Palkuriki Somanatha

Palkuriki Somanatha was a Telugu poet of the Virashaiva faith of Basava, from Palakurthi near Warangal.¹ His two main works are the Basava Purana and the Panditaradhya Charitra.¹² Historians place him either in the late twelfth century or in the reign of Prataparudra, the last Kakatiya king.²³⁴⁵¹

Life and date

Palkuriki Somanatha was a native of Palakurthi, in the Jangaon taluk near Warangal.¹ He was the leading Telugu writer of the Virashaiva faith of Basava.¹ His date is disputed. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, in their history of Telugu literature (1928), placed him in the reign of the king they called Prataparudra I.²³ This was the Kakatiya Rudradeva of the late twelfth century.²³ They dated his Vrishadhipa Satakam to 1180, the earliest Telugu sataka (poem of a hundred verses) they knew.²³ P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, writing in 1978, made him a contemporary of Prataparudra, the last Kakatiya king.⁴⁵¹

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao also wrote that his campaign for the faith had the support of the court.²⁶ They said that a minister of the same king, Ninduttri Yannayamatya, was his disciple.²⁶ Parabrahma Sastry held, on the contrary, that the Kakatiya kings did not support the Aradhya Shaiva movement, though it gained ground in their time.⁵

Works

Most of Somanatha’s writing is in dvipada, a native Telugu metre of couplets (pairs of lines).¹⁷ He wrote in a deliberately simple Telugu (janu-tenugu), meant to carry Basava’s teachings to ordinary people.¹⁷

His two main works are the Basava Purana, a life of Basava, and the Panditaradhya Charitra, a life of the Andhra Shaiva teacher Mallikarjuna Panditaradhya.¹² He also wrote shorter works such as the Basavodaharana and the Anubhava Sara.¹² Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao add that he wrote in Telugu, Kannada and Sanskrit.² Later poets built on him. Srinatha used the Panditaradhya Charitra for his own poem of that name.⁶⁸ Piduparti Somanatha put the Basava Purana into verse in the sixteenth century.⁶⁸

Parabrahma Sastry found Somanatha’s writings narrow and sectarian (devoted to one sect).⁴¹ He found them harsh towards other faiths and towards the Vedas and the Vedanta, but valuable for the religious and social history of the period.⁴¹

The Panditaradhya Charitra, for example, tells of a debate between Mallikarjuna Panditaradhya and Buddhist teachers at the court of the Velanati chief Rajendra Choda II.⁹ It says that afterwards the teacher’s followers killed the Buddhists and destroyed their monastery, and the king had Panditaradhya blinded.⁹ Parabrahma Sastry took the story as the last recorded blow to Buddhism in the Andhra country.⁹

L. D. Barnett edited a graffito (scratched writing) of a servant of “the house of the blessed Panditaradhya” at Palampet.¹⁰ He cited the same work for the teacher’s birth at Draksharama.¹⁰

Footnotes

1. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 299. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

2. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 51 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

3. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 99 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 9. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 278. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 52 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 98 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

8. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 60 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

9. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 271. ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. L. D. Barnett (ed.), Inscriptions at Palampet and Uparpalli (1919), p. 12 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²