> Jampala:
> manaki ishTam lEni vaaLLani raakshasulu ani pilvaDam`lO tiTTu
> lEdaa?
>
> Reply:
>
> You have a fine point here. No doubt.
>
> But, I hope readers to understand that I am not calling any
> specific person or persons as raakshasulu. I am calling
When I first saw the post on kavi raakshasulu, I immediately
thought that Sri Syamala Rao put in poetic form the thoughts he expressed
during the early stages of the avadhaanamu debate. I agree that the poem
did not target any specific person or persons (at least by name). The
manner in which Sri Syamala Rao expressed his thoughts is fine with me
and certainly -IMHO- fits in within the TELUSA conventions (though I must
admit that his transcription system made it difficult to read). The
content of the poem appears debatable to me. Some of the things he
describes as the doings of the raakshasaas appear debatable to me - but
that would be the subject for another post if time and other
circumstances permit.
We have a tradition where the poet, before he gets down to the
main business of his kaavya, has to attend to certain required rituals
such as ishTadEvata praardhana. One of these rituals is praising the
'sukavi's and their ways. Another item is 'kukavi ninda' where he
denounces the ways of the bad poets (or non-poets as Sri vEloori would
call them). Sri Syamala raavu's poem seems to fall into that latter
category. Of course, the Telugu name for nindaakavitvam is tiTTu
kavitvam. (If Sri Syaamala Rao was merely lamenting the trend without
characterizing the perpetrators of the trend as raaskhasulu, it would
then fall into vEdanaa bharita kavitvam or EDupu kavitvam in Telugu).
To summarize: I do think that - as a matter of classification -
the poem kavi raakshasulu falls into the tiTTu kavitvam category and
the word raakshasuDu is a tiTTu. This is not to say that Sri Syaamala
Rao has violated the sacred code of politeness that TELUSA demands or
that he shouldn't have posted what he did. After all, some of our best
kavitvam is tiTTu kavitvamu. I will go even farther and say that it is OK
in my book even if he named some poets and pointed to their 'raakshasa
kRUtyaalu' as long as such pointing was not directed at the Telusa
debaters that disagree with him, and done in a proper spirit of
discussion. I did enjoy his poem though I think his vEdana is misdirected.
Regards. ---- V. Chowdary Jampala