19 Facts About Shatavadhani Ganesh

Shatavadhani Ganesh has performed more than 1300 avadhanas, in Kannada, Sanskrit, Telugu and Prakrit.

Shatavadhani Ganesh is known for extempore composition of poetry during these performances, and even of chitrakavya.

Shatavadhani Ganesh once set a record by composing poetry for twenty-four hours continuously.

Shatavadhani Ganesh learned English at school, and he later learned several other languages like Prakrit, Pali, Tamil, Hindi, Marathi, Greek, Latin and Italian.

Shatavadhani Ganesh is well known for his performances of avadhana, in which he composes extempore solutions in metrical verse to problems posed in parallel by the prcchakas on stage, satisfying the constraints imposed by them, while simultaneously dealing with interruptions designed to break his concentration.

Shatavadhani Ganesh's astavadhanas became very popular and he gave hundreds of performances, some of which were viewed by people even in pouring rain.

Shatavadhani Ganesh has performed avadhanas using eight languages, including Sanskrit, Kannada and Telugu.

Shatavadhani Ganesh is credited with introducing chitrakavya into avadhana, previously considered impossible to do in an avadhana.

Shatavadhani Ganesh has given more than 20 avadhana performances in American and European countries.

Shatavadhani Ganesh performed his first Shatavadhana at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bangalore on 15 December 1991.

Shatavadhani Ganesh did another one 15 days later, then one each again in 1992 and 1993, with his fifth, the first to be done entirely in Kannada, in 2012.

Shatavadhani Ganesh has started lectures on poetry composition, prosody and poetics on the website of "Padyapaana" organisation.

Shatavadhani Ganesh performed a shatavadhana in a single day in 1991.

Shatavadhani Ganesh gives public lectures, on dance, music, art, culture, literature, poetics, etc.

Shatavadhani Ganesh has written lyrics and composed verses for dance performances.

Shatavadhani Ganesh learned the performance art Yakshagana and conceived the idea of eka vyakthi yakshagana, of which several performances have been given by Mantapa Prabhakara Upadhyaya.

Shatavadhani Ganesh has played the role of Horatio in a Sanskrit production of Hamlet.

Shatavadhani Ganesh has given multiple lectures on various topics in Gokhale Institute of Public affairs, most of which is published on YouTube.

Shatavadhani Ganesh is considered one of the Sanskrit authors to have "carved a niche for themselves in twentieth century", and is credited with introducing new genres into Sanskrit literature.