Annamacharaya The Adrent Devotee
Statue Of Tallapaka Annamacharya at TallapakaImage Credit - "SA Rajampet" by Btarunr at English Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The first name that strikes to any devtoee from Telugu States when they think of Lord Venkateswara is "Annamacharya".
Sri Tallapaka Annamacharya (1408-1503) the mystic saint composer of the 15th century is the earliest known musician of South India to compose songs called “sankIrtanas” in praise of Lord Venkateswara, the deity of Seven Hills in Tirumala, India where unbroken worship is being offered for over 12 centuries. Annamcharya is believed to be the incarnation of Lord Venkateswara's. nandaka (Sword).
A rhyming couplet of poems called “Dwipada” written by Tallapaka Chinnanna, grandson of Annamacharya, enabled us to learn about the Saint Annamacharya, his life and works. Annamacharya was born on Vaisakhapoornima in the year Sarwadhari (May 9, 1408) in Tallapaka, a remote village in Andhra Pradesh, and lived immaculately for 95 years until Phalguna Bahula Dwadasi (12th day after full moon) in the year Dhundhubhi (February 23, 1503). Annamacharya is believed to be the incarnation of Lord Venkateswara’s Nandaka or Sword.
Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) have consecrated Annamacharya in two places, one in the Annamacharya Mandiram located in the Annamacharya Project Office premises at Tiruapati and the other one in Annamacharya temple at Tallapka the birth place of Annamcharya. The evidences supporting the fact that Annamacharya is the incarnation of the Lord are found in Chinnanna’s Dwipada.
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Narayana Suri (father of Annamaya), did not have children for a long time. Narayana Suri and his wife Lakkamamba visited Tirumala Temple and while they were prostrating in front of the Holy Mast (Dhwaja Sthambha) a dazzling brilliance from the sword of Lord Venkateswara struck them like a lightening. Eventually a boy was born to them and they named him Annamayya. Annamayya became Annamacharya when the sage Ghana Vishnu at Tirumala converted him into a Vaishnavaite at the age of 8.
During his long and prolific career, Annamacharya composed and sang 32,000 Sankirtanas, 12 Satakas (sets of hundred verses), Ramayana in the form of Dwipada,SsankIrtana Lakshanam (Characteristics of sankIrtanas), Sringaara Manjari, and Venkatachala Mahatmamyam. His works were in Telugu, Sanskrit and a few other languages of India.
Chinnanna called the 32,000 Sankirtanas as 32,000 Mantras or Sacred Hymns. It was also recorded in Chinnanna’s Dwipada that Purandara Dasa, who was 70 years younger to Annamacharya, heard about the miracles of Annamacharya and visited him. Purandara Dasa paid his respects to Annamacharya by calling him the incarnation of Lord Venkateswara and his Sankirtanas as Sacred Hymns.
Annamacharya wrote the sankirtanas on palm leaves and later his son Tirumalacharya got them engraved on copper plates. But for reasons not known, most of these copper plates lay hidden in a rock built cell opposite to Hundi in the Tirumala temple unnoticed for over 400 years.
In 1922, twenty five hundred copper plates, comprising of about 14,000 sankIrtanas and a few other works, were found in a rock built cell, later named as Sankirtana Bhandagaram, opposite to the Hundi (donation box).
Ever since the discovery of this lost treasure, Tirumala Tirupati Devastanams (TTD) and other organizations in India are working hard to promote the music and literature of Annamacharya.
About TTD digital library -> on tirumala.org
About the Temple
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The Discovery of the Hidden Treasure
We may never know how his works remained hidden behind the temple walls for nearly 500 years. We may never know why he was not discussed in any of the literary works prior to the discovery. Scholars are certain that almost all the famous saint composers were not even aware of him.
For hundreds of years the Lord of the seven hills has been going to sleep, during the pavalimpu seva, listening to the most popular lullaby of all times – ‘Jo Achyutananda Jo Jo Mukunda’; the singing priests did not even know that it was his composition.
But 93 years after the discovery of the treasure, scholars around the world continue to unearth rare gems from the vast amounts of literary and musical works of Saint Annamacharya. Many of his works are believed to be permanently lost to us while many of those found are yet to be fully understood.
The TTD management preserves these plates at its archaeological museum, near Govindarajaswamy temple here.
The plates are of three dimensions -- some as big as a marble slab, some larger than the face of a brick, while some are wafer-thin palm leaf-shaped sheets.
The compositions of Annamayya, his son Peda Tirumalacharya and grandson, China Tirumalacharya, figure on these plates.
The rare works include `laghu kritis', `srungara kirtans', `adhyatmika kirtans', `dwipadams' and `srungara manjari'.
The Universal Digital Library (UDL) of the US, founded by Raj Reddy, a professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has been working in association with the TTD's Sri Venkateswara Digital Library (SVDL) in scanning ancient texts and scriptures. In the latest move, these copper plates were planned to be digitised.
Alexander Duncan Campbell was a British Civil Servant who wrote the book A Grammar of the Teloogoo Language.This book was published in 1816. A digitized version of this book is available on the Google Books.
In this Book in a footnote the author describes about Annamaya Kirthanas as follows, "Having heard that a number of poems engraved on some thousand sheets of copper had been preserved by the pious care of a family of Bramins in the temple on the sacred hill at Tripetty I deputed a Native for the purpose of examiuing them but with th exception of a treatise on Grammar of which a copy was taken the whole collection was found to contain nothing but voluminous hymns in praise of the diety".
It is this reference that led to the discovery of Copper inscriptions. After a lapse of over 400 long years, 14,000 kirthanas were transcripted and work was taken on over 2500 copper plates. Ever since, the TTD had been working hard to preserve the priceless literary work. At present, the TTD has in its possession about 2,698 plates.
More details on Annamacharya -> http://www.sohamtimes.org/2011/01/annamacharya-announcement/
The Playlist of Annamacharya Khirtanas are embedded in the Youtube Playlist Below -