A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s4.26

c19.s4.26

In some ways the most interesting figure of the time was Tenāli Rāmakrishna who started his career under Krishnadeva Rāya but lived on to the reign of Venkata. Posterity remembers him more as a court jester who played many practical jokes on high-placed men, the monarch himself not excepted; but he was also a poet of talent, and his *Pānduranga Māhātmya*, counted among the five great Kāvyas in Telugu, is a work of high merit which narrates the story of a dissipated Brahmin's soul being successfully rescued from the servants of Yama by those of Vishnu, because he happened to die in Pandarpur. Rāmakrishna also wrote the *Udbhatācārya-carita* and dedicated it to an officer of Krishnadeva Rāya.