________________
DECEMBER, 1898.]
THE TELUGU LITERATURE.
raja, and three daughters - Lakkamâmba, Obamâmba and Kônamâmbâ. Of the offspring of the daughters: to Narasaraya, son of Lakkamâmbâ, is dedicated the Narasabhúpaliya, to Gobburi Narasaraja, son of Obamâmbâ, is dedicated the Rámábhyudaya, while the Paramayögivilása is dedicated to Timmaraya, son of Kônamâmbâ. The Narasabhúpáliga is a Telugu rendering of the Sanskrit Prataparudriya, of which the portion dealing with the drama (Nálaka Prakarana) and the examples illustrative of the rules are omitted. The examples were prepared afresh by the author in the name of Narasarâja. It is said that Râmarajabhushana had a taste for music.
335
By the time he composed the Harischandra-Nalópákhyana, Ramarajabhushana must have been of a ripe old age, and by that time the dissolution of the kingdom of Vijayanagara had reached its completion. This work was written after Pingali Sûrana wrote his Raghavapaṇḍaviya, dedicated to Sri Rama, towards the end of the sixteenth century. We may, therefore, safely say that Râmarajabhushana wrote his works from 1550 to 1590 A. D.
In his preface to the Harischandra-Nalópákhyana, Poondla Ramakrishniah says that the fact that the colophons of the Fasucharitra and Harischandra-Nalbpakhyana, the first and third of the works, agree, and that mention is made of a totally different personage in the second of the works, Narasabhupálya, shews that the writer of the first and third of these works must have been one and the same person. Had the second work been written by this person there would have been no possibility of so many inconsistencies in prosody as are to be found in it, for they are wholly absent in the Vasucharitra.
In the preface to his commentary on the Vasucharitra, the commentator Somanatha (who also wrote the Chaturbhujabhisheka, Yávanacharitra and Gamgdgaurisamvada) says that the Vasucharitra was written by Mûrti or Baṭṭumûrti. We know that this commentator flourished towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, a few years after Appakavi and Ahôbalapati. What have the modern critics to say to this?
Telugu poets are in the habit of introducing into their later works certain stanzas from their earlier ones, with slight rectifications and modifications. Take for instance Tikkana's Nirvchanôttararamayana and his Mahabharata. This habit is also visible in the Vasucharitra and Narasabhupaliya. An inexplicable fact unless we admit that the two works are the compositions of one and the same poet.
The evidence therefore comes to this that the so-called Ashta-diggajas did not all flourish at the time of Krishnadevaraya, and there can be no gainsaying the fact that the golden age of Telugu art and literature began sometime previous to Krishnaraya, whose nearer ancestors had discovered and nursed the genius of the Telugu people, while he, after his military achievements, gave them a home. His wars with the Muhammadans had established his supremacy over the vast extent of Telugu country. Vijayanagara had become an imperial State, and the Telugus, bound to her not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection, brought to her their civilization. Their arts and philosophy were easily carried to the new seat of learning, where Krishnaraya was ready to receive them with due honor. Not content with patronizing literature, he built many mandapas and temples, nor, while hospitable to the authors of the city's civilization, was he unmindful of her material prosperity, and the trees he planted in the town extended their cool, umbrageous branches over many a weary way-farer. Later on, though her political power waned and disappeared; though kingdoms rose and fell and the centuries rolled away, they did but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and the sage. Revolution after revolution has since passed over the face of India, but time has only half succeeded in its theft. Vijayanagara has been removed and ruined, but its power through its writers to delight the Telugus is still left.
