Tracing Tirtha’s Glory COMPOSER NONPAREIL Said to hail from a village near Guntur, Narayana Tirtha created the literary treasure, ‘Krishna Leela Tarangini.’ T S Parthasarathy

When the sway of the Vijayanagar empire was extended to cover the whole of Tamil Nadu, there was large scale migration of scholars and musicians, into Thanjavur and Madurai and they were patronized by the Nayak rulers there. Most of them were Telugus but there were Kannadigas also like Govinda Dikshitar, father of Venkatamakhi.

The South Indian bhajana sampradaya was almost exclusively nourished by the works of a few Advaitic scholars and musicians.

They included Narayana Tirtha, Bodhendra Swami of Govindapuram, Sridhara Venkatesa (Ayyaval) of Tiruvisainallur, Sadasiva Brahmendra and Sadguru Swami, Marudanallur. Narayana Tirtha, the author of ‘Krishna Leela Tarangini,’ is hailed as the ‘South Indian Jayadeva’ because there are several similarities between him and the Oriya poet who wrote the ‘Gita Govindam.’ Both were ardent devotees of Krishna.

© "The Hindu" (Friday, January 6, 2006) published by Kasturi and Sons Limited, 859-860, Anna Salai, Chennai 600 002. Website: www.hindu.com. Reprinted with permission.

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