The Giver of the Worn Garland KRISHNADEVARAYA'S AMUKTAMALYADA

by SRINIVAS REDDY

  Unlike other literary personalities of his time, there exists a significant amount of biographical information available to us about the king. We even have a unique eyewitness account of his appearance and personality:

  The king is of medium height, and of fair complexion and good figure, rather fat than thin… He is the most feared and perfect king that could possibly be, cheerful of disposition and very merry… so gallant and perfect is he in all things.9

  Royal chronicles tell us that his mother was Nāgala Devi, a Tuḷu10 woman, and his father was Tuḷuva Narasa Nāyaka, the de facto emperor of Vijayanagaram. After the death of his half-brother Vīra Narasiṃharāya in 1509, Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya was enthroned by his wise and able minister Timmarasu. The newly crowned king led his troops on a long series of brilliantly successful military campaigns that brought much of South India under his control—the Deccani sultans of Bidar, Bijapur and Gulbarga, the Rĕḍḍis of Kŏṇḍavīḍu, the Vĕlamas of Bhuvanagiri, the Tamils of Śrīraṅgapatnam and the Gajapatis of Kaliṅga soon became part of his vast multicultural empire. During this dynamic period of expansion, Telugu rose to prominence as an important language of both literary and political currency. The king himself relates the wondrous dream in which the god Āndhra Viṣṇu says:

  tĕlugadela yanna deśambu tĕlugenu

  tĕlugu vallabhuṇḍa tĕlugŏkaṇḍa

  yella nṛpulu kŏluvan ĕrugave bāsāḍi

  deśa-bhāṣalandu tĕlugu lĕssa I.15 (ā)

  ‘If you ask, “Why Telugu?”

  It is because this is Telugu country

  and I am a Telugu king.

  Telugu is one of a kind.

  After speaking with all your lords at court

  didn’t you realize—

  amongst the regional languages,

  Telugu is the best!”

  This famous stanza has become the rallying cry for modern-day Telugu cultural and literary pride. And although a linguistically based regional identity for Telugu speakers may be a modern conception,11 this poem clearly highlights how language, even in the early 16th century, was essential in the formation of both cultural identity and political power.12

  TELUGU AS SYNTHESIS

  Telugu13 is a language of South India. Today it is spoken by over 80 million people, mostly in the state of Āndhra Pradesh, but also in the neighbouring areas of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, as well as among large diasporic Telugu communities throughout the world. The Telugu language has always been connected to the land of Āndhra, a broad swathe of south-central India composed of three distinct areas: Tĕlaṅgāṇa, the rocky terrain of the western Deccan plateau; Rāyalasīma, the arid land stretching south to Tamil country; and Āndhra proper, the rich deltaic farmland to the northeast, supported by the two great river systems of the Godāvari and Kṛṣṇa. This land, the heart of the Vijayanagara empire, covers much of the peninsular subcontinent and has always been at the cultural and linguistic border between North and South India.

  Telugu is a Dravidian14 language and belongs to a distinct family of languages predominantly found in South India. These languages (including the literary languages of Tulu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu15) are linguistically unique from Indo-European languages like Greek, Latin, English and of course the ancient Indo-Aryan language of Sanskrit. And although Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages have very different origins, their history, as well as the development of their derivative languages, has been a continual process of interaction and enrichment.

  The Telugu tradition itself makes a clear distinction between Sanskrit and the various Indian vernaculars. The deśa-bhāṣalu, or regional languages, such as Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada exhibit dynamic folk idioms that are localized and deeply connected to spoken languages whereas the monolithic mārga-bhāṣa of Sanskrit represents a static, pan-Indic language of scholarly and religious literature. Academic attention, both literary and historical, has predominantly focused on the top-down influence of Sanskrit on the languages of South India thereby belying the significant influence of Dravidian phonology, syntax and grammar on the Sanskrit language, attested to even in the Vedas, the very oldest stratum of Sanskrit literature.16 At the heart of this mutually influencing linguistic nexus is Telugu—a Dravidian language with one of the highest functional Sanskrit vocabularies in all of India. Telugu is the ultimate realization of Indian linguistic synthesis. Not only the classical language, but the everyday spoken language as well abounds with Sanskrit words, so integrated with the native language that they are hardly noticeable as loan words. In fact, it is almost impossible to speak or write in Telugu without using Sanskrit vocabulary (and these days, the same argument can be made for English loan words).

  Language is inextricably linked to culture and as such, Telugu culture has developed as a composite blend of Sanskritic and Dravidian influences. Existing at a geo-social frontier zone, Telugu language and culture are markers of the broader trends that have led to the synthetic development of Indian culture as a whole. As Hart and Heifetz explain:

  South Asian culture is essentially syncretistic. Its writers and thinkers tend not to attempt to create a coherent system by discarding earlier cultural elements that do not fit in with their ideas but rather to synthesize everything that has gone before, throwing away nothing but rather subordinating everything to the idea or point of view that they wish to advance.17

  This kind of syncretism is most evident in Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s Āmuktamālyada, a boldly original poetic work that artfully blends the high art of Sanskrit ornate poetry with the passion and immediacy of Telugu diction and feeling.

  ĀMUKTAMĀLYADA & TELUGU LITERATURE

  Telugu boasts a millennium-old classical literary heritage. The poet Nannayya, writing the Āndhra Mahābhāratamu in the 11th century at the court of Rājarājanarendra in present-day Rajamundry, is revered as the ādi-kavi or first poet of the language. Telugu literature as we know it thus began with a ‘translation’ or more appropriately a transcreation of Veda Vyāsa’s Mahābhārata, for although Nannayya based his work on a Sanskrit original, his style and lyricism were wholly Telugu. One of Nannaya’s innovations was the adoption of the campū style in which poetry (padya) was interspersed with prose (gadya). This approach was continued by later poets, and although the genre and style of the poetry evolved into something much more ornate and stylized, campū became the standard mode for Telugu composition.

  From the epic style of Nannayya to the brilliant proto-kāvyas of the 14th century master poet Śrīnātha, Telugu literature developed over half a millennium to become a unique, self-reflexive tradition that clearly understood its distinctive position within the larger spectrum of Indic literatures. The old deśi-mārga divide was progressively blurred and Telugu emerged as a fiercely powerful literary medium in which the judicious combination of Sanskrit and Dravidian idioms would lead to some of South Asia’s finest literary productions.

  … when ideas come together smoothly in good Tenugu

  without any slack, and description achieves a style,

  and there are layers of meaning, and the syllables

  are soft and alive with sweetness, and the words

  sing to the ear and gently delight the mind,

  and what is finest brings joy, and certain flashes

  dazzle the eyes while the poem glows like moonlight,

  and the images are the very image of perfection,

  and there is a brilliant flow of flavor,

  and both mārga and deśi become the native idiom,

  and figures truly transfigure, so that people of taste

  love to listen and are enriched

  by the fullness of meaning –

  that is how poetry works, when crafted

  by all real poets.18

  The so-called Golden Age of Telugu literature reached its apex during the glorious reign of Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya, whose own Āmuktamālyada stands out as a landmark in Telugu literary history. Sceptics have long doubted the au
thenticity of the king’s authorship, but his boldly original voice is distinguishably unique in comparison to the poetic luminaries that surrounded him at court.19 The poet’s fantastic imagination as well as his idiosyncratic diction and syntax have been classified by the tradition as nārikeḷa pākam,20 or ‘coconut style,’ because it requires both time and energy to relish, like working hard to break open a hard coconut shell to enjoy the sweet, juicy fruit. Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s thematic material is also unique. Unlike most writers of his time who looked to the Sanskrit pūraṇas for inspiration, the poet-king turned southward to the land of the Tamils.

  SOUTH INDIAN DEVOTIONALISM

  Āmuktamālyada,21 literally the Giver of the Worn Garland, is the name of the Tamil mystic Goda, or Āṇḍāḷ as she is commonly known in the Tamil country. She is revered as one of the historical Ālvārs—twelve poet-saints who lived between the 7th and 9th centuries CE in South India. These Tamil mystics, literally ‘immersed’22 in devotional ecstasy, offered passionate songs of worship to the great god Viṣṇu. Their four thousand hymns were later collected in the Nālāyira Divya Prabandham, a Tamil text that Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya was certainly familiar with.23 These devotional poems represent some of the earliest expressions of bhakti—a powerful new force of religious devotionalism that rejected caste-oriented Brahmanic doctrine and ritual to preach a more direct and personal love for god.24

  You dwell in heaven

  stand on the sacred mountain

  sleep on the ocean

  roll around in the earth

  yet hidden everywhere

  you grow

  invisibly:

  moving within

  numberless outer worlds

  playing within my heart

  yet not showing your body

  will you always play hide and seek?25

  The rich philosophical and mythological importations from North India were now refashioned with a distinctive South Indian ethos. In the typical style of Indian syncretism, these new developments soon spread to every corner of the subcontinent, leading to the great medieval flowering of North Indian devotionalism exhibited by poet-saints like Mīrabai and Kabīr.

  The powerful outpourings of the Ālvārs became the spiritual basis for the development of a new philosophical school that fused the old metaphysical concepts of Vedānta with the new modality of bhakti. A branch of Viṣṇu worship known as Śrī Vaiṣṇavism was crystallized by the celebrated 12th century theologian Rāmānuja. His writings and teachings on Viśiṣṭa Advaita,26 or Qualified Non-Dualism, were extremely influential throughout South India and played a key role in preserving and promoting the devotional hymns of the Ālvārs.

  Initiated into the Śrī Vaiṣṇava sampradāya by the Tāt Ācāryas of Vijayanagaram, Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya was an intensely religious man, and any reading of Āmuktamālyada must be seen through his devoted eyes. He was so dedicated to his chosen god—the Lord Śrī Vĕṅkaṭeśvara of Tirupati—that he reportedly made the arduous pilgrimage to the famous hill temple on seven different occasions. He supported the upkeep of several well-known temple complexes and commissioned the construction of many others. The king’s strong faith is evident, in both content and tone, throughout his great masterpiece. As such, Āmuktamālyada can rightly be classified as a bhakti-kāvya, a hybrid genre that imbues the stylized parametres of Sanskrit ornate poetry with the religious fervour of South Indian bhakti. Only Kampan’s great Tamil Irāmāvatāram precedes this kind of literary fusion. In the long history of Indian literature, Āmuktamālyada is a monumental achievement—it represents a singular integration of the literary, cultural and religious currents that ran through Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s great empire as well as his dynamic persona.

  STORY & SELECTIONS

  Āmuktamālyada is the story of Goda Devi told in some 875 verses and prose passages divided into six chapters.27 Like most kāvyas and prabandhas28 the work is filled with several descriptive (and often tangential) sections that serve to create a rich and textured poetic world. The tradition stipulates that in order to be rightly classified as a prabandha, a poem must contain lengthy descriptions of cities, seasons, nature, marriage, love, war, etc. And although these elements are all beautifully handled in Āmuktamālyada, the present translation endeavours to present a more readable distillation that focuses on the central story of Goda Devi and the work’s most notable poetic sections.

  The poem begins with an invocation of the poet’s iṣṭa-devata or chosen deity, Śrī Vĕṅkaṭeśvara, followed by a homage to the twelve great Ālvār saints.29 Next the king provides us with a detailed account of his inspiration for writing the book—a dream in which the god Āndhra Viṣṇu appears and commands him to ‘create a great poem in Telugu.’ The next 32 stanzas constitute the vaṃśa-stuti or Praise of Lineage, a stylized historical section that is largely taken from the introduction to Pĕddana’s Manu Caritramu.

  Chapter I, the prathama-āśvāsamu, begins at verse I.51 and describes the village of Śrī Villiputtūr, a small place of pilgrimage in southern Tamil Nadu, home to humble saints and pious devotees. The descriptions paint an idyllic picture of bucolic life in medieval South India and slowly bring us into the poet’s colourful imagination. The chapter ends with an introduction to the Vaiṣṇava saint Viṣṇucitta, or Periya Ālvār as he is known in Tamil. The historical saint, also the foster father of Goda Devi, is one of the most important figures in the Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition and functions as a central character throughout the poem. He is so important in fact, that Āmuktamālyada is sometimes referred to as the Viṣṇucittīyam.

  In contrast to the pastoral setting of the first chapter, Chapter II welcomes us to the famed fortress-city of Madhura, capital of the powerful Pāṇḍya empire.30 The ancient fort and the city’s towering cityscapes are described in rich detail and compared to the celestial city of Amarāvati. Next comes a short introduction to the Pāṇḍya king before the famous grīṣma-ṛtu-varṇana or Description of the Summer Season, considered by Telugu pandits to include some of the poet’s finest offerings. The chapter ends with a narrative section that sets into motion the events in Chapter III. The Pāṇḍya king is on his way to see a waiting lover when he overhears a brahman reciting a proverb about life’s impermanence. Overwhelmed by the powerful words, the king returns to the palace and calls together wise scholars to determine the best way to reach mokṣa or spiritual liberation. At exactly the same time, Śrī Mannāru Svāmi, the god of Śrī Villiputtūr, commands Viṣṇucitta to proceed to Madhura and win the debate, assuring the humble bhakta that his own divine presence will carry the day.

  The beginning of Chapter III is devoted to Viṣṇucitta’s brilliant debating skills at the Madhura court. This section functions to highlight Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s erudite command of various philosophical doctrines and his familiarity with the major Vedāntic scriptures. The remainder of the chapter (III.14–89) extends Viṣṇucitta’s metaphysical discourse by narrating the story of Khāṇḍikya and Keśidhvaja, a philosophical debate between two cousins, originally found in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa. Though this section is praised for its narrative and dialogic merits, it is often overburdened with technical information that slows the pace of the overall story.

  With 289 verses Chapter IV is by far the largest āśvāsam in the poem. Although highly interesting, this long chapter diverges from the main story and I have left much of it untranslated in order to retain the central story’s narrative momentum. The beginning of the chapter includes Viṣṇucitta’s dramatic victory, his conversion of the Pāṇḍya king to Śrī Vaiṣṇavism and his majestic daśa-avatāra-stotram or Praise of the Ten Descents. The remainder of the chapter is the story of Yāmunācarya or Ālvandār, a renouncer-king, and an important historical figure in the development of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism. This side story also contains over 100 poems dedicated to the Rainy Season (varṣā-kālam) and Autumn Season (śārada-ṛtu). The long chapter finally ends with an extensive 82
verses on rāja-dharma or ethical governance.

  In many ways, Chapter V is the climax of the epic. We are finally introduced to the story’s namesake Goda Devi—the foster daughter of Viṣṇucitta and the earthly embodiment of the goddess Lakṣmi. Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya artfully describes Goda’s adolescent beauty in some 30 elegant stanzas before moving on to a long section of natural dialogue in which the lovelorn Goda describes to her friends the intense pain of separation from her beloved Lord Viṣṇu. This section of the poem that includes an extensive nindā-stuti or ‘praise through blame’ seems to be based in part, or at the very least influenced by, the Tamil Nācciyār Tirumoli and Tiruppāvai, two works attributed to the historical Āṇḍāl herself. The poetry here exhibits a naturalness of feeling, conveyed through the use of Telugu metre and speech, which directly puts us in touch with the varied emotions of the lovesick Goda. The chapter concludes with some 50 stanzas describing the arrival of Spring.

  Chapter VI begins with the Māladāsari Katha, a story of a low-caste devotional singer and his encounters with a dvija-niśācaruḍu, a brahman ghost named Soma Śarma. Again, this lengthy side story, though praised for its narrative brilliance, deviates from the primary story and I have not translated it here. At the end of this story, Lord Viṣṇu advises Viṣṇucitta to marry his daughter to the god Raṅganātha. What follows is a detailed description of the great temple complex of Śrīraṅgam, the most important divya-deśam or holy place for Śrī Vaiṣṇavas. Within the sacred temple enclosure, the apotheosis of Goda is fulfilled and she is effectively merged with the Lord.31 The great poem ends where it began in Śrī Villiputtūr and the marriage of the divine couple is celebrated in traditional South Indian fashion.