God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati

The devotional poems of Annamayya (15th century) are perhaps the most accessible and universal achievement of classical Telugu literature, one of the major literatures of pre-modern India. Annamayya effectively created and popularized a new genre, the short padam song, which spread throughout the Telugu and Tamil regions and would become an important vehicle for the composition of Carnatic music - the classical music of South India. In this book, Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman offer translations of nearly 100 of Annamayya's poems. All of them are addressed to the god associated with the famous temple city of Tirupati -- Annamayya's home. This deity is sometimes referred to as "god on the hill" or "lord of the seven hills." The poems are couched in a simple and approachable language invented by Annamayya for this purpose and fall into two major categories, the erotic and the metaphysical. The erotic poems, usually in the female voice, sing of the complexities of the god's love life. The metaphysical poems are sung in the poet's own voice and explore the relationship between the poet and his god. Though a small sample of Annamayya's surviving corpus, the selection in this volume suggests the scope of both genres. Rao and Shulman's elegant and lyrical modern translations of these beautiful and moving verses are wonderfully readable as poetry in their own right. The Afterword enriches the reader's understanding, providing historical context and returning us to the poems themselves with a deeper appreciation.

Shulman, David

Rao, Velcheru Narayana

Annamayya

Literature & Fiction

Oxford University Press

The devotional poems of Annamaya (15th century) are perhaps the most accessible and universal achievement of classical Telugu literature, one of the major literatures of pre-modern India. Annamaya effectively created and popularized a new genre, the short padam song, which spread throughout the Telugu and Tamil regions and would become an important vehicle for the composition of Carnatic music - the classical music of South India. In this book, Rao and Shulman offer translations of 150 of Annamaya's poems. All of them are addressed to the god associated with the famous temple city of Tirupati-Annamaya's home-a deity who is sometimes referred to as "god on the hill" or "lord of the seven hills." The poems are couched in a simple and accessible language invented by Annamaya for this purpose. Rao and Shulman's elegant and lyrical modern translations of these beautiful and moving verses are wonderfully readable as poetry in their own right, and will be of great interest to scholars of South Indian history and culture.

Religion & Spirituality

Hinduism

Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu

The book looks at the three major Nayaka states--ruled from Senji, Tanjavur and Madurai, Tiruccirappalli--as well as at minor states located at their periphery. While these states had differing life-spans, developmental patterns, geo-ecological environments, and distinct forms of historical experience, they also shared salient structural and cultural features. At their height, in the early seventeenth century, they encompassed the greater part of the Tamil country. Early chapters set out the fundamental tensions of the period: the social flux caused by the resurgence of certain groups, which had either intruded into the area from the Telugu country, or entered the mainstream of Nayaka society from a marginal position. Related to this is the central paradox of Nayaka kingship-- the tension between inflated claims and the limited scale of kingship. Later sections set out these themes in some detail, and also delineate how such states were founded, what their resource base was, and how this base was portrayed and managed. The book's ambit extends considerably beyond the economic and political, to consider how the social flux of the epoch also found its counterpart in the central themes of Nayaka literature. Specifically, there is a focus on perceptions of the body and bodily mutilation and regeneration (here termed Nayaka anthropology), and on the parodic dialectic that underpins the rhetoric of kingship. Other chapters deal with contestation and war. The final chapter looks to the post-Nayaka transition, focusing once again on the kingdom that appears most of all to epitomize the Nayaka spirit: Tanjavur. What is distinctive about the Nayakas? How do they fit into the wider realities of their time? From what do they derive? How can we understand the emergence of new institutional patterns, of the striking artistic and especially literary creations at the Nayaka courts, of a novel historiography and culture? Supplementing standard sources by an imaginative use of Dutch, Portuguese, Tamil, Sanskrit, and Telugu sources, the authors show how the Nayakas witnessed, and partly produced, a profound shift in the conceptual and institutional bases of South Indian civilization.

History

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay

Asia

Looking at the three major Nayaka states--ruled from Senji, Tanjavur, and MAadurai/Tiruccirapalli--as well as at minor states located at their periphery, this volume deals with the political culture of the NaAyaka period in medieval South India, an era which extends from the early sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. Supplementing standard sources by an imaginative use of Dutch, Portugese, Tamil, Sanskrit, and Telugu sources, the authors show how the Nayakas witnessed, and partly produced, a profound shift in the conceptual and institutional bases of South Indian civilization.

This groundbreaking cultural biography of Srinatha, arguably the most creative figure in the thousand-year history of Telugu literature., shows how the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century poet revolutionized the classical tradition and effectively created the classical genre of sustained, thematically focused, coherent large-scale compositions. Some of his works are proto-novellas: self-consciously fictional, focused on the development of characters, and endowed with compelling, fast-paced plots. Though entirely rooted in the cultural world of medieval south India, Srinatha is a poet of universal resonance and relevance. Narayana Rao and Shulman provide extended translations of Srinatha's major works and show how the poet bridged gaps between oral (improvised) poetry and fixed literary works; between Telugu and the classical, pan-Indian language of Sanskrit; and between local and trans-local cultural contexts. This wide-ranging and perceptive study reveals Srinatha place in a great classical tradition in a moment of profound cultural transformation.

Srinatha: The Poet who Made Gods and Kings

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Girls for Sale: Kanyasulkam, a Play from Colonial India

First staged in 1892, the South Indian play Girls for Sale (Kanyasulkam) is considered the greatest modern work of Telugu literature and the first major drama written in an Indian language that critiqued British colonialism’s effects on Indian society. Filled with humor, biting social commentary, parody, and masquerade, the plot revolves around a clever courtesan, a young widow, and a very old man who wants to buy as his wife a very young girl. Velcheru Narayana Rao has prepared the first idiomatic English translation, with notes and a critical essay. Itself a masterpiece of Indian literature in translation, this edition makes Apparao’s work available to new audiences.

Apparao, Gurajada

Humor & Entertainment

Indiana University Press

First staged in 1892, the South Indian play Girls for Sale (Kanyasulkam) is considered the greatest modern work of Telugu literature and the first major drama written in an Indian language that critiqued British colonialism’s effects on Indian society. Filled with humor, biting social commentary, parody, and masquerade, the plot revolves around a clever courtesan, a young widow, and a very old man who wants to buy as his wife a very young girl. Velcheru Narayana Rao has prepared the first idiomatic English translation, with notes and a critical essay. Itself a masterpiece of Indian literature in translation, this edition makes Apparao’s work available to new audiences.

Handbook of Investment Research: Economic and Financial Indicators as Market Movers

English speakers may read for the first time a previously hidden literature of great beauty and importance, compiled and translated by one of the foremost scholars of the literature of twentieth-century India.Richly appealing, sensitively and masterfully translated, surprisingly accessible, and adeptly organized, these poems from the Telugu language of southern India will find in this groundbreaking anthology the wider international readership they deserve and a place in the worldwide emergence of India's vernacular literature.Velcheru Narayana Rao is an ideal guide for the English-language reader's timely introduction to this long and vigorous literary tradition and to the generously varied poets whose accomplished, exotic, enigmatic voices speak to us here at last in the boundless tradition of all great poetry.

Hibiscus on the Lake: Twentieth-Century Telugu Poetry from India

Poetry

University of Wisconsin Press

How is it that this woman's breasts glimmer so clearly through her saree? Can't you guess, my friends? What are they but rays from the crescents left by the nails of her lover pressing her in his passion, rays now luminous as the moonlight of a summer night? These South Indian devotional poems show the dramatic use of erotic language to express a religious vision. Written by men during the fifteenth to eighteenth century, the poems adopt a female voice, the voice of a courtesan addressing her customer. That customer, it turns out, is the deity, whom the courtesan teases for his infidelities and cajoles into paying her more money. Brazen, autonomous, fully at home in her body, she merges her worldly knowledge with the deity's transcendent power in the act of making love. This volume is the first substantial collection in English of these Telugu writings, which are still part of the standard repertoire of songs used by classical South Indian dancers. A foreword provides context for the poems, investigating their religious, cultural, and historical significance. Explored, too, are the attempts to contain their explicit eroticism by various apologetic and rationalizing devices. The translators, who are poets as well as highly respected scholars, render the poems with intelligence and tenderness. Unusual for their combination of overt eroticism and devotion to God, these poems are a delight to read.

When God is a Customer: Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others

Ramanujan, A. K. K.

History & Criticism

University of California Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rao, Velcheru Narayana. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rao, Velcheru Narayana

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rao, Velcheru Narayana. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati

God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati

Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu

Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu

Srinatha: The Poet who Made Gods and Kings

Srinatha: The Poet who Made Gods and Kings

Girls for Sale: Kanyasulkam, a Play from Colonial India

Girls for Sale: Kanyasulkam, a Play from Colonial India

Hibiscus on the Lake: Twentieth-Century Telugu Poetry from India

When God is a Customer: Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others