Pingali Ellanarya

Pingali Ellanarya was a Telugu poet of the early 17th century.¹ He wrote the Tobhya Charitramu (the story of Tobhya), also called the Sarvesvara Mahatmyamu (the greatness of the Lord of all).¹² It is one of the two old Telugu poems on Christian subjects known to P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao.¹ The other is the Vedanta Rasayanamu of Mangalagiri Anandakavi.¹

The poet and his patron

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, in their history of Telugu literature (1928), date the poem to 1602.¹ They describe the poet as a Brahmin attached to a Reddi family.¹ His teacher was Sarabha Naradhya.¹ By his teacher’s grace, the poet says, he learned the “eightfold composition”.¹ He opens the poem with the usual praise of the great Shaiva saints and poets.¹

He wrote the poem for Tumma Rayapa Reddi, whom they call “a petty prince of Baktavada, in Kondavidu”.¹ See Kondavidu. A catalogue of the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library at Madras, printed in 1947, names the poet’s father as Nagayamatya.² It also says he wrote the poem at the request of Tumma Rayapa Reddi.²

The story behind the poem

The poem’s opening explains how it came to be written, as Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao sum it up.¹ Obala Reddi, father of a Konda Reddi, heard an account of the life of St Thomas from his teacher, Sanjivanadha Swami.¹ The account was later written down.¹ In their view this written account was the basis of the poem.¹

The manuscript at Madras

The 1947 catalogue describes a paper manuscript of the Sarvesvara Mahatmyamu, complete in four cantos.² It calls it “a work on Christianity describing the story of Tobhya”.² In the same volume, it notes, is a copy of the Vedanta Rasayanamu.² The catalogue found the writing fair “but full of mistakes”.²

Where the sources disagree

• His date. In their chapter on Christian poets, Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao date the poem to 1602.¹ But in their list of 18th-century poets they place him and Anandakavi “about the same time” as other poets of that century.³
• Was he a Christian? Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao doubted that Ellanarya and Anandakavi were “formal members of the Christian Church”.¹ They thought it “probable that they were followers of Christ from within the Hindu community”.¹ K. Sitaramaiya, in 1943, wrote only that the poem shows “distinct signs of Christian influence”.⁴
• The subject. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao trace the poem to a life of St Thomas.¹ The Madras catalogue calls it “the story of Tobhya”, and does not mention St Thomas.²

Footnotes

1. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 105 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

2. A. Sankaran and Syed Muhammad Fazlullah, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Telugu Manuscripts in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras, Vol. IX (1947), p. 2535, No. 2266 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 90 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

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