आमुक्तमाल्यदा (विजयनगर सम्राट् श्रीकृष्णदेवराय - गोदा देवी आण्डाल भक्ति एवं साम्राज्य-नीति)

PREFACE
Of the five great epics in Telugu literature, Āmukta Mālyada
has the pride of having given the Andhras the inspiring sentence:
Telugu is the best among the nation’s languages. Written by Emperor
Krishnadeva Raya, the epic is about the life of Goda Devi whose
garland of devotion was accepted by Sri Ranganatha It is verily
the saga sublime of the Love Divine.
Composed in the grand style of the classics, Āmukta Mālyada
savours of the nine rasas. And devotional fervour is the Great
Bass that elevates it to the position of a scripture.
A few years ago, I happened to listen to a discourse on poetic
appreciation by His Holiness Sri Lakshmana Yateendra of
Mumukshu Peetham. He chose the verse of Garuda’s flight above
the oceans in Āmukta Mālyada, and elaborated the architectonic
and emotional content of the few lines to describe the sublime
poetry of Krishnadeva Raya. Sri Lakshmana Yateendra kept the
audience spell-bound. We could almost hear the flap of the large
wings, the sounds of the turbulent ocean and the hiss of the knot
of serpents deep in the ocean-bed. It then became inevitable for
me to make a study of Āmukta Mālyada. Aided by the excellent
exegesis of Vavilla Ramaswamy Sastrulu, I have spent wonderful
hours in communion with this golden poem, widening the horizons
of my knowledge of Vaishnava literature.
In the course of my Āmukta Mālyada studies, I found that no
book on the epic had been published so far in English. With a view
to introducing it to the non-Telugu readers, I began writing about
it. The results of my endeavour were published as a series of essays
in The Indian Express, Vijayawada, in 1987. I am grateful to Sri
R. Sampath for making this possible.
I claim no wide or deep reading in Telugu literature, and
my ‘introduction’ is not a work of scholarship. All that I have
sought to record is my enthusiasm for the eminent devotional epic.
The saga of the life and work of the Vaishnava Alwars and Acharyas
has helped me greatly to achieve rapport with the Telugu classic.