Gangadhara, a multilingual poet of the fifteenth century, having achieved renown in south India, decided to seek further glory in the faraway kingdoms of Gujarat. From the court of King Pratapadevaraya of Vijayanagara (r. 1426-1447), he set forth on a long and arduous journey of hundreds of miles. At the time, Gujarat roughly comprised much of the territory that is part of the state today, including the peninsulas of Saurashtra, also known as Kathiawad, and Kachchh. Gangadhara first went on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Dwarka. Next, he proceeded to the court of Sultan Muhammad Shah II (r. 1442-1451), at Ahmadabad. This was a flourishing city, a new capital of the Gujarat sultanate that had only recently been built by the Sultan's father, Ahmad Shah (r. 1411-1442). At the Ahmedabad court, to the great delight of Sultan Muhammad, Gangadhara vanquished the local poets with his excellent lyrical skills. Gangadhara then went on to two other courts in the region - Champaner, to the east of the capital, and Junagadh, to its far west - composing panegyrics for the Rajput chieftains of these fort kingdoms.

In the mid-fifteenth century Gujarat was becoming well known as a place where poets and scholars were sure to find supportive audiences. Sanskrit continued to be popular: Gangadhara's skills in this Indic High language were favoured not only by modest Rajput kings but also desired in the court of a Muslim sultan. At the same time, a multilingual milieu was also emerging. As political action shifted away from the subcontinent's traditional centre, Delhi, Gujarat, an ecologically and socially diverse region, saw a variety of groups vying for political power. Poets, writers, and scribes were crucial to the ways in which these new rulers of local and regional entities imagined their polities and asserted their rights to rule in this changing political context. Gangadhara's ability to make good in the different courts that constituted Gujarat evidence the region's political, cultural, and literary vibrancy. Yet the century during which Gangadhara made his journey is viewed in the conventional historiography of pre-modern South Asia as one of political and cultural decline. In most surveys of Indian history, the fifteenth century is given little attention, and is often designated the ‘period in waiting’ or the ‘twilight’ before the rise of the Mughals in the sixteenth century.