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VIII. THE KRISHNA CULT (1550-1800) The Ashta Chhap.— Vallabhacharya and his son Vitthalnath, who have been mentioned in a previous chapter as the early leaders of the Vallabhachari sect at Gobardhan, near Muttra, each had four disciples, all of whom were Hindi poets. They are known as the Ashta Chhap, or the Eight Seals, or Diestamps, because the poems they produced are regarded as standards for that dialect of Western Hindi in which they wrote. This dialect was the Braj Bhasha, named after the district in which they lived, namely Muttra and Brinda- ban and the surrounding country. Since their time almost all Hindi poetry connected with the Krishna Cult has been composed in Braj Bhasha, and it has also come to be looked upon as the poetic dialect of Hindi par excellence, though Tulsi Das and most of the worshippers of Rama wTote in Eastern Hindi. The disciples of Vallabhacharya who are included in the Ashia Chhap were Sur Das, Krishna Das Pay Ahdrl, Parmd?iand Das and Kumbhayi Das. Those of Vitthal- nath were Chahirbhuj Das, Chhit Svami, Nand Das and Govi7id Dds. All these flourished about the middle or second half of the sixteenth century. Krishna Dds Pay Ahdrl seems to have been a rival of Sur Das, though not equal to him in poetical merit. He was, however, the writer of graceful and melodious stanzas. His best known work is called the Prem- sattvanirup. Krishna Das had several pupils who became poets. According to some one of them was