Empire Inside Out

Examining the interplay of religion, history, and literature through a case study of King Krsnadevaraya's celebrated Telugu poem -muktam-lyada, Ilanit Loewy Shacham showcases the groundbreaking worldview that this often-overlooked poem embodies. Krsnadevaraya (r.1509-1529) ruled over the Vijayanagara Empire during its heyday, and his monumental poem situates all power and authority not in the imperial center, but in the villages and temples at the empire's outskirts; not in the royal court, but in a religious community - a worldview radically different from how literary and political histories portray the king and his empire.

Ilanit Loewy Shacham is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her area of expertise is in classical and pre-modern south Asian literature, with an emphasis on poetry. She has published in numerous journals including the International Journal of Hindu Studies, The Journal of Hindu Studies, and The Indian Economic and Social History Review, and is a contributor to Sensitive Readings (University of California Press, 2022). She is also working on a collaborative project on the Telugu Mahabharata by Nannaya Bhatta (ca. eleventh century) with Harshita Mruthinti Kamath (Emory University).

- Introduction
- 1. Genre and Empire: Beyond the Courtly Poem
- 2. Religion as Framework: Srivaisnavism Enters the Plot
- 3. Margins as Center: Poetics and Politics in the -muktam-lyada Geography
- 4. Expanding Literary Domains: Poetics of Fragments in the Imperial Whole
- 5. Conclusion: What Kind of Text is the -muktam-lyada, and What Is It About?
- Bibliography