Nīlakaṇṭha Somayāji#Nilakantha
A figure from the books
#Nilakantha
Nīlakaṇṭha Somayāji · 1444–1544
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Poetry — the Telugu Rāmāyaṇamu that bears her name; the vernacular-epic line's first woman.
“Five hundred years before "plain language" became a movement, a woman from a potter's yard wrote a complete Rāmāyaṇa on one rule — if the reader has to stop, the poet has failed — and Telugu made it a household book.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“A potter's daughter with no Sanskrit, no guru and no patron condensed the entire Rāmāyaṇa into some 870 verses of Telugu so clear, she said, that the meaning should arrive the instant the words do — and refused to dedicate it to any king.”
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