The forgotten saint-poet prose to the poet

Visakhapatnam: While Tallapaka Anamacharya, whose prose on Tirumala’s Lord Venkateswara is regarded as Telugu language’s first ‘Vaggeyakara’, historians believe the credit should go to Sri Kantha Krishnamacharyulu who lived and composed around four lakh verses revering Simhachalam’s presiding deity Lord Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy in the 12th century.

A movie was also made on the life of Anamayya. While Krishnamacharyulu, who is fondly called ‘Krishnamayya’, lived in the 12 and 13th centuries, Anamayya belonged to the 15th century. Krishnamayya composed sankertanas on Lord Vishnu in the form of Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy, more than three centuries before Annamayya.

According to historians, Krishnamayya’s life and his compositions found mention in Pratapa Rudra Charitra and Siddheswara Charitra. “According to folklore, Krishnamayya used to sing verses in praise of Lord Lakshmi Narasimhan Swamy. And in adoration the god himself used to dance to those verses in the form of Balakrishna. He often was lost in the Lord’s love and used to dance to his compositions. He was highly revered in and around Simhachalam,” Prof Kolluru Suryanarayana, former head of the department of history, Andhra University, said.

He said that there were many incidents in Krishnamayya’s life about his love for the Lord that he has inscribed in his Simhahiri Vachanalu. “Krishnamayya invites the Lord to his marriage in Sri Kurmam. Lord promises him that he would attend, but he should recognize him in whatever form he attends. At the wedding feast, an untouchable comes and sits in the first row. He is shooed away. Krishnamayya later realizes it was the Lord himself who attended his wedding in the form of an untouchable. Krishnamayya was a staunch Vaishnavaite. He wrote verses in a language that is understood by the public and his works reflected the essence of Vedas and mainly Vaishnavism,” said the historian.

Prof. Suryanarana said that Krishnamacharyulu wrote poetry in a simple and non-metrical language that was free from any intricate vocabulary that distracts the attention from the essential philosophy of his writings.