Atharvana

Atharvana was a Telugu grammarian of the 13th century.¹ He wrote the Trilinga Sabdanusasanamu, a grammar of Telugu written in Sanskrit.¹² P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao called him “the only Jain writer in the whole range of available Telugu literature”.¹ Later writers cited him as an authority.¹

Name and date

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, in their history of Telugu literature (1928), date him from about 1240.¹ They place him in the Kakatiya period.³ They write that historians had put him at either the beginning or the end of the 13th century.¹ Tradition, however, made him a contemporary of Nannaya.¹

Many thought that “Atharvana” was a title, not a real name.¹ In this view his own name was Nallanna.¹ He took the name of the Atharva Veda to suggest that the language he described was very old.¹ Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao noted that no Brahmins of the Atharvana branch of the Veda were found in the Telugu country.¹ His title Dvitiyacharya, “the second teacher”, set him after Nannaya, who was counted the first grammarian.²

His works

The works given to him are:¹²

• the Trilinga Sabdanusasanamu, a grammar of Telugu in Sanskrit, which shows the age of the language
• the Atharvana Chandas, a work on metre
• a Telugu Mahabharata, continuing from where Nannaya stopped, with the Virata, Udyoga and Bhishma books¹²

None of the last two survives.² Verses from his Mahabharata are quoted by the later grammarian Appakavi.² Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao thought a grammarian was “hardly qualified to be a poet”.² In their view this was why his Bharata could not stand beside the work of Tikkana.² They also noted that he named Nannechoda as a poet who had brought death on himself by using unlucky metres.⁴

P. Sreenivasachar listed the Telugu writers of the Kakatiya age in 1942.⁵ His last entry is “Adharvana: Bharatamu and 2 works on Telugu Grammar”.⁵ P. T. Raju, in 1944, also named the grammar and noted that its author “is supposed to be a Jaina”.⁶

The legend of the burnt Mahabharata

A story tells why Nannaya never finished his translation of the Mahabharata.⁷⁸ In it, Atharvana showed his own Mahabharata to Nannaya before taking it to the king.⁷ Nannaya feared it would be preferred, so he set fire to the house where the manuscript was kept.⁷ Atharvana cursed him, and Nannaya went mad.⁸

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao rejected the story: “Nanniah and Atharvana were not contemporaries”.⁸ Besides, verses from Atharvana’s Bharata are quoted in later anthologies.⁸ Elsewhere in their book they still repeat it, as an example of the jealousy poets suffered.⁹

A Jain Mahabharata?

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao counted Atharvana’s Bharata among the few traces of an old Jain culture in the Telugu country.¹⁰ They thought it “probable” that it was a Jain version of the epic, since its author was a Jain.¹¹

Where the sources disagree

• His date. Tradition made him a contemporary of Nannaya.¹ Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao put him about 1240, and said others placed him at the start or end of that century.¹
• His faith. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao state that he was a Jain.¹ Raju wrote more cautiously that he “is supposed to be a Jaina”.⁶

Footnotes

1. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 55 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

2. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 56 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 23 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

4. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 53 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

5. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part I (1942), p. 14, note 2 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

6. P. T. Raju, Telugu Literature (1944), p. 29 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

7. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 42 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 43 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

9. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 31 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

10. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 21 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

11. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 49 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩