Pariyaachakama maata

Raga Vanaspati , Mela 4
Aa: S R1 G1 M1 P D2 N2 S Av: S N2 D2 P M1 G1 R1 S
Taalam: Rupakam

Lyrics: Pallavi: pariyācakamā māṭa? padigurilō pogaḍinadi Anupallavi: verapuna nanu mānambuna vesanambuna nē kōri śaraṇāgata rakṣaka! ninnu santatamunu śaraṇanaga  Charanam: oka munikai draupadi dvārakā nilayā! śaraṇanaga oka māṭaku vibhīṣaṇuḍu ōrva lēka śaraṇanaga sakalēśvara! prahlādu  jālicē śaraṇanaga hitakaruṇḍai brōcitivē tyāgarājuni māṭa

English verse: Do I seem the droll of the shire, As I sing of You at the town square? Refuge of All! In pain, fear and doubt, I ever seek refuge at Your redoubt! Has not Your Hand from afar, reached, The queen, as before the sage, she winced? When upon a single taunt, Brother fled brother's haunt, And when a prince cried out in grief, Did You not take them to Your fief? And yet, O Lord of all,  Are my words alone, Mocked and left alone?

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Comments:

Incidents from  the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Bhagavatam are serially referred to here. 

Queen ... sage: When the Pandavas were exiled to the forest, Duryodhana and his cronies bade the irascible sage Durvasa, an incarnation of Shiva, to visit them at their hermitage. The sage was known for his ready curse and ravenous appetite. Duryodhana contrived that the sage would arrive with his retinue at the hermitage after the Pandavas had had their meal of the day, and there was no food left. Durvasa was expected to run into a rage and wreak great curses upon the Pandavas. Draupadi, upon the sage's arrival, prayed to Krishna who was at the time, across the country, in Dwaraka. Krishna, with His divine powers, came to her aid and forestalled the sage.

Brother fled brother's haunt: Vibheeshana, the youngest brother of Ravana, counseled him to turn over Sita to Rama and seek his refuge. In response to Ravana's anger at this counsel, Vibheeshana defected to Rama's side and was crowned the king of Lanka after the war.

Prince cried out: Prahalada, though the son of an evil demon, somehow grew up to be a devotee of Vishnu and after repeated attempts on his life, by his father, the terrible Hiryanakashipu, who was protected by a boon from Brahma that made him all but immortal, was saved by Vishnu, in his most terrifying incarnation, as the Narasimha or man-lion. The incarnations of Vishnu are detailed in the Bhagavatam, where details not in the Ramayana or Mahabharata, may be found. Tyagaraja alluded to Prahalada several times, as he is a symbol of the "Bhakti marga" or the path of personal devotion, that is considered accessible to all, irrespective of birth and creed. Prahalada, though an Asura or demon, was expressly saved by Vishnu. This is in fact, the only case in Hindu mythology, when a major incarnation interceded solely to deliver an Asura. Tyagaraja, of course, composed the Prahalada Bhakti Vijayam, an entire cycle of songs about the Prahalada events.

Vanaspati is one of the seventy two  melakarta or foundational ragas, and one of the forty that includes vivadi swaras or dissonant notes including R3, G1, D3 and N1, in the notation scheme we use. There is some controversy between certain quarters about whether such ragas should be used in the Carnatic system or not. In reality, it reflects the development of the theory of Carnatic music over time, rather than whether these ragas can produce elaborate, consistent and pleasant melodies or not, into which debate the controversy somehow turned.

The regular reader might find that the verse translations are far too frequently in couplets. This could indeed get tiresome. The sole reason for the frequency of couplets is that, while generally preserving word and sentential order in the original, I also try to match Tyagaraja's flow. Due to his particular, music composition style, Tyagaraja's lyrics, when rendered into readable English, just naturally fall into couplets. I have my own style of writing poetry, as would anyone, but it is quite clear that anyone else writing a verse translation that tries to match the flow of the original, would also use couplets.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY: Here is a piece from Philip Massinger's 1624 play, The Bondman, which quite succinctly captures both the idea behind the path of Bhakti Yoga or Marga, and Prahalada's own ascent. As might be expected from a Renaissance playwright, the original thought is from Horace. But, it has been handled more directly and so, effectively, by Massinger here. The Sabaeans of Horace's time, were a people from the south of the Arabian peninsula, who had become wealthy from trading in fragrances, particularly frankincense and myrrh, which was indigenous to the area.

                                 The immortal gods
  Accept the meanest altars, that are raised
  By pure devotion; and sometimes prefer
  An ounce of frankincense, honey, or milk,
  Before whole hecatombs, or Sabaean gems,
  Offered in ostentation.

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Kannan piranthaan and art songs

Lyrics: kaṇṇaṉ pirandāṉ engaḻ kaṇṇaṉ pirandāṉ inda kāṟṟathai eṭṭu disaiyilum kūṟiḍum tiṇṇamuḍayāṉ maṇi vaṇṇamuḍayāṉ uyar devar talaivaṉ puvimisai thōṉṟiḍa paṇṇai isaippīr neñjil puṇṇai oḻippīr inda pāriṉile tuyar nīṅgiḍum enṟidai eṇṇisai koḻvīr naṉgu kaṇṇai viḻippīr ini ēdum kuṟaivillai vedam tuṇai unḍu sankaran vandān iṅgu maṅgalam enrāṉ nalla candiraṉ vandiṅgu amudai poḻindanaṉ baṅgam onṟillai moḻi maṅguvadillai inda pārin kaṇmunbu vānattile niṉṟu gaṅgaiyum vandāḻ kalai maṅgayum vandāḻ inba ādiparāsakti anbudaṉ yendinaḻ sengamalattāḻ engil poṅgum mugattāḻ tirudēviyum vandiṅgu siṟappuḍan niṉṟaṉaḻ

English verse: The Lord's come, our Lord's come, Far and wide proclaims the wind, Firm as ever, the Blue Hued's come Has the Lord of the gods, says the wind. Sing and heal the pain in your heart, That, the grief of the world, shall begone; Fixed on Him, awaken, for your part, The Word's with us for all wants are gone. Shiva blessed us with good tiding, With the nectar of moonlight exceeding; No blemish, no wane of the tongue, Upon the sky, in the world's eye, sung. The Ganges and Speech, were beheld As Power, with love, the Babe, had held. The red lotus, Her face shames, As Wealth attends His myriad games.

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Comments:
We cannot well appreciate art or music without a study of contrasts. We have throughout seen songs in the kriti form and reckoned them as poetry. Here we go the other way. We have a song by the poet patriot Subrahmanya Bharathi, on the birth of Krishna. This song is what one would call an "art song". It was first written as a poem and was then set to music for a solo singer or a small chorus. In common music genre parlance, it would fall in the classical easy listening and classical categories. In common performances, it is orchestrated and not improvised. The first line becomes a refrain. It does not well fall into the kriti form, such that one could attach embellishments at different points. It is also in a rare raga, Saranga tarangini, in which there are only a few kritis and uses the misra chapu talam. However, the song is generally rendered in only one precise way. So, the raga and taalam were not given earlier, nor were the ascent and descent of the raga. Nor were the lyrics put forth in our usual kriti, color coded format, as the music is mostly predetermined and this is different from what we have seen. I think this music setting was by the poet himself, but am not sure. In the west, many art songs and Leider of the 18th and 19th centuries are known, such as the Erlking, based on a Goethe poem, and famous for Franz Schubert's musical setting. These art songs were part of the large currents of change that flowed from one musical era to the next.

About the verses: Speech personified, Sarasvati, or Vakdevi, is the goddess of all the arts, including music, speech and rhetoric. The arts, in Hindu culture, are considered to be sixty four in number and include some trades and crafts as well, including, most strangely, thievery. Sarasvati, the consort of Brahma, who resides on a white lotus, as opposed to his red lotus, is the only Muse available in the Hindu pantheon; but she is a full goddess and also has some of the functions of Apollo. There are also certain classes of supernatural beings like the kinnaras, a horse-headed but otherwise anthropomorphic group, who form the hordes of Kubera, the celestial treasurer and live high in the Himalayas. They are proficient in music and with their animal like parts are reminiscent of figures from the west like Pan. The Greek centaurs were reversed in form from the Kinnaras, having a human head and equine body, but were also sometimes associated with learning. In this site of course, the main Muse that would watch over us, is Erato, the Muse of lyric poetry, who holds a lyre, as opposed to Sarasvati, who holds a Veena or the Indian lute.

Please note that we have followed the usual scheme of reckoning of gods by the personification of their domain of control. It may interest the inquiring reader to note that I adopted this convention not just for the ease of readers from different cultures and heritages. This convention actually has a firm basis. It is used even in the the Upanishads and the Vedas, in the Sanskrit. Cf. Kaatopanishad and how it refers to the god of death and righteousness, for one example.

Tamil Transliteration details: As we have seen earlier, in the romanization, note the hard "ṟ" sound as in "atrium", the unique ḻ sound as in Tamiḻ , the hard "ḷ" sound as in Glamorgan, the "ṅ" as in "bang", the "ñ" as in "banjo" and the soft ṉ sound as in "Great Dane", apart from the short and long u and o sounds, all not present in Sanskrit. The romanization is according to the National Library of Calcutta standard, as ISO 15919 doesn't cover these cases.

Krishna's advent in song: Incidentally, there are vast numbers of songs in Carnatic and related music about Krishna's exploits, but not many describing just the event of His birth. Here is the actual event as in the Bhagavatam (also called the Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavata Purana) 9:24:55-57. Krishna was born to Devaki and Vasudeva in prison (hence his patronymic Vaasudeva). Shuka narrates the Bhagavatam to King Pareekshith, the grandson of the Pandavas.

aṣṭamastu tayorasīt svayameva hariḥ kila|
subhadrā ca mahābhāgā tava rājan pitamahī||

yadayada hi dharmasya kśayo vruddhiśca pāpamanaḥ|
tada tu bhagavanīśa ātmānaṁ srujate hariḥ||

na hyasya janmano hetuḥ karmaṇo vā mahīpate|
ātmamāyāṁ vineśasya parasya druṣṭurātmanaḥ||

"To them, as the eight son, Vishnu(Hari) Himself was born. Subhadra, the fortunate, your grandmother, O King, (was also born).

Whenever goodness wanes and evil waxes, Vishnu personally comes down to this world.

Neither does He have a birth, nor an advent (cause). Nor is He bound to the fruits of His actions, O king! The omniscient, all pervading and omnipotent transcendent One, acts (came to earth), by His own grace." (cf. with the concept of "svatantra" in the song Nadopasance)

The Bhagavatam is the basis of many of the schools of modern Hinduism dedicated to Vishnu, irrespective of their underlying philosophies, such as the Gaudiya tradition in the east of India, and is a corner stone of all the others, such as the Sri Vaishnava tradition of the southern states. In the latter, the 4000 hymns of the Alwar saints are held as equal to the Vedas, and so, can be said to figure higher in precedence. The Bhagavatam is universally exalted, even among the non-Vishnu schools of worship. This book is where the incarnations of Vishnu and other exploits are described elaborately.

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Brova Bhaarama

Raga Bahudari, 28 Harikambhoji janya
Aa: S G3 M1 P D2 N2 S Av: S N2 P M1 G3 S
Taalam: Deshaadi

Lyrics: Pallavi: brōva bhāramā? raghurāmā! bhuvanamella nīvai nannokani Anupallavi: śrī vāsudēva! anḍa kōṭla kukṣiṇi- yuncakō lēdā? nannu Charanam: kalaśāmbudhilō dayatō namarulakai- yadigāka gōpikalakai koṇḍaletta lēdā? karuṇākara tyāgarājuni

English verse: Scion of the Raghus, is it too much to bear, Saving a single soul, kept by Your care? Yet, You pervade all that exists, And You are all that exists! Blessed prince! The universe boundless, You hold in Your Person endless. Mountains you have moved and borne, And that, twice at least, haven't I known- The king of mounts, For the gods, to find nectar, A hill upon your finger, To give Your flock, shelter. Compassion for all You find, This bard has You in a bind.

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Comments:

The theme of this song is that, as the Lord has borne far greater preponderances and is all pervasive and omnipotent, could He not attend to the meager task of saving a humble bard?

About the verses: Blessed prince: As Vaasudeva, or the son of Vasudeva, Krishna was a prince of the Yadavas. "Kukshini": the stomach; literally "The corners (borders) of the universe are bound by Your stomach." or "You contain the universe within Your Person." One epithet frequently applied to Vishnu is "aparyapta" or limitless, He of the limitless form. He has appeared in this Cosmic Form, stretching across the universe, and embodying all of it, in a number of episodes. Mandara, the king of mounts was borne by Vishnu, as the churn, when the gods and demons churned the Ocean of milk for nectar. This was in his incarnation as the Great Tortoise (koormaavatara). "Your flock": The cowherd people of Gokula, ('gopikaas' in the original, signifying the women), among whom Krishna spent his childhood. In this episode, Krishna to humble the vain Indra, instructed his people to stop worshipping a vengeful and undeserving Indra. The wrathful thunderer Indra sent down torrential rain to wipe them all out. But, Krishna merely lifted up the Govardhana hill on His little finger and sheltered His people under it. For nine days Indra tried to drown them with his rains. Having failed, the humbled Indra sought and obtained Krishna's pardon. Here again Tyagaraja sees Rama as Krishna and Vishnu also.

We saw two different flavors of all-pervasiveness in the two previous songs. Here, we see two more flavors. In the first, totality, the Lord, is considered the sum total of the Universe ('You are all that exists'). So, He is "all the universe", as in the kriti. The next flavor is subsumption. The whole universe is said to be contained in His person. That is, He contains all that is in existence, and all that is existence, within Himself. He is above and beyond the universe. In a famous episode, on being chided by his mother Yashoda for eating sand, the child Krishna opened His mouth wide to reveal all the universe within it. But, this image of all the universe being contained in Vishnu's stomach, is from the Srimad Bhagavatam, specifically, verse 3:33:4.

Once again, here are the four flavors of all-pervasiveness we have seen:

• He is within one or one is He.
  
• He pervades all beings in the universe.
• He is the sum total of all beings in the universe.
• He contains the universe within Himself, as a small part.

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Extra Comments:
Usually, in such discourse, the common practice is to quote from the relevant Hindu scriptures and sacred lore. Scholarly quotations would abound. Since our aim on this site is to reach a wide range of readers, from all heritages and persuasions, we will generally summarize what is relevant from those sources, in an accessible form and quote only when absolutely necessary. Sometimes we may give the verse number, so that the more interested reader may indeed try and should try, to read from the source too. We will quote more extensively, but from literature, in the comparative studies.

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