The Medicine No Money Can Buy
Most of the songs in this collection are addressed upward. This one is shouted sideways, at a crowd.
Konarē — won't you buy? It is a vendor's call, the sort worked down a lane on a market morning, and Ramadasu opens with it and then keeps it up for four verses. He has a remedy. He lists what it cures. He says there is nothing like it anywhere. He is, unmistakably, making a pitch.
And then, in the third section, the customer reaches for his purse and discovers that his money is no good here.
That is the joke, and it is not really a joke. Ramadasu has built a marketplace for the sole purpose of letting it fail — because the one thing he wants to say about grace is that it cannot be purchased, and the most vivid way to say so is to spend three verses appearing to sell it.
| Telugu | Transliteration | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| రామ | rāma | Rama |
| జోగి | jōgi | yogi, ascetic — the Telugu form of yōgi, and in street usage the wandering mendicant |
| మందు | mandu | medicine, remedy, drug |
| కొనరే | konarē | won't you buy! — imperative of konu, to buy, with the plural -rē |
| పామరులారా | pāmarulārā | O simple ones, O unlettered folk — vocative plural of pāmara |
Pāmara means the common person, the unlettered, the one without learning — and it is not entirely a compliment. Ramadasu is not addressing scholars or initiates. He is calling to the people in the lane.
That choice governs the whole song. What follows contains no Sanskrit metaphysics, no scriptural citation, no technical vocabulary of liberation until the very last verse. It is a list of ailments and a claim about a cure, delivered in the register of someone who expects to be understood immediately.
Sources differ on the vocative. Several editions read pāmarulārā; the Navaratna publication gives ō janulārā, O people. Both are a call to a crowd. Pāmarulārā is the blunter, and is followed here.
| Telugu | Transliteration | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| మీరు | mīru | you (plural, respectful) |
| ప్రేమతో | prēmatō | with love, lovingly |
| భుజియించరయ్యా | bhujiyincharayyā | eat it, consume it — from bhuji, to eat; with the vocative ayyā |
| కామ | kāma | desire, lust |
| క్రోధముల | krōdhamula | angers (plural) |
| నెల్ల | -nella | all of them, the whole lot |
| కడకు | kaḍaku | to the end, utterly, finally |
| పారద్రోలే | pāradrōlē | that drives away, that routs |
Bhujiyinchu means to eat. Not to revere, not to receive, not to honour — to take into the body and digest.
This is the load-bearing word of the anupallavi, and it is worth dwelling on because some circulating texts replace it with a verb of worship, which quietly demolishes the conceit. If you worship the medicine, it stays outside you and the song becomes another hymn of praise. If you eat it, the metaphor holds all the way down: a remedy only works once it is inside, and it works by changing the body that took it.
And note the pairing: prēmatō bhujiyincharayyā — eat it with love. Love is not the reward for taking the medicine. Love is the instruction on the label. It is how the thing is to be swallowed.
A small word doing large work. Kaḍaku means to the end, to the finish, utterly. Combined with -nella — all of them, the whole lot — the claim being made is not that the medicine helps with desire and anger. It is that it routs them entirely.
Which is, medically speaking, an extravagant claim. It is exactly the register of a street vendor, and Ramadasu knows it. He is writing in the idiom of a man who says his tonic cures everything — and then, over the next three verses, quietly makes the claim true by changing what is being sold.
The ailments, the price, the surprising clause about arguments, and the signature.
| Telugu | Transliteration | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| కాటుక | kāṭuka | collyrium, kohl — the black eye-cosmetic |
| కొండలవంటి | koṇḍalavaṇṭi | like mountains |
| కర్మముల | karmamula | karmas, accumulated deeds and their consequences |
| ఎడబాపే | eḍabāpē | that separates, removes, parts one from |
| సాటి లేని | sāṭi lēni | without equal, incomparable |
| జగమునందు | jagamunandu | in the world |
Translations often flatten kāṭuka koṇḍalu into "huge mountains," and in doing so throw away the best image in the song.
Kāṭuka is collyrium — the black kohl women line their eyes with. So the mountains are not merely large. They are black, and they are made of something that comes in the finest imaginable grains, applied a trace at a time.
Which is precisely how karma is understood to accumulate. Not in catastrophes, but in specks — a small evasion, a small cruelty, a small appetite indulged — laid down so gradually that no single deposit is visible, until what stands behind you is a mountain range the colour of soot.
The image also quietly sets up the impossibility the next verse trades on. You cannot dig away a mountain of powder. There is no purchase on it, nothing to take hold of. Anything that removes it will have to work on a different principle entirely.
| Telugu | Transliteration | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| కోటి | kōṭi | a crore, ten million |
| ధనముల | dhanamula | wealth, riches |
| కొనను | konanu | to buy |
| దొరకని | dorakani | not obtainable, not to be had |
| భాగవతులు | bhāgavatulu | bhāgavatas — devotees of the Lord |
| స్మరణ జేసి | smaraṇa jēsi | having remembered, by remembrance |
| తలచు | talachu | to think of, to call to mind, to dwell on |
Here is the trapdoor. Three sections of vendor's patter, and then: konanu dorakani — not obtainable by buying.
The sequence matters enormously. If Ramadasu had opened by saying grace cannot be purchased, it would be a pious commonplace and you would nod past it. Instead he spends the pallavi and anupallavi getting you into a transaction — pricing, promising, calling you over — so that the refusal, when it lands, has something to refuse.
The doctrinal term for what is being asserted is akraya: that which has no purchase price. But the song does not use the word, and does not need to. It stages the failed transaction instead.
The second line supplies the only currency the vendor will take: smaraṇa jēsi talachu — remembering, and dwelling on. Not wealth, not ritual, not learning. Attention.
This is nāma-smaraṇa stated without its technical name, which is characteristic of this song's whole register. And it is exactly the doctrine that Śrī Rāma Nāmamē argues in the abstract and Tāraka Mantramu celebrates having found. Here it arrives as the answer to a haggle.
| Telugu | Transliteration | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| వాదుకు | vāduku | for argument, in dispute, contentiously |
| చెప్పిన గాని | cheppina gāni | even if said, even though spoken |
| పాపములు | pāpamulu | sins |
| గొట్టి | goṭṭi | striking, beating away |
| ముదముతో | mudamutō | with joy, gladly |
| ముద్దు | muddu | dear, sweet, lovable |
This is the most theologically startling line in the composition, and it is easy to read past.
Vāduku cheppina gāni — even if spoken in argument. That is, even when the Name is uttered contentiously, sceptically, to score a point, perhaps in mockery — it still works. The sins are struck away anyway.
The claim has deep roots. It is the logic of the Ajāmila episode in the Bhāgavata, where a dying man calls his son — who happens to be named Nārāyaṇa — and is saved by the sound of the Name despite intending nothing by it. The southern nāma-siddhānta tradition presses this hard: if the Name is the deity in audible form, then its efficacy cannot depend on the state of mind of whoever happens to sound it. Medicine does not ask whether you believed in it.
Set that beside the anupallavi and something almost contradictory emerges. There he insisted: take it with love. Here he concedes: it works even without. Both are true in the tradition, and the tension between them is the honest position — love is how the medicine should be taken, and the medicine is stronger than the manner of its taking.
A caution. Parses of this line vary across editions, and some read vādu differently. The reading given is the common one; it is not the only one.
| Telugu | Transliteration | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| భద్రాద్రియందు | bhadrādriyandu | at Bhadrādri — the hill of Bhadrachalam |
| ముక్తిని | muktini | liberation |
| పొందించే | pondinchē | that causes to obtain, that bestows |
| సదయుడైన | sadayuḍaina | the compassionate one — sa-daya, possessed of mercy |
| సద్భక్తితో | sadbhaktitō | with true devotion |
| గొలిచే | golichē | serves, attends upon, worships |
Watch the final verb. Golichē — serves, attends upon.
For four verses a man has been standing in the lane selling something. In the last line he tells you what his actual position is: he does not own the medicine, he does not manufacture it, and he is not taking a cut. He serves it. He is not the proprietor. He is the one who hands it across.
Which is the mudra doing double duty, as it does throughout this corpus. Rāmadāsa means Rama's servant, so the signature and the job description are the same word — a pattern Caraṇamulē Nammiti pushes even further, letting the name come apart until only dāsuḍa is left standing.
Bhadrādriyandu — at Bhadrādri. The liberation on offer is given an address.
That is not incidental. Ramadasu spent public money rebuilding that temple and went to prison for it, and across the corpus he returns to the hill constantly — as an epithet in Rāma Dayajūḍavē, as the thing being pointed at in Idigō Bhadrādri. Here it is where the prescription gets filled.
Set out clinically, the song has the shape of a label: named conditions, a named remedy, a stated dose, and a price.
| The label says | In the text | What is actually meant |
|---|---|---|
| Indications | కామ క్రోధములనెల్ల kāma krōdhamula-nella |
Desire and anger — the first two of the ariṣaḍvarga, the six inner enemies. Longer recensions extend the list to mada and mātsarya, pride and envy. |
| Also indicated for | కాటుక కొండలవంటి కర్మముల kāṭuka koṇḍalavaṇṭi karmamula |
Accumulated karma — described as fine black powder heaped into mountains. |
| Dosage | ప్రేమతో భుజియించరయ్యా prēmatō bhujiyincharayyā |
To be eaten, not venerated. Taken with love — love is the method, not the result. |
| Efficacy | కడకు పారద్రోలే kaḍaku pāradrōlē |
Complete rout, not palliation. Effective even when taken in bad faith (caraṇam 3). |
| Price | కొనను దొరకని konanu dorakani |
Not for sale. Crores refused. |
| How to obtain | స్మరణ జేసి తలచు smaraṇa jēsi talachu |
By remembrance and sustained attention. The only accepted currency. |
| Dispensary | భద్రాద్రియందు bhadrādriyandu |
Bhadrādri. The one with the temple he built. |
The ailments Ramadasu names are not a casual list of faults. Kāma and krōdha open the ariṣaḍvarga — the six enemies of classical Indian ethics, standardly enumerated as desire, anger, greed, delusion, pride and envy. The Gītā treats the first two as the gateway pair; everything else follows from them.
What Ramadasu has done is take a formal moral taxonomy and print it on a medicine bottle. That translation — from ethics to pharmacology — is the entire wit of the song, and it also happens to be a serious claim about how the tradition thinks these things are dealt with. Not by resolve, not by argument, not by moral effort. By taking something.
A question worth asking directly: why the commercial conceit at all? Ramadasu could have said all of this without a hawker.
A medicine is a thing. It has a weight and a taste and it is either in your hand or it is not. Abstractions about divine mercy slide past a listener in a lane; a bottle does not. The conceit forces the intangible into an object you could be holding.
You cannot decline a payment that was never offered. By spending three sections establishing a transaction, Ramadasu creates the conditions under which konanu dorakani — not to be had by buying — is an event rather than a platitude.
A hawker has no standing. He can be ignored, haggled with, walked past. Ramadasu — who elsewhere argues with God as an equal and presents Him with itemised bills — here takes the lowest position in the street, and the last word of the song confirms it: he only serves the medicine.
It would be possible to read the pharmacology esoterically — to make mandu a technical term, or to find a system in the sequence of ailments. Nothing in the text supports that, and this series does not go looking for it.
The metaphor is doing something simpler and more effective: it is translating. A doctrine that would take a paragraph of Sanskrit is delivered, to an unlettered crowd, in the one idiom everybody in the lane already understands — buying, taking, being cured, being cheated. There is no cipher. There is a very good teacher.
The usual caution. Khamās does not mean anything. What can honestly be said is that its home repertoire is the music of persuasion, and that in devotional performance it lends itself readily to warmth and lightness.
If the Khamās attribution is the one you are hearing, the pairing is almost too apt. The rāga of the javali — the flirtatious, coaxing, thoroughly worldly form — put underneath a street vendor's cry. The music knows how to wheedle, which is exactly what the text is doing for three sections before it turns.
This is the second composition in this series where the rāga is genuinely contested, and here the disagreement changes the song more than usual:
| Attested as | Rāga | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Navaratna publication and most recordings |
Khamās | Light, coaxing, faintly amused. The hawker is enjoying himself, and the refusal in caraṇam 2 arrives as a delicious reversal. |
| Sangeetasudha collection | Nādanāmakriya | A rāga of falling phrases and deep pathos. The same words become the cry of someone who has been calling in the lane a long time and knows the crowd is not stopping. |
| Karnatik.com | Kāmās | A spelling variant of Khamās rather than a distinct attribution. |
Both readings are current and neither is declared correct here. But it is worth noticing that they produce genuinely different theology. In Khamās, the medicine is being cheerfully pressed on people who would be lucky to take it. In Nādanāmakriya, it is being offered by someone who suspects they will walk past — which makes pāmarulārā, O simple ones, land very differently indeed.
If you listen to only one thing after reading this, make it those two.
The most authoritative pairing available for this repertoire. Listen for how lightly the pitch is delivered — nothing is oversold, which makes the refusal in caraṇam 2 land harder.
Names its rāgam and tāḷa in its own title. A clean reading to set the others against, and good for hearing the madhyama entry that identifies Khamās.
Hear it in sequence with the other eight. It sits fifth — right after the sufficiency song, and right before the one about finding what you sought.
YouTube is not reachable from the environment this page was written in, so none of these recordings has been played or confirmed live from here. Each was selected because a search index recorded a title matching this composition — and in the first two cases the performers and the rāgam as well. They are corroborated, not verified.
If one has gone dead, the Listening Room on the collection index carries search links that cannot rot.
The conceit has aged strangely well. We live surrounded by the register Ramadasu was parodying — the confident claim, the total cure, the thing that will fix your attention and your anger and your appetites if you will only subscribe. He would have recognised all of it instantly. His pitch is indistinguishable in form.
What separates it is the second verse, and it is worth being precise about the difference. Everything genuinely sold to us must, by definition, be purchasable — that is what makes it a product. Ramadasu's entire claim rests on the opposite: that the thing worth having is the one thing crores cannot obtain, and that the price is not money but sustained attention, which is precisely what the modern marketplace is built to consume rather than accept.
He is also, quietly, uninterested in whether you are worthy. The medicine works on those who take it in argument. It works on the unlettered crowd he is calling to. There is no qualification, no initiation, no examination — only the taking. For a song that spends four verses in the idiom of commerce, it is remarkably free of the thing commerce actually runs on, which is exclusion.
The Devotional Music index holds thirteen keertanas including all nine Navaratnas, and the His Voice view sets this song in the nine-stage arc from asking to seeing — where the medicine cry marks the turn from doctrine into practice.
The text here is the best-attested form: pallavi, anupallavi and four caraṇams, closing on the mudra. Where sources conflict — on the rāga, on the opening vocative, on the parse of caraṇam 3, and on whether longer recensions exist — the conflict is reported in the body rather than resolved.
Texts of this song circulate with two substitutions that look harmless and are not:
The anupallavi verb. Some versions replace bhujiyincharayyā (eat it) with a verb of worship. That inverts the conceit — a medicine you venerate stays outside you, and the entire pharmacological argument collapses.
The mountains. Some versions lose kāṭuka (collyrium, kohl) and render the line as generic large mountains. The colour and the fineness of the grain are the image: karma accumulates like soot, not like boulders.
Both corrected readings are the ones carried by the Navaratna publication and the collections listed above.
As with the earlier articles in this series, the Devanāgarī-equivalent Telugu here was set from transliterated sources rather than from a printed Telugu edition. It is offered in good faith and would benefit from a reader who knows the script. Corrections welcome — get in touch.
He stood in the lane for four verses, selling.
కొనరే
And when the money came out, he would not take it.
The scholarship tells us what the medicine is for.
The music tells us how lightly it was offered.
Only the taking tells us anything else.
Sri Rama Jaya Rama Jaya Jaya Rama. శ్రీ రామ జయ రామ జయ జయ రామ
Rama as a travelling quack interpretive
Jōgi is the Telugu of yogi, but the street sense is narrower and earthier: the wandering mendicant, the man who arrives from nowhere with a satchel. And itinerant mendicants sold remedies. That is what they did.
So the figure being conjured is not the prince of Ayodhyā. It is a hawker with a bag, calling in a lane.
Devotional poetry does this deliberately and often — the Buddha as physician, Kṛṣṇa as cowherd, Rama here as a street vaidya. The deflation is the point: a king must be petitioned through intermediaries and correct forms, but you can walk straight up to a man selling something and ask him what it does.