Kuchimanchi Timmakavi

Kuchimanchi Timmakavi was a Telugu poet of the 18th century.¹ He wrote a great many long poems.¹² He was known by the title Abhinava Vaganusasana, “the new Vaganusasana”, a title of Nannaya.¹³ He is remembered especially for poems in “pure Telugu”, written without Sanskrit words.⁴⁵

His works

P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, in their history of Telugu literature (1928), list him among the poets who opened the 18th century.¹ They name these of his works:⁴⁶⁵¹

• the Rukmini Parinayamu (the marriage of Rukmini)
• the Rajasekhara Vilasamu and the Ballana Charitramu
• the Rasika Janamanobhiramamu, a poem written in imitation of the Vasucharitramu
• a Ramayana and the Nilasundari Parinayamu, both in pure Telugu⁴⁶⁵¹

Charles Philip Brown listed the Rasika Janamanobhiramamu among the books quoted in his Telugu dictionary of 1852.⁷ He described it as “a poem in 5 books”.⁷

The pure-Telugu poems

Telugu poetry had always used many Sanskrit words.⁵ Some poets tried, as a feat, to write whole poems without them.⁵ Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao counted Timmakavi’s Ramayana and Nilasundari Parinayamu among these.⁵ They praised the earlier pure-Telugu poem of Ponnikanti Telaganarya, but not these later ones.⁵ In their view the language of such poems was “unintelligible even to the pandit”.⁵ They compared them to “letters written in cypher, unmeaning without a key”.⁵

Where the sources disagree

• His merit. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao put his Rasika Janamanobhiramamu among the imitations of the Vasucharitramu that had “all its defects but none of its excellence”.⁶ K. Sitaramaiya, writing in Hyderabad in 1943, called Timmakavi “a very prolific writer and a scholar of great merit”.² He also granted that the pure-Telugu poems were hard to read, but did not dismiss their authors’ services.⁸

Footnotes

1. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 90 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. K. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 58 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

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

4. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 54 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 89 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

6. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 88 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

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

8. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 59 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩