Praising God in “Wondrous and Picturesque Ways”: Citrakāvya in a Telugu Prabandha
Focused on Nandi Timmana's sixteenth-century Telugu epic poem, Pārijātāpaharạamu (Theft of a Tree), this article analyzes citrakāvya, a genre of poetry that includes various kinds of patterned verses, word puzzles, and figural poems. The seventeenth-century Telugu grammarian Appakavi outlines t...
| Published in: | Journal of the American Oriental Society |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
American Oriental Society
2021
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| In: |
Journal of the American Oriental Society
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| IxTheo Classification: | BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Focused on Nandi Timmana's sixteenth-century Telugu epic poem, Pārijātāpaharạamu (Theft of a Tree), this article analyzes citrakāvya, a genre of poetry that includes various kinds of patterned verses, word puzzles, and figural poems. The seventeenth-century Telugu grammarian Appakavi outlines three genres of citrakāvya: 1) citrakavitvamu (verses with restricted syllables); 2) bandhakavitvamu (figural verses); and 3) garbhakavitvamu (verses with meters embedded in meters). Timmana employs all three genres of citrakāvya in Theft of a Tree 5.92-99, which are set in the voice of Nārada praising Kṛṣ̣a as god. Rather than reading citrakāvya as simply a form of alaṅkāra (literary ornament), I argue that citrakāvya primarily functions as a form of stotra (praise poetry) in the context of Timmana's Theft of a Tree. Shifting the flow of his rather fast-paced narrative, Timmana intentionally uses citrakāvya to praise and even capture god through the complex figuration of syllables and sounds. Timmana's citras are essential to scripting a new layer of the pārijāta narrative, one that highlights the voice of the poet himself speaking to his god. |
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| ISSN: | 2169-2289 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Oriental Society, Journal of the American Oriental Society
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.7817/jameroriesoci.141.2.0255 |