Jayanti Ramayya Pantulu

Jayanti Ramayya Pantulu was a Telugu scholar who spent his working life as a revenue officer and his spare time on old inscriptions and books.¹² He found and edited many Telugu inscriptions, worked to set up the Andhra Sahitya Parishat, and edited a large volume of Telugu inscriptions for the Government of India.¹³ The Andhra Historical Research Society honoured him on his 75th birthday with a special volume of its journal.⁴

Early life and education

The life sketch printed in that volume says he was born at sunrise on 18 July 1860, at Mukteswaram on the Godavari in Amalapuram taluk.⁴ He first studied in the village school held in the temple of Mukteswara, learning by heart from palm leaves.⁴ In 1874 his elder brother taught him the English alphabet, and he joined the town school at Rajahmundry.⁴

He went on to the college at Rajahmundry. He passed the B.A. in 1882.⁵ For a short time he was headmaster of the Raja’s High School at Pithapuram.⁵ Then he went to Madras and passed the B.L. in 1886, and the sketch calls him the first native of the Godavari district to take that degree.⁵

A revenue officer

He meant to work as a pleader, but a friend persuaded him to join the revenue department in 1886.⁵ By 1891 he was an acting Deputy Collector.⁵ He served in many districts, among them Anantapur, Visakhapatnam, Bellary, Krishna, Kadapa, Nellore and Guntur.⁵¹ He retired in August 1917 after 31 years of service.¹

Inscriptions

His work on inscriptions began by chance. In 1891, on leave in his village, he saw a set of copper plates now called the Tottaramudi plates of Kataya Vema.¹ He read and translated them, and the Government Epigraphist, E. Hultzsch, asked him to publish them in Epigraphia Indica.¹ Among the inscriptions he later published there, the sketch counts three as the most important:¹

• the Devulapalli plates of Immadi Narasimha Raya
• Yuddhamalla’s inscription at Vijayawada (then Bezwada)
• the Malkapuram inscription of Ganapatideva¹

The sketch explains why they mattered. The Devulapalli plates showed that the Saluva kings came between the first and third dynasties of Vijayanagara.² The Vijayawada inscription is in old Telugu verse, so there was Telugu poetry before Nannaya.² He also gave about 500 paper copies of inscriptions from Guntur and Kadapa districts to Andhra University.²

His largest work was the tenth volume of South Indian Inscriptions, Telugu inscriptions from the Madras Presidency.² When it was printed in 1948, the Government Epigraphist, B. Ch. Chhabra, wrote in the preface that it held 781 inscriptions of fifteen dynasties, from the Vishnukundins to the Mughals.³ “It is a great pity,” he wrote, that Ramayya Pantulu, “the Editor of this volume, could not live to see the fruit of his labour”.³

Telugu language and letters

He also worked for Telugu books. While in Madras he took up the idea of an Andhra Sahitya Parishat (Telugu literary society). It was founded at Madras in April 1911, with the Maharajas of Pithapuram and Venkatagiri as founders, and he chaired its executive committee from the start.¹

He edited old Telugu works for the Parishat, among them the Kavijanasrayamu, an old book on Telugu metre, and the Rayavachakamu.⁶ He also edited the Suryaraya Telugu dictionary, planned on the lines of the Oxford English Dictionary.⁶ In 1920 he was elected to the first Indian Legislative Assembly for the Godavari and Krishna districts.¹

In the quarrel over written Telugu he stood for the old literary language. The sketch says he fought the attempt to use spoken Telugu in public examinations, and that his side won.¹ See also Gidugu Ramamurti and Telugu grammar.

What later writers said

In 1943 K. Sitaramaiya named him with Manavalli Ramakrishna Kavi as older scholars “responsible for a large output” of literary and historical research.⁷

Footnotes

1. “Jayanti Ramayya Pantulu: Life and Work”, JAHRS X (1936–37), p. xviii (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

2. “Jayanti Ramayya Pantulu: Life and Work”, JAHRS X (1936–37), p. xix (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. B. Ch. Chhabra, preface (November 1947) to J. Ramayya Pantulu (ed.), South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. X (1948), PDF p. 7 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. “Mr. Jayanti Ramayya Pantulu: His Life and Work, a Sketch”, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, Vol. X (1936–37), p. xvi (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. “Jayanti Ramayya Pantulu: Life and Work”, JAHRS X (1936–37), p. xvii (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

6. “Jayanti Ramayya Pantulu: Life and Work”, JAHRS X (1936–37), p. xx (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

7. K. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 99 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩