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Introduction 1. The date of Apparao’s birth is reported variously as November 31, 1861, and September 21, 1862. Calculating the date according to the Gregorian calendar from information given in Apparao’s horoscope, which records his birth according to the Telugu calendar, is ridden with problems. See Bandi Gopala Reddy (hereafter Bangorey), “Mundu matalu,” in Mqttamqdati kanyatulkam (kanyatulkam First Version), edited by Bangorey (Nellore: Published by Bangorey , 1969), 30–31. Act One 1. Bonkula dibba (bqnku means “a lie” and dibba means “a hill or a mound”) is the name of an open public space in front of the fort in Vizianagaram in northern Andhra Pradesh. Local legends derive the name from the story of a French engineer who lied about a scheme for digging for water in the area and fled halfway into the project. Some scholars trace the origin of the name to the Marathi word bankul, jail, and say there used to be a jail in the area which fell into ruin. According to another legend, Gurajada Apparao used to spend hours on end in this place chatting away, so his friends called him King of Bunk. K. V. Ramana Reddy (hereafter K. V. R.), Kanya-tulkam: Tika, Tippani (Vizianagaram: Velugu Pracurana, 1991), 10. 2. “Dancing girl” is another term for nautch-girl, a colonial English term (nautch from natya, Sanskrit, dance, via Hindi nac) that social reformers of Andhra used for women from a caste called Bogam-vallu, Sani-vallu, or Vetyas. Bogam is a Telugu word derived from Sanskrit bhogam (pleasure/joy/luxury), and vetya is a Sanskrit word assimilated into Telugu. Nautch-girls were courtesans and were kept by upper-caste men as their pleasure-women. Bogam women were well educated and highly cultured. Some of the greatest singers, dancers, and poets came from women of this caste. Bogam women served as court poets of the Nayaka kings of Tanjore and Madurai. Colonial moralists viewed these women as prostitutes, and the Andhra social leaders of the time adopted the same attitude toward them. A new name was invented to give respectability to them: devadasis, or servants of god, despite the fact that in Andhra, Bogam-vallu were mostly secular and did not have much to do with temples. In 1956, the government of Andhra Pradesh prohibited dancing by Notes these women and moral activists forced them to reform themselves and live respectable lives. Among the considerable research that has been done on the devadasis is Frederique Apffel-Marglin, Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of Devadasis of Puri (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985); Saskia Kersenboom-Story, Nityasumaqgali : Devadasi Tradition in South India (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1987); A. K. Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao, and David Shulman, When God Is a Customer : Telugu Courtesan Songs of Ksetrayya and Others (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Samanta Banerjee, Dangerous Outcaste: The Prostitute in Nineteenth Century Bengal (1998; reprint, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2000); Leslie Orr, Devotees and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Kay K. Jordan, From Sacred Servant to Profane Prostitute: A History of the Changing Legal Status of Devadasis in India, 1857– 1947 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2003); Kalpana Kannabiran and Vasanta Kannabiran , Muvalur Ramamirthammal’s Web of Deceit: Devadasi Reform in Colonial India (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2003). However, not much scholarly work has been done on the Bogam women of Andhra. Devesh Soneji is currently engaged pioneering work in this area. See his “Living History, Performing Memory : Devadasi Women in Telugu-speaking South India,” Dance Research Journal 36, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 30–49. See also Priyadarshini Vijaisri, “Transcending the Devadasi: Reform and Patterns of Sacred Prostitution in Colonial Andhra,” in Space, Sexuality and Postcolonial Cultures, edited by Manas Ray (Calcutta: Center for Studies in Social Sciences, 2003); Vijaisri, “Contending Identities: Sacred Prostitution and Reform in Colonial India,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 28, no. 3 (2005): 387–411; and “The Temple Dancer,” in Nancy Paxton, Writing Under the Raj: Gender, Race, and Rape in the British Colonial Imagination, 1830–1947 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 83–108. 3. Reference to Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. 4. From John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (edited by Peter Elfed Lewis [Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1973]), 60. The opera was first produced in London in 1728. 5. Ibid., 52. 6. Schools run by the colonial government were closed for Christmas, even though Christmas was not a holiday for the vast majority...