the polysemy of the prabandha – reading a premodern...

The Polysemy of the Prabandha – Readinga Premodern Musical Genre

Naresh Keerthi*

(Received 22 May 2015; revised 16 December 2015)

Abstract

The term prabandha simultaneously means very many things in the context of premodern Indianliterature and music. The prabandha as a musical meta-genre has occupied the attention of musicologistsfrom Mataga (8th c. AD?) to Vekaamakhin (16th c. AD). There is much variety in the number, descriptionand details of the various types of prabandha songs found in the musicological sources, and it is fortunatethat there are a few examples of prabandha-s available, even if they are from the late medieval period.Here, a specific sub-category – the Śrīraga Prabandha is considered, its genealogy through themusicological literature studied and also an example to understand the life trajectory of the concept of aprabandha is examined. By studying the structural, textual and musical content of the two songs, it istried to sketch the identity of the musical prabandha vis-à-vis its literary namesake, its literary sources,and its successors in the history of musical genres. Also, the essay explores the overlapping yet distinctspheres of production, reception and circulation of the musical and literary prabandha-s. The availableexamples are used to discuss the methodological issues of studying genres that straddle the categories ofthe literary and the performative.

Key words: Genre, Indian Classical Music, Musicology, Śriraga prabandha, Vekaamakhin.

*Research Fellow, National Institute of Advanced Studies, IISc Campus, Bangalore - 560 012, Email: [email protected] tribhir varair mahābhāga kadvaipāyana śubha |prabandha bhāratasy’ema cakāra bhagavān prabhu || Mahābhārata 1.2.236.11||

2 sarasvatī-datta-vara-prasādaś’cakre subandhu sujanai’ka-bandhu / pratyakara-ślea-maya-prabandha vinyāsa-vaidagdhya-nidhir nibandha // 13 //3 vāg-devatā-carita-citrita-citta-sadmā padmāvatī-caraa-cāraa-cakravartī /śrī-vāsudeva-rati-keli-kathā-sameta etam karoti jayadeva-kavi prabandha // 2//

1. INTRODUCTION

The category prabandha abides in manyworlds, and all those existences are linked by aWittgensteinian family likeness. In the domain ofSanskrit literature, it is an old chestnut, and textsranging from the Mahābhārata1 to Subandhu’sVāsavadatta2 to Jayadeva’s Gītagovinda3 identifythemselves as being prabandha-s. Thus it is clearthat the term has a very wide range ofsignifications even within the Sanskrit literaryuniverse. This section discusses the wide rangeof connotations of the term as well as the concept

of the prabandha. Tracing the history of the namealone will be a partial, not to say misleadingexercise, and the process will be complete only ifwe also trace the semantics of the other relationalpredicates of the term.

The Sagīta Ratnākara (4.6) lists vāstuand rūpaka as synonyms for the term prabandha– the former refers to it being a narrative form,with some importance accorded to the ‘textual’content (vastu = plot, content), and the latter namereminds us that it is a taxon distinguished by itsmereology and other structural features [rūpa(ka)

Indian Journal of History of Science, 51.1 (2016) 143-155 DOI: 10.16943/ijhs/2016/v51i1/48386

144 INDIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE

= form]. The Tamil term for musical composition– urup’pai encompasses uru – form, echoing/reiterating the onomasiological emphasis foundsin names like prabandha and nibandha (wellbound, well formed) and rūpaka (rūpa = form).In the Tamil literary canon, the pāiyal texts usethe term pirapantam (= prabandha) to describeliterary subgenres. It is said that there is thegreatest variety in the ‘minor’ literary genres(ciilakkiya-pirapantam), and that they flourishedfrom the 12th century onwards (Subramanian,1993, p. 249). Muilwijk discusses at length thedifferent reading of the literary category‘prabandham’ within the Tamil literaryscholarship. She concludes the following to beineluctable features of a text for it to beprabandham – it has to poetry, not prose; shouldhave stanzas connected by the narrative content,should be a text of belles lettres quality, and ismeant for consumption by such an (cognoscenti,literate elite) audience (Muilwijk 1996, pp.210-228).

In Telugu classical literature, the termprabandha is used to refer to the genre that roughlycorresponds to the ‘mahākāvya’ in Sanskrit andTamil, and the late Vijayanagara period isidentified as the ‘prabandha yuga’ or prabandhaage in Telugu literary histories. Erranna, one ofthe contributors to the Telugu Mahābhārata, hadthe title ‘Prabandha-parameśvara’ conferred onhim. Krishnaiah (2003) is of the view that theTelugu ‘prabandha’ is bound to be a poetic formwith the predominance of śgāra (the sensuoussentiment) and is characterized by an ornate(ālakārika) and elaborate descriptive style.

2. HISTORY OF PRABANDHA IN

MUSICOLOGICAL LITERATURE

Bharata doesn’t mention prabandha-s.However, he describes dhruvā songs that werealmost exclusively, only to be used as part of

theatric productions (Nāyaśāstra – Chapter 32).Mataga’s Bhaddeśi (henceforth BD) is asignificant source, since it is probably one of theearliest and most influential sources after Bharatathat took seriously the task of delineating as manyas 49 types of ‘deśi’ songs. This is a landmarkmoment since several indigenous and ‘minor’forms of song, dance and poetry now come to theattention of the lakaakāra; and others follow inMātaga’s footsteps.

The beginnings of a seriousethnomusicological attempt can be seen in the BDand the Abhilaitārtha-cintāmai (a.k.a.Mānasollāsa, henceforth AC), wherein the genresare not merely described and illustrated, butappended with pertinent details regarding the tune,tāla, language(s) as well as social contexts for thepresentation/ performance of these songs. Thisstage is consonant with Todorov’s description ofgenres’ relationship with the societies that produceand propagate them – ‘..Genres communicateindirectly with society through theirinstitutionalization. Genres are the meeting placebetween general poetics and event-based literaryhistory.4’ Thus we can ‘read’ the social spaces ofthe production, pedagogy and performance intothe very prabandha-s.

The 13th century Sagīta-Ratnākara ofŚārgadeva [The Ocean-treasure of Musical gems,henceforth SR] is a crucial text that brought muchclarity into our understanding of the parts and theclassification of the deśya prabandha-s. TheAbhilaitārtha-cintāmani (henceforth AC) alsoknown as the [Rāja] Mānasollāsa [Delighter ofthe Royal mind] is a 11th century encyclopaediaby the Kalyāna Cālukya king BhūlokamallaSomadeva, which has chapters on poetry, song,instrumental music and dance. The veryorganization of the gīta-vinoda and vādya-vinodachapter is instructive vis-à-vis the relation betweenmetres and musical forms.

4 Genres in Discourse, trans. Catherine Porter, pp. 19-20

THE POLYSEMY OF THE PRABANDHA – READING A PREMODERN MUSICAL GENRE 145

As Sathyanarayana notes, there is a seriouslacuna in the history of the extant classical genresof Indian music5 and any connections to theprabandha-s and other genres described in themusicological texts. Texts from as recent as the17th century (Tulaja and Shahaji) parrot sectionson genre from the SR, and fail to explain theprovenance of any of the more contemporarygenres. (Sathyanarayana, 2004, pp 163-164).

However it is possible to glean twocontinuities – one between the belles lettres metricpoetry and contemporaneous musical forms, andthe other between the archaic musical genresdescribed in texts such as the Mānasollāsa andthe current musical forms. Charting both theselineages is a desideratum for writing a history ofthe musico-dance modes and genres that haveprevailed in India.

2.1. The Prabandha Purua – Histology orAnatomy?

Just as the Purua sūkta discusses thecosmos as an anthropomorphized body, the SRdiscusses the aga-s [components/ limbs] of themusical-metric prabandha along the analogy of aperson and his limbs/parts. This is in keeping witha recurrent mereological trope in the Indian vidyā-s – see the Vāstu-purua of the śilpa andarchitecture texts6, and the Kāvyapurua invokedby Rājaśekhara7.

The SR makes a principled distinctionbetween gīta and prabandha. The former is givenas being of the gāndharva class of music, and thelatter belongs to gāna. The SR’s description ofprabandha gives us the impression that at thisstage, ‘prabandha’ refers to the composition –marked by distinct segments – the aga-s, and

each of these has some or all of a set of elementstermed dhātu-s. The signal contribution of the SRis in bringing clarity vis-à-vis the nature of thedhātu-s and aga-s, as well as their variouspermutations in each particular prabandhasubcategory (Ramanathan, 1999).

Śāgadeva may have got the idea of thedhātu-s and agas from the ontological domainof Āyurveda. He discusses the aga-s and dhātu-s in a rare poetic moment as follows –

agāni a tasya8 svaraś’ca birudampada||12||

tenaka pāa-tālau ca prabandha-puruasya te |

bhavanty’agavad’agāni magalā’-rtha’prakāśake || 13||

tatra tena-pade netre sta pāa-birudekarau |

karābhyām’udbhavāt kāryekāraatvo’pacārata || 14||

“It (the Prabandha) has six aga-s (parts/components) - svara, biruda, pada, tena,pāa, tāla(12). The tena and the pāa –tāla combination constitute the parts ofthe prabandha-purua [the song-person],like shapely limbs add beauty to aperson’s body (13). The tena-padacombinations are like its eyes - conferringcharm and auspiciousness, and the pāa-biruda combinations are its arms. Thepāa-biruda aspects are designated as theprabandha-person’s arms by synecdoche[a conflation of the effect and theinstrumental cause], since they areproduced by actions of the hands.”

2.1.2. The Prabandha in 17th Century Tanjore

Rājacūāmai Dīkita (17th Century AD)in the prastāvana of his ‘Ānanda-rāghava-nāaka’

5 Forms such as the vara, svarajati, pada, kti, kīrtana, jāvali and tillana in South Indian Classical music; and the khyāl, dhrupad,appa, humri, tarānā and dādra in North Indian music.

6 Varāhamihira’s Bhatsahitā Chapter 53; Ajitāgama VIII.1-4 quoted in Kalātattvakośa Vol 1 p. 45.7 Kavirahasya Chapter 3 Kāvyapuruotpatti.8 This faulty verse can be emended to read agāny’amūni a tasya, or agāny’etāni a tasya; or agāni a syur’etasya, without

distorting the meaning. An examination of the original manuscript sources will help to clinch one of these as the suitable reading.


calls his patron Raghunātha Nāyaka as the‘Prabandha-Parameśvara’9. Given thatRaghunātha was a musicologist as well as poet;this epithet, deliberately or unconsciously givesus a pun that reflects the many registers/significations of the prabandha.

Raghunātha is important for ourconsideration, since he was the patron ofVekaamakhin, who produced the Catur’dai-prakāśikā [henceforth CDP] as well as theŚriraga prabandha that we take up for study inthis essay. S. Seetha notes that there as several‘caturdai pieces’ with svara notation availablein the Sarasvati Mahal Manuscript library, andopines that these were produced in the court ofRaghunātha Nāyaka, possibly by the Nāyakahimself (Seetha, 1981/2001).

2.2. The Difference between Gīta and Prabandha

In the Prabandha-prakaraam (Chapter 8)Vekaamakhin gives the sparse differencebetween the gīta and the prabandha. He pointsout how, while both refer to musical etudes orcompositional forms, by a semantic convention(rūhi), the sālaga-sūa type of prabandha aloneis called gīta(ka). This is a long way from the SR’sseparation of gīta and prabandha into thegāndharva and gāna modes of divine andmundane music. Structurally there appears to bea certain consistency in the segments of aprabandha composition. From the 10th century ACto the CDP (c 17th AD), the gīta and prabandhaare seen to have the same khaa-s – the udgrāha,melāpaka, ābhoga and a refrain termed dhruva10.

By Vekaamakhin’s time, the differencebetween the prabandha and the gīta seems to befast vanishing. More importantly both the gītasand the prabandha-s must have become obsolete,as the forms such as the svarajati-vara and kti-kīrtana-pada gained currency. The

rāgakadambaka and tālārava were absorbed andincorporated into the rāgamālika and tālamālikaforms. The svarā(r)tha/ svarāka remained as amarginal curiosity feature, only to be recast intothe pada or vara formats. The rare, sparseexamples of the Umātilaka, Kaivāa and Śrīragaprabandha-s that are purportedly of the sameprovenance as Vekamamakhin’s CDP, seem tobe pedantic, conscious attempts to reconstruct orresuscitate these genres, rather than illustrationsof a practiced, much performed, flourishingrepertoire. It is noteworthy that these examplesoften do not conform to the lakaa (grammar)elucidated for the subgenre in Vekaamakhin’sown treatise.

2.3. Examining the Śrīraga Prabandha

From our inspection of the names ofprabandha-s, as found in several texts, we can seehow there is an overlap of the set of prabandha-swith the vttas [metrical forms], and with thenames of deśi tālas. The continuity of theindigenous genre of prabandha over the dramatic,musical and literary sub-genres is only reiteratedby these observations.

Thus it becomes the unenviable, yetinescapable task of a musicologist interested instudying the prabandha-s, to see them in light ofthe allied and contiguous domains – the domainof tāla and chandas. An admirable beginning hasbeen made by R. Sathyanarayana (1995) in hisdiscussion of the ela prabandha-s enumerated inthe BD, wherein he conducts a prosopography thevarious prosodic forms (vtta-s) in relation to theela prabandha-s that they constitute. However,much remains to be done, in tracing the emergenceof the musical kti-kirtana pada and other genres,from a stage that was dominated by moric poetry– be it of the tight-knit akara vtta-s that camefrom Sanskrit or the more fluid mātra chanda-sfrom the Prakt-s and the Apabhrasa-s.

9 For the Telugu poet Erranna’s identical title, see introduction section10 Though, in the sālaga-sūa type of composition, a unit termed antarā takes up the role of the earlier melāpaka.


3. THE SRīRAN.GA PRABANDHA IN

THEORY AND PRACTICE

The AC of Somadeva (also Someśvara),which has a chapter on poetry, music and dancemakes a distinction between the prabandha andthe gīta, listing both as separate genres, albeit inthe same chapter, and one after the other. Howeverit appears that by the time of the Caturdaiprakāśikā [A Beacon to the four pillared pavilion(of music), 17th century AD], the distinction meantlittle, and the CDP has a half-hearted account ofgīta and prabandha as being distinct forms.Vekaamakhin even goes so far as to say that theonly reason he describes gīta and prabandha asdistinct, is to save face on Gopāla Nāyaka’s behalf(CDP 9.2-9.5). This appears like a step to retainthe balance and symmetry of the older four-pillared principle of music (which would becomea tripod if he conflated gīta and prabandha).

3.1. A Biography of the Śrīraga Prabandha

As we saw in the previous section, theprabandha-s are inextricably and organicallyconnected to the worlds of tāla (rhythm) andchandas (metric prosody). And the connection ismore than a set of shared names. Our investigationin the trail of the Śrīraga Prabandha will have tobe a prosopography of this family of Śrīraga-s –the eponymous deśi tāla, the normativedescriptions of the Śrīraga Prabandha fromdifferent lakaa texts, and the song(s) given asan example of this genre.

The Bhaddeśi with its elaborate, ifobscure account of the many deśya prabandha-s,doesn’t mention the Śrīraga Prabandha. It isprobably first mentioned in Cālukya Someśvara’s

AC as one of a quintet of prabandha-s, whoselakaa-s are described in terms of each other.Jagadekamalla’s text mentions it in theprabandha-prakaraam, but no details areforthcoming in the version of the text available tous11.

The 13th century SR of Śārgadevaborrows extensively from the BD and the AC,redacting and collimating material from these texts(more often than not) with discernment and tact.Śārgadeva is also honest enough to mentionSomeśvara and Jagadekamalla among hissources12. The SR introduces, probably for the firsttime a division of prabandha-s into the sūa, āliand viprakīra types, with śuddha and chāyālagavariants of the sūa. This is an elaboration andimprovement on the classification found inSomeśvara’s AC.

3.1.1. Śrīraga as a Tāla

The first mention of the Śrīraga in the SRis not as a type of viprakīra prabandha, but as adeśi tala13. Raghunātha Nāyaka (17th century AD)in his Vālmiki Caritra, gives some technical detailspertaining to dance, while describing thecompetition between Ūrvaśi and Rambhā. TheŚrīraga tāla features in a list of tālas that Śrvaśidanced to (Seeta, 1981/2001). Here it may bepertinent to mention that Śrīraga is mentionedas a type of tāla [#19, scheme ||S|S] mentioned byVekaasundarasāni as being used for the tāla-rūpaka kvāa14 [It is puzzling to note that there isa significant overlap between the list of names ofdeśya tālas (rhythmic beat cycles), vtta-s (poeticmetres) and prabandha-s (musico-dancecompositions). While in some cases, the

11 śrīrango gaditas’tasmād’ umātilaka-namaka |syāc’chrīvilasa-śarabhalīlo’nyas’simhalīlaka ||32 || GOS edition pp. 5 ||

12 ‘parāmardī ca someśo jagadekamahīpati’ || Sr 1.1.18 ||13 raga śrīraga-caccaryau pratyago yati-lagnaka |

gajalīlo hamsalīlo varabhinnas’ tribhinnaka ||241 ||Sagita Ratnākara volume III, 5.239-254, Adyar Library series (1951/1981)

14 R. Sathyanarayana, Nartana-Niraya Vol III pp 310. 1996


connections are apparent [eg toaka prabandhaand āryā/ kanda prabandha-s use as part of themātu (lyric) a verse set in those respective metres– toaka and āryā in AC], the connections aren’tas readily available in other cases. The connectionbetween Śrīraga the prabandha, prescribed tohave four sections each with a different tāla, andŚrīraga which is a deśya tāla, is matter for furtherinvestigation.

3.2. Śrīraga as a type of (viprakīra) Prabandha

Now we move on to the discussion ofŚrīraga as a genre of prabandha in the variousmusicological texts. The first text taken here isthe SR. It lists the Śrīraga as the first of the 36viprakīra prabandha-s and gives its lakaa asfollows –

tato’nye viprakīrāns’tān prasiddhānkaticid bruve |

śrīrago śrīvilāsaś’ca syād15’pancabh-agir’ata param || 28||

tālair rāgaiścaturbhis’syāt śrīrango’ntepadānvita || 4th Prakaraa ||

The Svara-mela-kalānidhi(SMK) ofRāmāmātya (1550 AD) mentions the Śrīragaprabandha in its list of 32 sūa prabandha-s,along with ela, svarāka and śrīvilāsa in theintroductory chapter [upodghāta-prakaraam1.20-22,]. Rāmāmātya is believed to be thegrandson of Kallinātha – an authoritativecommentator on the SR, and mostly derives hismaterial from the SR. Since the prabandha-prakaraa of the SMK is missing, the lakaa ofthe Śrīraga Prabandha is unavailable. Howeverthe mention is noteworthy.

The next text we consider is the Nartana-Niraya (NN) [The last word on Dance] a textwritten in the 1570s, by Paarīka Vihala, whoclaims to have been in Akbar’s court. We knowfor certain that Paarīka Vihala was familiarwith forms such as the dhrupad. He also notes the

presence of a segment (dhātu) called the antarā,found between the dhruva and the ābhoga. Thisis an element that has persisted in modern/ latermusical forms such as the khyal bandish, and isnoticeable in Ibrahim Adil Shah’s dhrupadcompositions in the Kitāb-i-Nauras. (Ahmed,1956)

The NN lists the quintet comprising of theŚrīraga, Śrīvilāsa, Pañcabhagi, Pañcānana andthe Umātilaka –

tālair’rāgair’caturbhiś’ca dalair’antepadānvita|

śrīrago medinīvānś’ca śeas’syātrāgapuñjavat|| 3.2.189 ||

‘With four segments (petals), each in adifferent rāga and tāla; the Śrīraga is amedinī type prabandha, with the padaelement in the last section. The rest of itsfeatures are like the rāgakadamba.’

Clearly, the verse is paraphrase of the SRdefinition of the Śrīraga prabandha. We will nextlook at how Vekaamakhin [c17th AD] hasdescribed the Śrīraga prabandha. It is mostapposite to consider his treatment, since we alsohave an illustration of the Śrīraga-prabandha,attributed to him; given with musical notation inthe SSP of Subbarāma Dīkita (1904).

3.3. Vekamamakhin’s account of the Śrīragaprabandha

The lakaa of the Śrīraga prabandha isas follows –

śrīragasya prabandhasya catasrakhaikāh smtā |

pratikhaikam’ekaiko rāgas’tālaś’cavāñchita || 71 ||

pratikhaikam’apy’ante prayojyamniyamat’padam|tad’anyāni svarādīni pañcāgany’aicchika-kramāt || 72 ||

prayojyānyatra cādyārdha pratikha-ikam’asti yat |

15After Shringy and Sharma, 1978. Verse is metrically faulty, syād can be dropped


sa udgrāho dvitīyārdham dhruva ityeaniraya ||73 ||

na sto melāpakā’bhogāv’ ābhogavirahe’pi ca |

turīyāyā khaikāyā ante nāmakanampadai || 74 ||

gāt-net-prabandhanām kāryam tenadvidhātuka |

prabandho’yam bhavecchandastālā–dyaniyamena ca || 75 ||

nibaddhatvād’aniryukta iti śrīragalakaa | 76a ||

‘(The Śrīraga prabandha) is known tohave four segments (khaikā-s). Each ofthese segments is to have a distinct rāgaand tāla ||71|| At the end of each khaikā,it should surely have the pada (lyric/text).The other 5 aga-s (such as svara)may be present or not, it is left to one’swill|| 72|| The first khaikā is designatedthe udgrāha, and its latter half is termedthe dhruva || 73|| The melāpaka andābhoga, or just the ābhoga can be left out,if desired. However the fourth khaikāmust be signed with the names of….||74||The singer/poet, the patron/deity andthe genre. The song should have sectionswith two distinct tunes (?), and isclassified as aniryukta, since it is framedby the constraints of rhythm (tāla) andmetre (chandas). These are the featuresof the Śrīraga prabandha. || 75 & 76a||

3.4. The Textual Trail of the Śrīraga Prabandha

As we saw in section 2, the prabandha hasa range of connotations - literary genre, musicalcomposition for vocal, instrumental and danceperformance. Thus it straddles and toggles acrossthe categories of genre and the Aristotelianperformative ‘mode’. This polysemy of theprabandha is magnified in the case of the Śrīragaprabandha – the researcher is compelled toinvestigate the relation between Śrīraga as a deśitāla, as a ‘genre’ described variously in the lakaa

texts, and the available exemplars. Thedescriptions from the musicological texts appearto be in consonance; and the AC definition,expanded in the SR is paraphrased in allsubsequent grammars.

Having seen the treatment of the genre athand by the musicologists across half amillennium, we can now study the lakyaexamples, and examine their relation to thedescription in the lakaa treatises.

4. THE LAKS. YA EXAMPLES OF THE

SƒRI–RAN.GA PRABANDHA

Here we take up an example of theŚrīraga prabandha attributed to Vekaamakhin,but in all likelihood composed by Muddu-Vekaamakhin. The exemplar is taken from theSagīta Sampradāya Pradarśini of SubbarāmaDīkita (1904). It is given with notation set in theraga Baulī, and Eka tāla (pp 253-254).

4.1. The Mereology of the Song

The composition is not seen to have 4sections each with different rāga-s and tāla-s, asis warranted by the lakaa texts. Instead it has2(?) sections, all in the same raga – Baulī, and inone tāla - Eka . The composition is howeverconforming to the rule of being a medinī jātiprabandha, since it has all the 6 aga-s (features)- svara, pada, tāla, biruda, pāa, and tenaka.

4.2. The Text of the Song

The song, in all likeliness, is in therecondite ‘Bhāīra Bhāā’16 (Sathyanarayana,2004). Little is known about this language, whichmust be a late apabhrasa, almost exclusivelyused for producing songs. It is claimed that theSarasvati Mahal Library has a grammar ofBhāīra, authored by a certain Ka Kavi17. Theonly defence for the use of this Bhāīra in the

16 Songs in many languages were sung in various regions – Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Lata, Prakrt, Sanskrit etc. A special sonorouslanguage was evolved for composing songs (bhandirabhasa) – R.Sathyanarayana in ‘Karnatic Music as Aesthetic form’ (2004)p164


Fig. 1. The notation of the Śrīraga prabandha in Baulī rāga, from SSP (1904)


songs of Vekaamakhin, is probably that it wasuniformly (un)intelligible to the different peoplesthat inhabited Tanjāvūr at the time of itscomposition and performance, and hence didn’tprivilege any one community in the audience.

The remoteness of the language may alsohave conferred/ invested a special stature on thesongs, making it difficult for subsequentperformers to tamper with the textual content. Asimilar phenomenon may be seen in the case ofmagico-ritual incantations in the Vedic, Buddhistand other cultures, wherein seeming unintelligiblestrings of words garner (spi)ritual significance asmatter for recitation or contemplation. Anygrammatical solecisms or unidiomatic expressionsadd to the mystique and ‘archaic’ nature of thetext – it transcends any mundane prescriptions ofgrammar and style, and the ambiguity underscoresthe ineffability of the divine that is beingdescribed, and how it eluded description in meremortal language [Bronkhorst, 2001].

The emphasis in such situations is almostalways on the correct reception/ initiation into thechant, and the right enunciation/ performance ofthe chant in a suitable state of mind. The‘Bhāīra’ employed in this and other songsattributed to VM, amply satisfies such conditions.While it is claimed that Purandaradāsa and otherharidāsa-s composed in Bhāīra, the statementremains unsubstantiated. The so called Bhāīrais difficult to study and understand, for want ofenough illustrations.

H. Tieken (2008) discusses how thelinguistic register of musical examples fromSanskrit Kāvya literature was distinct from eventhe recognized Prākrits – Śauraseni and Mahārari(that were used for prose and poetry/songsrespectively). He suggests that a new Prākrit wasfashioned out of the material of popular songs ofthe time. The emergence of this Bhāīra bhāāfound in the gītas and prabandha-s of

Vekaamakhin and his successors is very likelya recapitulation of the same phenomenon;produced at the intersections of the highlymultilingual Tanjavūr court and street. Hence wecan treat it is a late, ‘artificial’ apabhramśa.

4.2.1. Liberation by Libretto

The text of the song is given below –| uddhata-ripu-jana-viddha-(t)tapana-paddhati re re! |

prapañca-sūtra-dhara ! giridhīra ||

| pavana(t)-tanubhava- kandhara-bandhura-sandharu re re! || etc..

The first khaikā of the song isn’t fullycomprehensible, and has disjointed phrases andvocatives in praise of Viu. The terminalgemminations such as viddhat-tapana in this‘Bhāīra’ song betray a strong Tamil influence.It is interesting to compare the first line of theprabandha with the following āryā-gīti (kanda)verse from the Telugu poet Bhaumūrti’smahākāvya Vasucaritramu –

uddhata-ripu-viddha tapana

paddhati kari-bhavanad-avani-paad’ambudhi sam-

pad’dharaa samuddharaa sa-

middha’raa-rajó vrajódyad-ibha-mada-stikin || Vasucaritramu 1.89 ||

Bhaumūrti, also known as Rāmarāja-bhūauu, lived in the 15th century and was animportant poet of the Vijayanagara court. HisVasu-caritramu is one of the pañca-mahākāvyasof Telugu, and is noted for its layers of meaningsand profuse use of literary conceits such as śléa(pun) and yamaka (alliteration). The verse is aayanta panegyric in praise of a king -

“His foes pierced the sun’s orb, as theyfared their way to the heaven of heroes.(The heat of his valour) dried up theocean-garment of Dame Earth, which hereplaced with the resplendent robes that

17 http://thanjavur.nic.in/sml/library/Departments/Manuscripts/manuscripts.html last accessed on 1st July 2015


are the clouds of dust raised in the battlefield and the ichor streaming from thebattle- elephants.”

It is clear on inspection that the first half-couplet of Bhaumūrti is the source forVekaamakhin’s udgrāha. We know fromSubbārama’s Dīkita’s (1904) autobiographicalnote that the Vasucaritram was an important partof a classical education in his time, and Dīkitahimself was trained in the Manucaritram andVasucaritram. Dīkita quotes another passagefrom the Vasucaritram, while discussing the rāga-lakaa of the rāga Vasanta. Hence, it appearsthat Bhaumūrti’s status as a ‘Sagīta-rahasya-vidyā-nidhi’ was taken quite seriously, and hisverse with an oblique reference to the rāga, whilepunning on the spring season (vasanta) is takenas episteme for defining the raga18.

However popular be the Vasucaritram, aTelugu mahākāvya is likely to have had limitedcirculation in 17th-18th century Tañjāvūr – amongthe literary-literate elite in courts, colleges andsalons. This recycling/recasting of a hemistichfrom a mahākāvya into a musical genre marks ananimation and expansion of the reach of the verse.A new textuality emerges - text as lyric,inseparable from its musical setting, with greaterlicense and possibilities for performance andinterpretation in a musico-dance setting.

Further research is bound to show up manymore patterns of intertextual overlaps across poeticand performative genres. For instance, the 10th

century Kannada poet Ranna borrows artisticmaterial liberally from the Sanskrit poets Bhāsaand Bhaa Nārāyaa, and most blatantly from hispredecessor in the Kannada poetic traditionPampa. Coming to the musical genres,Kanakadāsa’s poems have many resonances withthe didactic epigrams of Sarvajña, and theinspiration that Tyāgarāja drew from Kétrayya(Rao, 1981) or the influence of Upaniad

Brahmendra Yogin on Muttusvāmi Dīkita(Raghavan, 2007) can’t be dismissed ascoincidences.

4.3.1. Describing the Patron, Inscribing the Poet

The Śrīraga prabandha has severalsignatures – all warranted by the prescriptivegrammar of the genre, and some a product of thecomposer’s creative strategies19. It gives thecomposer’s names, along with his father’s, thatof the subject of the song (in this case the deityRaganātha) as well as the sub-genre of the songi.e ‘Śrīraga prabandha’.

The practice of poets using one or the otherkind of signature is not unknown - Kālidāsa andVātsyāyana speak of songs that encrypt a lover’sname in the lyric. Tieken (2010) identifies thebhaitā-s in the dhruva songs ofJagatprakāśamalla’s play (17th century) asemanating from an earlier practice enshrined inthe songs such as the caryā-gīti-s of Bengal,Vidyāpati’s Maithili padāvali songs andJayadeva’s Gītagovinda. He sees a continuity ofthis practice in the dhruvā/daru songs found inTamil plays from the last two centuries. He rightlynotes that the bhaitā type signatory [self-identificatory] verse or stanza is found in the TamilŚaiva and Vaiava devotional literature from the8-9th centuries .

However, this practice of inscribingoneself into the song is not merely the poet-vāggeyakāra’s stake on authorship. Nor is thepoet’s assertion of her authorship reified merelythrough embedding their name or a standard nom-de plume.

The various types of signatures describedby Sambamoorthy (1966), all have examples inthe Indian musical and kāvya compositions of thelast millennium. The vīraśaiva poets were knownto compose in a ‘subversive’ genre that discarded/

18‘arigā pañcamamévagiñci’ and vasantamu mahāsampūra-bhāvónnatin , Sagīta Sampradāya Pradarśini (1904) pp 349].19‘nāmākana padaih || gāt-net-prabandhānā etc. - CDP 9.74-75


eschewed all shackles of moraic poetry,deliberately flouting any use of the ādiprāsaalliteration, so essential to all Dravidian classicalpoetry. Nonetheless, they persisted in the use ofthe ‘akita’ signature, and these becameincreasingly important elements of establishingprovenance and ‘authenticity’ of the vacana songsas they were getting integrated and organized intoa canonical corpus for the vīraśaiva movement.

Many of the vacana poets used a devatā-mudrā, i.e. the name of the deity as a signature.We see the same practice in the 15th century telugupoet Annamācārya, who used the name of his ia-daiva [favourite deity] Vekaéśvara as his mudrā[signature] in his songs; and Aruagirinātha whodedicated all his songs to Muruga, whom headdresses (curiously) as ‘Perumāle!’. This practicewas consolidated by the Haridāsa poets singingin Kannada, and the other major musician-poetsof the South Indian tradition, such as Kétrayya,Sāragapāi and Tyāgarāja who composed inTelugu, and Muttusvāmi Dīkita and Svāti Tirunalwho composed in Sanskrit.

There are examples of songs which use amortal patron’s name as the signature, as in thecompositions of the 18th century musiciansPonnayya and Cinnaya, that refer to various rulersof Tanjore, Mysore, and Travancore. Thisshouldn’t be read as simple courtly dedication orritual sycophancy. The ostensible reference to adeity or a king, often serves to underscore andconsolidate the poet’s identity, much as thetakkhallus did in the case of the 10th century qasidaor ghazal (Sharma, 2002, pp.102-104).

Thus, there is a gamut of rhetorical devicesavailable to the vāggeyakāra, to inscribe herselfinto the song, besides using a bhaitā stanza, orexplicitly invoking his name, which could beperceived as an immodest act, inviting effacement.The Śrīraga prabandha is a rare example ofseveral types of signatory elements converging ina single song, flagging different aspects of the

literary-performative culture that produced thesong.

5. CONCLUSIONS

Our study of the Śrīraga prabandha is asingle instance of the possibilities of genrecriticism and the study of the literary andperformative compositional types of premodernIndia. As we noticed, there is a complicatedrelationship between the normative rulesformulated by the grammarian-musicologist(lākaika) and the songs that are produced andperformed (lakya), even in this case where themusicologist and composer are the same person.

This examination of the divergencebetween the emic and etic material can beexpanded further, say to study the otherprabandha-s and ‘caturdai’ compositions thatare available. A simplistic conclusion based on thedifference would be that the song and the CDPweren’t composed by the same author. A differentexplanation is that Vekaamakhin wassubscribing to different prescriptive traditions forthe formulation of his musicological treatise(lakaa grantha) and for the composition of hisprabandha and gīta songs.

We see a similar tension and dissonancein the writing of Subbarāma Dīkita, whoseanxieties towards being fidelious toVekaamakhin’s lakaa tradition, while alsorepresenting the performed realities of rāgaidentities that were extant in his time, are apparentin his Pradarśini. This anxiety of scholars toreconcile the insights of their intellectual lineageand its textual tradition, with the contemporaryexpression and articulation in the practice of anart or discipline, is a recurrent leitmotif in theprescriptive literature, and is well exemplified bythe case study of the Śrīraga prabandha. Thereis scope to extend this investigation to the otherexample of Śrīraga prabandha found in the samesource i.e. Subbarāma Dīkita, and also to expand


the story to other compositions such as theUmātilaka, Kaivāa and such prabandha-s.

Looking at the many avatāra-s of theŚrīraga – tāla name, prabandha type, and theactual songs; all of which have very little to dowith one another, we can conclude that these areheterologous entities that merely share a signifier.It would be a strained exercise, misleading even,to try and stitch a continuity or homology betweenthe śāstric, etic accounts and the 17th and 18th

century compositions. This dissonance betweenthe theoretical injunction and practical example,ostensibly from the same source, also points to animportant methodological caveat for the historian.

Magalam

In our mapping of the genealogy of thegeneric prabandha, and the Śrīraga species ofthat genre, we are reminded of the variousdisciplines one has to draw on, to study genresthat are constantly straddling multiple forms ofpresentation and articulation. This act of plottingout the cognitive polysemiosis of the genre iscrucial for writing an intellectual history of thegenre and the literature it constitutes. A closereading of the lyrical content and thedevelopmental history of the songs holds thepossibilities of being a potential tool to map theoverlapping circuits of music, dance, poetry,literature, ritual and kingship.

Musical compositions and genres havehitherto been the exclusive preserve of thetraditional musicologist, but by reading them ashistorical-cultural artifacts, they are amenable forvery different analyses. The picture that emergesfrom the current study is a set of genres that aresimultaneously textual and performative – theytook material from the confines of codices andmanuscripts and animated them, by releasing theminto the performative domain, where it is muchmore multisemiotic, and was accessible to a muchmore diverse audience, as compared to when thesame content was present as high literature.

The musical verses of the Śaiva tevaramcorpus, the songs of the Vaiava prabandhaanthologies; and a good 500 years later, the songsof Aruagirinātha and Kétrayya; all have a coupleof things in common – they all had a music setting;they were almost never recited in a śuka-karkaśa(dry, harsh) monotone; and they all have varioussignatory elements in them. Except Kétrayya, allthe others have a strong near-compulsory senseof marking and naming the geographical locus ofthe shrine or deity they praise. All their songs aremarked by a nom-de-plume that identifies the poet-singer and the human or divine patron beingpraised. Sāragapāi (17th century AD) has apadam exclusively devoted to place names,including some places quite far from his domicile,and Shahaji’s opera – the Devendra kuravañji hasa well-travelled gypsy woman describingimportant cities from six continents. These songsare now markers of sacred, or otherwise culturallysignificant geographies.

Prabandha-s need to be studied as such –at the bustling, noisy intersection of these materialand these fields. There is more literary and culturalhistory revealed in their spilling over genericboundaries than there is in their (rare) stayingwithin the boundaries of genres.

Further, the continuity between thesvarā(r)tha prabandha described by Someśvara(and others) and the svarākara compositions ofRāmasvāmi Dīkita and Sāragapāi is yet anothertype of example that needs to be explored. Theseare exercises of musico-literary gymnastics similarto the palindromic and other carmina figurata typecitra-kāvya that was a frequent concomitant ofIndic courtly culture. Similarly the pedda varnamof Karveinagaram Govindasāmayya, whichutilized a suite of Telugu verses set in deśya metresfor its ettugaa svaras represents an importantpoint in this cline between metre-bound verse andrhythm-bound lyric. These merit a fullerexposition and will be discussed elsewhere.


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