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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1898.
improbable, considering the position they occupied and the high veneration with which they were regarded.
824
Madayyagari Mallana, in contradistinction to Praudhakavi Mallana, the writer of the Ekadasimáhatmya, a poet who bad lived some time previously, was a writer on Rhetoric of the time of Krishnaraya. He was an inhabitant of Kondavidu, and the son of Mâdayya. He was a Brahmana of the Lingayat sect. A very large number of Brahmaṇas were converted to this sect by Bijjalaraya, king of Kalyana. They wear a stone linga round their necks and worship it after their daily ablutions. Mallana received a good education in his infancy, and while in his budding manhood, wrote the Rajasekharacharitra, or a poetical history of Rajasekhara. He dedicated it to Nandyala Appaya, the son-in-law of Sâļuva Timmarâja, the prime minister of Krishnaraya. This poet received rich rewards from his patron in lands and other presents.
Tenali Ramakrishna alias Tenali Ramalinga, was a Yajnavalkya Brahmana of the Kaunḍinya gótrz. He was the son of Râmayya and Lakshmamma. It is said of him that he first bore the appellation of Tenâli Râmalinga, and under that name wrote the Lingapurana, still extant, but aferwards embraced the Vaishnava faith to please the sovereigns of Chandragiri, and changed his name to Ramakrishņa. Kâvali Venkataramasvâmi, in his Biographies of Dekkan Poets, p. 88, speaks of him as being one of the ashfa-diggajas at the court of Krishnaraya. He was born, he says, in the village of Tenâli in the Kistna district in S. S. 1384, i. e., 1462 A. D., and was of the family of Isvarapraggada. His horoscope exhibits him as born under a very propitious star. In his infancy he studied the Telugu dialect, and by the association of the bhatrajas or bards of Bhattipalli, he became a perfect master of that language, and a professor of rhetoric. He likewise possessed a tolerable knowledge of Sanskrit. We have no records to prove the truth of these statements, and it is highly probable that the horoscope of the poet was a later invention. Had he been born in 1462 A. D. as is alleged, he must have been about 50 years old at the time of Krishnaraya's accession.
Having heard, it is said, much of the patronage afforded by Krishnaraya, Ramakrishna went to Vijayanagara in hopes of receiving countenance from the king. As he had no friends to forward his case, he was obliged to ingratiate himself into the good graces of the inferior servants of the household and composed a few verses on one of the female attendants of the queen. The fame of Ramakrishna thus reached the ears of the king, who appointed him one of the court poets.
He was of a humorous character, and loved to play practical jokes. The guru Tâtâcharya was a very orthodox man, and was in the habit of visiting a cow-stall every morning as soon as he rose from bed, being taken to the place blind-folded in order to view the cows' excrement as the first object seen during the day, thinking it to be a very meritorious act. His habit was to keep his eyes shut and laying hold of a cow's tail to wait till she evacuated, when he opened his eyes to behold the excrement. One morning Ramakrishna got up early, and removing the cow from the stall, stood in its place stark naked. The guru came as usual, and instead of the cow's tail he found a man. His rage knew no bounds, and running up to the king, he laid a complaint against Ramakrishna. The king became exceedingly angry and ordered the poet to be forthwith executed. The executioners carried him to a plain and buried him in the earth as far as the neck, leaving only his head above ground, agreeably to the sentence passed on him. They left him thus, intending to return with a certain number of elephants to trample him to death. It so chanced that a hump-backed washerman was passing by, and asked the poet how he came to
11 [The founder of the Lingayat sect was Basava, the prime minister of Bijjala. An inscription at Managōli in the Bijapur district, dated in the reign of the Kalacharya king Bijjala, mentions this Basava as one of the fivehundred mahajanas of that village; see Ep. Ind. Vol. V. p. 10 f.-H. K. S.]
