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popular poets require to be properly explained to the people.
We shall begin with Akho, for his work as a poet was more destructive than constructive. The poetry which had first inspired and enlivened Mira and Narasinba, had passed into the hands of the priests and heads of the Vallabhdchdrya sect by this. time. Krishna, or, as he is fondly called, Kanaiya, the ideas imagery of whose early career had thrown 2 golden cloud of associations over the beautiful groves of Brij, was also idolised and enshrined in temples; and with this transmigration of the Deity from poetry to idol- worship, the God in this new incarnation was made to travel into the heart of Mewar and Gujrat. The Mewar temple had not only its idol, but the idol had for its head-worshippers the ancestors of those whom we now call the Vaishnav Maharajas. The relations between this Mewar idol and the Maharajas may, for the sake of brevity, be best expressed as having been similar in kind to those of the descendants of Sivaji and their ministers the Peishwas. The Gujarat headquarters of the idol were fixed at Dakor, and the Dakor temple has been fortunate in not having had its Peishwa. The Mewar temple seems to have risen into importance before the Dakor temple, and the poet Akho was, by birth and breeding; a pious devotee of the Mewar temple. But fiery minds can seldom resist the temptation of breaking
