topics: |  fiction | 16th-c | telugu | translation

kalA-purna-udayamu means the "rise of a fuller art", or the "full bloom
of art".  With this ambitious title, Pingali Surana unfolds a revolutionary
narrative for the times - Andhra during the Vijayanagara period (16th c. -
cotemporaneous with Elizabethan literature).  He was at the court of
Krishnadevaraya, who fostered the heyday of classical Telugu poetry with
poets such as Allasani Peddana and Tenali Ramakrishna in his court.

Pingali Suranna wrote this text in the poetic style campu, which mixes
verse and prose, and injected new literary techniques into the narrative
style such as the use of flashbacks and character transformation.  The text
is offered to Raja Krishna of Nandyala (Krishnadevaraya).

Surana said of this work: "I wanted to have the structure of a complex
narrative no one had ever known, with rich evocations of erotic love,
and also descriptions of gods and temples that would be a joy to listen
to."

This translation, the first into English, is based on the text edited by
Baruru Tyagaraya Sastri 1888/1968, and also the compilation by Malladi S
Sastri (1938) which compares fourteen collated manuscripts.

Suranna is also the author of the Raghava-pandaveeyamu (of Ram and the
Pandavas) - an entire text that is in double meaning, describing the stories
of Rama (Ramayana) and the Pandavas (Mahabharata).

Excerpt

Writing poetry is like milking a cow.
You have to pause at the right moment.
You have to feel your way, gently, with a good heart,
without breaking rules.
You need a certain soft way of speaking.
You can't use harsh words or cause a disturbance.
Your feet should be firm, your rhythm precise.
It requires a clear focus.
If it all works right, the poet becomes popular,
and a cowherd gets his milk.
If not, they get kicked.
		- preamble, p.3