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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Theft of a Tree: A Tale by the Court Poet of the Vijayanagara Empire

Theft of a Tree: A Tale by the Court Poet of the Vijayanagara Empire

Timmana, Nandi
Kamath, Harshita Mruthinti
Narayana Rao, Velcheru

Paperback

Series: Murty Classical Library of India

General PoetryHinduism

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0674295919
ISBN13: 9780674295919
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: Feb 13 2024
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.10 Depth: 7.90
Language: English

The first English translation of a thousand-year-old story of Krishna and his wife Satyabhama, retold by the most famous court poet of the Vijayanagara Empire.

Legend has it that the sixteenth-century Telugu poet Nandi Timmana composed Theft of a Tree, or Pārijātāpaharaṇamu, to help the wife of Krishnadevaraya, king of the south Indian Vijayanagara Empire, win back her husband's affections. Timmana based his work on a popular millennium-old Krishna tale.

Theft of a Tree recounts how Krishna stole the wish-granting pārijāta tree from the garden of Indra, king of the gods. Krishna takes the tree to please his favorite wife, Satyabhama, who is upset when he gifts his chief queen a single divine flower. After battling Indra, he plants the pārijāta for Satyabhama--but she must perform a rite temporarily relinquishing it and her husband to enjoy endless happiness.

This is the first English translation of the poem, which prefigures the modern Telugu novel with its unprecedented narrative unity.

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