Leaders and Landmarks of Telugu Literature

Leaders and Landmarks of Telugu

Literature

BY PROF. RAYAPROLU SUBBA RAO¹

(The Osmania University, Hyderabad)

SRINATHA AND POTANNA (1350-1475)

By the time we come to Warangal in the hey-day of her splendour and luxury, the poet has become an honoured figure in society and has achieved royal patronage and titles of distinction. He became the leader of popular taste and refinement. A sense of plenty prevailed among the people, and there was a swing towards worldly enjoyment. A craving for ease and comfort became common and was spreading in society. The simplicity of life was disappearing. Religious austerity was on the decline.

It was at this juncture that Srinatha and potanna appeared on the literary scene of Andhradesa. Similar in greatness, they were yet poles apart in their personal qualities, in their essential outlook–in fact, in their very temperaments. Srinatha was intensely ambitious. He loved fame, and was fond of all the pleasures of the world. potanna devoted his life to a contemplation of the divinity, and courted poverty. Srinatha stood for a fuller life, and potanna stood for purer conduct. Srinatha touched life, as he saw it, at many points. potanna sang almost only of God.

Srinatha lived from 1365 to 1440, while potanna lived between 1400 and 1475. Not much information is available about the family history of Srinatha, but his own life has come down to us in some detail. As he wrote proudly of himself, he began versification while yet a boy; as a fresh youth, he entered the literary field with his ‘Sapta Sati’; in full-blown manhood he astonished the Telugu literary world by his ‘Sringara Naishadha,’ a translation of Sri Harsha’s ‘Naishadha’ in Sanskrit. His works chronologically arranged, are (1) ‘Sapta Sati,’ (2) ‘Maruttarat Charitra,’ (3) ‘Sringara Naishada,’ (4) ‘Bhimeswara Purana,’ (5) ‘Kasi Khanda,’ (6) ‘Panditaradhya Charitra,’ (7) ‘Sivaratri Mahatmyam,’ (8) ‘Haravilasa,’ (9) ‘Vallabhabhyudaya,’ (10) ‘Sringara Dipika,’ (11) ‘Veedhinataka’ and (12) ‘Palnati Veera Charita.’

No poet had to his credit so many works of high literary merit or such a variety of themes and metres. It is no easy task to translate the Sanskrit ‘Naishadha’ into a ‘vernacular’ without having to sacrifice some of its fine deep colours, its profound scholarship and its magnificent diction. The original work bristles with linguistic intricacies, unfamiliar verbal forms and unknown compounds, not to speak of the all-too-compressed and compact thought of its scholarly author. In fact, no poet in any other language had, up till now, attempted the task. Yet, Srinatha put his finger on it and decorated the Telugu Muse with this lovely diadem. This contribution of Srinatha has a special importance to the growth of Telugu literature, because the Sanskritic School among Andhras argued that serious works in Sanskrit could not well be rendered into Telugu, and Srinatha, by this performance disproved the theory, and demonstrated how Telugu also was a worthy vehicle for high poetic thought. A careful comparison of the Telugu ‘Naishadha’ with the Sanskrit original reveals that in many places the original is deliberately retouched, and that the translation is the better for the retouching.

I will mention only two of his works: ‘Veedhi Nataka’ and ‘Palnati Veera Charita.’ The first depicts the social life of Warangal, and the second is a ballad culled from the folk-lore of the day. The ‘Veedhi Nataka’ exhibits a series of pen-pictures drawn mostly from the flourishing bazaars and delightful haunts of Warangal. It breathes a refreshingly popular atmosphere, and the sentiment borders almost on licentiousness. But from a purely artistic point of view it has that attraction which only the life of the common people offers in its free moods and unconventional environments. When he talks to the young girl in the betel-nut shop you will see her blushing with colour. Again, when he curses in disgust the lady of the inn, it is difficult to restrain laughter. The mingled feelings of the poet when he describes the dress, customs and habits of the people and their inevitable reactions at the intrusion into their life of a foreigner are enjoyable. The matter of this supreme work of art is not strictly decorous. But if certain flowers in the garden of life are held by the merely respectable to be taboo to the poet’s touch, Srinatha at any rate refused to be a prude. He plucked the tabooed flowers, and drew exquisite perfumes. His ‘Veedhinataka’ is a glorious monument to his daring but unquestionable poetic genius.

‘Palnati Veera Charita’ is a heroic ballad. In the uplands of Guntur District, even today, the worship of these heroes is an annual feature among the village folk. The burden of the song is a fierce battle, fought between two rival royal houses. There are, in the poem, some women characters and certain situations that are matchless. The poem is written in a metre which adapts itself to song very easily. Everything in the poem can be said to be Srinatha’s, because there was no earlier work on the subject, except popular tradition from which he could draw.

Nayakuralu is a prominent woman. Amazonian in her stature and strength, she comes from a Reddi family. Either she lost her husband early in life or he faded into nothingness before her overbearing personality, for we hear nothing about him in the whole story. Nor is there anyone in the story with whom her relationship can be traced. Not even feminine charm did she have or exercise in the least. By dint of sheer perseverance and organizing instinct, she gained the ear of one of the rival houses, intrigued and brought about a battle in which great personal bravery was manifested. At one strategic point in the battle the enemy were pushed to squeeze themselves out of a narrow mountain pass. At that time she is depicted to have mounted the hill and stood there, like a Colossus, across the mountain pass, and she gave fight to the enemy. There is another poignant situation where Manchala, a young lady of the ruling family, was deserted by her husband, Baludu. He was young, charming and given to unrestricted sport and pleasure; but his heroic temper was the temper of fine steel. All the elders were on the battle-field. The young hero alone was in the town. When the principal heroes fell in the battle, and the call came to the young man, he left for the field of battle; but before his departure he paid a visit to his wedded wife, as was the custom with all fighting classes in India. Manchala received her husband. After many long days of separation, the couple were together for a few minutes. Baludu forgot himself beside his wife, and forgot all about the fight and the field too. It was a moment of supreme psychological conflict in which the warrior and the lover were at deadly clash. Very often woman in her youth is a coveted creature with Oriental poets. The angel in her is, as a rule, forgotten. But Srinatha saw woman in her highest moods and illustrated that vision in undying lines. The youthful Manchala asserted the full dignity of womanhood, and in a thrilling speech exhorted her husband out of the seductive bed-chamber in quest of his most immediate duty. Lashed by her words, Baludu fled to the battle-field. This is a peerless scene in Telugu literature, and rarely has the language of a poet achieved finer effect in any language.

Srinatha’s life is without a parallel in many ways. He frightened the contemporary poets out of their wits by his great works and deep scholarship. Besides, his debating powers were remarkable. There was one profound grammarian by name Dindima Bhatta, who always carried before him a conch-drum as a symbol of his unique powers as a logician and a litterateur. Srinatha, as a creative genius, transgressed the limits of grammar, and was thus drawn into a fight with the conservative scholars. He fought with Bhatta and shattered his drum of victory, perhaps both literally and metaphorically. He ate off gold plates with the Reddi rulers; rode in a palanquin; and wrested, as it were, honours and gold from many a satrap of the day. In one of the South Indian Durbars, so the story goes, he was seated on a dais and was bathed in gold dinars. He wore long coats and turbans; used musk and saffron; and lived in all luxury. But the end of this great poet was anything but happy. He lived too long, long enough to see all his royal patrons pass away. History records that the quit-rent on his lands fell in arrears, for which he was actually taken handcuffed in the open streets. But his pride was unquenchable. His last verse is memorable for the spirit of the man:

"Srinatha is dying: and the hearts of the poets of the heavenly world are trembling (at the thought of having to encounter Srinatha)."

Potanna belonged to Warangal, and with him we get into an atmosphere altogether different from the one we have just moved out of. As tradition has it, he was not educated and was of an ascetic bent of mind from his childhood. His ancestral occupation was agriculture. Somehow, he did not like the society he had to live with. He even developed a positive hatred towards worldly ways and means. He took the vow of poverty and retired to the silent forests. It is said that he met a ‘yogi,’ who unlocked the flood-gates of his latent powers. Poetry began to flow in torrents. In unmistakable language, he declared that his scholarship was inborn and not acquired, and that his poetic light was the grace of God. It is said he was accustomed to dictate poetry only in his intensely emotional and self-forgetful moods. His work, certainly, has the halo of such spontaneity. He translated the ‘Bhagavata’ into Telugu. The ‘Bhagavata’ is deeply religious in its atmosphere and Vaishnavite in outlook, and so remained it in Potanna’s hands too.

Potanna’s style has the force, the sweep and the certainty of a tidal wave. There is a ringing echo in his words, that appears and reappears with rapturous warmth and sincerity. The prayerfulness on the one hand and the melody on the other, inherent in his work, are responsible for the extensive popularity of the Telugu ‘Bhagavata,’ parts of which are recited in the millions of Telugu homes even today. The religious fervour and the devotional tone of the poet are deeply marked in every line of his poems. And for real poetry we must go to the 10th canto, where Sri Krishna’s boyhood, the surrounding cow-herd villages and the ever-green plains of the Jumna are portrayed. Usually Potanna indulges in sonorous phrases and long Sanskrit compounds. He is fond of rhyme which sometimes clogs the wheel of thought. But the 10th canto pulsates with lyrical ardour which transcends his mannerisms and his limitations. What is noticeable everywhere is the studious restraint from conscious artifice and patient dressing-up. Potanna was a real devotee, and the reactions of a society which was fast changing into newer forms were inevitably severe on him. Besides, Telugu literature also was drifting more and more towards the secular and the sensual in life. Naturally he was upset, and cried out, addressing the Goddess of Learning:

"Oh, Mother, why do you shed tears that roll down your bruised breast? Believe me, I shall not sell Thee to the Kings of Karnata and Kirita for my bread and butter." Turning to the contemporary writers he exhorts:

"A poem" is like a girl, tender as the mango leaf in bud. Sell her not to the wicked Kings. Instead of enjoying that shameful food, the poets could, just as well, become ploughmen or dig out roots and bulbs in the woods to feed their wives and children."

Very bitter words indeed!

Against this puritanic outburst let us put the open assertion of his famous contemporary, Srinatha. He said:

"Oh, King of the Telugus! Give me musk and lavender. Their perfume will spread and whisper (to me) through the silken dress of singing girls."

Let us pause awhile and review what was so far achieved in Telugu literature. During the early stages of literary activity, the motive was as much to popularize Aryan thought and ideals as to perfect the process of combination between Telugu and Sanskrit. Such being the case, the poet who first played the role of a constructive worker was perforce not entirely successful. As it is the aim that determines the scope and shape of the work, the literature of the period could not but be scholarly and conventional in expression, exclusive and pedagogic in tone. But the incorporation of cultural thought and literary sentiment of Sanskritic origin into Telugu was not altogether an unmixed evil. Although high-sounding vocabulary shrouded the sweet and simple Telugu language, the contact with Sanskrit did enrich Telugu idiom, speech and form. Telugu had assimilated (and had sometimes wholly adopted) the cultural and literary conventions of Sanskrit by the end of the 14th century. We have just studied the two leaders of the 15th century, who made the literary history of the period, but were poles apart not only in their social and religious outlook but also in their literary conventions. Srinatha, however, was undoubtedly the representative of the times; and Potanna, by his courage and sincerity, permanently revived the religious element in poetry, which was fast falling into disuse.

We fail to understand or appreciate Srinatha and we also miss the real significance of Potanna, if we do not analyse the life of the Andhras during this epoch.

It was the Reddi kings who were ruling at the period. The king was a social and even a religious institution among the Hindus. But the old notions of kingship seemed to have disappeared. It was, at first, a close preserve meant only for Kshatriyas by birth. But time is a great destroyer as well as a great builder. The fact was that the caste of Kshatriyas degenerated in both the ethnic and ethical spheres in India. But the other castes, notably the fourth, imbibed all the best and noblest qualities of the Kshatriyas for whom alone the kingship was covenanted.

The Reddis were a sturdy race noted for their fine physique, personal bravery, organizing capacity and above all an inordinate love for their motherland. Primarily, they were and are agriculturists. The Reddi loves his fields more than his house. He loves his cows and bulls more than he loves his own children. This attachment to land and livestock helped by the uncompromising sense of self-respect made him seek ‘fresh fields and pastures new.’ It was the agriculturist that made the Indian village: not the Brahmin, who required a producer to fall upon; nor the Kshatriya, whose aristocratic life demanded a society of all classes; nor even the Baniya, who could only live on barter and exchange. It was the agriculturist who, perhaps, first built a shed for his cattle and a home for his family, and carried out the plan of village construction. The Reddis took up the sword, not so much for honour or service in the army as for protection of their hard-acquired property from the marauder and of their dearly-loved cattle from the beasts of prey. But, thus equipped, the Reddi, when summoned by anarchy in the country, showed his mettle and unhesitatingly took the reins of government in hand. This is not the place for a detailed survey of the Reddi rule in the Andhra country. But the phase of Andhra culture and civilisation which received a great impetus from the patronage of the Reddis afterwards became an inalienable characteristic of Andhra life. The Redd kings were not mere patrons of literature and arts. They were scholars and commentators themselves. Early in the 15th century (1414), Vema Bhoopala, a Reddi king of Addanki, wrote a commentary on ‘Amaru Kavya,’ a treatise on erotics attributed to Acharya Sankara. I mention this in order to indicate the literary taste and artistic temperament of the Reddi kings. They brought with them a learned appreciation of artistic literature full of love, beauty, music, colour and fragrance, and the manifold gifts of nature. Their love of perfumes is proverbial. History tells us that it was the Reddi rulers of Kondavidu who first brought Muslims from the north, mainly to manufacture ‘attars’ from different flowers. In Andhra Desa, ‘Kondavidu Attar’ is a household name. The Reddis built beautiful stores, solely intended for scents and spices, and there were store-keepers of scents among the palace officers. They imported camphor trees from the Punjab, musk and ‘javvajee’ from Goa, and pearls and cratons from different places. It is said that Kumaragiri Reddi actually carved a palace of pleasure out of a single trunk of a tree. They loved personal beauty and artistic surroundings. In fact they desired to realise heaven on earth. These were the surroundings in which the poet, Srinatha, lived, moved and , enjoyed himself, and his poetry reveals the effect of the social scene on his great imagination. The genius of Srinatha flowered forth from the very spirit of the times he lived in. Potanna’s soul drew itself away from this same atmosphere as the protest of sensitive religiosity.

1 The last article of this series was published in Triveni for June 1939.