Prodigious composer
B.S.R. KRISHNA
GOD ON THE HILL — Temple Poems from Tirupati: Annamayya; Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman — Tr. in English; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 395.
Annamayya (1408-1503 A.D.) composed 32,000 songs and about 14,000 of them are available inscribed on copper plates and kept locked inside a small room in the temple premises of Tirumala.
His compositions started seeing the light of the day only from 1930 onwards. All the available compositions have been published in 29 volumes by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam under their Annamacharya Project specially established to preserve, propagate and promote Annamayya's literature and music.
Both Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman are scholars of great repute and their translation of Tallapaka Annamacharya's compositions reflects their commitment and sincerity in every way.
This book is a pioneering work in that it carries an authentic and faithful translation of close to 100 padams of Annamayya in English. There are a couple of books by different authors which also carry translations and are done equally well, but this book differs from the others as it carries a very highly researched afterword at the end of the book.
Features
The selection of the compositions, the use of appropriate vocabulary for some of the obscure and technical terminology, and the translators' faithful adherence to the original make the translations very readable. There are some words, which deserve better treatment with respect to translation but those are ignorable, minor in content.
The afterword that the authors have written at the end makes very interesting reading and at times borders into minor controversies and goes against the popular beliefs. They give a summary of the biography of Annamayya written in `dwipada' format by his grandson Chinnanna, which definitely helps in understanding Annamayya better.
The quality of the book is eclipsed by the publisher's blunder in using an unusually small font. If only this book had been published in a bigger font it would have helped a lot of readers.
After all, most readers of such books are those who need glasses to read even normal fonts. Be that as it may, the translators' work is commendable and a leap towards understanding Annamayya and his indomitable devotion.
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