Gadha Saptashati and Kreedabhiramam…

More than anything else, Gadha Saptashati has succeeded in recording the real life instances, day-to-day occurrences and the living style of the people of the regions now known as Andhra and Maharashtra, during the reign of the Satavahanas. We find many of the habits, customs and the festivities observed during those times are still being observed even today. Probably in the history of humankind 2000 years period may not be that bigger one for customs and habitual observations to die from the memory of human mind.

A mind, which is filled with a lot of compassion and liking for the fact than the imaginary, can only visualize and accomplish the kind of compilation Gadha Saptashati eventually turned out to be. Hala Satavahana was a human being with such an agile mind and a romantic heart.  He recorded, what he liked and wanted to record, the life and sentiments of the common people of that time.

A few hundred years later, Vinukonda Vallabharaya did the same thing, but slightly in a different way. He crated a few imaginary characters and through them recorded the general happenings in the lives of the people of 15th century Orugallu (now Warangal) on a winter day, in the town inside the fort, from daybreak in the morning to sun set in the evening.

The main characters, the hero Manchana Sarma and Tittibha Chetti, with whom the story commences and further moves on, enter the town early in the morning, while the day breaks in the east, from the western entrance of the fort.  From there, they pass through certain areas of the town inside the fort, describing the things they witness as they move along.  They meet people whom they intended to meet and at the end leave the town and the fort from the northern entrance as the sun sets in the evening on the fort.

As they pass along the streets inside the fort of Orugallu, Vallabharaya leaves nothing to your imagination; the town springs up alive with all its natural activity of those days and unfolds before your mind’s eye.  The describing, though poetic, was that powerful!