Person · Telugu poet · India
Allasani Peddana
Ranked first among Krishnadevaraya's eight poets and given the title Andhra Kavita Pitamaha, grandfather of Telugu poetry. His Manucharitramu, on the birth of Svarochisha Manu, established the prabandha as the form of the reign: a single sustained ornate narrative poem rather than a translation from a Sanskrit original.
- Date
- 1500–1550
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Patron dynasty
- Vijayanagara
- Condition
- historical person
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 15.335, 76.460
Worth knowing
The emperor is said to have washed his feet with his own hands and to have paid him in gold for each verse of the Manucharitramu, which is the kind of story a literary establishment tells about its senior figure. He is credited with a stanza on the Telugu language's superiority that is still quoted in arguments about it.
About the place
Placed at Hampi, the court he served. Nothing is known of where he was born or died; the marker stands for the Vijayanagara court that his Manucharitramu was written for.
Connections (2)
- PatronageKrishnadevaraya
Peddana's Manucharitramu is the first full prabandha in Telugu and set the form — an ornate, long narrative poem built around a single story — that dominated the language's literature for the next three hundred years. Krishnadevarāya is said to have carried one pole of his palanquin personally, which is the sort of story courts tell about themselves, but the literary shift it marks is real: Telugu replaced Sanskrit as the prestige language of the southern court within one reign.
- In the same set asNandi Timmana
Peddana and Timmana are the first two of the eight and the two whose works fixed the prabandha as the form of the reign: a single long narrative poem in ornate Telugu, taking an episode from a purana and elaborating it, rather than translating a Sanskrit original. Everything the other six wrote is measured against these two, and the Andhra Kavita Pitamaha title went to Peddana.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Allasani Peddana”. Allasani Peddana, Manucharitramu; Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman, Classical Telugu Poetry: An Anthology (2002).
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