He claims to have written the book at the instruction of the god Vishnu, based on a purported Sanskrit language work by the earlier poet Nannaya.
The surviving parts of Appakavīyamu suggest that Appa-kavi had knowledge of Vedic sciences, astrology, Agama literature, poetics, linguistics, and philosophy.
Appa-kavi's Appakavīyamu is a work on grammar, and scholars Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman call him "perhaps the most influential grammarian in Telugu".
[1] In his introduction to Appakavīyamu, Appa-kavi narrates the following legend: when he was living in the Kamepalli village in the Palnadu region (probably in present-day Guntur district[4]), he had declared his intention to write a book.
That night, the god Vishnu appeared in his dream, and told him that the earlier poet Nannaya had composed a Sanskrit-language work on Telugu grammar, with help of Narayana-bhatta.
Tatana (Vellanki Tatam Bhattu who wrote Sulakshana-saramu) and Nutana-Dandi (Ketana) covered a little Telugu grammar, but their works were not comparable to that of Nannaya.
[1] A similar legend about Nannaya's purportedly lost work appears in Yelakuchi Bala-sarasvati's Bala-sarasvatiyamu, which Appa-kavi describes as the basis of his own commentary.
According to Appa-kavi, a man can free his generations from hell if he creates one of these seven things: a son, a water tank, a poem, an endowment, a temple, a grove, and a Brahmin settlement.