The manuscript was written towards the fulfilment of a Fellowship for advanced research at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla between 2013 and 2015. The project titled "Narrative Traditions of a Telugu Epic: Palnätivīrula Katha" is laid out in five chapters. The first chapter gives a broad outline to Telugu literary history by way of understanding the tradition of Palnātivirula Katha in the available oral and written traditions. It constructs the methodology for understanding the specific epic of Palnādu by using the terms narrative, tradition, text and epic. The next chapter makes an attempt to understand the sociological implications of the epic and its times while also resolving some critical issues related to authorship of the written texts of the epic which are entwined with history, religion, caste and gender of the times of the epic. Hence the second chapter lays out some of these configurations with the help of historical and literary material. The third chapter examines oral materials. Apart from the main chapter, which understands the context of these narratives in the 20 C, it contains Annexure 1 and II that have a description and translation of the oral narratives from the recorded performances specifically done for this project. While the fourth chapter engages with a few written texts, mainly, Unnava Lakshminarayana's play Nāyakurālu, Nazer's Palnāti Yuddhamu, Pingali Lakshmikantham's Palnātivīra Caritra and Nagasri's Palnātivira Caritra of the epic to ponder over the implications of the Mahabharata for a regional vision of power and territory. Pingali's text, though its veracity is dubious, brings together the many scattered episodes of the epic into one big written text and hence it is treated as an independent narrative in this project. The last chapter summarises the whole question of Telugu consciousness which is why there seems to be a continuous revisiting of an epic like Palnātivīrula Katha, over a period of time, by the Telugu peoples all over the world.
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