Avadhanam

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Avadhanam is a literary feat popular from the very ancient days in Telugu. It requires immense memory power and tests a person's capability of performing multiple tasks simultaneously. All the tasks are memory intensive and demand an in depth knowledge of literature & grammar. The tasks vary from making up a poem spontaneously to keeping a count of a bell ringing at random. No external memory aids are allowed while performing these tasks except the person's own brain, not even so much as a writing utensil. Astavadhani is a name given to any person who has successfully performed Avadhanam with eight prucchakas.

Avadhani refers to the individual who performs the Avadhanam; the one who queries them is the Prucchaka. The Prucchakas put forth questions to the avadhani which are literary in nature. The Prucchakas can optionally place additional constraints. Though it is not stated explicitly, conformation to Chandassu (The syntax for poems) is mandatory. Avadhani should answer them in the form of a poem. The literary questions generally consist of a description given in prose and the avadhani has to express it as a poem. The additional restrictions placed by the Prucchakas can be anything like asking the avadhani to not use a given set of alphabets in the entire poem or to construct only a particular type of poem etc.

The first person to ask the question is called "Pradhana prucchaka". He is the same as any other Prucchaka except that, he asks the first question.

The beauty of Avadhanam is, the avadhani is not allowed to recite the entire poem in a single go. After listening to the Prucchaka's question, the avadhani constructs the first line of the poem, recites it and moves to the next Prucchaka. After listening to all the Prucchakas, and reciting one line of poem each, the avadhani shall return to the Pradhana prucchaka (in Round-Robin fashion) and continues with the second line of the poem. The beauty and challenge here is that, the avadhani has to remember the question, the line of poem said before and all the additional constraints placed. They shall not be repeated and any mistake shall disqualify the person from being entitled to "Avadhani". Every poem has 4 lines, so every Prucchakas turn comes 4 times. Avadhaani has to recite the full poem once he finishes constructing all the lines of the poems. This is called "dhaarana" and forms the culmination of the Avadhanam. Avadhani should use only his memory for all this. Some times, Avadhanam goes for days at an end!!!

It is a general practice for one of the Prucchakas to keep ringing a bell randomly and avadhani has to keep track of number of bell rings. The beauty and challenge of the Avadhanam is that the avadhani has to do all these tasks simultaneously.

Of the remaining Prucchakas, one person is in charge of "aprasthuta prasangam". His responsibility is to distract the avadhani with questions and topics unrelated to the avadhanam and the avadhani has to reply to his questions and riddles. The Prucchaka who manages this should also be equally intelligent and witty to entertain the audience with his questions. The challenge for Avadhani is not to get distracted by 'aprastutha prasangam' but also should give witty answers spontaneously to the silly questions.

Because of the memory intensive nature of Avadhanam, the number of Prucchakas plays a major role. The more the number of Prucchakas, the higher the challenge. Higher the challenge, more is the fame.

The number of Prucchakas can be 8 (ashtavadhanam) or 100 (shathavadhanam) or even 1000 (sahasravadhanam)! A person who has successfully performed Ashtavadhanam is called as Ashtavadhani, a shatavadhanam is called a Shatavadhani and sahasravadhanam is called Sahasravadhani.

The trend of Avadhanam was popularized by Divakarla Tirupati sastry (1871-1919) and Chellapilla Venkata sastry (1870-1950) who were popular as "Tirupati Venkata Kavulu". Contemporaries of Tirupati Venkata Kavulu that are famous for enriching the heritage of Avadhanam include Kopparapu Sodara Kavulu and Venkata Raamakrishna Kavulu. Kopparapu Sodara kavulu are well known for their speed in composing poems.

Besides conducting Avadhanams, which in itself is a great feat, many Avadhanis also left a longer and lasting legacy by penning works and mentoring students who often grew up to contribute to Telugu literature in their own uniquely rich ways. Students of Tirupati Venkata Kavulu include famous Gnanapith award winner Viswanatha Satyanarayana and well known Subbanna Satavadhani. Sri Paada Subrahmanya Sastri, a well-known short story and novel writer is a student of Venkata Rama Krishna Kavulu.

The other lesser known forms of Avadhanam are Chitravadhanam (painting), Nrutyavadhanam (Dancing) and Ganitavadhanm (Mathematics).

Some of the current avadhanis include:

• Dr. Garikipati Narasimha Rao. He is referred to as Maha Sahasraavadhani for having subjected himself to thousand Prucchakas! He is well known for amazingly fast recollection of hundreds of verses composed and recited earlier and has the title 'Dhaarana Brahma Raakshasa'. His 'Saagara Ghosha' is an acclaimed literary work.
• Dr. Medasani Krishna Mohan. He performed many Ashtavadhanams, Satavadhanams and also a Sahasravadhanam. Besides being Avadhani he also heads the Annamacharya Project involved in uncovering, compiling, classifying and popularising Annamayya works at Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam.
• Dr. Nagaphani Sarma. He performed many Asthtavadhanams, Satavadhanams and also Sahasravadhanam. He performed avadhanams in both Telugu and Sanskrit languages. He also lead the Telugu Adhikara Bhasha Sangham.
• Kadimalla Varaprasad. He conducted many Ashtavadhanams, Satavadhanams and also a Sahasravadhanam. His students include Satavadhanis like Vaddiparti Padmakar and Kota Lakshminarasimham. In past, "Jamta kavulu" conducted Ashtavadhanams and Satavadhanams, but Kadimalla Varaprasad and Kota Laksminarasimham pioneered as "Jamta kavulu" in conducting Sahasravadhanam together.
• Astakala Narasimha Rama Sharma. A teacher by profession, he is referred as Wikipedia of ASHTAVADHANAM prakriya and completed more than 150 asthavadhanams. He also built a unique temple for goddess Saraswati in Medak, Telangana.