Veturi Prabhakara Sastri

Veturi Prabhakara Sastri was a Telugu poet and scholar who spent his life finding, reading and editing old Telugu writings.¹² Writers of the 1920s to 1940s placed him among the leading critics and researchers of their day.³² His work ranged from stray verses and children’s songs to the life of the poet Annamacharya.¹⁴

A pupil of Venkata Kavi

K. Sitaramaiya, in his handbook of Telugu literature (1943), writes about the pair of poets known as the Tirupati Venkata Kavulu. Among the pupils of Venkata Kavi, he names “Veturi Prabhakara Sastri the great poet and research scholar”.⁵

Research on old Telugu

Prabhakara Sastri worked at the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library in Madras.⁶ Scholars turned to him for help with old texts. Bhavaraju Venkata Krishna Rao, writing on the early dynasties of Andhra in 1942, says he read an old work on metre “with the assistance of Pandit Veturi Prabhakara Sastri”.⁶

In 1928 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao wrote about the effort to save the oral literature of the Telugus. They noted that Prabhakara Sastri had already published a volume of chatu poems (stray verses that people knew by heart).¹ He also had a collection of Songs of the Playfield, the songs of children’s games, ready for printing.¹

Critic and biographer

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao counted him with Vedam Venkataraya Sastri and the Kasibhatla brothers among the critics of their day.³ These critics, they wrote, commanded respect for their learning, their judgment and their sympathy for new writing.³

P. T. Raju, in his survey of Telugu literature (1944), mentions Prabhakara Sastri’s work on the poet Srinatha among the few biographies of poets.⁷ Raju adds that it was very hard to find reliable facts about the lives of the old poets.⁷

Sitaramaiya wrote that research in the path of K. V. Lakshmana Rao was being carried on in literature by Prabhakara Sastri, Manavalli Ramakrishna Kavi and Vajjala Ch. S. Sastri.²

The life of Annamacharya

He also worked for the Tirupati temple. In 1949 the Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams printed the Annamacharya Charitramu, a life of Tallapaka Annamacharya by Tallapaka Chinna Tiruvengalanatha.⁴ The title page says it was edited by Veturi Prabhakara Sastri, a researcher of Telugu literature at the Sri Venkatesvara Oriental Research Institute.⁴

Footnotes

1. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 110 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Sitaramaiya, Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 105 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), p. 112 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Tallapaka Chinna Tiruvengalanatha, Annamacharya Charitramu, ed. Veturi Prabhakara Sastri (Sri Venkatesvara Oriental Series No. 17, Tirupati: T. T. Devasthanams, 1949), title page, PDF p. 2 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. K. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 70, note 2 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

6. Bhavaraju Venkata Krishna Rao, A History of the Early Dynasties of Andhradesa, c. 200–625 A.D. (1942), p. 544, note 2 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

7. P. T. Raju, Telugu Literature (1944), p. 79 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²