Tikkana Somayāji#Tikkana
A figure from the books
#Tikkana
Tikkana Somayāji · c. 1205–1288 CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Telugu poetry — second of the kavitraya, the "poet-trinity" of the Andhra Mahābhāratamu — and statecraft, as minister and envoy of the Nellore Choda chief Manumasiddhi II.
“One poem, three poets, three centuries — and the man at the centre of the relay was no cloistered scholar but a working minister who, between cantos, crossed the Deccan to win his exiled patron's throne back with an army.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Greatness can be a continuation. Tikkana picked up an epic another poet had left unfinished for a hundred and fifty years, completed fifteen of its eighteen books, and dedicated the whole of it not to a king but to Hariharanātha — Śiva and Viṣṇu worshipped as one God — as a standing argument against the sectarian quarrels of his century.”
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