Page:Biographical Sketches of Dekkan Poets.djvu/160

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chanced to meet Yachama Naidu, who was returning in a palankeen from a hunting excursion. He put several questions to the poet, which he answered in beautiful verse, which so pleased the aforesaid Rajah, that he invited him to his court, and desired him to write one hundred stanzas, in praise to the God Sriram, Chakrapa executed this task with great credit to himself, and so much to the satisfaction of Yachama Nadu, that he offered the poet any reward that he should desire. Chakrapa asked for eighty seers of cholam grain; but the Rajah was more munificent than he promised to be, for he presented the poet with a tract of land that yielded yearly the quantity of produce he named, besides conferring on him very valuable presents, and furnishing him with a guard for his safe conduct home to his native village. Chakrapa did not write any work on any useful subject, all his effusions being confined to poems in praise of the God Sriram; this poet never flattered any individual of note to forward any mercenary views: he died when he was sixty years of age, in by no means affluent circumstances.