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...
The devotional poems of Annamaya (15th century) are perhaps the most accessible and universal achievement of classical Telugu literature, one of the m...
Composed in the mid-sixteenth century, The Sound of the Kiss, or The Story That Must Never Be Told, could be considered the first novel written in South Asia. Telugu, the language spoken in today's Andhra Pradesh region of southern India, has a classical literary tradition extending over a thousand years. Suranna's masterpiece comes from a period of intense creativity in Telugu, when great poets produced strikingly modern innovations. The novel explodes preconceived ideas about early South Indian literature: for example, that the characters lack interiority, that the language is...
Composed in the mid-sixteenth century, The Sound of the Kiss, or The Story That Must Never Be Told, could be considered the first novel ...
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 literature.
English speakers may read for the first time a previously hidden literature of great beauty and importance, compiled and translated by one of the fore...
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...
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 ...
In the past two decades, scholars have transformed our understanding of the interactions between India and the West since the consolidation of British power on the subcontinent around 1800. While acknowledging the merits of this scholarship, Sheldon Pollock argues that knowing how colonialism changed South Asian cultures, particularly how Western modes of thought became dominant, requires knowing what was there to be changed. Yet little is known about the history of knowledge and imagination in late precolonial South Asia, about what systematic forms of thought existed, how they worked, or...
In the past two decades, scholars have transformed our understanding of the interactions between India and the West since the consolidation of British...
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...
This groundbreaking cultural biography of Srinatha, arguably the most creative figure in the thousand-year history of Telugu literature., shows how th...
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...
This groundbreaking cultural biography of Srinatha, arguably the most creative figure in the thousand-year history of Telugu literature., shows how th...
Here is the first translation into English of the Basava Purana, a fascinating collection of tales that sums up and characterizes one of the most important and most radical religious groups of South India. The ideas of the Virasaivas, or militant Saivas, are represented in those tales by an intriguing mix of outrageous excess and traditional conservatism. Written in Telugu in the thirteenth century, the Basava Purana is an anthology of legends of Virasaivas saints and a hagiography of Basavesvara, the twelfth-century Virasaiva leader. This translation makes accessible a completely new...
Here is the first translation into English of the Basava Purana, a fascinating collection of tales that sums up and characterizes one of the most i...
