your bridge home
True Valor
He is writing a devotional poem about a garland, and burying a manual on how to run an empire inside it.
He wrote a book about how to be a king, in Telugu, while being one.
That is unusual enough on its own. What makes the Amuktamalyada genuinely strange is that most of it is not about kingship at all.
It is a devotional poem about a woman garlanding a god.
And the political advice is buried inside it. As though statecraft were a thing you mentioned in passing, while writing about love.
Krishnadevaraya was born on the 17th of January, 1471.
He ruled the Vijayanagara empire from 1509 to 1529. The third king of the Tuluva line. He came to the throne on the death of his half-brother Viranarasimha.
Vijayanagara at that moment was the great southern power.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.