Marana

Marana was a Telugu poet of the late Kakatiya period, a pupil of Tikkana.¹² He put the Sanskrit Markandeya Purana into Telugu verse as the Markandeya Puranamu.¹³ He dedicated it to Nagaya Gannaya, an officer of the last Kakatiya king, Prataparudra.⁴⁵ A story in it later became the basis of Allasani Peddana’s Manucharitramu.¹

The Markandeya Puranamu

P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, in their history of Telugu literature (1928), wrote that the poem “ranks very high in the literature of the time”.¹ They counted it among the Puranas translated into Telugu, with Errapragada’s Nrisimha Purana and Srinatha’s works.³

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, the historian of the Kakatiyas, wrote in 1978 that Marana did not simply follow the Sanskrit text.² Like his teacher Tikkana in the Mahabharata, he made changes.² He found its style simple, free from long Sanskrit compounds and full of native Telugu (desi) words.²

The patron and Kakatiya history

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao name the patron as “Naya-ganna Mantri, a commander of Prataparudra II”.⁴¹ Parabrahma Sastry used the poem as a source for Prataparudra’s government.⁵ He wrote that Marana names several of the king’s officers.⁵ Nagaya Gannaya, one of them, is said to have received the insignia of a nayaka (commander).⁵ He was made the officer in charge of the Kakatiya capital.⁵

Parabrahma Sastry added that “the latest writers on the Kakatiya History” identify Nagaya Gannaya with an officer called Kannu or Kattu.⁵ According to the historian Shams-i-Siraj Afif, that officer went with Prataparudra into captivity towards Delhi.⁵ After the king died on the way, he became a Muslim and took the name Malik Maqbul.⁵ This identification is made by those later writers, as Parabrahma Sastry reports it.⁵ See Malik Maqbul.

From Marana to Peddana

The Markandeya Purana tells the story of Svarochisha Manu.¹ Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao wrote that it was “the basis of the Manucharitra of Peddana”, who paid Marana “the compliment of imitation in many places”.¹ They found Marana’s hand in the way Peddana conceived the situations of his poem.⁶

Footnotes

1. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 57 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 298. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 63 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

4. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 23 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

5. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 171. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

6. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 73 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩