1839.] 



Essay on Telugu Literature, 



363 



the name Bbattu Mufti, or Mirror of Minstrelsy being an epithet, which 

 has now become his sole appellation. He had originally designated 

 *he Vasu Charitra after his own name as the Rama Razu Bhushanam, 

 Two other works of his, the Narasa Bhupaliyam and the Harischan- 

 dra Nal'op'akhy'anam are also highly celebrated. In the latter he has 

 imitated the Naishadham by framing an entire poem with two meanings. 

 For in one interpretation of the words, they apply to the monarch Haris- 

 chandra ; in the other to the spouse of Damayanti. 



The Narasa Bhupaliyam is thus named after the nominal author Narasa 

 Rayalu, the poet's royal patron, who died in A. D. 1430. In like man- 

 ner Calidasa is stated to be the author of the Magha: but the writer, who- 

 ever he was, has distinctly attributed it to his patron " the merchant 

 Magna." This mode of adulation is followed by Hindus at the present 

 day, for they often propose to publish in the name of an Englishman 

 books written by themselves. It must however be allowed that no de- 

 ception is seriously intended, and the adoptive author never really gets 

 credit for the work. 



69. The style exhibited in Bhattu Murti and his followers will never 

 meet with much applause among European critics. The rapture it ex- 

 cites among his countrymen will be rightly valued when we recollect the 

 state of Hindu taste. The ingenious Thomas Hood has in many of his 

 Facetiae manifested a power of punning which would have gained him 

 a very exalted seat on the Indian Parnassus. For the most admired 

 poets revel in learned quirks, the (slesha) double and triple meanings 

 of words both Sanscrit and Telugu ; in (chhekam) jingle of sound: in a 

 rhapsodical sublimity (utprexa) which answers pretty closely to what 

 the French poets call charades: performing innumerable feats of per- 

 verted ingenuity which as Dr. Johnson says "are so difficult that we are 

 inclined to wish they had been impossible." To learn the most admir- 

 ed verses of these poems by memory is a task imposed on many a Hindu 

 schoolboy, but to teach him the meaning- is never even attempted. It 

 will not be easy to persuade the Hindus that a mere exercise of memory 

 is not meritorious. The English reader cannot expect to derive much 

 gratification from a poem which is avowed to be so obscure that even 

 the most learned pandit is in many places obliged to confess his inabi- 

 lity to understand many pages unless by the aid of previous study. 



Some assert that this poet likewise wrote the Panchali Parinayam or 

 Nuptials of Draupadi, but. I have not met with any poem bearing that 

 name. It only remains to remark that the title Bhattu Murti was be- 

 stowed upon him by his royal patron Krishna Rayalu, who was the son 

 of a handmaid of Narasa Rayalu and succeeded to his throne. 



/O. In noticing the faults of style in the Telugu higher poets it is 

 but just to notice that they are free from that sort of bad wit which is 



