Ayyalaraju Ramabhadrudu

Ayyalaraju Ramabhadrudu was a Telugu poet of the 16th century.¹ He is counted among the Ashtadiggajas, the eight poets of the court of Krishnadeva Raya of Vijayanagara.²³ He came to the court only in the king’s last years.¹ Later he wrote for a nephew of Aliya Rama Raya, the king’s son-in-law.⁴⁵

Life

G. R. Subramiah Pantulu wrote on the court poets in the Indian Antiquary in 1898.¹ He described Ramabhadra as a Niyogi Brahmin of Ontimitta (then Wontimitta), in Kadapa (then Cuddapah) district.¹ Subramiah Pantulu noted that this was also the birthplace of Bammera Potana.¹ Ramabhadra’s father was Akkaya and his grandfather Parvatanna.¹ He leaned towards Vaishnavism, and was a disciple of Mummadi Varadacharya.¹

As a young man he wrote a satakam (a set of about a hundred verses) on the god of the local temple.¹ He came to Vijayanagara in the last days of Krishnadeva Raya, and began to write about 1530.¹ He was very poor and had about a dozen children.¹ So people called him Pillala Ramabhadrayya, “Ramabhadrayya of the children”.¹⁶

His works

He wrote two long poems:⁷¹⁴

• the Sakalakathasara Sangrahamu (the essence of all stories), in nine cantos, a collection of famous Puranic stories
• the Ramabhyudayamu (the rise of Rama), a poem on the story of Rama⁷¹⁴

Krishnadeva Raya asked him to write the first, but died before it was finished.⁷¹ Subramiah Pantulu found it the work of a young man, in places ungrammatical.¹ Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao noted that it takes in verses said to be by a woman poet, the widowed daughter of Buddha Raju.⁸

After the king’s death, Ramabhadra joined the court of Gobburi Narasaraja.⁴ Subramiah Pantulu describes Narasaraja as the son of Obamamba, a sister of Aliya Rama Raya.⁹⁵ Ramabhadra dedicated the Ramabhyudayamu to him.⁴⁵ P. T. Raju, in 1944, also dated this second poem to Rama Raya’s time.¹⁰

Charles Philip Brown described the Ramabhyudayamu in 1852.¹¹ He counted eight books and 1,855 verses.¹¹ He thought it “of modern date”, because it “uses a few Hindustani words”.¹¹ “The style is greatly admired”, he added.¹¹

A story of his arrival

Both Subramiah Pantulu and Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao tell a story of how he reached the court.¹⁴⁶ In despair, it says, he set out for the capital with his family.¹⁶ Soaked in a thunderstorm, he met some students who had to write a verse for their teacher.¹⁶ He wrote it for them in return for a fire and dry clothes.¹ Their teacher, Ramarajabhushana, saw that a real poet had written it, and brought him to the king.¹⁴⁶

Subramiah Pantulu also tells of a later quarrel and a contest between the two poets.⁴ But he called the story “apocryphal”.⁴ In his view Ramarajabhushana was not yet writing in Krishnadeva Raya’s lifetime.⁴ Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao say only that “tradition identifies” the teacher with Ramarajabhushana.⁶

Where the sources disagree

• Ontimitta and Ekasilanagara. Subramiah Pantulu gave “Ekasilanagara” as the Sanskrit name of Ontimitta.¹ H. Krishna Sastri, in a note to the same article, disagreed.¹ He wrote that inscriptions show Ekasilanagara was the Sanskrit name of Warangal.¹
• Date of the Ramabhyudayamu. Subramiah Pantulu and Raju place it in the time of Rama Raya’s family, after Krishnadeva Raya.⁴¹⁰ Brown, without giving reasons beyond its language, called it “of modern date”.¹¹

Footnotes

1. Subramiah Pantulu, Indian Antiquary XXVII (1898), p. 322, with H. Krishna Sastri’s note 8 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³

2. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 72 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

3. G. R. Subramiah Pantulu, “Discursive Remarks on the Augustan Age of Telugu Literature”, Indian Antiquary XXVII (1898), p. 299 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

4. Subramiah Pantulu, Indian Antiquary XXVII (1898), p. 323 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

5. Subramiah Pantulu, Indian Antiquary XXVII (1898), p. 335 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 75 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 76 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 103 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

9. Subramiah Pantulu, Indian Antiquary XXVII (1898), p. 334 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

10. P. T. Raju, Telugu Literature (1944), p. 35 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

11. Charles Philip Brown, A Dictionary, Telugu and English (1852), p. xii (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵