Ponnikanti Telaganarya

Ponnikanti Telaganarya was a Telugu poet of the 16th century at the court of Golconda.¹² He wrote the Yayaticharitramu (the story of King Yayati), a poem in “pure Telugu”, using as few Sanskrit words as he could.³ It is dedicated to a general of the sultan Ibrahim Qutb Shah.² It is one of the few Telugu poems of the period written for a Muslim court.¹

The poem in pure Telugu

P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, in their history of Telugu literature (1928), date the poem to 1578.³ They describe it as “a kavya of five cantos, in pure Telugu”.³ In their view Telaganarya “made an attempt at opening a new field”, and produced “a very readable book of considerable merit”.³ Later poets who tried the same, they wrote, were less successful.³ They had little praise for those later works, which they found hard to understand.³

P. T. Raju, in 1944, also noted that it was written “without using any Sanscrit word”.⁴ He added that ordinary readers found pure Telugu hard to follow.⁴ K. Sitaramaiya, in 1943, counted it among the works in accha Telugu (pure Telugu).⁵⁶ Charles Philip Brown listed the poem among the books quoted in his Telugu dictionary of 1852.⁷

The patron

S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar printed the opening of the poem in his Sources of Vijayanagar History (1919).² In his summary, it is dedicated to “the Muhammadan Chief Amin Khan, General of Ibharam (Ibrahim Kutb Shah)”.² It praises Amin Khan’s elder brother, who visited the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar.² That brother is said to have known Arabic, Persian, Gujarati and Telugu.² Another brother, Fazl Khan, made a treaty between the sultan and the Vijayanagara king Sriranga Raya.²

Where the sources disagree

• The dedication. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, Sitaramaiya and Raju write that the poem was dedicated to Ibrahim himself.¹⁶⁴ Krishnaswami Aiyangar’s summary of the poem’s opening says it was dedicated to Amin Khan, Ibrahim’s general.²
• The date. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao give the poem the date 1578.³ But elsewhere they place its patron, Ibrahim, between 1512 and 1543.¹

See also Addanki Gangadhara.

Footnotes

1. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 84 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar (ed.), Sources of Vijayanagar History (1919), p. 236, extract 75, the Yayaticharitramu (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 97 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. P. T. Raju, Telugu Literature (1944), p. 42 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

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

6. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 59 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

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