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Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Language & literature

From Prakrit inscriptions and the first Telugu records to Nannaya, Pothana, Vemana and modern prose.

Part of the long inscription cut on the rock of the Bommala Gutta: rows of closely spaced Telugu-Kannada letters on a rock surface painted red.
Part of the long inscription cut on the rock of the Bommala Gutta: rows of closely spaced Telugu-Kannada letters on a rock surface painted red. · P. Madhusudan (Wikimedia Commons) (opens in a new tab) · CC0 (opens in a new tab)

Telugu is one of the four major Dravidian languages of South India. Its written history begins later than its spoken one. For centuries the inscriptions of the Telugu country were cut in Prakrit and then Sanskrit. Only slowly did Telugu itself appear on stone, and then in books.1

This page follows that story from the earliest Prakrit records to the arguments about written and spoken Telugu in the twentieth century. It leans heavily on the first continuous history of the literature in English, written by P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao in 1928.1 Their dates, and their judgements of taste, are those of 1928, and where later finds or other writers disagree, the page says so.

Prakrit and Sanskrit before Telugu

The oldest writing in the region is not in Telugu. The edicts of the Mauryan emperor Asoka at Erragudi in Kurnool district are in Prakrit, in the Brahmi script.2 D. C. Sircar noticed that some lines run from right to left.2 It was as if the engraver were used to the Kharoshthi script of the north-west.2

The short Buddhist inscriptions on the Bhattiprolu caskets are in a Prakrit close to Pali.3 Their script is a kind of Brahmi that Georg Bühler dated no later than about 200 BCE.3

Prakrit remained the language of public record under the Satavahanas and the Ikshvakus.4 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao note that every inscription before the 11th century then known was in Prakrit or Sanskrit.4 The pillars at Nagarjunakonda carry Ikshvaku inscriptions “in Prakrit and in Brahmi characters”, as their editor J. Ph. Vogel put it.5

By the time of the Vishnukundins, the charters were in Sanskrit.6 The Salankayanas had already moved from Prakrit grants to Sanskrit ones.7 In the Sanskrit of the Chikkulla plates, F. Kielhorn spotted a Telugu-style plural, samvassarambul (“years”).6 He took it as proof that “the writer’s vernacular was Telugu”.6

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao remark on a gap in memory. Telugu literature, they write, is silent about the Satavahana kings.8 The only echo is a tradition that a Satavahana king wrote or sponsored the Prakrit Saptasati.8 The poet Srinatha said he had translated it in his youth, but that version is now lost.8

The first Telugu records

When does written Telugu begin? Here the sources disagree, because new inscriptions kept turning up. In 1928 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao wrote that epigraphists had not found “any Telugu inscription earlier than A.D. 1020”.9

K. V. Lakshmana Rao, in the same year, published the Addanki inscription of Pandaranga, dated to about 844–5.10 It opens with a Telugu verse in the taruvoja metre.10 He saw in it “a positive evidence of the existence of Telugu poetry in the middle of the 9th century A.D.”.10 That was a century earlier than the Bezwada pillar of Yuddhamalla, then the oldest known.10

A further step back came with the Telugu Cholas of Renadu. In 1956 K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and M. Venkataramayya published twelve of their records.11 They placed them between the later 6th and the end of the 8th century. All were in early Telugu, in the script of the Badami Chalukyas.11

They called the Kalamalla pillar of about 575 one of the earliest wholly Telugu records yet found.12 Earlier Pallava records contain Telugu words, they noted, but this was the first complete inscription in the language.12 By then Telugu had begun to separate from Kannada, though the two still shared a script.12

Nannaya and the Telugu Mahabharata

Telugu literature, as distinct from inscriptions, begins with Nannaya (Nanniah).13 The Eastern Chalukya king Rajaraja Narendra (1022–63) of Rajahmundry commanded him to translate the Mahabharata.13 He translated the first two books and part of the third.13 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao describe him as a Vaidiki Brahmin from Tanuku and the king’s family priest.13 The Godavari gazetteer adds that “the earliest mention of Rajahmundry in any extant literature” is in Nannaya’s introduction.14

An inscription gives a fixed point. The Nandamapundi grant of 1053 names the author of its Sanskrit verses as Nanniyabhatta.15 E. Hultzsch thought him “perhaps identical” with the poet.15 The grant praises the man who received it, Narayana, for verse in “the Samskrita, Karnata, Prakrita, Paisachika and Andhra languages”.16 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao identify him with the Narayana Bhatta whom Nannaya thanked as his helper.16

The translation took three centuries to finish. Tikkana completed fifteen books in the 13th century.17 Errana (Errapragada) completed the rest of the third book in the 14th.17 Later poets honoured the three as the Kavitraya, “the Great Three”.17

Tradition also makes Nannaya the first grammarian.18 It credits him with the Andhra Sabda Chintamani, a Sanskrit grammar of Telugu.18 But Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao doubted that he wrote it.18 In 1922 the Andhra Historical Research Society at Rajahmundry marked the ninth centenary of Rajaraja’s accession.19 It called him the patron of “the first extant literary composition”.19

Was there Telugu writing before Nannaya? Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao weighed the theory that a Jain literature had been destroyed. They found no evidence for it.20 They proposed instead two streams of poetry.20 One was an older, oral desi poetry of songs, proverbs and ballads. The other was a Sanskrit-based margi court poetry, which Nannaya founded or helped to found.20

Their list of desi forms runs from cradle songs and harvest songs to “sagas of local chiefs”.21 That theme is taken up on the page Folk songs & oral traditions.21

The Kakatiya age

Under the Kakatiyas, Telugu writing spread inland. P. Sreenivasachar edited the Telangana inscriptions.22 He called the period an important time for Telugu literature and Sanskrit learning.22 He noted that some records begin with the grant itself in Telugu prose, and add the Sanskrit verse as a kind of appendix.22 An example is the Hanamkonda inscription of 1163.22

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao call the literature of the 12th century “pronouncedly Virasaiva”.23 Its chief writer was Palkuriki Somanatha, author of the Telugu Basava Purana and Panditaradhya Charitra.23

Tikkana was a Niyogi Brahmin and minister to the Nellore chief Manumasiddhi.24 He went as the chief’s envoy to the Kakatiya Ganapatideva.24 Before his Mahabharata, he wrote the Nirvachanottara Ramayana, entirely in verse.24 The Ranganatha Ramayana is in two-line dvipada couplets.25 In Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao’s judgement, it was probably the work of a chief named Buddha Raju, not of the poet whose name it bears.25

Grammar and prose came too. Ketana translated Dandin’s Dasakumaracharita.26 He wrote a Telugu grammar, the Andhra Bhasha Bhushana, and put the Mitakshara law commentary into Telugu.26 Atharvana wrote a Telugu grammar in Sanskrit. In their view he was “the only Jain writer” in the surviving literature.27 Under Prataparudra, Vidyanatha wrote the Sanskrit work on poetics, the Prataparudriya.28

The dating of all this is not settled.29 In 1852 C. P. Brown put Somanatha’s Basava Purana at about 1300.29 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao place him in the 12th century.29

Reddis, Srinatha and Pothana

After the fall of Warangal, the Reddis of Kondavidu became the great patrons on the coast. Errana dedicated his Harivamsa to their founder, Prolaya Vema Reddi.30 The Kistna manual calls the Kondavidu Reddis “great patrons of Telugu literature”.31

Their court poet was Srinatha (about 1365–1440).32 He translated Sriharsha’s difficult Sanskrit Naishadha.32 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao rank him with the Kavitraya.32 They also credit him with two other works.33 One is the Palnati Vira Charitra, which they describe as a romance of love and war among local chiefs.33 The other is the Vidhinataka, light verse on the street life of Rajahmundry.33

Bammera Pothana (Potana) translated the Bhagavata Purana. In tradition he was Srinatha’s brother-in-law.34 Two episodes, Gajendra Moksha and Rukmini Kalyana, became, they write, “perhaps the most widely read and recited portions in Telugu literature”.34

Pothana’s birthplace is disputed between Warangal and Ontimitta in Kadapa (then Cuddapah).35 A story says that he refused to dedicate the poem to the Padma Nayaka chief Singama, and offered it to Rama instead. This story is tradition.35

Another work set in Telangana is Vinukonda Vallabha’s Kridabhiramamu.36 It is a tour of the streets of Warangal that includes a cock-fight.36 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao counted it the first Telugu translation of a Sanskrit play as a play.36

Vijayanagara and the prabandha

The reign of Krishnadeva Raya of Vijayanagara (1509–30) opened what Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao call the prabandha (long narrative poem) period.37 Poets now built long, ornate story poems around a slight tale from the Puranas.37

The king himself wrote the Amuktamalyada, the story of the Vaishnava saint-poet of Srivilliputtur.38 They treat it as a sign of Vaishnavism’s new hold on Telugu poetry.38 Brown’s dictionary, however, lists the same poem under the name of Allasani Peddana. So even its authorship has been questioned.39

Eight court poets, the Ashtadiggajas, were credited to the king.40 But Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao note that the last three were later.40 Peddana’s Manucharitra became the model prabandha.41 Tradition says the king carried a pole of his palanquin.41 In 1927 the catalogue of the Madras government’s Telugu manuscripts gave this poem alone twenty-two entries (Nos. 619–640).41

Molla, a woman of the potter caste, wrote a Ramayana.42 They called it the most widely read of all the Telugu versions.42 Tenali Ramakrishna is remembered as a court jester.43 He was also the author of the Panduranga Mahatmya, one of the “five great kavyas”.43

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao saw the 17th to 19th centuries as a long decline, an age of clever but empty verse.44 They make two exceptions. The Telugu courts of the south, at Tanjore and Madurai, developed prose.45 They wrote more plays in one century than the northern poets had in eight.45 And a large popular literature flourished outside the courts.

Golconda: Telugu, Persian and Dakhni

Persian was the language of the Qutb Shahi court, but its sultans did not ignore Telugu. Addanki Gangadhara dedicated his Tapati-samvaranopakhyanamu to Ibrahim Qutb Shah.46 Hirananda Sastri dates Ibrahim to 1550–1581.46

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao add Ponnikanti Telaganarya’s Yayati Charitra, written in “pure Telugu” without Sanskrit words.47 They call these “the only kavyas in Telugu literature dedicated to a Muhammadan ruler”.47 They repeat the story that Ibrahim had lived as a refugee at Vijayanagara.47

The same court shaped a new literary language. Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah wrote Persian and Urdu poetry under the pen-name “Qutbshah”.48 Bilgrami records that the Sufi Miranji Khuda Numa, who died in 1659, wrote two books on spiritual matters “in the old Urdu language of the Deccan”.49

At Golconda fort, the Musa Burj bastion was completed in 1666–67.50 It carries its Persian building record with a Telugu translation beside it.50 Brown observed in 1852 that educated Muslims of the south wrote letters in Persian.51 Yet “every native Musulman learns the vernacular of those among whom he resides”.51

Alongside the court epics ran the sataka. It is a “century” of separate verses, each ending in a fixed refrain.52 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao counted about six hundred, three-quarters of them religious or moral.52 The earliest they knew was Somanatha’s Vrishadhipa Sataka of about 1180.52

The Sumati Sataka is credited to Baddena, a chief of the Kakatiya era.53 It and the verses of Vemana became the moral primers of Telugu schools.53 Devotional satakas include the Dasarathi Sataka of Kancherla Gopanna, the Rama devotee of Bhadrachalam.54

Vemana’s date is uncertain. Brown began collecting his verses at Machilipatnam (then Masulipatam) in 1824.55 He found manuscripts “full of errors of every kind”, and no two arranged alike.55 From copies gathered at Visakhapatnam, Nellore, Guntur, Kadapa and Madras, he sifted about two thousand stanzas.55

Brown recorded that Vemana was a kapu (farmer) by birth.56 He guessed that Vemana had become a Jangam (Virashaiva priest).56 He wrote that Vemana was believed to have lived “about the beginning of the seventeenth century”.56 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao preferred the early 15th century. But they admitted that no date could be fixed even roughly.56

Much popular poetry was meant to be sung. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao single out the kirtanas (devotional songs) of Tyagaraja.57 They also single out the love-songs called javalis, looked down on because public women sang them.57 K. Sitaramaiya names Kshetrayya, who lived at the time of Vijayaraghava Nayak of Thanjavur (then Tanjore).58 His Telugu padams were still widely sung.58 These songs belong as much to music as to literature, and are treated on the page Music & dance.

Other traditions entered Telugu verse too. Pingali Ellanarya wrote a poem on the life of St Thomas.59 It was drawn from an account his patron’s family had received from a teacher.59 About 1750 Mangalagiri Anandakavi wrote the Vedanta Rasayana, a life of Christ.59 By contrast, Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao found no Muslim writers of Telugu before modern times.60 They named only Ummar Ali Shah and a sataka poet, Ganganapalli Hussain.60

Colonial scholarship and print

In the early 19th century, European scholars began to describe the language. H. H. Wilson published the catalogue of Colin Mackenzie’s manuscripts in 1828.61 It quotes the views of Mr Babington and the late Mr Ellis: “Neither the Tamul, the Telugu nor any of their cognate dialects are derivations from the Sanscrit.”61

Telugu, Wilson concluded, “is not a mere derivative from Sanscrit, but has an independant origin”.62 But its literature was “largely indebted” to Sanskrit.62 His dating shows how little was then known. He thought no Telugu work was older than the end of the 12th century.63 He put Nannaya late in the 13th.63

Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao took the opposite line a century later. They held, with the Telugu grammarians, that the language was formed by changing Sanskrit and Prakrit.64 Dr Caldwell’s Dravidian theory, they allowed, might fit its origins, but not its later form.64

Charles Philip Brown published A Dictionary, Telugu and English in 1852. It explained both “the colloquial style used in business and the poetical dialect”.65 He noted that every southern language had “a poetical and a vernacular dialect”.65 He complained that some pandits wanted a “pedantic style; which is admired because conceited and far from clear”.66

Printing among the Telugus, Brown wrote, began about 1806, but made little progress until 1830.67 He also paid for a corrected edition of Pothana’s Bhagavata in 1827.68 Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao credited the Brown and Mackenzie collections, and the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library at Madras, with saving many texts.69 In 1929 the Madras government refused to hand that library’s Telugu manuscripts over to the new Andhra University.70

Veeresalingam, the novel and the language question

In Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao’s account, modern Telugu prose and the Telugu novel begin with Kandukuri Veeresalingam of Rajahmundry.71 His Rajasekhara Charitra was adapted from Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield.71 His biographer D. Anjaneyulu notes earlier claims to the title of first Telugu novel.72 But he calls it the first social novel in the language.72

Veeresalingam also wrote farces and translated Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.73 His Andhra Kavula Charitra (lives of the Telugu poets) remained a standard reference.73

The sharpest dispute of the early 20th century was over language.74 Should books be written in the classical literary style (grandhika), or in the language people spoke? Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao describe it as “an acrimonious battle of words”.74

K. Sitaramaiya wrote in Hyderabad in 1943.75 He names Gidugu Ramamurti as the leader of the spoken-Telugu movement, with Gurajada Apparao.75 A book in the spoken style was prescribed as a textbook. In reply, he writes, the orthodox founded the Andhra Sahitya Parishat.75 In the end, the universities came to accept the spoken (vyavaharika) style.75 Gidugu also learned the language of the Savaras of the Visakhapatnam hills and made an alphabet for it.76

Gurajada wrote the social play Kanyasulkam.77 Its 1909 preface said it was written partly to disprove the idea that Telugu was unsuited to the stage.77 A “new poetry” of lyric and nature verse followed. In both accounts, Rayaprolu Subba Rao led the way.78 Newspapers and magazines took over the patronage once held by courts and zamindars (landholders).79 Among them were the Andhra Patrika, Bharati and the Andhra Parishad Patrika.79

Telugu in Hyderabad State

In the Nizam’s dominions, Telugu was the largest language, but not the language of government. The 1931 census found that Telugu covered “nearly half the area of these Dominions”.80 It also recorded the founding of Osmania University in 1918, teaching in Urdu.81 Urdu was defended as “the cultural and official language of the State”.81 Sitaramaiya notes that Rayaprolu Subba Rao was invited to hold Osmania’s newly created Telugu chair in 1918–19.82

Telugu public life in Telangana grew around libraries.83 The Sri Krishnadevaraya Andhra Bhasha Nilayam opened in Hyderabad in 1901.83 Libraries followed at Warangal (1904) and Secunderabad (1905).83 The Vignana Chandrika Mandali of Komarraju Lakshmana Rao published books.83 It ran prize competitions in history, science and novel-writing, and began a Telugu encyclopaedia.83

In November 1921, a delegate tried to move a resolution in Telugu at a conference in Hyderabad.84 He was shouted down.84 That night, Sarojini Regani relates, a dozen Telugu members founded the Andhra Jana Sangham.84 The story of these movements is told on the page Reform, freedom & people’s movements.

By 1951 Telugu was the mother tongue of 47.8 per cent of Hyderabad State.85 It was the majority language in all eight eastern (Telangana) districts.85 Urdu, at 11.6 per cent of the state, was concentrated in the towns.85 In the Madras Presidency, the 1901 census had counted over fourteen million Telugu speakers.86 The Telugu-speaking states formed in 1953 and 1956 are described on the page Andhra State & Andhra Pradesh.

What this page does not cover

About the sources. The library behind this site is strong on inscriptions and on the classical poets, and thin elsewhere. It has no source used here on Telugu literature after about 1950: the poets, novelists and journalists of independent Andhra Pradesh are not covered. The Tallapaka poets are treated only on the page on Annamacharya, and the Telugu court of Tanjore only on the pages on its poets, such as Raghunatha Nayaka. Dakhni Urdu literature, the tribal languages of the Godavari and Visakhapatnam (then Vizagapatam) hills, and the Telugu literature of the courts at Madurai and Mysore appear only in passing or not at all.

Footnotes

  1. P. Chenchiah and Raja M. Bhujanga Rao, A History of Telugu Literature (1928), preface, PDF p. 17 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)), and p. 13 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  2. D. C. Sircar, “Erragudi Edicts of Asoka”, Epigraphia Indica XXXII (1959), p. 4 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. G. Bühler, “The Bhattiprolu Inscriptions”, Epigraphia Indica II (1894), p. 323 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  4. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 16 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  5. J. Ph. Vogel, “Prakrit Inscriptions from a Buddhist Site at Nagarjunikonda”, Epigraphia Indica XX (1933), p. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  6. F. Kielhorn, “Chikkulla Plates of Vikramendravarman II”, Epigraphia Indica IV (1897), p. 194 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. R. Subba Rao, “Pedavegi Copper-plates of Nandivarman II”, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society I, pt. 2 (1926), p. 96 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  8. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao, History of Telugu Literature (1928), pp. 20–21 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 37 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  10. K. V. Lakshmana Rao, “The Addanki Stone Inscription of Pandaranga”, Epigraphia Indica XIX (1928), p. 273 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  11. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and M. Venkataramayya, “Telugu Chola Records from Anantapur and Cuddapah”, Epigraphia Indica XXVII (1956), p. 220 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  12. Nilakanta Sastri and Venkataramayya, “Telugu Chola Records” (1956), p. 221 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  13. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 22, 42 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  14. F. R. Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers: Godavari (1907), p. 243 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)); see also p. 21 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  15. E. Hultzsch, editorial note in F. Kielhorn, “Nandamapundi Grant of Rajaraja I”, Epigraphia Indica IV (1897), p. 303 n. 3 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  16. Kielhorn, “Nandamapundi Grant” (1897), p. 302 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)); Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 43–44 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  17. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 42, 46, 48 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  18. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 43 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  19. Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, Vol. I (1926), p. 4, PDF p. 15 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  20. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 37–39 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  21. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 40 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  22. P. Sreenivasachar (ed.), A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part I (1942), pp. 7–8 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  23. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 23–24, 51–52 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  24. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 46 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  25. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 54–55 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  26. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 56 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  27. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 55 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  28. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 23–24 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)); Sreenivasachar, Corpus, Part I (1942), p. 7 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  29. Charles Philip Brown, A Dictionary, Telugu and English (1852), p. viii (archive.org (opens in a new tab)); Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 51 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  30. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 24, 48 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  31. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), pp. 10–11 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  32. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 25, 59–60 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  33. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 60 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  34. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 64 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  35. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 25, 63–64 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  36. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 66 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  37. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 69–70 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  38. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 70–71 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  39. Brown, Dictionary (1852), p. vii (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  40. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 26, 72 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  41. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 72, 74 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)); S. Kuppuswami Sastri, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Telugu Manuscripts in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras, Vol. II (1927), contents, Nos. 619–640, PDF p. 6 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  42. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 77, 103 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  43. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 83 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  44. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 86 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  45. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 93–94 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  46. Hirananda Sastri, Shitab Khan of Warangal (1932), p. 12 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  47. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 84 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  48. Syed Ali Asgar Bilgrami, Landmarks of the Deccan (1927), p. 132 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  49. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), pp. 61–62 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  50. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), p. 153 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  51. Brown, Dictionary (1852), p. iii (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  52. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 98–99 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  53. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 56–57, 99 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  54. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 99–100 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  55. Charles Philip Brown (tr.), The Verses of Vemana (1829; reprint 1911), preface, PDF p. 5 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  56. Brown, Verses of Vemana, preface, PDF p. 6 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)); Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 99 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  57. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 100 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  58. K. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 56 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  59. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 105–106 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  60. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 107 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  61. H. H. Wilson, The Mackenzie Collection (1828), Vol. I, p. xxix (PDF p. 32) (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  62. Wilson, Mackenzie Collection (1828), pp. xxxvii–xxxviii (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  63. Wilson, Mackenzie Collection (1828), p. xxxviii (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  64. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 15–16 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  65. Brown, Dictionary (1852), title page and p. iv (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  66. Brown, Dictionary (1852), preface, PDF p. 10 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  67. Brown, Dictionary (1852), p. iv (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  68. Brown, Dictionary (1852), p. viii (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  69. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 110 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  70. Madras Legislative Council: Questions and Answers, 29 January 1929, pp. 207–208 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  71. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 116–117 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  72. D. Anjaneyulu, Kandukuri Veeresalingam (1976), p. 88 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  73. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), pp. 110, 113, 115 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  74. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 109 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  75. Sitaramaiya, Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), pp. 79–80, 86–89 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  76. Sitaramaiya (1943), p. 88 n. 2 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  77. Sitaramaiya (1943), p. 90 and n. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  78. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 117 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)); Sitaramaiya (1943), pp. 90–91 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  79. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao (1928), p. 119 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  80. Census of India 1931, Vol. XXIII: H.E.H. the Nizam’s Dominions, Part I: Report (1933), p. 222 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  81. Census of India 1931, Vol. XXIII, Part I (1933), pp. 216–217 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  82. Sitaramaiya (1943), p. 91 n. 1 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  83. The Freedom Struggle in Hyderabad, Vol. III (1957), pp. 151–152 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  84. Sarojini Regani, Highlights of the Freedom Movement in Andhra Pradesh (1956), pp. 177–178 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  85. Census of India, 1951, Vol. IX: Hyderabad, Part I-A: Report (1953), pp. 404–406 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  86. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 29 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

Photos

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Eras

Kakatiyas

1163–1323 CE

From about 1150 to 1323 the Kakatiya kings of Anumakonda and Orugallu (Warangal) brought much of the Telugu-speaking country under one dynasty. They built the great irrigation tanks and temples of Telangana, and fell to the armies of the Delhi Sultanate.

Dynasties

Eastern Gangas of Kalinga

c. 498–1434 CE

Dynasty of Kalinga that ruled from Kalinganagara, now Mukhalingam in the Srikakulam district, and later from Orissa, from about the 6th century until 1434. Its early grants are dated in a Ganga era whose starting point is still disputed. The north of the Telugu country, the old Ganjam and Vizagapatam districts, was the heart of the kingdom. Their copper plates come from Chicacole, Achyutapuram, Jirjingi, Nadagam and Alamanda, and hundreds of their inscriptions in Telugu and Sanskrit survive at Mukhalingam, Srikurmam and Simhachalam. Anantavarman Chodaganga, a grandson of Kulottunga I, reigned from 1078 for about seventy years. The later kings fought the Kakatiyas across the Godavari, and their minister Kapilesvara founded the Gajapati dynasty in 1434.

Telugu Cholas of Renadu

c. 550–800 CE

Kings of Renandu, the country around Kadapa, from about the later 6th to the 8th century. They claimed descent from the Chola king Karikala, took the names of their Pallava and then Chalukya overlords, and ruled from Chippili and Malepadu. Their stone inscriptions at Kalamalla and Erragudipadu are among the earliest records written wholly in Telugu. None of their records is dated in an era. Three editors have placed the same king, Punyakumara, about 625, about 740 and about 800.

Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi

c. 615–1077 CE

A branch of the Chalukyas of Badami that ruled Vengi, the coastal country between the lower Godavari and Krishna, from the early 7th century. Its founder, Kubja Vishnuvardhana, was a younger brother of Pulakesin II. The kings fought the Rashtrakutas for two centuries. After about 1000 they were bound to the Cholas by marriage, and in 1070 their heir became the Chola emperor Kulottunga I. Their copper-plate grants record the length of every reign. The first Telugu literary work, Nannaya's Mahabharata, was written at their court in Rajahmundry.

Chalukyas of Vemulavada

c. 750–973 CE

A family of Chalukya chiefs who ruled the Sabbi country of northern Telangana, today's Karimnagar district, from their capital Vemulavada (Lembulavataka). They were feudatories of the Rashtrakutas from about 750 to about 970. Their records begin with Vinayaditya-Yuddhamalla, who is said to have bathed his elephants in oil at Podana (Bodhan). Arikesari II (about 930–955) was the patron of the Kannada poet Pampa, and Somadeva Suri wrote his Yasastilaka in 959 in the town of Arikesari's son. Their rule ended when the Chalukyas of Kalyani took Telangana before 973.

Haihayas of Kona and Palnadu

c. 1073–1364 CE

Two families of chiefs in the Telugu country who claimed descent from the legendary Haihaya king Kartavirya. The Kona chiefs ruled Konamandala, the Godavari delta, from the late 11th century to the 14th, under the Chola–Chalukya kings and the Velanati Chodas. They joined in the war in which the Kakatiya Prola II was killed. In the Palnadu, Haihaya chiefs of the Chagi family appear as feudatories of the Western Chalukyas from 1111. The Palnadu chiefs are the kings of the Telugu heroic ballad of the Palnati Viralu, whose war, fought out at Karempudi, has been dated anywhere from 1080 to 1386.

Telugu Chodas of Pottapi and Nellore

c. 1120–1316 CE

A family of Telugu chiefs who called themselves Madhurantaka Pottapi-Cholas and Ganda-Gopalas and claimed descent from the Chola king Karikala. They ruled the Pakanadu country of Nellore and southern Kadapa (Cuddapah) from Pottapi and then Nellore, from the early 12th century to about 1316. First vassals of the Cholas, they took Kanchi under Tikka I and his successors. They then passed under the Kakatiyas, who restored Manumasiddhi II, the patron of the poet Tikkana. A related branch ruled Konidena in the Guntur country.

Kakatiyas

c. 1163–1323 CE

Dynasty of Anumakonda (Hanamkonda) and Orugallu (Warangal). The Kakatiyas were Rashtrakuta and then Western Chalukya feudatories from the tenth century. They declared their sovereignty under Rudradeva in 1163, and under Ganapatideva they ruled the Telugu country from Telangana to the coast. Rudramadevi reigned as king under the name Rudradeva, and her grandson Prataparudra fell to the Delhi Sultanate in the 1320s. Their rule rested on allied chiefs, nayaka commanders holding land for military service, and village assemblies. It is remembered for its tanks, its temples, the Motupalli sea-trade edict and its court literature.

Reddis of Kondaveedu

c. 1325–1424 CE

Telugu dynasty of the Panta Reddi family. It rose on the coast after the fall of the Kakatiyas and ruled for about a hundred years, from about 1325 to the 1420s, first from Addanki and then from the hill fortress of Kondavidu. Its six kings, from Prolaya Vema to Racha Vema, held the country between Srisailam and the sea and at times the Godavari delta. They built the flights of steps at Srisailam and Ahobilam, fought the Recherla Velamas, Vijayanagara and the Bahmanis, and kept a court where Errapragada and Srinatha wrote. Under Kumaragiri the eastern half of the kingdom became a separate state at Rajahmundry.

Recherla Velamas

c. 1336–1475 CE

A family of Telugu warrior chiefs of the Recherla line and the Velama (Padmanayaka) community who rose after the fall of the Kakatiyas. Singama Nayaka's sons Anapota and Mada overthrew the Musunuri chief Kapaya Nayaka about 1368. They ruled Telangana from the hill forts of Rachakonda and Devarakonda for about a century, between the Bahmanis, the Reddis, Vijayanagara and the Gajapatis of Orissa. The king Singabhupala wrote the Sanskrit Rasarnavasudhakara, and tradition links the poets Srinatha and Potana with their court.

Vijayanagara Empire

c. 1336–1646 CE

The South Indian empire founded about 1336 by the brothers Harihara and Bukka on the Tungabhadra. The Sangama, Saluva, Tuluva and Aravidu dynasties ruled it in turn. It held Rayalaseema and the Nellore country from the fourteenth century. It fought the Reddis, the Velamas, the Bahmanis and the Gajapatis of Orissa for the Telugu coast, and under Krishnadeva Raya it took Udayagiri, Kondavidu and Kondapalli and marched to Simhachalam. Its court made Telugu a language of high poetry. After the defeat of 1565 its kings ruled from Penukonda and Chandragiri, until Golconda took the last of the Telugu districts in the 1640s.

Reddis of Rajahmundry

c. 1386–1448 CE

The eastern Reddi kingdom, centred on Rajahmundry and the Godavari delta. It grew out of the Kondavidu kingdom when Kumaragiri Reddi gave 'the eastern country' to his minister and brother-in-law Kataya Vema in the 1380s. After Kataya Vema's death about 1414–16, his kinsman Allada Reddi fought off the Telugu Choda Annadeva, the Kondavidu king and a Bahmani army. Allada's sons Allaya Vema and Virabhadra ruled jointly until the 1440s, when the Gajapati Kapilesvara of Orissa took the delta. Srinatha wrote his last poems at their court.

Qutb Shahis

c. 1518–1687 CE

Sultans of Golconda (1518–1687) who ruled Telangana and, from the 1520s, the coast between the Krishna and the Godavari. Later they ruled the northern coast and the Guntur country, and in the 17th century much of the Karnatak to the south. The founder, Sultan Quli, had governed Telingana for the Bahmanis. Ibrahim joined the alliance that destroyed Vijayanagara in 1565, and Muhammad Quli founded Hyderabad about 1589–91. From 1636 the kings paid tribute to the Mughals, and in 1687 Aurangzeb took Golconda by treachery after an eight months' siege. Persian nobles held the high offices, but Telugu soldiers held the forts and Brahmin accountants kept the revenue. Under the last king two Brahmin brothers, Madanna and Akkanna, ran the state.

Asaf Jahis (Nizams of Hyderabad)

1724–1948 CE

The dynasty of the Nizams of Hyderabad (1724–1948). It was founded by the Mughal viceroy Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah, who made himself independent in the Deccan after defeating Mubariz Khan at Shakar Kheda in 1724. After his death the French and the English backed rival heirs. The Northern Circars passed to the French in 1753 and to the English in 1766, and the Ceded Districts of Rayalaseema to the East India Company in 1800, leaving Telangana as the Telugu heart of the Nizam's Dominions. Bound to the British by the subsidiary alliance of 1798–1800, the Nizams governed through ministers such as Chandu Lal and Salar Jung I. They assigned Berar to the British in 1853 and leased it in 1902. Mir Osman Ali Khan's reign brought Osmania University and the rebuilding of Hyderabad, and his government ended in September 1948.

People

Dhananjaya (Telugu Chola)

c. 575 CE

Telugu Chola ruler of Renandu in the Kadapa country, whom his editors date to about 575. As Erikal-Muturaju Dhananjaya he is named in the Kalamalla pillar inscription, one of the earliest records written wholly in Telugu. As Dhananjayavarman, youngest son of Nandivarman, he heads the line of Punyakumara in the Malepadu plates.

Mahendravarman I

c. 600–630 CE

Pallava king of Kanchi (about 600–630), son of Simhavishnu. In his reign the Chalukya Pulakesin II took Vengi and the Pallava provinces of the Guntur and Nellore country, though Mahendravarman defended Kanchi. Some of his surnames in his cave inscriptions in the Tamil country are Telugu. This led Jouveau-Dubreuil to argue that his family and his cave style came from the Telugu country.

Mahendravikrama (Telugu Chola)

c. 600 CE

Telugu Chola king of Renandu, son of Dhananjaya and father of Punyakumara, the first of his line to take the title Chola-Maharaja. His name copies that of the Pallava king Mahendravarman I, and his editors placed him about 600. Short Telugu stone records of a 'Chola-Maharaja' at Uruturu and Indukuru are assigned to him.

Punyakumara

c. 625 CE

Telugu Chola king of Renandu and Hiranyarashtra, the best-documented ruler of the family. He is known from two sets of Sanskrit copper plates (Malepadu, fifth year; Dommara-Nandyala, tenth year) and from Telugu stone records at Tippaluru, Ramesvaram and Veludurti. His titles imitate those of the Pallava Mahendravarman I. Editors have dated him about 625, about 740 and near the end of the 8th century.

Gunaga Vijayaditya III

c. 844–888 CE

Eastern Chalukya king of Vengi (c. 844–888). His records claim victories over the Gangas, the Nolamba king Mangi, a chief Sankila of Dahala and the Rashtrakuta Krishna, and the burning of Kiranapura and Chakrakuta. Historians have seen him both as the man who sacked the Rashtrakuta capital and as a Rashtrakuta vassal. His general Pandaranga is praised in one of the earliest Telugu verse inscriptions.

Pandaranga

c. 844–888 CE

Army commander of the Eastern Chalukya king Gunaga Vijayaditya III in the second half of the 9th century, praised in the Telugu verse inscription at Addanki. Later grants credit him with burning Kiranapura, the home of the Rashtrakuta Krishna II and his ally Sankila. He was the executor of his king's grants, and his descendants held the office of Katakaraja under the later kings.

Pampa (Adi Pampa)

902 CE

Kannada poet, born in 902 into a Brahmana family from the Vengi country that had become Jaina. At the court of the Chalukya king Arikesari II of Vemulavada he wrote the Adipurana and the Vikramarjunavijaya or 'Pampa Bharata' (941). In the second poem he made his patron the epic hero Arjuna. A rock inscription of his younger brother Jinavallabha on the Bommala Gutta at Kurikyal, near Karimnagar, gives his family and the village the king granted him.

Yuddhamalla II

c. 927–934 CE

Eastern Chalukya king of Vengi (about 927–934) of the junior line descended from Yuddhamalla I. He seized the throne during the civil war that followed the death of Amma I in 925, and held it for seven years until Chalukya-Bhima II drove him out. A Telugu verse inscription on a pillar at Vijayawada (then Bezwada), recording a temple of Kumarasvamin and a monastery for Saiva ascetics, is attributed to him or to his grandfather. His sons Badapa and Tala II later tried to win back the throne with Rashtrakuta help.

Arikesari II (Chalukya of Vemulavada)

c. 930–955 CE

Chalukya king of Vemulavada in today's Karimnagar district, a feudatory of the Rashtrakutas, who ruled from about 930 to about 955. He was the patron of the Kannada poet Pampa, who made him the hero of his Vikramarjunavijaya (941). His pillar inscription at Vemulavada gives the family line and records a gift to a Sun temple in his capital, Lembulavataka. He sheltered a Chalukya prince named Bijja from the Rashtrakuta king Govinda IV, and helped bring Govinda's uncle Baddega (Amoghavarsha III) to the throne.

Somadeva Suri

959–966 CE

Jaina scholar and Sanskrit author of the 10th century. He finished his prose-and-verse romance, the Yasastilaka, in 959 at Gangadhara, in the territory of Vagaraja, eldest son of the Chalukya king Arikesari II of Vemulavada. At that time the Rashtrakuta Krishna III was in camp at Melpati. In 966 Arikesari III gave him a village for the Subhadhama Jinalaya, a Jaina temple at Vemulavada.

Rajaraja Narendra

1022–1063 CE

Eastern Chalukya king of Vengi (crowned 1022, died about 1061–63), the son of a Chola princess and husband of another, who ruled from Rajahmundry. His reign was disturbed by Chola and Western Chalukya intervention and by a rising of his half-brother Vijayaditya VII. Telugu tradition remembers him as the patron of Nannaya, whose Mahabharata is the oldest surviving Telugu literary work.

Karunakara Tondaiman

c. 1076–1112 CE

General and minister of the Chola king Kulottunga I, the hero of the Tamil poem Kalingattupparani, which describes how he marched an army north from Kanchi across the Penna, the Krishna and the Godavari to defeat the king of northern Kalinga. A Sanskrit inscription of 1103 at Draksharama, which K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer identified as his, records the burning of Kalinga, a victory pillar on the borders of Orissa and his gifts in the Vengi country. The date of the war is disputed: about 1076–77, 1084–90, before 1095–96, or about 1111–12.

Somesvara III

c. 1126–1138 CE

Western Chalukya king, called Bhulokamalla, who reigned from 1126 to 1138. He is credited with the encyclopaedic Sanskrit work Manasollasa. As Prince Somesvara he governed the Kollipake province from Kolanupaka in Telangana, where a pillar of 1125 celebrates his victory over the lord of Trikalinga. An inscription at Patancheru records grants made on the day of his coronation, 20 February 1127.

Jaya (Jayapa)

c. 1209–1253 CE

General and minister of the Kakatiya king Ganapatideva, of the Ayya family of Divi. Ganapati married his two sisters and made him commander of the elephant troops and governor of Velanadu. He built the Ganapesvara temple on Divi in 1231 and wrote the Nritta Ratnavali, a Sanskrit treatise on dance.

Manumasiddhi II

c. 1248 CE

Telugu Choda king of Nellore from about 1248 or 1250, son of Tikka I and patron of the poet Tikkana Somayaji. He was driven out of Nellore early in his reign. The Kakatiya king Ganapatideva restored him after Tikkana went to the Kakatiya court as his envoy, and he later fought for Ganapati against Kalinga on the Godavari. Whether he was the same king as Vijaya-Gandagopala of Kanchi is disputed.

Malyala Gunda

c. 1259–1276 CE

General (dandanatha) of the Malyala family under the Kakatiya rulers Ganapatideva and Rudramadevi, known from his inscriptions of 1259 and 1272 at Bothpur in the Mahbubnagar district. They are elaborate Sanskrit poems by the scholar Isvara-suri, and they state that the Kakatiyas were born in the fourth varna. He had died by 1276–77, when his widow Kuppamamba, daughter of Gona Buddhaya, built a temple for his merit.

Errapragada

c. 1280–1350 CE

Telugu poet of the 14th century, the third of the 'Kavitraya' who completed the Telugu Mahabharata. He finished the Aranya Parva that Nannaya had left incomplete. He was a Niyogi Brahman of Gudluru in the Nellore country and a devotee of Siva (Sambhudasa). He was attached to Prolaya Vema, the founder of the Reddi kingdom, and dedicated his Harivamsa to him. He also wrote a Ramayana and the Narasimha Purana for the god of Ahobilam.

Prataparudra

c. 1289–1323 CE

Last Kakatiya king (r. 1289–c. 1323; 1295–1323 in older accounts) and grandson of Rudramadevi. He crushed the Kayastha revolt, reorganised the nayankara military system, and paid tribute to Delhi after the sieges of 1310 and 1318. He was captured when Ulugh Khan took Warangal in the 1320s. Later warrior families remembered him as the king who raised them to rank.

Vidyanatha

c. 1289–1323 CE

Court poet of the last Kakatiya king Prataparudra. He wrote the Prataparudriya (Prataparudra-yashobhushana), a Sanskrit book on the theory of poetry whose example verses all praise the king. Its model play, the Prataparudra-kalyana, is one of the few literary sources from the time for the Kakatiya court.

Srinatha

c. 1365–1440 CE

Telugu poet of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, often ranked with the three translators of the Mahabharata. He served Peda Komati Vema of Kondavidu as vidyadhikarin and composed his grants and inscriptions. He then wrote for the Reddis of Rajahmundry. His Sringaranaishadham, Bhimakhandam and Kasikhandam are dedicated to Reddi kings and ministers, and they are a main source for their history.

Singabhupala (Recherla)

c. 1384–1399 CE

Recherla Velama king of Rachakonda (late 14th century), son of Anapota Nayaka. He wrote the Rasarnavasudhakara, a Sanskrit book on drama whose opening verses are the fullest early account of his family. Later tradition calls him, or a namesake of the next century, Sarvajna ('the all-knowing') Singa, patron of Srinatha and Potana. Who was who is disputed.

Kataya Vema

c. 1386–1415 CE

Minister and brother-in-law of Kumaragiri of Kondavidu. He received 'the eastern country' with Rajahmundry as its capital in the 1380s, and ruled the Godavari delta and the coast to Simhachalam until about 1414–16. A grandson of Prolaya Vema through his mother, he was also a Sanskrit scholar. He wrote the Kumaragirirajiyam, a commentary on Kalidasa's plays.

Kumaragiri Reddi

c. 1386–1402 CE

Reddi king of Kondavidu (c. 1386–1402), son of Anavota. He is remembered for his spring festival and his court's foreign trade, and as the patron after whom Kataya Vema named his commentary on Kalidasa. He gave the Godavari country around Rajahmundry to his minister and brother-in-law Kataya Vema. At the end of his reign he lost Kondavidu to his kinsman Peda Komati Vema.

Bammera Potana

c. 1400–1475 CE

Telugu poet of the fifteenth century, author of the Telugu Bhagavata. Tradition links him with Sarvajna Singa, a Recherla Velama king of Rachakonda. It says he wrote the Bhoginidandakamu in praise of the king's mistress but refused to dedicate his Bhagavata to a mortal king. No inscription confirms the story.

Peda Komati Vema

c. 1402–1420 CE

Fifth Reddi king of Kondavidu (c. 1402–1420), a grandson of Prolaya Vema's elder brother Macha, known as a scholar-king. The Sringaradipika commentary on the Amarusataka and other works are ascribed to him, and the poet Srinatha served him as vidyadhikarin and composed his grants. His reign was spent in wars with the Rajahmundry Reddis, Vijayanagara and the Recherla Velamas.

Deva Raya II (Vijayanagara)

1422–1446 CE

King of Vijayanagara from 1422 or 1423 to 1446, the greatest ruler of the first dynasty. He enlisted Muslim archers in his army, survived an attempt on his life in 1443 and received the Persian envoy Abdur Razzaq. His inscriptions reach the Godavari delta and the Guntur and Nellore country. The Telugu poet Vallabharaya governed Vinukonda for him, and Srinatha was bathed in gold in his Pearl Hall. After his death the Bahmani sultan and the Gajapati of Orissa besieged his capital together.

Saluva Narasimha

c. 1485–1492 CE

Chief of the Saluva family of Chandragiri. He drove the Gajapatis of Orissa back up the coast towards Rajahmundry and faced the Bahmani sultan there in the 1470s. In 1485–86 he took the throne of Vijayanagara from the last Sangama king and founded the second, Saluva, dynasty. He died in 1492–93 and left his young sons in the charge of his general Narasa Nayaka. Whether he recovered Udayagiri from Orissa is disputed.

Prataparudra (Gajapati)

c. 1497–1540 CE

Gajapati king of Orissa from 1496–97 to about 1540, son of Purushottama, and the last great king of the Suryavamsi line. At his accession his empire reached from Bengal to the Guntur and Nellore country. In 1512–19 the Vijayanagara king Krishnadeva Raya took Udayagiri, Kondavidu and Kondapalli, captured his son Virabhadra, marched to Simhachalam and married his daughter. The Qutb Shahi sultan of Golconda then took the Godavari–Krishna country. The legal digest Sarasvativilasa bears his name. He was a disciple of Chaitanya.

Shitab Khan (Sitapati) of Warangal

c. 1504–1516 CE

A Telugu chief of humble birth who held Warangal, Khammam and Bellamkonda in the early sixteenth century. Hirananda Sastri identified him with an officer who had fled the Bahmani Sultan Humayun Shah about 1461, and with the Sitapati of the Golconda chronicle. His pillar inscription in Warangal fort records that he took the fort from the Muslims on 21 January 1504. He put back the images of Krishna and of the Kakatiya family goddess. He supported Telugu poets and called himself king of the Bhogi family. Sultan Quli Qutb Shah of Golconda defeated him. He took shelter with the Gajapati prince at Kondapalli and fought on the losing side at Palanchinur. The Kistna manual thought he was a vassal of Orissa.

Krishnadeva Raya

1509–1529 CE

King of Vijayanagara from 1509 to 1529, of the Tuluva dynasty, and the most famous ruler of the empire. In 1512–16 he took Udayagiri, Kondavidu and Kondapalli from the Gajapati Prataparudra. He marched to Simhachalam and married the Gajapati's daughter. In 1520 he defeated the Adil Shah at Raichur. He wrote the Telugu poem Amuktamalyada, in which the god says Telugu is the best of the languages of the land. His court, with Allasani Peddana and Nandi Timmana, began the age of the Telugu prabandha (long narrative poem).

Ibrahim Qutb Shah

1530–1580 CE

Fourth Qutb Shahi sultan of Golconda (1550–1580), a younger son of Sultan Quli. He spent seven years as an exile at Vijayanagara under Rama Raya. He came back to take the throne with the help of the Telugu foot soldiers who held the forts. He joined the alliance that destroyed Vijayanagara at Talikota in 1565, and he conquered Rajahmundry, the northern coast and Kondavidu. Telugu poets dedicated works to him and to his officers, and Telugu records call him Ibharama. A Sanskrit copper-plate grant from Nellore calls him Malikibharama.

Aliya Rama Raya

1542–1565 CE

Chief of the Aravidu family and son-in-law (aliya) of Krishnadeva Raya. After Achyuta Raya's death, he and his brothers Tirumala and Venkatadri overthrew the regent Salakam Timma. He placed Sadasiva on the throne in 1542 and ruled the empire in his name until 1565. His family's lands lay around Kurnool, Adoni and Gooty, and his governors held Kondavidu. He played the Deccan sultans against each other until they joined against him. He was captured and beheaded in the battle of January 1565.

Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah

1566–1612 CE

Fifth Qutb Shahi sultan of Golconda (1580–1612), third son of Ibrahim Qutb Shah. He founded the city of Bhagnagar, later Hyderabad, on the Musi river around 1589–91, and built the Charminar, the Jami Masjid and the Dar-ush-Shifa hospital there. Ferishta says he named the city after a singer, Bhagmati. The sources differ on who she was and on how the city got its later name. He wrote poetry in Persian and the old Urdu of the Deccan.

Tirumala (Aravidu)

c. 1569–1572 CE

Brother of Aliya Rama Raya and the first king of the fourth, Aravidu, dynasty of Vijayanagara. He commanded a wing of the army in the battle of 1565 and lost an eye there. He fled with King Sadasiva and the treasury to Penukonda, which became the capital. He took the throne about 1569–70 and divided the empire into three viceroyalties, the Telugu one under his son Sriranga at Udayagiri and Penukonda. The Telugu poem Vasucharitramu was dedicated to him. Heras dates his death to 1572, Sewell to 1578.

Ibrahim Adil Shah II

1580–1627 CE

Sixth Adil Shahi sultan of Bijapur (r. 1580–1627), nephew and successor of Ali Adil Shah I, called Jagat Guru. He was the patron of the historian Ferishta and the builder of the Ibrahim Rauza. In his reign Bijapur held Adoni against a siege of 1595–96. Early in the seventeenth century it took Kurnool from the last Hindu chief of the town. Heras places Ferishta's account of a failed Bijapur siege of Penukonda in these years.

Venkatapati II (Vijayanagara)

1586–1614 CE

King of Vijayanagara from 1586 to 1614, the youngest son of Tirumala and the last strong ruler of the empire. He was chosen king over his young nephews. He ruled first from Penukonda, then from Chandragiri, and from 1606 from Vellore. He fought Golconda for the Telugu country, and the Telugu Ramarajiyamu says peace was made with the Krishna as the boundary. Jesuit missionaries lived at his court, and Tenali Ramakrishna and Tarigoppula Mallana are counted among his poets. His death at Chandragiri in 1614 was followed by a war of succession.

Kandukuri Veeresalingam

1848–1919 CE

Social reformer, journalist and writer of Rajahmundry (1848–1919). He worked for the education of girls and the remarriage of widows, and conducted the first widow remarriage in the Madras Presidency in 1881. He wrote the early Telugu social novel Rajasekhara Charitramu.

Kasinadhuni Nageswara Rao

1867–1938 CE

Founder of the Telugu paper Andhra Patrika and maker of the balm Amrutanjan (1867–1938), from Elakurru in Krishna district. He backed the non-cooperation movement through his paper, chaired a Madras meeting against the Simon Commission, and was jailed in the salt satyagraha of 1930 and the civil disobedience of 1932. He was elected to the Central Legislature in 1934.

Mutnuri Krishna Rao

1879–1945 CE

Editor of the Krishna Patrika of Machilipatnam (1879–1945), a leading Telugu nationalist paper. He organised Bipin Chandra Pal's tour of the Telugu districts in 1907, helped build the National College at Machilipatnam, and was jailed in the salt satyagraha of 1930, the civil disobedience of 1932 and the individual satyagraha of 1940–41.

Cherukuvada Venkata Narasimham

1887–1964 CE

Congress speaker and writer from Ghantasala in Krishna district (1887–1964). He worked on the nationalist papers Desabhimani and Krishna Patrika, taught at the National College in Machilipatnam, and was jailed for a year each in the non-cooperation movement of 1921, the salt satyagraha of 1930 and the civil disobedience of 1932. He was known as Upanyasa Chakravarti.

Suravaram Pratapa Reddy

1896–1953 CE

Telugu writer, editor and public worker of Hyderabad State, from Alampur taluk of Mahbubnagar district (1896–1953). He founded and edited the Golkonda Patrika from 1925 to 1949, presided over the first Andhra Conference at Jogipet in 1930, and wrote a social history of the Telugu people that won the Sahitya Akademi award.

Kishen Pershad

1901–1912 CE

Hereditary Peshkar and twice chief minister of Hyderabad: Prime Minister under Mahbub Ali Khan and Mir Osman Ali Khan from 1901 (confirmed 1902) to 1912, and President of the Executive Council from 1925. A descendant of Chandu Lal through his mother, born in AH 1281 (1864–65), he was a poet in Urdu and Persian. He founded literary journals and held large jagirs near Hyderabad.

Makhdoom Mohiuddin

1908–1969 CE

Urdu poet, trade union leader and communist of Hyderabad (1908–1969). He was secretary of the Communist Party in Hyderabad State, was jailed in 1944 for a speech, and was named by the Hyderabad government in 1949 as a member of the communists' State Committee during the Telangana armed struggle. From 1957 until his death he led the communist group in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council.

Mir Osman Ali Khan (Asaf Jah VII)

1911–1948 CE

Seventh and last ruling Nizam of Hyderabad (1911–1948), son of Mahbub Ali Khan. He ruled directly from 1914 to 1919 and then through an Executive Council. His reign brought Osmania University (founded by his farman of 1917, with Urdu as the medium of teaching), the Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar reservoirs built after the Musi flood of 1908, the City Improvement Board, the new High Court and the Osmania General Hospital. His government ended in September 1948, when the Indian Army entered the state and a military governor took charge.

Akbar Hydari (Nawab Hyder Nawaz Jung)

1917 CE

Hyderabad official and minister under Mir Osman Ali Khan. As Secretary in the Education Department he proposed in 1917 the university that became Osmania University, teaching in Urdu. He was Finance Member of the Executive Council from 1919 into the 1930s, President of the state railway board after the state bought the railway, and chairman of a committee of the princes' ministers on the federal plan in 1934–35. By 1938 he headed the government, which banned the new Hyderabad State Congress that year; he was also Chancellor of Osmania University.

Addanki Gangadhara

Telugu poet of the 16th century who dedicated his Tapatisamvaranopakhyanamu, the story of King Samvarana and Tapati, to Ibrahim Qutb Shah of Golconda. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao counted it, with Ponnikanti Telaganarya's Yayaticharitramu, among the only Telugu kavyas dedicated to a Muslim ruler. Its opening praises Ibrahim's conquests in the Telugu country.

Allasani Peddana

Chief Telugu poet of Krishnadeva Raya's court and first of the Ashtadiggajas (the eight court poets), called Andhrakavitapitamaha, 'grandfather of Telugu poetry'. His Svarochisha Manucharitramu, a story from the Markandeya Purana retold with rich description and dedicated to the king, became the model of the Telugu prabandha (long narrative poem). The king honoured him with the anklet of the champion poet and the village of Kokata, and Peddana mourned him in a famous verse.

Ananda Gajapati Raju

before 1897 CE

Maharaja of Vizianagaram, the greatest zamindari of the Madras Presidency, from 1879 (1878 in Maclean's chronology) until his death without children on 23 May 1897. A son of Vijayarama Gajapati Raju III, he held the personal title of Maharaja, sat for many years in the Madras Legislative Council and was made G.C.I.E. in 1892. He maintained the first-grade college at Vizianagaram, and in 1883 he laid the foundation stone of the Town Hall at Madras. His will of 1896 led to a long suit over the succession.

Atharvana

Telugu grammarian of the Kakatiya period, author of the Trilinga Sabdanusasanamu, a grammar of Telugu written in Sanskrit. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao called him the only Jain writer in surviving Telugu literature, dated him about 1240 and thought his real name was Nallanna. A legend that Nannaya burnt his Telugu Mahabharata out of jealousy was rejected by them, because the two did not live at the same time.

Ayyalaraju Ramabhadrudu

Telugu poet of Ontimitta in Kadapa district, counted among the eight poets of Krishnadeva Raya's court. The king asked him to write the Sakalakathasara Sangrahamu, a collection of Puranic stories, but died before it was finished; Ramabhadra later dedicated his Ramabhyudayamu, a poem on Rama, to Gobburi Narasaraja. He was nicknamed Pillala Ramabhadrayya for his many children.

Baddena

Telugu Choda chief of the Kakatiya period, author of the Nitisastra Muktavali, a verse handbook on the duties of kings. Tradition also makes him the author of the Sumati Satakam, the book of moral verses taught in Telugu village schools, but the sources disagree on who wrote it and when.

Brahma Nayudu

Hero of the Telugu ballad cycle of the Palnati Viralu (Heroes of Palnadu): the minister who led one side in the Palnadu war, fought out at Karempudi, and who is still honoured there as a form of Vishnu. He is known only from the ballads and the cult. No inscription names him, and the dates proposed for his war range from 1080 to 1386.

Chemakura Venkatakavi

Telugu poet of the 17th century at the court of Raghunatha Nayaka of Thanjavur. He wrote the Vijayavilasamu, on Arjuna's three marriages, and the Sarangadhara Charitramu, a tragic tale of a prince falsely accused. His style was so admired that it was named after him, 'Chemakura paka', and some count the Vijayavilasamu among the five great Telugu poems.

Chilakamarti Lakshmi Narasimham

Telugu novelist, playwright and speaker of Rajahmundry in the early 20th century, a follower of Kandukuri Veeresalingam's social reform. Jayanti Ramayya in 1913 credited him with starting the Telugu historical novel on the model of Walter Scott, drawing on Tod's Annals of Rajasthan. His plays, above all Prasanna Yadavamu and Gayopakhyanamu, were very popular, and K. Sitaramaiya notes that he wrote and spoke although he was blind.

Dhurjati

Telugu Shaiva poet of Srikalahasti, counted among the eight poets (Ashtadiggajas) of Krishnadeva Raya's court. He wrote the Kalahasti Mahatmyamu, a poem on the holy place of Srikalahasti, and the Kalahastisvara Satakamu, a set of devotional verses to its god. Stories about his loose living go back to a verse about the king's question on the sweetness of his style.

Gadicherla Harisarvottama Rao

Nationalist journalist who, as a teacher trainee at Rajahmundry, was expelled and barred from government service in 1907 for his part in the Vande Mataram movement. He was jailed in 1908 for an article in his weekly Swaraj, and later led the Home Rule League in Andhra. Regani counts him among the first political prisoners of the movement in Andhra.

Gidugu Venkata Ramamurti

Telugu scholar of Parlakimidi who led the early 20th-century movement to write books in modern spoken Telugu instead of the old literary style. His opponents, among them Jayanti Ramayya in 1913, fought him through the Andhra Sahitya Parishat, but K. Sitaramaiya wrote in 1943 that he lived to see the universities accept the spoken style. He also learned the Savara language of the Visakhapatnam hills and compiled a Telugu-Savara dictionary (1914).

Gona Budda Reddi

Chief of the Gona family in the Kakatiya period, named in its colophons as the author of the Ranganatha Ramayana, the Telugu Ramayana in the native dvipada metre. His sons completed it with the Uttara Ramayana. His daughter Kuppamamba was the wife of Ganapatideva's general Malyala Gunda.

Gurajada Apparao

Telugu writer of Vizianagaram, author of Kanyasulkam (the bride-price), the first important social play in Telugu, which mocks the selling of young girls in marriage to old men. He was one of the leaders of the movement to write in spoken Telugu, invented the song metre Mutyala Saramulu, and is credited with beginning the Telugu short story.

Hullaki Bhaskara

Telugu poet of the Kakatiya period, chief author of the Bhaskara Ramayanamu, a Ramayana in mixed verse and prose written with his son and pupils. He dedicated it to Sahinimara, a cavalry commander. A well-known story explains this unusual dedication, but Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao called it 'a later invention'.

Jakkana

Telugu poet of the early 15th century, author of the Vikramarka Charitramu, tales of the legendary King Vikramaditya of Ujjain. He dedicated it to Vennelaganti Siddamantri, whose family was favoured at the court of the Vijayanagara king Devaraya II. K. Sitaramaiya counted him among the later poets who imitated Nannechoda's style.

Kancherla Gopanna (Bhakta Ramadas)

A Telugu devotee of Rama, remembered as Ramadas. He was a revenue officer who spent government money on the Rama temple at Bhadrachalam on the Godavari and was imprisoned for it. In the legend, he was freed when Rama and Lakshmana paid his debt to the king. He is credited with the Dasarathi Sataka and with devotional songs. Writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries make him a nephew of Madanna and an officer of Abul Hasan Qutb Shah. The Godavari district gazetteer of 1907 places him about 1725 under the Nizams.

Kankanti Paparaju

Telugu poet of the 18th century whose Uttara Ramayanamu, a mixed verse-and-prose telling of the last part of the Rama story, became the best-known Telugu version of it. C. P. Brown recorded in 1852 that the real author was another poet, Pushpagiri Timmanna, and that Paparaju, an official at Pulicat, had taken the book in payment of a debt about 1790. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao also credit him with an early play, the Vishnumaya Vilasamu.

Kokkonda Venkataratnam

Telugu scholar, poet and journalist of the 19th century, a defender of the classical literary style. P. T. Raju wrote that his Narakasura Vijaya Vyayogamu was the first Telugu translation of a Sanskrit play to be printed. He ran the journal Andhra Bhasha Sanjivani, quarrelled in print with Kandukuri Veeresalingam, and later opposed Gidugu Ramamurti's spoken-Telugu movement.

Komarraju Lakshmana Rao

Telugu scholar and organiser who, as diwan (chief minister) to the Raja of Munagala, helped open the first Telugu library in Hyderabad in 1901. He founded the Vignana Chandrika Mandali, which published Telugu books on history and science, held Telugu examinations and prize competitions, and began a Telugu encyclopaedia. A Hyderabad history of the freedom movement calls him the first to see the need for close ties between Telangana and the Andhra districts.

Kshetrayya

Telugu poet and composer of padams, love songs on Radha and Krishna, sung by dancers and musicians across South India. K. Sitaramaiya and P. T. Raju place him in the 17th century, at the time of Vijayaraghava Nayaka of Thanjavur. C. R. Day in 1891 called him the most popular composer of padams.

Kuchimanchi Timmakavi

Prolific Telugu poet of the 18th century, called 'Abhinava Vaganusasana' (a new Nannaya). He wrote many long poems, among them the Rukmini Parinayamu and the Rasika Janamanobhiramamu, and a Ramayana and the Nilasundari Parinayamu in 'pure Telugu' without Sanskrit words. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao found his pure-Telugu poems unreadable; K. Sitaramaiya praised him as a scholar of great merit.

Kusumaditya (Chalukya of Mudigonda)

Chief of the Mudigonda branch of the Chalukyas, son of Bottu-Beta, known from the Kukkunur copper plates found near Bhadrachalam. They tell how a disaster struck in the first year of his rule, and his ministers Indaparaju and Remaraju carried him into exile for twelve years. They brought him back to rule the Visuru-nadu, and he rewarded them with an agrahara (village grant) on the Godavari. Its editor dated the letters to about 1200; P. V. Parabrahma Sastry placed Kusumaditya and his brother Nagati about 1218.

Madapati Hanumantha Rao

Leader of the Telugu awakening in Hyderabad State. He was a founder and, from 1922, the secretary of the Nizam Rashtra Andhra Jana Sangham, which worked through libraries, schools and publications and became the Andhra Mahasabha in 1930. He organised the first Hyderabad political conference, held at Kakinada in 1923.

Madayyagari Mallana

Telugu Shaiva poet of Kondavidu, counted among the eight poets of Krishnadeva Raya's court. His Rajasekhara Charitramu, a story-poem, is dedicated to Nadindla Appa, nephew and son-in-law of the king's minister Saluva Timma, and its opening traces the minister's family. The Rayavachakamu places him with the king after the victory over the sultans.

Mangalagiri Anandakavi

Telugu poet of the 18th century, author of the Vedanta Rasayanamu, a life of Christ in four cantos written in classical Telugu verse. C. P. Brown called him a Roman Catholic and dated the poem about 1700; Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao put him about 1750 and doubted that he was a church member. Kandukuri Veeresalingam ranked him among the best poets of his century.

Marana

Telugu poet of the late Kakatiya period, a pupil of Tikkana, who wrote the Markandeya Puranamu and dedicated it to Nagaya Gannaya, an officer of the last Kakatiya king, Prataparudra. Its story of the birth of Svarochisha Manu later became the basis of Allasani Peddana's Manucharitramu. The poem's mention of Prataparudra's officers makes it a source for Kakatiya history.

Mohanangi

Daughter of Krishnadeva Raya of Vijayanagara, remembered in Telugu tradition as a poet and a judge of poetry. She is said to have written the Marichi Parinayamu, a love poem now lost. Court stories make her the princess who bought Sankusala Nrisimha's verses in the market and brought him to the king's notice, and the target of a joke by Tenali Ramakrishna. All that is known of her comes from these stories.

Molla

Telugu woman poet of the potter caste, author of the Molla Ramayanamu, a short verse retelling of the Ramayana. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao placed her in Krishnadeva Raya's reign (1509–30) and called hers the most widely read of all the Telugu Ramayanas; C. P. Brown described the poem in 1852 as 'an imitation of Valmiki'.

Muddupalani

Telugu woman poet of Thanjavur in the 18th century, author of the Radhika Santvanamu (the consoling of Radha), a love poem in four cantos. She says she was skilled in music, poetry and dance. Kandukuri Veeresalingam, who placed her at Thanjavur about 1760, admired her verse but found it too frank; Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao called it indecent.

Mulaghatika Ketana

Telugu poet and scholar of the 13th century, a younger contemporary of Tikkana. He put Dandin's Sanskrit romance Dasakumaracharita into Telugu and dedicated it to Tikkana, wrote an early Telugu grammar, the Andhra Bhasha Bhushanamu, and turned the Mitakshara law code into Telugu.

Nachana Somana

Telugu poet at the court of Bukka I of Vijayanagara in the 14th century and author of the Uttara Harivamsamu, a retelling of the later life of Krishna. Critics ranked him with the three poets of the Telugu Mahabharata, and N. Venkataramanayya pointed to him as the only poet in a spoken language known to have been patronised by Bukka.

Nandi Timmana

Telugu poet of Krishnadeva Raya's court and one of the Ashtadiggajas (the eight great poets), popularly called Mukku Timmana. He was a Niyogi Brahman and a Saiva, and a nephew of the poet Malayamaruta. He wrote the Parijatapaharanamu, dedicated to the king, the story of Krishna bringing the parijata tree from heaven for Satyabhama. Its introduction is a source for the careers of Narasa Nayaka and Krishnadeva Raya. Tradition says it was written to reconcile the king with a queen.

Nannaya

Telugu poet of the 11th century, the author of the earliest surviving Telugu literary work. He wrote the first parvas (books) of the Telugu Mahabharata at the request of the Eastern Chalukya king Rajaraja Narendra of Rajahmundry. A Telugu grammar in Sanskrit, the Andhra-sabda-chintamani, is traditionally said to be his, though later historians doubted it. A. C. Burnell placed him in the 12th century in 1878; the editors of the inscriptions and later historians place him under Rajaraja in the 11th.

Nannechoda

Telugu Choda prince of Pakanadu and author of the Kumarasambhavamu, a long Telugu poem on the birth of the war-god Kumara. The poem was found and printed only in the early 20th century, and scholars still argue over its date: its editor placed it before Nannaya, while Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao put the poet about 1150.

Palkuriki Somanatha

Telugu Shaiva poet from Palakurthi near Warangal. He wrote the Basava Purana and the Panditaradhya Charitra in the dvipada metre, the founding works of Telugu Virashaiva literature. Historians disagree over whether he lived in the late twelfth century or under Prataparudra, the last Kakatiya king.

Panuganti Lakshminarasimha Rao

Telugu essayist, playwright and humorist of the early 20th century, best known for the Sakshi (The Spectator) essays, which appeared in weekly parts in the Andhra Patrika. He also wrote plays, among them Kanthabharanam and Radhakrishna, and early short stories. Critics disagreed about his humour: Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao found it clean and kindly, K. Sitaramaiya at times obscene.

Pillalamarri Pinaveerabhadrudu

Telugu poet of the later 15th century at the court of Saluva Narasimha, who became the first king of Vijayanagara's second dynasty. His Jaimini Bharatamu, dedicated to that king, opens with an account of the Saluva family's wars. Many stories grew up around him: that he silenced Srinatha as a boy, and that the goddess Sarasvati wrote his poem in one night.

Pingali Ellanarya

Telugu poet of about 1602, author of the Tobhya Charitramu, also called the Sarvesvara Mahatmyamu, a poem in four cantos on a Christian subject. He wrote it for Tumma Rayapa Reddi, a minor chief in the Kondavidu country. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao say it was based on an account of the life of St Thomas kept in the patron's family.

Pingali Surana

Telugu poet of the mid-16th century at the courts of Akavidu and Nandyal in Kurnool district. He wrote the Raghavapandaviyamu, in which every verse tells the stories of both Rama and the Pandavas, and two story-poems: the Kalapurnodayamu, a plot of his own invention, and the Prabhavati Pradyumnamu. Tradition counts him among Krishnadeva Raya's eight court poets, but Subramiah Pantulu and P. T. Raju put him a generation later.

Ponnikanti Telaganarya

Telugu poet of the 16th century, author of the Yayaticharitramu, the story of King Yayati in five cantos written in 'pure Telugu', avoiding Sanskrit words. He dedicated it to Amin Khan, a general of Ibrahim Qutb Shah of Golconda, and its opening praises Amin Khan's family as servants of the sultan.

Raghunatha Nayaka of Thanjavur

Telugu Nayaka ruler of Thanjavur (then Tanjore) in the early 17th century, himself a poet in Telugu and Sanskrit and a writer on music. His court began the 'Southern school' of Telugu literature: his own Valmiki Charitramu was an early Telugu prose work, and Chemakura Venkatakavi wrote the Vijayavilasamu there. Poems by his son, his minister and a woman poet of his court describe his wars for the Vijayanagara throne.

Ramarajabhushana (Bhattumurti)

Telugu poet of the later 16th century, author of the Vasucharitramu, the story of King Vasu's marriage told in verse full of double meanings, which became the model for later poets. His title means 'ornament of Rama Raja's court'; his own name was Bhattumurti. He dedicated the Vasucharitramu to Tirumala Raya and a book on poetics, the Narasabhupaliyamu, to Rama Raya's nephew. Scholars long argued whether the two names belong to one poet.

Rayaprolu Subba Rao

Telugu poet who led the 'new poetry' (bhava kavitvam) of the early 20th century, lyric verse on nature and idealised love written under the influence of English romantic poets. His Lalita (1909) and Trunakankanamu (1914) made his name. He was invited to the new Telugu chair at Osmania University, Hyderabad, in 1918–19, and was head of its Telugu department in 1944.

Sarangu Timmana

Telugu poet of the late 16th century, author of the Vaijayanti Vilasamu, also called the Vipranarayana Charitramu, the story of a Vaishnava devotee tempted by two courtesan sisters. G. R. Subramiah Pantulu wrote in 1898 that Timmana called himself the karanam (accountant) of Golconda. C. P. Brown noted that it was printed with a commentary in 1849.

Tallapaka Annamacharya

Telugu composer of devotional songs (sankirtanas) to the god Venkatesvara of Tirupati, the first of the Tallapaka family of temple poets. The Tirupati temple dated him 1408–1503 when it printed his songs in 1941. Temple records of 1530–1558, studied by S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, show his son Tirumalai Aiyangar as the temple's appointed singer, and his grandson setting up his image as a teacher.

Tarigonda Vengamamba

Telugu woman poet and devotee of Tarigonda, near Vayalpad in the old Kadapa district, who lived in the first half of the 19th century. She wrote the Venkatachala Mahatmyamu on the holy hill of Tirupati, the Rajayogasaramu and a Telugu couplet version of the Bhagavata. C. P. Brown noted in 1852 that she was living in 1840.

Tarigoppula Mallana

Telugu poet of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, author of the Chandrabhanu Charitramu, the story of the marriage of Krishna's son Chandrabhanu. He belonged to the circle of the Vijayanagara king Venkatapati Raya at Chandragiri, where his elder brother Datta Mantri was a minister.

Tenali Ramakrishna

Telugu poet, author of the Panduranga Mahatmyamu. Tradition counts him among the Ashtadiggajas of Krishnadeva Raya's court, and he is famous throughout the Telugu country as a jester. The record is thin. He first wrote as Tenali Ramalinga, a Saiva, before turning Vaishnava. The evidence of his patrons and contemporaries places him in the later sixteenth century, at the court of the Aravidu kings, rather than under Krishnadeva Raya. The jests told of him are folklore.

Tikkana Somayaji

Telugu poet of the 13th century at the court of the Telugu Choda king Manumasiddhi II of Nellore. He translated fifteen books of the Mahabharata into Telugu, completing the work Nannaya had begun two centuries earlier, and wrote the Nirvachanottara Ramayana. He went as his patron's envoy to the Kakatiya Ganapatideva, whose help restored Manumasiddhi to Nellore.

Tirupati Venkata Kavulu

Pair of Telugu poets, Tirupati Sastri and Venkata Sastri, who wrote together in the early 20th century. They were famous for satavadhanam, composing verse on a hundred subjects at once before an audience, and for plays on the Mahabharata such as Pandavavijayamu. Writers of the old school, they translated the Devi Bhagavatam and Arnold's Light of Asia, and trained many later poets.

Tyagaraja

Telugu singer, poet and composer of Tiruvaiyaru in Thanjavur district, whose devotional songs (kritis and kirtanas) to Rama are sung all over South India. C. R. Day in 1891 dated him about 1820–1840 and H. A. Popley in 1921 about 1800–1850, while P. T. Raju placed him in the 18th century. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao called him the greatest gift of Thanjavur to Telugu literature.

Vattikota Alwar Swamy

Telugu writer and publisher from Nalgonda district who rose from poverty without schooling. In 1938 he founded the Desoddharaka Granthamala, which published small books to spread national feeling. He ran the arrangements for the Andhra Mahasabha's session at Chilkur, became its organising secretary at Bhongir in 1944, and moved from nationalism to the Communist Party.

Vavilikolanu Subbarao

Telugu scholar-poet of the early 20th century who translated Valmiki's Ramayana into Telugu verse line by line and dedicated it to Rama. K. Sitaramaiya records that he believed Ontimitta in Kadapa district was the birthplace of Bammera Potana, renovated the Rama temple there and founded a school of Rama devotees. He was one of the classical scholars criticised by Gidugu Ramamurti in the language quarrel.

Vedam Venkataraya Sastri

Telugu scholar, critic and playwright, counted in 1928 among the leading critics of the day, given the title Mahamahopadhyaya. He wrote learned commentaries on classical poems, the historical play Prataparudriyamu about the last Kakatiya king, and translations from Sanskrit. A defender of the classical literary style, he argued with Kandukuri Veeresalingam and opposed Gidugu Ramamurti's spoken-Telugu movement.

Vemana

Telugu poet of short moral, religious and satirical verses, each ending with the refrain 'Viswad abhi rama vinara Vema'. His verses were the moral schoolbook of the Telugu country. Nothing certain is known of his life: C. P. Brown, who collected and translated the verses from 1824, heard that he lived about 1600, while Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao preferred the early 15th century.

Vemulavada Bhimakavi

Telugu poet known mostly from legend, linked by tradition with Vemulavada in Karimnagar district and with Draksharama. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao called him 'a poet of mystery': he has been placed in every century from the 12th to the 16th, and no work can be given to him with certainty. Later poets remembered him for 'words of power', and one tradition makes him the first to write verse with two meanings.

Vijayaraghava Nayaka of Thanjavur

Telugu Nayaka ruler of Thanjavur (then Tanjore), son of Raghunatha Nayaka, and himself an author of Telugu plays, among them a Raghunathabhyudayamu in praise of his father. K. Sitaramaiya and P. T. Raju name him as the patron of the song-composer Kshetrayya. A Telugu chronicle of the Thanjavur kings tells how he refused a marriage alliance with the Nayaka of Madurai and died fighting when Madurai's army stormed Thanjavur.

Vinukonda Vallabharaya

Telugu poet of the 15th century, governor of Vinukonda under the Vijayanagara king Devaraya II, named as the author of the Kridabhiramamu, a lively tour of the streets of Warangal told as a play. His family served the Vijayanagara kings from Bukka I onward as ministers, generals and keepers of the royal jewels. P. T. Raju and K. Sitaramaiya give the Kridabhiramamu to Srinatha instead.

Places

Addanki

Town on the Gundlakamma river, formerly in Ongole taluk. A stone here carries the 9th-century Telugu verse inscription of Pandaranga. Later records name it as the centre of the 'Addanki country'.

Bhadrachalam

Temple town on the Godavari, held to be a place where Rama lived after the abduction of Sita. Its temple of Rama is linked with Kancherla Gopanna, remembered as Ramadas, who is said to have spent the revenue on the shrine and to have been imprisoned for it. The Kistna manual (1883) makes him a nephew of Madanna under the last Qutb Shahi king. The Godavari gazetteer (1907) places him about 1725, as an official of the Nizam.

Erragudipadu

Village in the former Kamalapuram taluk of Kadapa district. A stone beside its Chennakesava temple carries an inscription of an Erikal-Mutturaju of the Telugu Cholas of Renandu. Its editors dated it to the late 6th century, and it is among the earliest records written in Telugu.

Kalamalla

Village in the former Kamalapuram taluk of Kadapa district. A broken pillar in its Chennakesava temple carries a late-6th-century inscription of the Telugu Chola Dhananjaya. It is one of the earliest records written entirely in Telugu.

Rajahmundry

Town on the left bank of the Godavari, the ancient Rajamahendravaram. It was the eastern capital of the Reddis, and a frontier fortress fought over by Orissa, the Bahmanis, Vijayanagara and Golconda. It was Bussy's headquarters in the 1750s, and in the 1920s the home of the Andhra Historical Research Society.

Tippaluru

Village in the former Kamalapuram taluk of Kadapa district, the Tirpaluru of an early Telugu stone inscription of the Telugu Chola Punyakumara. The letters of the inscription resemble those of the Pallava Mahendravarman I. Its date contains the earliest mention of the hora (planetary hour) then known in south Indian inscriptions.

Monuments

Osmania University

1918 CE

University at Hyderabad founded by Mir Osman Ali Khan's farman of 26 April 1917 and established by charter in 1918, the first in India to teach through an Indian language, Urdu, with English compulsory. Its translation bureau put the college textbooks into Urdu. In the 1930s the university moved to a new campus at Adikmet, where the Arts College was built at a sanctioned cost of Rs 27,13,000. In 1938 students who sang Vande Mataram in a hostel were expelled.

Inscriptions

Kalamalla inscription of Erikal Muturaju Dhananjaya

c. 575 CE

A damaged pillar inscription from Kalamalla in Kadapa district, dated from the shape of its letters to about 575 CE. Its editors called it one of the earliest records written entirely in Telugu.

Erragudipadu inscription of Erikal-Mutturaju

c. 590 CE

An early Telugu stone record beside the Chennakesava temple at Erragudipadu in the Kamalapuram country. Its letters are almost the same as those of the Kalamalla pillar, and its editors dated it to the last quarter of the 6th century or a little later. It records a tax-free grant of 24 measures of land to a Brahmana in the reign of an Erikal-Mutturaju. The witnesses included a Mutturaju called Navapriya and a 'Vallava Dukaraju', perhaps a Pallava crown prince.

Tippaluru inscription of Punyakumara

c. 625 CE

An early Telugu stone record at Tippaluru in the Kamalapuram country. It was issued while Erikalla-Mutturaju Punyakumara ruled Renandu from his capital Chirpali. Its ornamental letters look like those of the Pallava Mahendravarman I's Vallam rock inscription. It names the weekday and the hora (planetary hour), the earliest mention of the hora then known in south Indian inscriptions.

Aihole inscription of Pulakesin II

634 CE

A Sanskrit poem of 37 verses by the Jaina poet Ravikirti, engraved in 634–35 on the Meguti temple at Aihole in Karnataka. It is the main account of the conquests of the Chalukya king Pulakesin II, including his eastern campaign. There he humbled the Kalingas and Kosalas, took Pishtapura (Pithapuram), and ravaged 'the water of Kunala', which Kielhorn identified with the Kolleru lake. He also defeated the Pallava king before Kanchi.

Gadval plates of Vikramaditya I

674 CE

A Sanskrit copper-plate grant of the 20th year of the Chalukya king Vikramaditya I, dated 25 April 674. It was kept at Gadwal (then in Hyderabad State, now in Telangana) and is said to have been found in the fields there. Issued from a camp at Uragapura on the south bank of the Kaveri, it names the three Pallava kings whom Vikramaditya defeated. E. Hultzsch noted two Telugu terms for measures of grain in it.

Malepadu stone inscription of Satyaditya

c. 725 CE

A short Telugu stone record from Malepadu in the Cuddapah district. It records a gift of land at Chirumburu (Chilamakuru) by the Telugu Chola prince Satyaditya, ruler of the Siddhi thousand and the Renandu seven thousand. It was published in 1912 as a sample of the earliest Telugu records of the district, and it is written from the bottom upwards. Its two editors read the family tree in it differently.

Addanki inscription of Pandaranga

c. 844 CE

A damaged stone inscription of the mid-9th century from Addanki. Its opening Telugu verse, in the taruvoja metre, praises Pandaranga, army commander of the Eastern Chalukya king Gunaga-Vijayaditya III.

Bezwada pillar inscription of Yuddhamalla

c. 890–950 CE

A Telugu verse inscription on a stone pillar in the Mallesvara temple at Bezwada (Vijayawada). It records that a Chalukya king Yuddhamalla built a temple and a monastery for Kumarasvamin (Karttikeya). It also records that a Yuddhamalla later added a front tower to a temple built by his grandfather Mallapa-raju. Its editor J. Ramayya Pantulu (1920) dated it to about 890–930 and called it the earliest Telugu poetry then known. Its date, its division into one or two records and the meaning of its fourth verse were disputed.

Kurkyal inscription of Jinavallabha

c. 945 CE

A rock inscription of about 945 on the Bommala Gutta, a hill at Kurikyal near Gangadhara in the Karimnagar district. Jinavallabha, younger brother of the Kannada poet Pampa, set it up. Written in Sanskrit, Kannada and Telugu, it records Jaina images, a temple, a tank and a garden made by Jinavallabha. It gives Pampa's family and home in the Vengi country, and confirms that the Chalukya king Arikesari II gave Pampa the village of Dharmavura for his Vikramarjunavijaya. Its three Telugu verses in the kanda metre are among the earliest Telugu verse.

Nandamapundi grant of Rajaraja Narendra

1053 CE

Five copper plates of 1053 CE recording the gift of Nandamapundi village to the poet Narayana. The gift was made in the 32nd regnal year of the Eastern Chalukya king Rajaraja I. The grant names its verse-writer as Nanniyabhatta, perhaps Nannaya of the Telugu Mahabharata.

Dirghasi inscription of Vanapati

1075 CE

A stone inscription of Saka 997 (1075–76) at Dirghasi near Kalingapatnam, in sixteen lines of Sanskrit verse followed by seven of Telugu verse. It records that Vanapati, a Brahmin general of the Ganga king Rajaraja I, built a dancing hall before the temple of Durga and gave lamps. It credits him with victories over the Chola king, the Utkala, and the kings of Vengi, Kimidi, Kosala and Odda.

Srikurmam inscriptions of the Chalukya chiefs

1273 CE

Four inscriptions of 1273 to 1318 on pillars of the Kurmesvara temple at Srikurmam. They were left by chiefs who claimed descent from the Eastern Chalukya kings Vimaladitya and Rajaraja Narendra, and who served the Eastern Ganga kings. The earliest calls the chief's father a minister of Narasimha I. It also says that Rajaraja Narendra, with scholars, translated the history of the Bharata race into Telugu. E. Hultzsch took this as a confirmation, from an inscription, of the tradition of Nannaya's Telugu Mahabharata.

Phirangipuram pillar inscription of Peda Komati Vema (1410)

1410 CE

A verse inscription on a stone pillar in front of the Virabhadra temple at Phirangipuram near Guntur, composed by the poet Srinatha. It records the dedication in February 1410 of a tank, Santana-sagara, built by Suramamba, queen of the Reddi king Peda Komati Vema. Half of it is in Sanskrit and half in Telugu. It gives the king's descent from Macha, the elder brother of Prolaya Vema.

Devalanagaram inscription of Nagamba (1429)

1429 CE

A Sanskrit inscription of March–April 1429 on the bund of the tank Nagasamudram near Rachakonda. It records the tank dug by Nagamba, queen of the Recherla prince Ravu Madhava. It gives his descent from Era Dacha through Anapota and Singa. It says that he wrote a commentary on the Ramayana, the Raghaviya, in 1427.

Konkuduru plates of Allaya Dodda (1431)

1431 CE

Seven copper plates found in 1887 at Konkuduru, near Ramachandrapuram in the Godavari district. In them Dodda, a son of Allada Reddi of Rajahmundry, gave the village of Gumpini, renamed Alladareddidoddavaram, to Brahmans on 14 January 1431. They give the family tree of Allada's family. Their editor compared it with the accounts in Srinatha's Kasikhandam and Bhimakhandam.

Musa Burj inscription, Golconda fort (1666–67)

1666–1667 CE

A Persian inscription on the Musa Burj bastion of Golconda fort, with a version in Telugu on another wall. It records the Mughal siege of 1656. Aurangzeb's commander Mir Miran was killed by a gunshot in his trench, and peace followed three days later. Abdullah Qutb Shah's commander Musa Khan then built the great bastion, finished in AH 1077 by the architect Dharmachar. The Telugu text, read by H. Krishna Sastri, dates the siege to Saka 1578 (23 January 1656) and the completion to Saka 1589 (1667).

Chura grant of Vijaya-Vishnugopavarman

A Sanskrit copper-plate grant, with some Telugu words, issued from Palotkata by the Pallava king Vijaya-Vishnugopavarman, son of a Simhavarman. It gives 108 nivartanas in the village of Chura in Karmarashtra to the Brahman Chasamisarman of Kundur. It was obtained at Narasaraopet and edited by C. R. Krishnamacharlu in 1938. It is written in letters of about the 7th century, and he took it to be a copy of an older grant.

Kukkunur plates of Kusumaditya

Copper-plate grant in Telugu prose, with Sanskrit verses, of Kusumaditya of the Mudigonda branch of the Chalukyas, found at Kukkunur near Bhadrachalam. It traces the family from Kariya-Gonaga, lord of Koravipura. It tells how Kusumaditya's ministers Indaparaju and Remaraju took him into twelve years of exile and brought him back to the Visuru-nadu, and it grants them the village of Krichchaka on the Godavari. Its editor called it the earliest copper-plate grant written entirely in Telugu prose. It is undated, and estimates range from the 11th century to about 1200.

References

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