His Grandson Said Annamacharya Wrote 32,000 Songs. TTD Counts About 13,000 That Survive — And Even His Birth Year Hangs on One Sentence

Tirumala, 1922: a sealed room opposite the Hundi

Let me ask you something first. If your grandfather had written thirty thousand songs, how would you make sure they outlived you?

Paper burns. Palm leaves rot. Memory forgets.

One family on the Tirumala hill, five hundred years ago, gave a very strange answer. They wrote the songs in metal.

Now come forward to 1922. A man named Sadhu Subrahmanya Sastry has just come back up to the Tirupati temple office. The Madras government had let him train in its epigraphy office, by an order dated 14 June 1921. He joined in August 1921, and in his own words, "I returned to the Tirupati Devasthanam in February 1922." (Sastry, Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, Preface, p. 9)

His job was to copy the inscriptions on the temple walls. That work began in May 1922. (Sastry, TTD Epigraphical Report, 1930, p. 1)

But on the platform that runs round the sanctum there was a room that was not a wall. Listen to how he describes it: "a small room of granite slabs beside the verandah of Sri Ramanuja, provided with a small wooden door of two planks and locked and sealed." Inside it, "about 3000 thick copper-plates inscribed with about 18,000 sankirtanas at the rate of three on each side of them." (Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, p. 84)

And he says, simply: "Along with this work of copying epigraphs, I transported the sankirtana copper plates of the Tallapakam musician-poets, Annamacharya, his son Pedda-Tirumalacharya, and this latter's son Chinna-Tirumalacharya, preserved in a cell in Sri Venkatesvara's temple, to the Tirupati Office and had them transcribed on paper." (Preface, p. 9)

Hold that sentence in your mind. Because the next part of his story is the one that hurts.

Seven numbers to hold before we start

Keep these seven in your pocket. Everything in this file hangs on them.

• Saka 1346, the year of Krodhi. The date on the first copper plate of the songs: 1424 CE. Whether it is the year he was born or the year he began to sing is the puzzle of this file. (TTD Tallapaka Padasahityam vol. 26, p. 35; Sastry, Report 1930, p. 280; Veturi, Annamacharya Charitra Peetika, p. 7)
• 23 February 1503. The day the same plate says the songs stop: the twelfth day of the dark half of Phalguna, Saka 1424. (Report 1930, p. 280)
• 32,000. The number of songs his grandson's verse life gives him. (Annamacharya Charitramu, TTD 1949, p. 45)
• About 3,000. Copper plates in the sealed room, counting all three poets. (Report 1930, p. 2; Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, p. 84)
• About 13,000. The songs TTD says have actually come down to us. (TTD Tallapaka Padasahityam vol. 1, 1998, publisher's foreword)
• 1882. The year a British survey was told of "two cart-loads of copper sâsanams" in a room in the temple, forty years before 1922. (Sewell, Lists of the Antiquarian Remains, vol. I, p. 153)
• Plate 177, song 385. Where "Brahmam okkate" sits in the TTD edition, with a footnote saying the version people sing is not quite the plate's. (TTD vol. 2, pp. 259–260)

First, the words you need

A few words first. If you are Telugu you know half of them already.

Annamacharya (అన్నమాచార్యుడు, Annamācārya). Also Annamayya. A Telugu poet-singer from the village of Tallapaka, in today's Rajampet area of Kadapa district. He sang to the god of the Tirumala hill. (Report 1930, p. 281)

Tiruvengalanatha (తిరువేంగళనాథుడు). "Lord of Venkatam", the plates' name for Venkateswara, the god of Tirumala.

Sankirtana (సంకీర్తన, saṅkīrtana). A song of praise made to be sung. Annamacharya's have a short refrain, the pallavi (పల్లవి), and usually three verses, each called a charanam (చరణం). The refrain comes back after every verse.

Adhyatma (అధ్యాత్మ, adhyātma). "About the self." His spiritual songs: on God, death, pride and the soul. He sings them in his own voice.

Shringara (శృంగార, śṛṅgāra). "Love." His love songs, in which the god is the lover and a woman longs for him, quarrels with him, forgives him.

Reku (రేకు, rēku). A sheet, a plate. Here, a copper plate with songs engraved on both sides. Editors still number songs by their plate.

Sankirtana Bhandaram (సంకీర్తన భండారము). "The treasury of songs." The small stone room inside the temple where the plates were kept. TTD's own foreword calls it the "Tallapaka ara", the Tallapaka room.

Saka era (శక). An Indian calendar that runs 78 years behind CE for most of the year. Saka 1346 is 1424 CE.

Annamacharya Charitramu (అన్నమాచార్య చరిత్రము). "The Life of Annamacharya." A Telugu poem by his grandson Chinnanna, also called Tiruvengalanatha, the son of Annamacharya's son Peda Tirumalacharya. (Report 1930, p. 282)

The claim we are testing

You have heard some version of this. Maybe at a concert, maybe on a phone: "Annamacharya (1408–1503) wrote 32,000 songs on Lord Venkateswara. They were engraved on copper plates and hidden in the temple for 400 years, until they were discovered in 1922. Only about 12,000 survive."

I grew up with these songs. So I checked it, layer by layer.

1. He composed songs to Venkateswara, sang them at the temple, and his family engraved them on copper. True. The plates exist, and their own prefaces say so.
2. 32,000 songs. Unsupported as a count. It is his grandson's number, in a poem written decades after his death. The great editor Veturi Prabhakara Sastri himself suspected the figure, and proposed that the line may once have read 22,000.
3. Born in 1408. Contested. It rests on one sentence on the first plate, which can be read two ways. Sastry read it as 1408. Veturi read the very same date as the year of birth, 1424.
4. Hidden for 400 years, discovered in 1922. Too loose. The room is in temple inscriptions from 1530; the plates were reported in 1882 and 1915. 1922 began the first systematic copying.
5. About 12,000 survive. Roughly right, but it depends on who counted. TTD says about 13,000.

The true part is extraordinary on its own. You'll see.

Case one: a boy of sixteen, and a sentence with two meanings

Let's start with the first plate. Because the family did something remarkable. They put a dated preface on the very first copper sheet.

The TTD edition of 1992 prints the plate's own wording, with footnotes where the earlier printed copy differs. You'll find the full Telugu below, in "Read the actual document". The heart of it is avatariñcina padāru yēṇḍlaku, "sixteen years after he was born". (TTD Tallapaka Padasahityam vol. 26, p. 35) In plain English, the sentence says: "In the Krodhi year, which is Saka 1346, sixteen years after Tallapaka Annamacharya was born, Tiruvengalanatha appeared to him..." Then it runs on: from then until Saka 1424, Dundubhi, the twelfth day of the dark half of Phalguna, these are the love songs Annamacharya offered to the god.

Now listen carefully. Where does "1346" belong?

Read it one way, and 1346 is the year the god appeared, when the boy was sixteen. Then he was born sixteen years earlier, in 1408. That is how the temple's own epigraphist read it in 1930: the songs began "in Saka 1346, Krodhi (=1424 A.C.), being then in his 16th year of age," and ran to "23rd February 1503 A. C." He adds it up: "a period of 80 years," and "his age at his retirement ... was therefore 96 years." (Report 1930, p. 280)

Read it the other way, and 1346 is the year he was born. That is how Veturi Prabhakara Sastri read it in his introduction to the grandson's poem. He writes that Annamayya was born in "Saka 1346, 1424 CE, Krodhi, in the month of Vaisakha, under the Visakha star," and died in 1503 on that same twelfth day of Phalguna. "His span of life: 79 years." (Veturi, Annamacharya Charitra Peetika, p. 7)

Same plate. Same numbers. Two scholars. A sixteen-year gap.

Which reading is better? If you ask me, the first. The main verb is "appeared" (ప్రత్యక్షమైతేను), and "from then on" (అది మొదలుగాను) reads most naturally if the date marks the start of the singing. But that's my reading, not a proof. Veturi knew this material better than almost anyone.

So "1408–1503" under his name is a reading. A good one. TTD's own 1992 volume uses it: "born in 1408 ... in 1424 Venkateswara appeared to him ... in 1503 he became one with Tiruvengalanatha." (TTD vol. 26, introduction, p. 2) But a careful reader keeps the other reading in the room.

Case two: 32,000, and the man who doubted it

Now the big number. Where does 32,000 come from?

Not from the plates. From a poem.

His grandson Chinnanna wrote the Annamacharya Charitramu, a life of his grandfather in Telugu couplets. TTD printed it in 1949. On page 45, under the heading "Annamacharya's works," the poem lists them: some songs on the path of yoga, some on renunciation, some in the flavour of love. And then:

పరమతంత్రములు ముప్పది రెండు వేలు (Annamacharya Charitramu, TTD 1949, p. 45)

paramatantramulu muppadi reṇḍu vēlu. "Thirty-two thousand supreme compositions."

The next page adds other works, including "twelve shatakas", collections of a hundred verses. (p. 46)

So the number is the family's own, written by a grandson. Is that a lie? No. Is it a count? We don't know.

Now the part almost nobody tells you. The man who edited this poem did the arithmetic.

Veturi Prabhakara Sastri, the scholar who brought the life of Annamacharya into print and who, in his own words, took "all the Tallapaka copper plates here" into his charge at Tirupati (Peetika, p. 123), writes this. The first plates say he composed a song a day, from his sixteenth year until his death. Count it that way, he says, and you get "about twenty-three thousand songs." But the poem says thirty-two thousand. So either the line should read "irvadi reṇḍu vēlu", twenty-two thousand, or the plate means he wrote "not less than one a day." (Peetika, pp. 65–66)

The man who edited the grandson's poem suspected one word in it.

His "about 23,000" rests on his own reading: born 1424, singing from sixteen until his death at seventy-nine, about 63 years. Use Sastry's 80 years of singing and a song a day gives about 29,000. The number moves with the birth year.

And then he asks the honest question. "Were all these songs ever engraved on copper? Or were they engraved, and we have not found them?" Some plates, he notes, went to Ahobilam. The engraving seems to have gone on until about 1560. After the upheaval at the Vijayanagara capital, the rest may have stayed on palm leaf, and palm leaf rots. (Peetika, p. 66)

So 32,000 is a claim. Respectable, old, from the family. But a claim.

Case three: a son with a promise, and a room of metal

Now the question I asked at the start. Why copper? The son, Peda Tirumalacharya, put his own preface on his plates. The 1930 Report summarises it: his songs began on that same day, 23 February 1503, "at the bidding of the father who enjoined upon the son the sacred duty of composing a Sankirtana each day and singing it before Sri Venkatesvara." (Report 1930, p. 283)

The son kept singing. And according to Veturi, he also had the songs cut into copper. "In Annamacharya's day the songs may have been written on palm leaves. After him, Peda Tirumalacharya had them engraved on copper plates." He adds that the cost of the copper and the engravers' wages would come to lakhs at his own day's prices, and that some plates carry the engraver's name: "Annamaraju Timmayya." (Peetika, p. 86)

A grandson's plates are dated too, though not Chinnanna's. Chinna Tirumalacharya, Peda Tirumalacharya's eldest son (Chinnanna was the fourth), wrote the Ashtabhasha Dandakam, a hymn in Sanskrit and seven Prakrits. It ends with a note that it was "transcribed on copper-plates, three in number," on Wednesday, 7 November 1537. (Report 1930, pp. 284–285)

And where did the plates go? Into a room the temple itself recorded. TTD's foreword says the first inscription to mention the Tallapaka song-treasury is from 1530, with more in 1545, 1547, 1554 and 1558. (TTD vol. 1, foreword) In the 1530s and 1540s Peda Tirumalacharya paid for food offerings to be placed in front of that very room on festival days. (Report 1930, p. 285; Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, p. 259)

Offerings, laid before a store-room of songs. As if the songs themselves were being honoured.

Where exactly was it? Sastry gives the clearest description, from someone who stood there. A small receptacle "formed through piling of a few thick granite slabs abutting Sri Ramanuja's shrine on the east, facing Venkatesvara's Hundi ... and situated on the north platform of the Vimana-Pradaksinam around the sanctum." (Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, p. 259) The Hundi is the great offering box every pilgrim knows. The songs sat right opposite it.

Case four: "two cart-loads", or why 1922 was not a discovery

Now the word everyone uses. "Discovered."

Let me read you a sentence from 1882. Robert Sewell, compiling a government list of every antiquity in the Madras Presidency, reaches Upper Tirupati. And he writes: "There are said to be 'two cart-loads of copper sâsanams' secured in a room in the temple. Application to the Mahant might possibly lead to their being opened out for examination." (Sewell, Lists of the Antiquarian Remains in the Presidency of Madras, vol. I, 1882, p. 153)

Two cart-loads. Said to be. In a room. Forty years before 1922.

How do we know those cart-loads were the songs? Because K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, the historian, said so in 1930, in his introduction to the temple's epigraphical report. He asks for "a large and representative selection from the thousands of Sankirtanas on about 3000 copper plates preserved in the temple, and these no doubt are the 'two cartloads of copper sasanams' that Sewell was told of." (Report 1930, Introduction, p. vii)

And there's more. Sastry quotes the Madras epigraphy report for 1915, which says that copper plates found in cellars at Upper Ahobilam "are of the same type as those found in the Tallapakamvari-koyyu on the Tirupati hill", carrying songs "both erotic and philosophical" by "Annamacharya and his son Tirumalacharya." (Report 1930, p. 282, quoting Madras Epigraphical Report 1915, p. 96, para 19) A later Madras report says it again: "Hundreds of songs ... are still preserved in that temple engraved on copper-plates." (Annual Report on Epigraphy, Madras, 1915–20 volume, para. 72)

So by 1915 the government epigraphists knew. The plates were not lost. They were locked.

What changed in 1922 is that one man carried them out and had them copied. TTD's foreword puts it exactly: "In 1922 the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams undertook to have the songs of the Tallapaka poets on the copper plates written out in manuscript copies." (TTD vol. 1, foreword) Sastry's own report says about 3,000 plates were transcribed between May 1922 and March 1927. (Report 1930, pp. 1–2)

And Sastry himself? He never says "discovered". He says the plates had been in "their original place of actual concealment for nearly four centuries", until "I transported them." (Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, p. 242) Concealment, yes. Unknown, no.

Now the part that hurts. Do you remember the paper copies? Here is what happened to them, in his words.

In 1930 the three boxes of transcripts went to the temple's press office on Anderson Street, Madras. Later the press moved. And then: "When the unthinking Manager of the Press, as Pandit Vijayaraghavacharya informed a few years later, considered the Sankirtana transcripts in the three boxes as mere trash, burnt the entire moss of transcripts and carried the empty boxes to the new premises." (Preface, pp. 9–10)

Burnt as trash. Years of copying. That is Sastry's account of what a colleague told him; nobody else is named. TTD's 1998 first volume gives a vaguer version: its editor writes that Sastry himself told him the copies had fallen to ruin "for some reason". (TTD vol. 1, editor's introduction, p. 2) Either way, thank God for the copper. The paper died in Madras; the metal was still on the hill.

Case five: how many survive? Every count, and who counted

So how many songs do we actually have? Here's where I want you to slow down, because you'll see a different number in every article.

Let me lay out every count I could open, with who made it.

The 1930 Report, by the man who copied them: "about 3000 copper-plates containing on the aggregate about 9000 devotional songs in the Sankirtana style and other literary pieces in Telugu, composed by a group of three poets of the Tallapakam family." (Report 1930, p. 2) Nine thousand. For all three poets together.

The same man, in his later book, first published by TTD in 1981: about 3,000 plates, three songs on each side, "the total number of psalms come to nearly 18,000." Of these "about 10,000 may belong to Annamacharya, 5000 to Pedda-Tirumalacharya and 3,000 to Cinna-Tirumalacharya." (Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, p. 372) A hundred and fifty pages earlier, the same book says the plates "may contain only 10,000 to 12,000 of Annamayyangar's songs." (p. 223)

Same author: nine thousand in 1930, eighteen thousand later. The later figure is plates times six. He doesn't explain the difference, and I can't either.

Veturi Prabhakara Sastri: in a footnote he says that, of the temple's copper plates, what can be taken as Annamacharya's comes to "about two thousand". He reached it from the plates of matching size numbered in sequence from the first plate bearing his name, at about six songs to a plate. (Peetika, p. 67, note 1) His sentence does not say "plates" outright; read as plates, two thousand at six songs each would be about 12,000. That reading and that multiplication are mine, not his.

TTD, in the foreword to the complete 1998 edition: he wrote "32,000 adhyatma and shringara sankirtanas", and "of these, only about 13,000 have come to us." (TTD vol. 1, foreword)

TTD's 1992 volume: the plates, "small and large together", number "about three thousand." (TTD vol. 26, introduction, p. 33)

So here's the honest summary. About 3,000 plates, all sources agree. The songs on them, for all three poets: 9,000 to 18,000, depending on whether you count what was copied or multiply plates by six. Annamacharya's share: 10,000 to 13,000. The 32,000 is the family's claim, not a count of any plates.

And some plates left the hill. Sastry records that the Madras epigraphists found some at the Narasimha temple in Ahobilam and some at Srirangam, and that "only a few were available in Ahobalam and they were secured by the Tirupati Devasthanam." (Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, p. 372)

Case six: love songs to a god

Now let me tell you the thing that surprises people most. By volume count, most of what survives is love poetry.

In the 29-volume TTD set I opened, four volumes hold Annamacharya's adhyatma songs, and twenty-two hold his shringara songs. The other three are his son's and grandson's. (TTD Tallapaka Padasahityam, title pages of vols. 1–29, 1998 reissue) Volumes are not songs, so don't treat that as an exact ratio. But the balance is obvious.

What is a love song to a god? The 1930 Report explains it plainly. "In the 'Sringara-Sankirtanas' God Venkatesa is addressed as Nayaka (lover) by the poet who conceives himself as the Nayika (lady-love), and the Nayaka is sometimes petted, coaxed, reproved, praised and petitioned with the ultimate object and request for being favoured with His divine grace." (Report 1930, p. 280)

Reproved! The poet scolds his god like a lover who came home late. Here is the very first song on the very first shringara plate, as TTD prints the plate. A woman speaks to her lover:

యేవూరి కేవూరు యెక్కడికి నెక్కడ | నీవు మాకు నిఁకనేల నిజమైనాఁజెప్పరా (TTD vol. 26, p. 35)

ēvūri kēvūru ekkaḍiki nekkaḍa / nīvu māku nikanēla nijamainā ceppara.

"Your town and mine, your road and mine, what are they to each other? Why come to us now? At least tell me the truth." (Our rendering; translations differ.) And the next line says it straight out: you come at midnight, from here and from there.

The first love song on the first plate is a quarrel.

The second song on that plate is gentler. Someone teases a woman getting ready:

గందము వూశేవేలే కమ్మని మేన యీ | గందము నీమేని తావికంటే నెక్కుడా (TTD vol. 26, p. 35)

gandamu vūśēvēlē kammani mēna yī / gandamu nī mēni tāvikaṇṭē nekkuḍā.

"Why smear sandalwood on your fragrant body? Is this sandalwood sweeter than the scent of your own skin?" And then: "Why keep looking in the mirror again and again? Is the mirror lovelier than your face?" (Our rendering.)

Five hundred years ago, in a temple song, cut into copper. Anyone who has waited for someone to get ready knows that line.

The family cut the love songs into the same metal as the prayers. To them, longing for a lover and longing for God were the same longing.

Case seven: "Brahmam okkate", and what the plate actually says

Now the song every Telugu child knows. Or thinks he knows.

In the TTD edition it is song 385 of the second adhyatma volume, on plate 177, in the raga Bauli. (TTD vol. 2, pp. 259–260) Surprise: even as printed, the refrain (pallavi) is not the famous line. It is a singer's cry of rhythm syllables, "తందనాన ఆహి తందనాన పురె / తందనాన భళా తందనాన" (tandanāna āhi tandanāna pure / tandanāna bhaḷā tandanāna). The famous line comes next, as the first verse:

బ్రహ్మ మొకటే పరబ్రహ్మ మొకటే (TTD vol. 2, p. 259)

brahma mokaṭē, parabrahma mokaṭē. "Brahman is one. The highest Brahman is one."

What does "one" mean here? The next verse tells you: "కందువగుహీనాధికము లిందు లేవు / అందరికి శ్రీహరే అంతరాత్మ" (kanduvaguhīnādhikamu lindu lēvu / andariki śrīharē antarātma). "There is no high and low in this. For everyone, Sri Hari is the self within." (p. 259)

Then come the pairs. Listen carefully, because this is where the song bites.

నిండార రాజు నిద్రించు నిద్రయు నొకటే అండనే బంటునిద్రదియు నొకటే మెండైనబ్రాహ్మణుఁడు మెట్టుభూమి యొకటే చండాలుఁ డుండేటి సరిభూమి యొకటే (TTD vol. 2, p. 259)

niṇḍāra rāju nidriñcu nidrayu nokaṭē / aṇḍanē baṇṭunidradiyu nokaṭē / meṇḍainabrāhmaṇuḍu meṭṭubhūmi yokaṭē / caṇḍāluḍuṇḍēṭi saribhūmi yokaṭē.

"The sleep a king sleeps in his comfort is one. The sleep of the servant beside him, that too is the same. The ground the great Brahmin walks on is one. The very same ground where the outcaste lives." (Our rendering.)

The word chandala (చండాలుడు) is the word the caste order of his day used for the people it pushed furthest out. Annamacharya puts that man and the Brahmin on the same earth, in the same line.

And he keeps going. Pleasure is the same for the gods and for insects and beasts. Day and night are the same for the rich man and the pauper. "కడఁగి యేనుఁగుమీఁదఁ గాయుయెండొకటే / పుడమి శునకముమీఁదఁ బొలయునెండొకటే" (kaḍagi ēnugumīda gāyuyeṇḍokaṭē / puḍami śunakamumīda bolayuneṇḍokaṭē): the sun that beats down on the elephant and the sun that falls on the dog in the street are the same sun. And to protect the righteous and the sinner alike, the name of Venkateswara is one. (p. 260)

Now here's the twist most people never hear. At the foot of page 259, the editor adds a note. The text printed above, he says, is the earlier printed text, kept as it was. That revision was made earlier by the late Rallapalli, a master of music, who he thinks may have changed it to suit the music. Because that is the version singers use today, he kept it above. Then he prints what the plate says. (TTD vol. 2, p. 259, note 1) The volume's introduction names the earlier editors of these plates as Rallapalli Anantakrishna Sharma and Udayagiri Srinivasacharya. (TTD vol. 2, introduction)

And the plate is different. On the copper, the refrain runs "తందనాన యీహి తందనాన ఆహా తందనాన । పురే తందనాన । భళా తందనాన" and goes straight on to "పరబ్రహ్మ మొకటే", parabrahma mokaṭē, three times. There is no separate "బ్రహ్మ మొకటే" line. The lines about no high and low, Hari within everyone, and all the races of creatures being one sit inside the refrain itself, not in a separate verse. Even a word differs: where the printed text has "లేవు" (lēvu, "are not"), the plate has "నేది". (p. 259, plate reading)

So, by the TTD editor's own note, the most famous Annamacharya song in Telugu is sung from a text an earlier twentieth-century editor revised, he thought to suit the music. Most of the words are on the plate. The shape is not quite the plate's.

What does the song prove about equality? It says that in sleep, earth, sun and the god within, king and servant, Brahmin and outcaste are the same. That is a spiritual claim, made in public, in plain Telugu. It does not tell anyone to change a law or open a temple door. It won't carry a reform manifesto. But "the ground where the outcaste lives" is not decoration either.

Read the actual document

Don't take my word for any of this. Here is the first copper plate's preface in full, as TTD prints the plate:

"శుభమస్తు॥ శ్రీమతే రామానుజాయ నమః॥ స్వస్తిశ్రీ జయాబ్యుదయ శాలివాహన శక వరుషంబులు 1346 అగునేటి క్రోధి సంవత్సరమందు తాళపాక అన్నమాచార్యులు అవతరించిన పదారు యేండ్లకు తిరువేంగళనాథుఁడు ప్రత్యక్షమైతేను అది మొదలుగాను శాలివాహనశక వరుషంబులు 1424 అగు నేటి దుందుభి సంవత్సర ఫాల్గుణ బ. ౧౨ నిరుధానకు తిరువెంగళనాథుని మీఁదను అంకితముగాను తాళపాక అన్నమాచార్యులు విన్నపము చేశిన శృంగార సంకీర్తనలు." — first shringara copper plate, as printed in TTD Tallapaka Padasahityam vol. 26 (1992; reissued 1998), p. 35

Now in plain words.

"May it be auspicious. Salutation to the glorious Ramanuja. In the Krodhi year, Saka 1346, sixteen years after Tallapaka Annamacharya was born, Tiruvengalanatha appeared to him. From then until the twelfth day of the dark half of Phalguna in Dundubhi, Saka 1424: these are the love songs that Tallapaka Annamacharya offered to Tiruvengalanatha, dedicated to him."

A salutation to Ramanuja, which fits the Report's account that Annamayya took up the Vaishnava faith at Tirupati. (Report 1930, p. 281) Two dates anyone in the temple could check. And a dedication to the god.

A title page, cut in copper.

The strongest case for the other side

I've told you which reading I prefer. Now let me give you the best case against me, because you deserve both.

One: on the birth year, Veturi may be right. He read 1346 as the year of birth, and he was not careless. He matched it to the birth-star tradition, Visakha in Vaisakha. (Peetika, p. 7) And the 1930 Report is not fully consistent. On page 2 it calls all three poets men who "flourished in the 16th century," which does not sit well with a man who began singing in 1424. (Report 1930, p. 2) Two: on the 32,000, absence of plates is not absence of songs. Veturi's own point: plates went to Ahobilam (Sastry adds Srirangam), engraving stopped around 1560, and palm leaf rots. (Peetika, p. 66; Tirupati Sri Venkateswara, p. 372) A grandson who grew up inside the family's workshop may simply have known a number we can no longer check. "Unsupported" is not "false".

Three: on equality, the song is about the soul, not society. The strongest reading against a social-reform Annamacharya is the song's own logic. Every pair is made equal by sleep, earth, sun or the god within. Nothing says the king should stop being king. If someone tells you Annamacharya was a fifteenth-century campaigner against caste, ask them for the plate.

What we could not prove

Here is where my research ran out.

• Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman's God on the Hill (Oxford, 2005). I could not open it; the only copy I found online is restricted. Every reading of a song in this file is from the TTD edition, in my own rendering.
• The birth year. Whether 1346 belongs to the birth or the vision. Both readings are in print; the plate cannot settle it alone.
• How many songs are on the plates, exactly. The figures run from about 9,000 to about 18,000 for all three poets. I found no published plate-by-plate count.
• The Madras Epigraphical Report for 1915 itself. I read it only as quoted by Sastry (p. 282) and as cited in a later Madras report ("page 90"); the two page numbers differ.
• Two dates Sastry never gives: the day the plates left the room (only "in the twenties"), and when the transcripts were burnt (only after the press moved).
• Whether TTD ever made the photostat copies of all the plates that its 1992 volume said it was planning. (TTD vol. 26, p. 33)
• Where the plates are today, and in what condition. I found no TTD document I could open that says.

Why it still matters today

Three reasons. None of them is a slogan.

The method. This family dated the work, signed it, and stored it in metal inside the building most likely to survive. If you have ever lost a phone full of photos, you know what they understood.

The text. The TTD editors printed the concert version and the plate's words side by side, and said which was which. Before you forward "the original lyrics", ask which original.

The language. These are songs in everyday Telugu: a quarrel at midnight, a girl at a mirror, a king and a servant asleep. They are still sung. TTD has kept a festival on his death-day since 1949 and on his birthday since 1978. (TTD vol. 1, foreword) The words outlived the empire that paid for the copper.

Verdict

So what do the plates prove? Let me put it in one place.

They prove that a Telugu poet called Tallapaka Annamacharya composed songs to the god of Tirumala over a very long life, that the first plate dates them from Saka 1346 (1424 CE) to 23 February 1503, and that his son and grandson cut them, with their own songs, into about 3,000 copper plates kept in a room the temple named in its inscriptions from 1530. That is solid. Be proud of it.

They do not prove 32,000 songs. That is the grandson's number, and his editor doubted it. About 13,000 survive by TTD's count; for all three poets the range is 9,000 to 18,000.

They do not settle 1408 or 1424. One sentence carries both. I lean to 1408, and I've shown you the sentence.

And 1922 was not a discovery. The plates were reported in 1882 and 1915. 1922 is when they were carried out and copied.

If you ask me, the true story is better than the forwarded one. A dying father asks his son for a song a day. The son keeps the promise and pays for copper. A grandson writes it all down, maybe with a proud number. Four hundred years later the paper burns, and the copper doesn't.

You decide which version you want to sing.