Nachana Somana

Nachana Somana was a Telugu poet of the 14th century at the court of Bukka I, one of the founders of Vijayanagara.¹² His known poem is the Uttara Harivamsamu (the later Harivamsa), on the later life of Krishna.¹ Critics have ranked it with the work of the three poets of the Telugu Mahabharata.¹ Historians have used his career as evidence about the origins of the Vijayanagara kings.²

The court poet of Bukka

P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, in their history of Telugu literature (1928), date Nachana Soma to 1355–77.¹ They call him “a court poet of Bukka Raya, an ancestor of Krishnadevaraya”.¹ P. T. Raju, in 1944, also places the poet at Bukka’s court.³

N. Venkataramanayya wrote about the founders of Vijayanagara in 1929.² He wrote that “Bukka I was the patron of the Telugu poet Nachana Soma”.² The poem is dedicated to “Hariharanatha”.² Venkataramanayya noted that this “is taken to be a covert allusion to Harihara I”.² See Harihara I. He also found that the poet and the king held the same views on the quarrels between religious sects.² From this he judged that the two men were very close.²

He made one more point. “It is significant”, he wrote, “that the only vernacular poet whom Bukka ever patronised was a Telugu poet”.² He used this, with other evidence, to argue that the Sangama kings were of Telugu origin.²

The Uttara Harivamsamu

Errapragada had already put the Harivamsa into Telugu.¹ Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao thought Nachana Soma was “probably dissatisfied with Errapragada’s achievement”.¹ So he wrote the story again, in a style he thought worthy of it.¹ They reported that “competent critics” judged it equal to the work of the Kavitraya (the three poets of the Telugu Mahabharata), and in parts better.¹

Not everything in the poem pleased them. They found its prose passages too ornate, full of double meanings and word-play.⁴ They counted him among the poets whose fame has come down to us “without transmitting much of their work”.¹

K. Sitaramaiya, writing in Hyderabad in 1943, saw him as a forerunner of the later long story-poems.⁵ In his view Nachana Somanatha, Pillalamarri Pinaveerabhadrudu and Srinatha laid the foundations for the prabandha (long narrative poem).⁵

Learning in Kannada

C. R. Reddy wrote the foreword to Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao’s book.⁶ He named Nachana Soma among the Telugu poets who were “celebrated for their attainments in Kanarese”.⁶ With Nannechoda and others, he took this as a sign of the early closeness of Telugu and Kannada.⁶

Footnotes

1. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 59 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. N. Venkataramanayya, Kampili and Vijayanagara (1929), p. 26, note 3 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

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

4. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 93 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

5. K. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 33 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

6. C. R. Reddy, foreword to P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 6 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³