Tikkana Somayaji

Tikkana was a Telugu poet at the court of Manumasiddhi, the ruler of Nellore.¹ He finished the Telugu Mahabharata that Nannaya had left unfinished, translating the remaining fifteen books.²¹ He also went as his patron’s envoy to the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva.¹

Family and position

Tikkana was “a Niyogi Brahmin attached to the court of Manumasiddhi, the ruler of Nellore”.¹ So say P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao in their History of Telugu Literature (1928).¹ His family, the Kottaruvu, came from Vellaturu in the Krishna district and settled in Guntur. They call Manumasiddhi “a tributary chief under the Kakatiya king, Ganapati Deva”.¹

His grandfather Bhaskara was a poet reputed to have written a Telugu Ramayana, now lost.¹ His father Kommanna commanded the army of a local chief in Guntur.¹ A cousin, “Khadga Tikkanna, or ‘Tikkanna of the Sword’”, was a noted warrior.¹ Because of his family’s standing, they wrote, he “was more of a minister than a mere poet, honoured by his master and treated by him as his equal”.¹ See Manumasiddhi II.

Envoy to the Kakatiya court

Manumasiddhi was driven out of Nellore early in his reign.¹ Tikkana then went to the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva to win his help.¹ According to Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, “it was to Tikkanna that Manuma owed his reinstatement”.¹ Brackenbury’s Cuddapah gazetteer (1915) likewise records that “the poet Sōmayāji used his influence with the Kākatīya king on behalf of his patron”.³

V. Venkatasubba Ayyar edited the Nayanapalle inscription of Ganapatideva in 1956.⁴ He summarised a Telugu literary account in which Tikkana pleads with Ganapati to restore Manmasiddhi.⁴ In this account Manmasiddhi had been driven into exile by his kinsmen Akkana and Bayyana.⁴ The inscription names the rebels as Bayyana and Tikkana.⁴ The editor thought the second name a variant of Akkana, so that this rebel Tikkana is a different man from the poet.⁴

Parabrahma Sastry, a modern historian, wrote that the poet claimed the whole credit of the victory for his master.⁵ He noted that the Kakatiya army had played a large part.⁵ See Ganapatideva.

The Telugu Mahabharata

Tikkana’s fame rests on his translation of the Mahabharata. Nannaya, whom tradition places at the court of the Eastern Chalukya Rajaraja Narendra, had stopped in the middle of the Aranya Parva.² Tikkana was “afraid of beginning where Nanniah had left the story … lest some evil should befall him”.¹ So he began with the Virata Parva and finished the remaining fifteen books.¹

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao singled out two qualities that earned him the title Kavi Brahma: “conciseness of diction” and “realism”.⁶ They judged the Virata Parva the height of his art.⁶ About fifty years later, they wrote, Errapragada completed the unfinished part of the Aranya Parva.⁶

Parabrahma Sastry noted that critics regard the work as a free poem rather than a mere translation.⁷ It uses plain Telugu words and avoids long Sanskrit compounds.⁷ See Nannaya and Language and literature.

Popular stories grew up round the translation. One, which Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao thought “probably apocryphal”, tells how Tikkana dictated in open court without looking at the Sanskrit.⁸ In the story he vowed to cut off his tongue if he ever hesitated for a word.⁸ A potter, Kumara Gurunatha, wrote down his words.⁸

The Nirvachanottara Ramayana

Before the Mahabharata Tikkana wrote the Nirvachanottara Ramayana, an all-verse poem on the story of Rama after his coronation.¹ He left the last canto (section) unfinished, and another poet completed it later.¹ Parabrahma Sastry explained that Tikkana wrote only this last part because his grandfather was believed to have written the earlier books.⁹

The poem is also a historical source for the Nellore kings.¹⁰¹¹ The Nellore gazetteer (1942) drew from it Tikka I’s wars against the Velanadu chiefs.¹⁰¹¹ It also drew from it his defeat of Sarangadhara, son of the Kakatiya governor of Addanki.¹⁰¹¹

Footnotes

1. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 46 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷

2. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 45 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

3. C. F. Brackenbury, Madras District Gazetteers: Cuddapah (1915), p. 34 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

4. V. Venkatasubba Ayyar, “Nayanapalle Inscription of Ganapatideva”, Epigraphia Indica XXVII (1956), p. 194 and notes (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 114. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

6. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 48 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), pp. 296–297. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

8. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 47 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 297. Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

10. W. E. Johns, Gazetteer of the Nellore District, brought up to 1938 (1942), p. 44 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

11. Johns, Nellore District Gazetteer (1942), p. 46 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³