For Peri Ravikumar, writer, grammarian and literary critic, Viswanatha Satyanarayana remains the first writer to impart a true Teluguness to the Ramayana. He describes Ramayana Kalpavruksham, Viswanatha’s seminal work, which fetched him the Jnanpith Award, as the first Telugu Ramayana.
Speaking at the function to mark the 10th reprint of the book, Mr. Ravikumar said, “The Ramayana was written in Telugu earlier by many great writers. But when you read Viswanatha Satyanarayana’s Ramayana Kalpavruksham it is like reading a book set in a land of the Telugus. You get an impression that Lord Rama is a Telugu and the place where the epic unfolds is Telugu land. The food served is Telugu cuisine and the entire epic is filled with Telugu nativity.”
By that yardstick, the other great renditions of the great epic, including those by Nannaya would be seen as Ramayanas in Telugu rather than Telugu Ramayanas.
As a Visawanatha scholar, Mr. Ravikumar says the great litterateur, who lived all his life in Vijayawada, was the one man who chronicled cultural transition in the land of the Telugus in the first half of the 20th century. He was in fact a great progressive, quite contrary to the observations of some who branded him as a conservative.
The upcoming Godavari Pushkarams, Mr. Ravikumar says, are a fitting occasion to highlight Viswanatha’s description of the river in Ramayana Kalpavruksham. The Godavari is portrayed in the classic as a witness to the abduction of Sita by Ravana who takes her away in his ‘Pushpakavimanam’.
Comparing him with the other great Telugu poets, Mr. Ravikumar says that while Nannayya’s style was descriptive and Tikkanna’s conversational; Viswanatha Satyanarayana used an introspective style. All his literary works speak to the reader through the inner thoughts of the characters, even animals and inanimate objects.
