The Āmuktamālyada of Kṛṣṇadevarāya: Language, Power & Devotion in Sixteenth Century South India
The Āmuktamālyada of the sixteenth century Vijayanagara monarch Kṛṣṇadevarāya is a poetic masterpiece of the highest order. It stands out as a landmark in Telugu literary history, not only for its poetic beauty, but also because of the unique religious and political themes embedded within its central narrative. Unlike most contemporaneous Telugu poets who based their works on Sanskrit purāṇas or other Indo-Aryan mythological sources, Kṛṣṇadevarāya turned to the southern Tamil tradition for his inspiration. The Āmuktamālyada is in essence a richly poetic hagiography of the Vaiṣṇava poet-saintess Āṇṭāḷ, or Goda as she is referred to throughout the text. And unlike the great kāvyas of Sanskrit (or even most coeval sixteenth century Telugu prabandhas) that often centered around male heroes, Āmuktamālyada tells the story of an adolescent Tamil girl in love with god. The notion of a female protagonist was surely common to Tamil epic literature, as in the famous Cilappatikāram, Maṇimekalai and Cīvakacintāmaṇi. This geo-cultural shift by Kṛṣṇadevarāya evidences a marked reorientation of the Telugu tradition towards the South, not only in terms of literary source materials and bhakti related themes, but also in a very concrete political sense as the power center of the post-Vijayanagara state system moved to the Tamil country. Both the themes of regional vernacularization and bhakti related transformations are framed by the poet-king's lived political life and his ambitious poetic imagination. In many ways Kṛṣṇadevarāya exemplifies the old notion of a kavi-rāja or poet-king; a ruler who could unite both statecraft and literature into a composite expression of kingship. The unique importance of Kṛṣṇadevarāya's work is therefore best understood when the text is placed within the historical context of the king's political agenda and the sweeping changes that he brought about, leading to both the apex and ultimate demise of the Vijayanagara empire. In this sense, Āmuktamālyada is a significant textual representative of the layered developments within South Asian literary and cultural history writ large. Composed in the early sixteenth century by one of South Asia's most celebrated monarchs, the ornate long poem of some 875 difficult verses brings together several diverse themes that coursed through the heart and mind of the multi-faceted poet-emperor, as well as his vast and diverse empire.
