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of this Bhakti this and much more was the combined work of religious missionaries and of poets. And the influence of Narasinha and Miré has been no small factor in working in this way not only upon the masses, but upon other poets as well for more than four centuries.

Gujarat had only three poets and those of obscure fame in the sixteenth century—and yet this century is not without its significance. These three poets—Vasto,

“Vachharaj, and Tulsi—have left poems. in which we can

clearly feel the quickening of the genius of the next century which was to burst.upon the country with a regular shower of a great poetsand with a variegated luxuriance of beautiful and powerful poetry. This next, that is, the seventeenth century, is the most important period in the history of Gujarati poetry.

Northern Gujarat was in the possession of the Abmedabad Sultans in the fifteenth century, and the date of the final conquest of Junagadh in remoter West by Sultan Mahomed Begada in 1472 is also the period about which Narasinha Mehta's career closes. Subsequently to this the Sultan was pushing his conquest jn eastern Gujarat and was engaged in conquering Champaner, the great capital of Gujarat proper, which is now in ruins ; and when his power was exhausted, there was more than a century’s reign of anarchy in Gujarat, and poetry does not grow during such periods. It was