18 Facts About Bhadrachala Ramadasu

Bhadrachala Ramadasu is a famous Vaggeyakara from the Telugu classical era.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu was born in the village of Nelakondapalli in Khammam district, and orphaned as a teenager.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu spent his later years in Bhadrachalam and 12 years in solitary confinement at the Golconda prison during the Qutb Shahi rule.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu is renowned for constructing the famous Sita Ramachandraswamy Temple and pilgrimage center on the banks of river Godavari at Bhadrachalam.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu was orphaned in the teens, triggering an impoverished life, sustained by singing bhakti songs to Rama and collecting rice door to door.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu's life story has been largely reconstructed from poems he composed or is assumed to have composed, where there is a mention of events of his life.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu is said to have learned Telugu, Sanskrit, Persian, and Urdu.

Once, Ramadasu visited Bhadrachalam for a Jatara and was disturbed by the dilapidated state of the Rama temple there.

So, Bhadrachala Ramadasu started to raise funds for the renovation and reconstruction of the temple.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu was dismissed from his job by his enemies who spread a lot of fake news.

Thereafter he released Ramadasu and established a tradition to send Pearls to the Bhadrachalam temple on every Rama Navami festival and this tradition was continued by the next rulers like Nizams of Hyderabad.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu is one of the bhakti movement poet-saints of Hinduism, and a revered composer in the Carnatic music tradition.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu is most known for his pallavi, anupallavi and caranam compositions in Telugu and some in Sanskrit.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu's compositions were popular in his days, and influenced many into the modern age.

Bhadrachala Ramadasu composed Dasarathi Satakam, a bhakti poem with didactic metric style whose lines and stanzas are often sung or shared in the regional Telugu tradition.

However, like the works of many poet-saints and philosophers on the Indian subcontinent, it is unclear which of the poems attributed to Bhadrachala Ramadasu were authentically composed by him.

Further, a notable feature of Bhadrachala Ramadasu's compositions is his knowledge and his use of ragas from both South Indian schools and North Indian schools, thereby uniting the two classical musical traditions.

For example, according to the Indian newspaper The Hindu, Bhadrachala Ramadasu composed nearly 300 songs and his works on Rama moved the Sultan.