Person · Telugu court poet · India
Dhurjati
Also known as Dhurjati, Dhoorjati, Kalahastisvara Satakamu
One of the Ashtadiggajas and the most unusual of them: a Shaiva devotee of Srikalahasti whose Kalahasti Mahatyamu and Kalahastisvara Satakamu are addressed to the god rather than to the emperor, and whose satakam is a sustained attack on courts, kings and the compromises of patronage.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 15.335, 76.462
Worth knowing
Krishnadevaraya is said to have asked what made Dhurjati's language so sweet, and Tenali Ramakrishna's answer — an obscene pun implying the poet kept the company of courtesans — is one of the best-known anecdotes of the court. The satakam's contempt for royal patronage is the more interesting fact, and it was written inside it.
About the place
Placed at Vijayanagara, the court he belonged to; the Ashtadiggaja poets are known by their works and their patron rather than by biographies.
Connections (1)
- Devotional corpus onKālahasti / Srikālahasti
Dhurjati's Kalahasti Mahatyamu is the temple's own sthala-purana in Telugu verse, and his satakam addresses the god directly in a hundred verses that spend much of their length refusing the court he was employed at. A poet paid by an emperor telling his god that kings are not worth writing for, in a poem the emperor's court preserved, is the sharpest thing in the circle.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dhurjati”. Dhurjati, Kālahastīśvara Śatakamu, trans. in Hank Heifetz and Velcheru Narayana Rao, For the Lord of the Animals (1987).
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