BEGINNINGS
Telugu literature begins with Nannaya, but Telugu language is much more ancient, attested in place names from as early as the second century A.D. Prose inscriptions from the middle of the first millennium show a gradual evolution toward the classical language. Verse and the appearance of a literary style are attested in inscriptions from the late ninth century on (or even earlier: the Turimělla inscription of Vikramâditya I, in the seventh century, is sometimes seen as already marked by a "high" style).
[5] See Korada Mahadeva Sastri, Historical Grammar of Telugu with Special Reference to Old Telugu, ca. 200 B.C.—1000A.D. (Anantapur: Sri Venkateswara University, 1969), 35–36; Bh. Krishnamurti, "Shift of Authority in Written and Oral Texts: The Case of Telugu," in Syllables of Sky, ed. D. Shulman (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 80–81, referring also to the Vijayavada inscription of Yuddhamala, c. 989.
Early references to[6] Thus, Ketana in his āndhra-bhāsā-bhŪsanamu, thirteenth century.
or Těnugu or Tělugu:[7] See Nannaya āndhra-mahābhāratamu (Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Sahitya Akademi, 1970), 1.1.26. We cannot say when Andhra and Telugu were first identified as linguistic terms.
the etymology of the latter term has been much debated, with some tenaciously arguing for a Sanskrit folk-etymology from trilinga, the land of the three lingas,[8] Supposedly Kālahasti in the south, śrīśailam to the west, and Dakaŕma in the northern delta. Vidyānātha (fourteenth century) identifies the "country called Trilinga" as the region marked by the three ggreat shrines of Dakarāma, śrīśaila, and Kāleśvaram (Kālahasti? Adilabad?); see Vidyānātha, Pratāpa-rudra-yaśo-bhŪsanam (Madras: The Sanskrit Education Society, 1979), 3.5.22. Recently a derivation has been proposed from tri-kalinga, the "three Kalingas"; see K. C. Gandhi Babu, "Origin of the Word Telugu," Proceedings of the Andhra Pradesh History Congress, 11th Session (Nagaram, 1987), 52–55. In any case, it seems likely that the medieval term tri-linga [desa] derives indirectly from tri-kalinga and that the association with the three śaiva shrines is secondary.
and others deriving it from caste or tribal names (Tělěgas, Tělāganya).[9] Perhaps linked to the geographical term Tělangāna.
Most probably the name is related to the Dravidian root těn "south"; thus, Telugu would be the southern language, in contrast to Sanskrit or any of the Prakrits.[10] Cf. Tamil těn-môli, the southern language, to refer to itself, as opposed to vata-môli, the northern language, Sanskrit.
Telugu is classed as Dravidian and is thus a sister language to Tamil, the oldest attested Dravidian language, with a continuous literary tradition going back at least to the first century A.D. The cultural presence of Tamil radiated northward into Andhra from very early times: Nannaya seems aware of a great tradition of Tamil poetry,[11] Nannaya, 1.1.24 (see selection in the anthology, p. 60).
and the powerful forces of Tamil religion, with its concomitant institutional features, unquestionably played a major role in the history of Telugu culture. It is also important to acknowledge that Telugu crystallized as a distinct literary tradition after the full maturation of Sanskrit erudition, including the domains of poetic theory, grammar, social ideology, scholastic philosophy, and so on. Unlike Tamil, which absorbed Sanskrit texts and themes in a slow process of osmosis and adaptation over more than a thousand years, Telugu must have swallowed Sanskrit whole, as it were, even before Nannaya. The enlivening presence of Sanskrit is everywhere evident in Andhra civilization, as it is in the Telugu language: every Sanskrit word is potentially a Telugu word as well, and literary texts in Telugu may be lexically Sanskrit or Sanskritized to an enormous degree, perhaps sixty percent or more. Telugu speech is also rich in Sanskrit loans, although the semantics of Sanskrit in Telugu are entirely distinctive. We will return to this theme.Already, however, we begin to sense the richly composite nature of the Telugu world. One might think of Andhra as one of the great internal frontier zones of South Indian civilization and at the same time, as such, a melting-pot—a domain of intense interaction among rival cultural currents, with their associated social and historical formations. It is not simple to isolate the various currents or to date their appearance in Andhra history, and one must bear in mind that much of the prehistory—before Nannaya—is hardly known. Still, there are some things that can be said in a general and perhaps slightly abstract manner.
The frontier is structured, in part, along geographic lines. Andhra is divided in three: (1) the coastal zone (Andhra proper), largely deltaic, especially to the north, where the Godāvarī and Krsnā Rivers flow into the Bay of Bengal (as elsewhere in South India, the delta is associated with heavy Brahmin settlement and influence); (2) Tělangāna, the dry Deccan plateau, home to peasants, artisans, and warriors; and (3) Rāyalasīma ("the royal domain"), the southern reaches of this plateau, tapering off into the mixed ecological regions of northern Tamil Nadu.
[12] See discussion on Senji in V. Narayana Rao, D. Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance, Court and State in Nāyaka Period Tamilnadu (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 41–44.
In early medieval times, Rāyalasīma was apparently far more fertile than it is today. But even the fertile delta to the north was largely wilderness beyond the immediate proximity of the great rivers; this situation changed dramatically only in the nineteenth century, when the major anicuts were created, thus opening up vast areas for rice cultivation. In medieval times the wild drylands of the interior, peopled by shepherds, artisans, warriors, and a growing proportion of agriculturists, were bound up linguistically, culturally, and sometimes politically with the hardly less untamed but wetter regions of coast and delta.Andhra history and culture reflect the constant interplay of these ecologically distinct zones, especially of the delta and the Deccan, with cultural innovation often emerging in the latter to be reshaped and domesticated in the former. Over time, ever more serious attempts at integration were in evidence as states based in one region spilled over into, or attempted to absorb, political units rooted in the other areas. Early Andhra history, just this side of prehistory, reveals a Deccan-based kingdom, that of the Sātavāhanas, represented mostly by inscriptions in Prakrit, with only tenuous linkages to the coast. The early state structures in coastal Andhra (especially to the north, in the region known as Vengi) culminated in the rule of the Eastern Chālukyas, who eventually married into the Chola system in the Tamil south. Under the Chālukya king Rājarājanarendra, Telugu literature as we know it began, with the poet Nannaya. By the thirteenth century, the center of Telugu state-building
[13] On Kākatīya history, see Cynthia Talbot, "Political Intermediaries in Kākatīya Andhra, 1175–1325," Indian Economic and Social History Review 31.3 (1994), 261–89; idem, "Temples, Donors, and Gifts: Patterns of Patronage in Thirteenth Century South India," Journal of Asian Studies 50 (1991), 308–40.
Key patterns of Telugu culture were established during this period and later adopted and creatively reworked by the successor-states, including the Vijayanagara super-state based in Hampi, to the west of historic Andhra.To what extent do these relatively distinct regional-ecological systems combine in awareness to form a single cultural entity—Andhra, as we think of it today? How old is such an awareness? The great poet Tikkana, in the thirteenth century, is apparently the first to refer to an imagined community named Andhra (andhrâvali),
[14] Tikkana āndhra-mahābhāratamu (Hyderabad: Balasarasvati Book Depot, 1984), 4.1.30.
but the boundaries of this community are unknown. Originally, the term seems to be a purely dynastic family title. The earliest fully formed reference to a geographical entity known as Andhra within the Telugu tradition may well be śrīnātha's in the late fourteenth century: here the temple of Daksârānāma in Konasīma is said to be the center (karnikā) of a lotus that is itself identified as the middle part of the Andhra country (āndhra-bhŪ-bhuvana-madhyamu).[15] śrīnātha, Bhīmeśvara-purānamu, ed. Ra. Venkata Subbayya (Madras: Ananda Press, 1901), 3.50.
This suggests that Andhra extends far beyond the delta, conceived (perhaps metaphorically) as the center of this cultural and geographical universe; deltaic Andhra, for śrīnātha, is the symbolic heart of the culture. There are, however, other mandala-like schemes superimposed on the geographic realities of medieval Andhra. For example, the important temple to śiva-Mallikârjunasvāmi at śrīśailam on the Andhra-Karnataka border to the west is said to have four encompassing gateways: Tripurântakam to the east, Siddhavatam to the south, AlampŪr to the west, and Umā-māheśvaram in PālamŪru (near Accampeta) to the north.[16] There is also a list of four "corners" or secondary gateways in addition to the above four "directions." These include Eleśvara-ksetra to the northeast of śrīśailam (near Nāgârjuna-kônda), Somaśila on the Pěnnāru to the southeast, PrasŪnâcala-ksetra/Puspagiri to the southwest (near Kadapa), and Sangameśvara to the northwest. Allamrāju Jaggarāvu śarma, śrīśaila sampŪrna sampŪrna carita (Rajahmundry: Laksminarayana Book Depot, 1986), 1; P.V. Parabrahma Sastry, śrīśailam, Its History and Cult (Guntur: Laksmi Mallikarjuna Press, 1985), 2–3, 27–32. The complete śrīśaila geosystem is yet more complicated, extending to eight śikhara-sites, each of which has three tīrthas.
In this mapping the center has shifted dramatically to the west, to the point of intersection between Tělangāna and Rāyalasīma. This tendency to reorient and to situate a new center contextually is perfectly[17] Krsnadevarāya, āmukta-mālyada, ed. Vedamu Venkatarayasastri, 2nd ed. (Madras: Vedamy Venkatarayasastri and Brothers, 1964), 1.11; see p. 168. It is highly unusual for a temple to be named after a community in this way; āndhra-visnu, in the classical purānic tradition, is the name of a king, perhaps a memory going back as far as the Sātavāhanas. "Andhra" here may thus be a dynastic title, and as such extended to the region that became known as historical Andhra. A similar perspective probably applies to the Andhras mentioned in early Sanskrit sources such as Aitareya Brāhmana [śunahśepha]. By the medieval period, a conflation of the dynastic and regional terms was clearly well-established. On śrīkākulam, see the selection from Kāsula Prusottamakavi, āndhra-nāyaka-śatakamu (Visakhapatram: Nirmala Publications, 1975) on pp. 248–50 and our forthcoming essay on the temple tradition from this site.
This same king also went on pilgrimage to Simhâcalam, at the northern edge of Telugu speech, and to Tirupati, at its southern limit,[18] Venkatam at Tirupati is already clearly seen as the northern boundary of the Tamil country in Cankam poetry, from the early centuries A.D.
as if consciously tracing the contours of his kingdom.The frontier inheres in Andhra culture in several powerful ways. If we look first to the northern delta, we strain to see traces of a largely invisible Buddhist proto-Mahāyāna culture flourishing in what is called Konasīma, "the corner" between the two great rivers. We know something of this Buddhist culture from archaeological findings at Nāgârjunakônda and Amarāvati, and from the surviving works of the famous philosopher Nāgârjuna, who may have spoken a language that was a precursor to classical Telugu. Five major temple sites in Andhra—Daksârāma, Bhīmârāma, Somârāma, Ksīrārāma, and Amarârāma—were in all likelihood originally Buddhist shrines, as the name ārāma suggests. Today all five are entirely Hindu, though Buddhist statuary is scattered throughout the temple courtyards. This process of Brahminizing an early Buddhist substratum, so evident in the five shrines, must have been general and formative. It was successful in the sense that Buddhism disappeared entirely from Andhra. And yet the Buddhist presence seems to have left behind an active and creative level of esotericism in praxis and concept, including Yogic, Tantric, alchemical, and "magical" trends that became a diagnostic feature of medieval Telugu culture.
[19] See our paper [in press] on the assimilation and transformation of a Buddhist ritual in śrīnātha's purāna on Daksârāma, the Bhīmeśvara-purānamu.
One sees hints of this fascination with esoteric strains of thought in central works of Telugu poetry such as Pěddana's Manucaritramu—the height of the classical tradition—as well as in a range of other textual traditions, such as Gaurana's fifteenth-century summation of the Nātha mythology, Nava-nātha-caritra, one of the earliest and richest accounts of the magically oriented Nāths in[20] For example, in the Tamil Cittar/Siddhas.
the organic and generative impact of these strands on Telugu religion and literature were perhaps deeper than in any other major south Indian tradition, with the possible exception of Kerala. There was also, almost certainly, an archaic Jaina impact on Telugu culture, of which little is now known; the oldest extant work on metrics, Kavi-janâśrayamu, is by a Jaina author, Malliya Recana.[21] The common place-name ending -pādu may reflect Jaina settlement. Jaina works may well have been destroyed in the course of prolonged conflict with Vīraśaivas (vying for the same "left-hand" constituency), as Pālkuriki Somanātha's Basava-purānamu suggests.
Look now to the harsh Deccan hinterland, a true frontier in many senses. A long process of settlement privileged the resilient warrior, perhaps epitomized by the Deccani god Vīrabhadra—śiva as hero. We find him at Lepâksi, in Rāyalasīma, at the southern edge of today's Andhra—a black, furious deity.
[22] See D. Shulman, "The Masked Goddess in the Mirror," in Festschrift Günther Sontheimer.
The cultic history of the Deccan must include the expansion of Vīraśaivism, originally a militant movement of antinomian worshipers of śiva drawn mostly from the so-called "left-hand" castes, that is, those not tied to the land (artisans, merchants, migratory groups, and so on). At śrīśailam, in the midst of the wilderness, one can observe stages of a long process—still encapsulated in the temple ritual—that seems to have taken this shrine through Buddhist, Vīraśaiva, more normative śaiva, and finally Brahminized/Sanskritized phases. The exotic "heroic" mode is, in any case, still apparent throughout this region, and we may look here for the first signs of that characteristic individualism—a surprisingly powerful and self-conscious presentation of self as subject—that turns up with consistency in Telugu poetry from at least the time of śrīnātha onward. We would go so far as to posit this interest in the uniquely individual subject, initially present in unsystematic occurrences in the literature but later exfoliated luxuriantly in Nāyaka-period texts,[23] This led directly to the appearance of the first personal diaries in South India, beginning with ā nandaranga Pillai in the mid–eighteenth century, writing in Tamil but still within the late-Nāyaka cultural mode.
as a diagnostic feature of the Telugu tradition over many centuries.To these two prominent thematic drives, each in its own way born of the frontier, that cut through varying strata, periods, and milieux, we may add a third, from the still more deeply internalized boundary zone of language. As the verse quoted at the beginning of this essay suggests, Telugu poets have consistently been drawn to an examination of language in its life-creating, world-generating aspect. Perhaps something of this fascination derives from the experience of living within a linguistic reality that is itself unusually lyrical and fluid, a constant exposure to language itself as musical sound. It is
[24] Cayankôntār, Kalinkattup-parani (Madras: South India Saiva Siddhanta Works, 1975), 470: some of the survivors of the defeated Kalinga army disguise themselves as musicans (pānar) from the Telugu country as they flee the conquering Chola force.
Certainly, the Telugu tradition has pushed the exploration of problems of language (speech, grammar, meter, words) in relation to story, perception, and creativity to a point of unusually powerful feeling and insight.