Who is the author of Veerbhadra Champu?

A champu kavya is a distinctive Sanskrit literary form that mixes prose (gadya) passages with verse (padya) stanzas within the same composition. Medieval court poets used this hybrid form to narrate royal genealogies, heroic deeds, or religious legends, and individual champu compositions are often identifiable from colophons or later literary catalogues (koshas) that record their author.

The Veerbhadra Champu (recorded in Sanskrit literary catalogues as Virabhadradeva Champu) is one such composition, composed around 1577 CE in praise of Virabhadradeva, a Baghela prince of the Rewa (Baghelkhand) ruling house in the Vindhya region of present-day Madhya Pradesh. The Sanskrit Sahitya Kosh and related literary catalogues attribute its authorship to Padmanabha Misra, son of Balabhadra Misra.

• Beesaldev refers to Vigraharaja IV of the Chahamana dynasty of Ajmer, who is remembered in tradition as the reputed author of the Sanskrit drama Harakeli Natak, a different work in a different genre.

• Bilhana was an 11th-century Kashmiri poet at the Chalukya court of Vikramaditya VI, known for the mahakavya Vikramankadevacharita and the lyric Chaurapanchasika, again distinct compositions.

• Kumarpal was a 12th-century Chalukya (Solanki) king of Gujarat, remembered chiefly as a royal patron of Jain scholarship, notably of Hemachandra, rather than as an author of this champu.

Since only Padmanabha (Padmanabha Misra) is credited with the Veerbhadra Champu in the Sanskrit literary record, Padmanabha is the correct answer.