Raga Hamsanadam, 60 Neetimati janya
Aa: S R2 M2 P D3 N3 S Av: S N3 D3 P M2 R2 S
Taalam: Adi
Aa: S R2 M2 P D3 N3 S Av: S N3 D3 P M2 R2 S
Taalam: Adi
| Lyrics: Pallavi: baṇṭu rīti koluviyyavayya rāma Anupallavi: tuṇṭa-viṇṭivāni modalaina madādula koṭṭi nēla kūla jēyu nija Charanam: rōmāñcamane ghana kañcukamu rāma bhaktuḍane mudra biḷḷayu rāma nāmamane vara khaḍgamivi rājillunayya tyāgarājunikē | English verse: O Lord Rama, as an orderly sentry, Into your service, may I gain entry, For, so shall I strike and blow to pieces, Lust, arrogance and all of the six vices! With fine armor that leaves one tingling, 'His devotee', the seal on my signet ring, The power of your name, my sword transcendent, Thus may I serve you truly, always resplendent. |
Comments:
This is again a beloved kriti, that is mostly the reason that its raga has become known. Hamsanadam literally means 'call of a swan', or more figuratively, a 'swan song'. The six vices are lust, anger, greed, delusion, arrogance, and envy. In the lyrics, they are indicated as the vices 'beginning' from lust, as in the canonical order. Cf. Sangita Jnanamu, the previous kriti posted, where too, similar sentiments are expressed, but in the context of Nadopasana or worship through music. Here the context is 'Rama Bhakti' or devotion to Rama. There is some significance to the power of Rama's name or "Rama nama". Its mere utterance is said to be a 'taraka mantra' or 'life saving prayer' or 'liberating prayer' in itself, precluding the need for any other worship. Tyagaraja in particular, is said to have been formally initiated into chanting it daily, and is said to have done so millions of times in his life. 'His devotee' signifies 'Rama's devotee'- for Tyagaraja admitted no other deity to his most devoted worship.
Extra Comments:
"Signet ring" is used with some license for more literally an "identifying disc", which could be a badge, seal, standard or any royal token.
Lust is again figuratively mentioned in terms of the 'sugarcane bow' wielder or Kama. Cf: Heccharikaga ra ra, "green bow" wielder, incidentally, a favorable mention. In Telugu, there are a number of epithets for Kama that mention his bow.
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Nice. I'm not sure why, but over the lyrics "tunta-vintivAni" I see a bunch of boxes over the "u" "i" and "n" I see them also on other characters as well. Do I need to dload a special font to see them properly?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, thank you so much for this. I love Thyagaraja and am excited to see his works being translated in this way. To the best of my knowledge there is no other lyrical translation available on the internet. Thanks again.
- Krishna
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ReplyDeleteAlso, regarding the boxes you see: This is a rare problem. We don't use special fonts. The original lyrics with the diacritics use only the Georgia font. The character encoding is set to the Unicode encoding, UTF-8. On most browsers this shouldn't pose a problem. They will probably be configured for UTF-8 encoding or to "auto detect" the encoding on the web page. Most probably your browser isn't taking Unicode and is reading the page as some other encoding. If you reconfigure it to read Unicode encoding, and/or to accept the encoding in the page, you should be fine. If this still doesn't work, you can email me your browser settings and other computer details like operating system etc, and I will look into it.
Thanks!
LTB.
Thanks for the meaning. Please let me know if it is possible to get the meaning of individual words. For example, I know mudra means seal. But I don't know what bantu means.
ReplyDeleteAs you may see in the mission statement and introductory pages available from the left side bar, the verse translations generally maintain word order. That is, they are in general word-for-word, which is quite difficult to do considering this is poetry and Telugu and Sanskrit are very different from English.
ReplyDeleteSo, to get the word meanings, simply follow the English order. Here, the first line says, "O Lord Rama, as an orderly sentry". Ignoring the obvious phrase "Lord Rama", "orderly sentry" matches "bantu" in the Telugu lyrics. That's all. "Bantu" means an orderly or a servant; here, more precisely it means sentry as Tyagaraja wants to be Rama's dwara-palaka.
You can continue this process in all the lines and in all the songs. Very rarely only the word or line order is changed. In those cases too, it is obvious as to what has been differently ordered. When a different English word has to be used to keep the English poetry more appealing, such as using "Lust" in the Anupallavi for "Sugarcane Bow Wielder", it is always mentioned in the notes below, as is the case here.
So, if you read through the English verse side-by-side with the original, you will always find the word-for-word meanings too.