According to some scholars such as Georg Bühler, the surviving text is only a prelude to the larger poem that Vakpati intended to write, but possibly never finished.
He states that he was known as Kavi-raja (Prakrit: "Kairāa",[2] "king of poets"), an epithet possibly awarded to him by his patron Yashovarman.
[6] Bappabhatti-Suri-Charita, a biography of the Jain leader Bappabhatti-suri, claims that Vakpati was born in the Paramara royal family, and was imprisoned by king "Yashodharma".
These Jain accounts can be dismissed as unreliable: they are mostly fabrications, aimed at showing how Bappabhatti was able to convert notable people including Vakpati to Jainism.
Pandit consulted three more manuscripts from the Jaina collections of western India, as well as Haripala's Sanskrit language commentary on Gaudavaho.
[9] Scholars such as Johannes Hertel and N. B. Utgikar regard the surviving text as a complete work, and believe that Vakpati had no intention of writing more.
[15] Other scholars, such as Pandit and Bühler, theorize that the surviving text of Gaudavaho is only a prelude to the larger work that Vakpati planned to write, but possibly could not complete.
Bühler notes that katha-pitham is the title of the introductory parts of Somadeva's Katha-sarit-sagara and Kshemendra's Brhat-katha-manjari, both of which are Sanskrit-language adaptations of Brihatkatha.
[19] N. G. Suru disagrees with Jacobi, stating that several post-Kalidasa poets enjoyed voluminous writing, focusing on quantity over quality.
He may have included the description of natural scenery in the prelude, because he intended to focus on the main theme (the killing of the Gauda king) in the subsequent parts of the poem.
Suru further argues that Haripala wrote a commentary on the manuscript with the least number of verses, and he himself admits that he is commenting on an earlier part of Gaudavaho.
Warder theorizes that the Gaudavaho may have been composed after Yashovarman's defeat against Lalitaditya, as the poem features an "atmosphere of nostalgia" with "bitter verses on good and evil, on the vanity of the present age when success is reserved for mediocrity and jealously withheld from excellence.
He starts with Brahma, and then refers to Vishnu and his incarnations including Narasimha, Varaha, Vamana, Kurma, Mohini, and Krishna.
He then describes pralaya, the periodic dissolution of the world, stating that its sole survivor - Vishnu - had incarnated as Yashovarman.
[33] Vakpati then states that after Yashovarman's coronation ceremony, as soon as the rainy season ended, the king launched a campaign for world conquest.
[33] You strike terror even with these pillars decorated with cloth dyed red, prominently displaying, as it were, circular heaps of flesh (from animals) butchered for your offering.
The poet then describes the winter season, stating that Yashovarman marched to the Shona river and then to the Vindhya mountains.
He uses various names for the goddess, including Madhavi, Bhairavi, Chandi, Narayani, Shankari, Kali, Shabari, Gauri, and Tapasi.
Yashovarman then defeated the Parasikas in a fierce battle as part of his world-conquest, just like Raghu had done in the past (a reference to Kalidasa's Raghuvaṃśa).
[41] Vakpati then describes Yashovarman's arrival in the suburbs of the Shrikantha (Thanesar) city, where the ancient king Janamejaya had performed a snake sacrifice ceremony to avenge his father's death.
[42] The king then moved to Kurukshetra, where he enjoyed water-sports with his lovers in a famous lake, which was the site of the fight between Bhima and Duryodhana.
Vakpati narrates how the gods transported the city of Ayodhya to heaven as requested by the ancient king Harishchandra.
[44] After Ayodhya, the king proceeded to the slopes of the Mandara mountain, where the local rich people offered him gifts.
Vakpati then devotes 150 verses to describe the "dry and insipid worldly life" of his period, venting out his frustrations about sycophancy of courtiers, nepotism, fraud, poverty, stinginess of rich people, lack of respect for the non-wealthy, and general wickedness in the society.
[55] He then glorifies the king, narrating how god Shiva tested him by appearing as a lion before him, calling him as an incarnation of Vishnu multiple times, and describing him as a member of the lunar dynasty.
A great assembly of gods, nymphs, men, women, and birds gathers in an open auditorium (as had happened in Bhavabhuti's play Uttararamacarita).
[9] The surviving text of the poem does not contain much historical narrative: it focuses more on mythological episodes, and on other topics found commonly in mahakavyas, such as natural scenery and march of armies.
[32] Historian V. V. Mirashi calls Gaudavaho "mostly a fictionalised piece" that does not name any of the defeated kings, and appears to be modeled on Kalidasa's Raghuvaṃśa and Harishena's panegyric on Samudragupta.
An inscription found at Nalanda in Magadha describes Yashovarman as a famous king who destroyed all his enemies with his sword.
[61] Bhattacharya identifies the defeated king as Vishnugupta, the father of Jivitagupta II, and states that the Gauda region may have been a part of the Later Gupta kingdom at the time.