Biography of Vemana

(Born: 25 August 1652, Kadapa - Died: 1730, Kadiri)

Vemana was a Telugu poet. Once a rich man, he renounced worldly pleasures due to some incidents and became Yogi Vemana. He is known for his famous Vemansatakams'. He lived in the later part of the seventeenth century. He spent his life in the Cuddappah and Kurnool districts of Andhra Pradesh.

Vemana was the people's poet. Not formally educated, he acquired some knowledge of poetics. He could not obviously handle Sanskritised Telugu and therefore used pure Telugu, simple and straight-forward, and wrote his poetry in one particularly simple manner, Aata Veladhi'. This style takes his ideas straight to the heart.

Later Vemana became a Yogi. He did not go about preaching his ideas, still, people were influenced by him. Vemana is clearly to the Telugu what Thiruvalluvar is to the Tamilians and Sarvagna to the Kannadas. He expressed his ideas strongly. His verses were full of robust and native humour and criticised rituals.