Transregional Aesthetics: A Tañcāvūr Nāyaka in an Early Modern Court
Sri Sathvik Rayala
Harvard University
What did it mean to appear kingly at court in seventeenth-century southern India? This is the central question that animates my talk. In my exploration of this topic, I turn to the Tañcāvūr Nāyaka state of early modern south India. Despite heading a modest dominion, the Tĕlugu kings of this state were undeniably cosmopolitan players, and their state was imbricated with transregional, transcontinental networks of trade. This cosmopolitanism and interregional connectivity had, perhaps unsurprisingly so, implications for how these Tĕlugu monarchs presented themselves at court. I instantiate this phenomenon by focusing on one description of Raghunātha Nāyaka, an early seventeenth-century ruler of the Tañcāvūr state, that attests to the transregional courtly aesthetic that these kings nurtured and presented. Written by Cemakūra Veṅkaṭakavi, a Tĕlugu poet patronized by Raghunātha directly, this description hints at how interregional trade and exchanges inextricably influenced the appearance of Raghunātha at court.
