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Introduction

Historical accounts of Muthusvami Dikshitar would have it that he was a traditionalist and a staunch follower of Venkatamakhin and the raga system as tabulated under what is today known as the Anubandha to the Caturdandi Prakashika. As we have seen in earlier blog posts, this Anubandha is today believed to be a work of Muddu Venkatamakin a descendant of Venkatamakhin. However we do notice that in quite a few ragas Muthusvami Dikshitar, in his exemplar compositions as documented by Subbarama Dikshitar in his Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini (SSP), departs from the so- called raga lakshana definitions laid down in the aforesaid Anubandha. We are unable to reconcile this for very many reasons. One such example is the case of raga Gopikavasanta under mela 20 Narireetigaula, which is the subject matter of this blog post. In fairness to Subbarama Dikshitar, we can notice that he doesn’t gloss over these inconsistencies. In fact he puts the facts as he obtained without any trace of doctoring them or explaining away the inconsistency. He himself avers that he is puzzled by some of these inconsistencies.

The raga Gopikavasanta or Gopikavasantam as referred in this blog post and its illustration, commentary and treatment in the SSP raises a number of questions for us. One may simply ignore all these, just render the exemplar composition of Dikshitar provided therein namely “ Balakrishnam Bhavayami’ and just move on. But for an observer, researcher or student of any discipline such as music these historical inconsistencies need to be looked into, for an inquisitive mind always seeks to reconcile these and get a proper perspective., if not a definitive answer. If possible a logical conclusion should also be derived therefrom based on available facts, which must be revisited should new evidence or information come available at a later date.

With this in mind let’s do a deep dive into this raga which sadly no longer occupies center stage but had one upon a time been a raga of great antiquity.

OVERVIEW OF THE RAGA LAKSHANA:

Much like some of the ragas, like raga Kalavati dealt with in an earlier blog post, Gopikavasanta too is a raga which can be considered exclusive to the SSP as it is the first treatise to document the raga and the exemplar compositions based on the authority of the Anubandha of Muddu Venkatamakhin dateable to the first half of the 18^th century.

For now we can say that the raga as named is not found mentioned in any treatises prior to the Anubandha to the Caturdandi Prakashika. We do not see the raga being mentioned ‘as is’ in Shahaji or Tulaja’s works. Sangraha Cudamani a work which was supposedly followed by Tyagaraja too documents this raga but the melody therein though under the same mela, is described very differently and we do not have any composition of Tyagaraja conforming to that. Thus we are left to understanding the melody with the SSP as the sole reference.

As always Subbarama Dikshitar quotes the lakshana shloka of Muddu Venkatamakhin to start with.

syAt gOpikAvasantAkhya purnah sadjagrahAnvitah |

ArOhE ca dha vakrah ca avarOhE ri vakritah ||

A cursory reading of this sloka coupled with the lakshya gita for the 20^th raganga nArirItigaula would reveal the following:

1. Under mela 20 the raga Gopikavasanta has been grouped as a bhashanga along with Bhairavi, Ahiri and Mukhari
2. The raga is sampurna, meaning it has all the seven notes, taking both the arohana and avarohana, together. The notes are R2, G2, M1, P, D1 and N2.
3. Dha is vakra in the arohana while Ri is vakra in the avarohana.

Lets look at the murcchana arohana and avarohana provided by Subbarama Dikshitar along with his commentary before we consolidate our understanding of the theoretical sketch of this raga.

1. RSRGMPDPNNS and SNDPMGRMGS are the murcchana arohana and avarohana
2. It can be sung at all time and has sadja as graha
3. Ri, Ga, Ma and Pa are all jiva and nyasa svaras
4. Some salient murcchanas are R.MGRG. , R.MRG. , R.GGS, P.DPM., RGMP, NDM, GRMGS, RMRGS, PS, PPS, MGRMRGS, PSNDPM, G.RMGS, PNNS, PSNS, PMGMGS, ppSS
5. He says the above sancaras are seen in the tanams in this raga
6. Subbarama Dikshitar concedes that the kriti exemplar does not sport PNS and SNS.
7. He wonders why (Muddu) Venkatamakhin has classified this raga as a bhashanga in the Ritigaula gitam.
8. He does not provide any gitam or tanam for this raga.
9. The only two exemplars he provides are Muthusvami Dikshitar kriti ‘bAlakrishnam bhAvayami’ in adi tala and his own sancari in catusra eka tala.

The proceedings so far itself throws open a lot of questions:

1. Even as Subbarama Dikshitar says that the sancaras he quotes are seen in tanams, he does not provide an exemplar tanam, which he does for many ragas especially older ones. Why?
2. He is puzzled why the raga is bhashanga. Perhaps he was wondering on this as the raga did not sport any foreign/anya svara. This atleast has an explanation as bhashanga in older times connoted a different meaning. Subbarama Dikshitar mistakenly evaluates the term in the modern context. We can safely conclude here that as per modern definition, Gopikavasanta is a upanga raga only under mela 20.
3. Subbarama Dikshitar voluntarily points out the lack of PNNS and SNS prayogas in the Muthusvami DIkshitar exemplar composition with out in anyway way providing an explanation. Why?
4. The arohana murcchana is given by Subbarama Dikshitar beginning with Ri. Extrapolating with similar such definitions, Subbarama Dikshitar should have added that Ri was the preferred jiva and graha svara. He makes no specific mention of it except in passing, clubbing it with couple of other svaras.

 ANALYSIS OF “BALAKRISHNAM BHAVAYAMI”

With the above referred open questions lets move to the kriti proper to investigate the same. The notation of the composition as given in the SSP would yield the following observations, about this beautiful composition of Muthusvami Dikshitar.

1. The kriti is in the standard Pallavi, anupallavi and carana format without a cittasvara section set to adi tala.
2. The raga mudra is conspicuously included in the text as ‘kapaTagOpikAvasantam’ in the caranam.
3. His standard colophon guruguha is found in the madhyamakalasahitya section as ‘mamata-rahitam guruguha-viditam’.
4. The kriti is on Lord Krishna, complete with prasa concordance. No internal reference is found as to the particular kshetra to which the composition can be ascribed to. And it is therefore a generic composition.

From a musicological perspective the following can be deduced :

1. The kriti is rich in svaraksharas.
2. The graha svara for Pallavi and anupallavi is pancama while the carana starts on the gandhara.
3. The murcchana arohana avarohana which is obvious from the notation is as under:

Arohana :   S R G M P D P S

Avarohana: S N D M G R M G S

4. The only prayoga found in the mandara sthayi is SpS. And tara sancara extends till madhyama.
5. Prolific sancaras used are SSP, pS, GRMGS, NDM, PDP, PDM, SRGM, PDNDM etc.
6. GRMGS is a leitmotif appearing repeatedly in the composition.
7. There is no PDNS or SNDP or obviously MGRS.

Thus we notice a number of deviations which the composition has with reference to the laid won lakshana :

While we see these departures, in stark contrast Subbarama Dikshitar in his own sancari, follows (Muddu)Venkatamakhin faithfully rather than follow Muthusvami Dikshitar. His sancari completely conforms to the laid down lakshana and as if to emphasise, he begins his sancari purposefully as NNSS, a sancara eschewed by Dikshitar in ‘Balakrishnam Bhavayami’.

We are left pondering with a few more questions for which there can be no clear conclusions or answers. See Foot Note 1.

1. Given the above information, did Muthusvami Dikshitar depart from tradition on purpose? In eschewing PNNS and other standard phrases, Dikshitar could have simply created another raga and named it to his convenience much like Amrutavarshini. Why did he still call his creation as Gopikavasanta despite the fact that melodically his version of the raga in ‘Balakrishnam Bhavayami’ is very different from the theoretical Gopikavasanta. The raga mudra has been embedded beyond doubt and Subbarama DIkshitar provides that as an exemplar. What better evidence could be there? So is it therefore acceptable to make deviations and implement ragas which are not in conformance to standard definitions, while retaining the same name?
2. Can this deviation be judged as an innovation on the part of Dikshitar and thus account for the same? Do we perhaps conclude that Dikshitar was a trail blazer who considered that if need be we can depart from tradition and for him the marga of the ancients were mere road signs and were stepping stones ion the journey to  elevate music  though innovation? (or)
3. Did he find that the then (during his lifetime) versions of the raga had already departed from this laid down version ( of Muddu Venkatamakhin) and he proceeded to compose using the then extant raga lakshana?

We will never know fully perhaps. We can perhaps look outside of the SSP and attempt to find answers to some of these questions.

1. The Sangraha Cudamani documents one Gopikavasanta under mela 20 with a definition of  SMPNDNDS/SNDPMGS for this raga. Needless to add it takes us no further as it is a different svarupa altogether, totally lacking rishabha in its scheme.
2. There are no extant kritis of either Tyagaraja or Syama Sastri given under Gopikavasanta.
3. Sri K V Ramachandran noted critic of the past century in his Music academy lecture demonstration averred that the raga of the composition ‘Mokshamu Galadha’ was Gopikavasanta, not Saramathi which was an invented melody without a textual tradition. We have no way of uncovering the true matu/musical setting if so of ‘mokshamu galada’ and finding out the Gopikavasantha as implemented by Tyagaraja.
4. There is one kriti of Svati Tirunal ‘ Dhanyoyam eva khalu’ recorded as being in Gopikavasanta. The notation of the composition as given by Sangita Kalanidhi Govinda Rao in his compilation mostly tracks the version of the raga as per Muthusvami Dikshitar. A few points merit our attention, which are given below:
   • A couple of sangatis for a few lines of the composition includes the phrase NDP which is not at all found in “Balakrishnam Bhavayami”, and for the same line we have NDM instead of NDP as a sangati.
   • Similarly in the mandara sthayi SNDM is found while in Dikshitar’s kriti only SPS is found. No tara sancaras beyond tara sadja are found in Dhanyoyam. All said, the phrase NDP sounds different and adds a different twist to the composition.
   • Curiously the kriti is architect’ed with very many avarohana phrases. SP is seen purvanga and SRGM is not seen at all.

One can say its quite a different implementation of Gopikavasanta. Would this make it Gopikavasanta or is it a very different raga. Modern musicology dictates that that Jayamanohari is created when Nishadha is dropped from Sriranjani. Do we use the same yardstick? One is not sure ! Also one cannot say with certainty as to the provenance of the mathu of this composition, whether it was sourced authentically from the Mullamoodu Bhagavathars or if it was an exercise in tunesmithing by Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavathar or Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. Curiously Sri Govinda Rao provides only the Muddu Venkatamakhin provided arohana/avarohana krama at the outset of the composition’s notation. Also see foot note 2 and 3 below.

POSTAL STAMPS ISSUED BY THE GOVT OF INDIA. WISH THEY ISSUED ONE TO HONOUR THE MEMORY AND CONTRIBUTION OF SUBBARAMA DIKSHITAR.

 We have no other references or material to look into other than these and the trail runs cold. We may not have answers for these but the objective in asking these questions is to understand for ourselves some of these contradictions with the fullest respect, care and caution for history, personages and the greatness of the compositions which we have inherited.

Even while one ruminates on these questions, it goes without saying that Dikshitar’s creation is a beauty in itself. We move on next to the discography section and aurally enjoy this magical creation, before coming back to the analysis on hand.

DISCOGRAPHY:

We should be much indebted to Sangita Kalanidhi Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer for having sung ‘bAlakrishnam bhAvayAmi”in his concert performances in the last century of which we have recordings. We do not have a record of any other contemporaneous performer of the days bygone doing so. It is likely the titan learnt this on his own from the SSP.

Here he is rendering it in one of his concerts. As one can see the leitmotif GRMGS is repeated again and again in the composition. The veteran’s rendering especially of the SpS motif is not very obvious or prominent but has the ideal kalapramana one can expect of a Dikshitar composition.

Vidvan Sri T M Krishna renders the Dikshitar masterpiece in his concerts following the notation in the SSP for which he is known for. His version below available in the public domain, is albeit faster in tempo in comparison to other versions.

Next is the rendering of Vidushi Dr. T S Satyavati ( courtesy Sangeethapriya). She presents a very stylized version accenting the gaps and pauses with the musical motifs of Gopikavasanta, sticking to the script of the raga’s lakshana as laid down by Dikshitar. In the madhyama kala sahitya she sings “guruguha vinutam’ instead of ‘guruguha vidhitam” which is the SSP text.

Unfortunately we do not have any recorded versions of raga alapana, neraval or svara kalpana in this raga to present.

The rendering of the Svati Tirunal’s “Dhanyoyam eva khalu” is very rare and is hardly ever encountered in the concert circuit. Below is an excerpt from the 2016 Navaratri Mantapam Concert of Prof Venkataraman ( courtesy Sangeethapriya).

Given that there are no tara sthayi sancaras in ‘dhanyOyam’, Vidvan Prof Venkataraman renders it in madhyama sruti. The composition stretches from mandara sthayi madhyama to tara sadja. It has all the Dikshitar motifs for Gopikavasanta including repeated use of GRMGS, SNDM and PS and SP. as pointed out earlier its bereft of SRGM.

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MUSICAL HISTORY OF GOPIKAVASANTA:

Given the wealth of material and the discography we have seen so far, we can and should persevere to assimilate the material in front of us, connect the dots and attempt to draw a plausible theory or hypothesis to the best of abilities to explain some of the questions we encounter above.

First is around the antiquity of the raga. How old is Gopikavasanta? We do have commentaries from Sangita Kalanidhi Subba Rao & Prof. S R Janakiraman and of Dr Seetha both on Sahaji’s Ragalakshanamu as well as Tulaja’s Saramrutha. The analysis of Dr Hema Ramanathan vide her PhD dissertation ” Raga Lakshana Sangraha’ which is the 21st century compendium of musical history of practically all ragas is yet another source of great value along with Dr Satyanarayana’s commentary on Muddu Venkatamakhin’s work Ragalakshanam. All of them point only to the Anubandha or to the Sangraha Cudamani as the earliest works documenting Gopikavasanta.

With all humility and sincerity at my command it is my considered view that the musical material before us has been completely overlooked. Sahaji in his Ragalakshanamu documents one raga under Bhairavi mela, which Dr Sita in her work translates as under and I quote her verbatim:

” sampurna, ghana and naya yogyam, in aroha dha is langhana, ri is langhana in avaroha, phrases like PDNS and MGRS do not occur, SNDPM, NDS, NSRSRGMGS, RGMPDP, MPNS, NSNDPM, MGRMG, SNDPMP, NSRRS are prayogas found in the tayas”

To paraphrase the above, the raga is sampurna – meaning it takes all the seven notes of the parent mela, considering both the ascent and descent ; dha is varja in the arohana and rishabha is varjya in the avarohana. According to Sahaji, this raga is called “Indu Ghantarava” and is documented almost on similar terms by Tulaja as well.

Prof S R Janakiraman in his commentary on Tulaja’s Saramrutha opines that this raga is resembling Margahindolam of modern times. In my considered opinion, Indu Ghantarava is Gopikavasanta, plain and unalloyed, conforming to the definition of Muddu Venkatamakhin as given by him in the Anubandha. Sahaji’s murcchanas tally with those of Gopikavasanta as given by Subbarama Dikshitar. Actually all the three works, the Triad as I refer to – namely Sahaji’s ‘Ragalakshanamu’,  Tulaja’s ‘Saramrutha’ and the Anubandha are all dateable to the first 3 decades of the 18th century. In the SSP we do have the Nattakurinji gitam with the proper ankita of Muddu Venkatamakhin with Sahaji’s poshaka mudra/patron’s colophon documented which go to prove the point that Muddu Venkatamakhin was patronized by Sahaji. Sahaji and Tulaja in their works have only documented ragas in currency/practice. And given that Muddu Venkatamakhin has added the scale to the anubandha meant that the raga was part both of theory and practice. Even assuming the date of the Anubandha to be subsequent, the above argument holds true.

With this input we can draw the first conclusion:

The raga which was once called Indu Ghantarava by Sahaji and Tulaja in their works is what was referred to as Gopikavasanta by Muddu Venkatamakhin ( all between 1690-1740). The same scale carried a different name as well which is Gopikavasanta.

Thus in all probability, the Gopikavasanta of Muddu Venkatamakhin and the Indu Ghantarava of Sahaji and Tulaja are one and the same.It had already taken root in our musical firmament during the early decades of the 18^th century.

It is on the authority of this Gopikavasanta of Muddu Venkatamakhin does Subbarama Dikshitar create his sancari which today is the sole exemplar of that form of the raga, as Muthusvami Dikshitar had modified the raga in the interregnum. It is perhaps plausible that Subbarama Dikshitar considered himself bound and beholden to the written edict of his purvacaryas. This is not surprising as we see him do the same with Yamuna, which we saw in  an earlier blog post. In fact Subbarama Dikshitar when composing his jatisvaram in Yamuna, took the earlier works as his authority and not the ‘Jambupate’ of Dikshitar. We are in no position to judge the course of action Subbarama Dikshitar took. Neither did he deign to reconcile the different form to which Dikshitar had adapted the raga. and perhaps which is why to avoid further discordance he decided to leave out the tanams and lakshya gitam for Gopikavasanta in his SSP.  One must pause here to appreciate the diligence with which Subbarama Dikshitar went about in his quest to understand the theory of our music and his conscientious effort to distill that in the SSP. To that end Subbarama Dikshitar did not simply go by Muddu Venkatamakhin’s lakshana slokas. He also viewed it in conjunction with tanams and gitams as well to determine the tradition. As an example lets consider Subbarama Dikshitar’s treatment of raga Abheri in the SSP. He gives the aroha lakshana krama of the raga as SMGMPPS even though the Muddu Venkatamakhin lakshana shloka only says ‘abherI sagrahA pUrna; syAdArohE nivarjitA’. The shloka does not say that rishabha, gandhara and dhaivatha are varja. Yet Subbarama Dikshitar on the authority of the purvacharyas and their tAnams in this raga, says that SMGMPPS is the arohana krama to be used in compositions. He emphatically makes that statement in his commentary for that raga and provides the Dikshitar kriti as exemplar with authority. That was not to be the case with Gopikavasanta!

At this juncture, we must now pause once more and take a couple of minutes to appreciate Subbarama Dikshitar’s predicament or was it his plight. We can imagine one dark winter evening in the closing years of the 19th century, the great musical visionary of those times, the last of the titans of the great Venkatamakhi tradition sitting in the pyol of his house in remote Ettayapuram hunched over in silence, pondering what to do with this problem. There he was all alone, at the cross roads of history, while preparing the draft of the to-be-published SSP, with two melodic versions of a raga in the same tradition and he couldn’t explain it away himself. And so he  decides to leave things as is, never thinking a minute to fudge facts or obfuscate the corpus is front of him. He simply leaves it at that by deciding not to publish the tanams and the gitams of Gopikavasanta, lest it should confuse the future generations . What remained on the final proof read version of his SSP was just the lakshana sloka and the Dikshitar composition. One problem was solved but then another bigger one loomed menacingly for him. What about the sancari? He couldn’t avoid composing one for a hoary raga, because doing one for every raga in the SSP has always been his plan. If he does compose one for Gopikavasanta, which version of the raga should he compose in ? Should he simply move with times as his great ancestor Muthusvami Dikshitar had done before him and use the melodic body of the modern Gopikavasanta of ‘bAlakrishnam bhAvayAmI’. Or should he do it in the older/archaic Gopikavasanta and and stay loyal to his beloved purvacaryas and Venkatamakin, whose lakshana sloka, lakshya gita and tanas lay in front of him, all composed in the archaic version of Gopikavasanta?

It must have been a very long night for the “sage like looking” Subbarama Dikshitar, which is how Pandit Bhatkande felt when he saw  him in Ettayapuram . And then the karma yogi he was,  when he wakes up the next morning, he decides to cast his lot with his most exalted preceptor Venkatamakhin. He had to keep the flag of his preceptor flying high and that he believed was his dharma! And so he goes on to create his sancari in the older/archaic form of Gopikavasanta. And as if to reinforce his conviction emphatically, he begins that sancari with the phrase NNSS, the very murcchana in the raga that Muthusvami Dikshitar had dispensed with!

With that master stroke Subbarama Dikshitar solved the problem for himself by reinforcing what he felt was tradition. But what about those of us now, 120 years or so later, who want to reconcile the versions ? Subbarama Dikshitar took the well-trodden path of following the edict of the purvacaryas to the T. He considered it perhaps a sin to be seen in discordance to the written edict. My personal suspicion/view is, he tagged all the musical material back to Venkatamakhin himself and never for once did he even suspect that somebody down the line – like Muddu Venkatamakhin for example had only created the Anubandha very much later in time. Which is why time and again he laments that the current practice & lakshana is way-off the sampradaya propounded by Venkatamakhin. With the utmost tenaciousness and single minded determination much like Dr.U.Ve. Svaminatha Iyer, he went about with great zeal to procure the original manuscripts which he believed to be Venkatamakhin’s himself and finally getting it from the Pontiff of the Kanci Mutt at Kumbakonam circa 1870. For him perhaps Venkatamakhin was God himself and therefore any deviation from his stated word would be blasphemy. And so he considered it fit to follow his hero and guru Venkatamakhin rather than even his immediate ancestor Muthusvami Dikshitar. Actually and unknowingly the ‘the preceptor’’ he was following was Muddu Venkatamakhin or the author of the Anubandha, whoever it was! Evidence of this mindset can be seen in Subbarama Dikshitar’s treatment of ragas in contradistinction to Muthusvami Dikshitar.

Turning over to Muthusvami Dikshitar himself, one can surmise that he could have chosen to name his version as he visualized in ‘Balakrishnam Bhavayami’ as a new raga, carving it out of the older Gopikavasantha (as documented by Muddu Venkatamakhin in his Anubandha), by dropping additionally Ni in the ascent and pancama in the descent and modifying the octaval scope of the raga, delimiting it in the mandara sthayi. He didn’t do so. It is conceivable that even in Dikshitar’s lifetime circa 1800, the actual theoretical construct of Gopikavasantha had died out or had become extinct, leading DIkshitar to resurrect a ‘version’ of Gopikavasanta.

It must have been that the older Gopikavasanta or Indu Ghantarava held a larger set of murcchanas and composers like Tyagaraja and Muthusvami Dikshitar thought it fit to use a sub set of those svara murcchanas to create baby or subsidiary ragas. Thus ragas of Tyagaraja’s compositions such as Jingala, Saramati Amrutavahini etc did not have a textual history. Tyagaraja merrily carved these solitary composition ragas ( eka kriti ragas) from out of the body of perhaps Indu Ghantarava/Gopikavasanta and proceeded to give them form and life. The older Gopikavasanta/ Indu Ghantarava simply became archaic or deprecated being overridden by these newbie ragas or on its own through disuse.

It has been Muthusvami Dikshitar’s cause to revive some of the older and dead ragas, burnish them and invest them with his compositions. Examples include Purvi, Padi, Salanganata, Gurjari, Navaratnavilasa and their ilk. So when Dikshitar took up some of these archaic ragas circa 1800, he either implemented them ‘as-is’ or he made melodic modifications to ensure that the musical identity of the creation was preserved in the process distinguishing it from the other extant ones . Thus one can plausibly imagine, when he took up the case of Gopikavasanta ( which had by then passed into oblivion through disuse or otherwise) and started crafting/redesigning perhaps its architecure, he retained elements of the original construction. So he continued to give the pride of place to the leitmotif GRMGS and retained the SRGM. To melodically enhance, distinguish and make Gopikavasanta aesthetically appealing, the architectural/design pattern, much like the ones in the software programming he used was to create turns, jumps, bends and twists in the raga’s melodic movement. So he gave a go by to PDNS and PNS and plumped for PDPS. He employed the same device again in the avarohana by jumping over Pa, making it langhana/varja. And  topped it with a octaval constraint in the mandara sthayi with SpS. See Note 4 below. His creation was complete and here was his chiselled and burnished version of Gopikavasanta. The older/archaic Gopikavasanta was all but forgotten, Dikshitar’s kriti exemplar must have taken its place and all was fine.

More than half a century later when the Pontiff of the Kanci Mutt handed over Subbarama Dikshitar the “original” manuscripts, which perhaps proverbially put the clock back for Subbarama Dikshitar, did all hell break loose for him. The older version of Muddu Venkatamakhin’s Gopikavasanta which he sincerely believed to be of Venkatamakhin’s found in the manuscripts he got and the patham of Gopikavasanta as found in ‘bAlakrishnam bhAvayAmI’ learnt perhaps from his father Balasvami Dikshitar or one of Dikshitar’s disciples like Thirukkadaiyur Bharati or Thevur Subramanya Iyer, and their contradiction posed a great problem as above more so when he wanted to publish the SSP, for consumption by the rest of the world.

This course of history is the one which can only possibly/plausibly explain the apparent contradiction or dichotomy one notices between the text book definition of Gopikavasanta and Muthusvami Dikshitar’s implementation as documented in ‘Balakrishnam Bhavayami’.

In sum, the natural life cycle of ragas by which they die out or spawn newer offsprings with truncated scalar material together with the arrival of margadarshis like Tyagaraja or Dikshitar who modify or resurrect ragas to continue the innovative/evolutionary cycle, is what can logically explain the contradiction such as the one we see in Gopikavasanta. In parting/concluding this section I cannot but help recalling what the renowned Jurist Justice P V Rajamannar pithily put, in his foreword to the Tamil version of the SSP and I quote him.

“It is a futile controversy to embark on the determination of the inconsistency between lakshana and sampradaya. The crystallized sampradaya of one age becomes the lakshana of the succeeding age.”

SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:

Muthusvami DIkshitar’s creations always instil a very deep sense of awe and respect and I endeavor to research them, sing them and enjoy them to the fullest possible means from different perspectives. That said the available renderings of ‘Balakrishnam Bhavayami’ seemed a little wanting in terms of some stylistic aspects such as the rendering of the mandara pancama SpS. Also I felt that given this raga lakshana deviation Dikshitar has made, a cittasvara section briefly summarizing the new svarupa he has cast, can be a great addition to the composition and for my personal understanding. To the best of my abilities, I have endeavored to create the following simple cittasvara section and I have taken the courage to render the same at the end of the madhyamakala section of the caranam, in the clipping below.

P, MGRMGS,p,S     GRMGSSP,    NNDMPPs,    P,PSsr,rmgrmgs,    sNDMG,GRM    GS,RGM ( Balakrishnam)

As already pointed out, some of the sangathis of a couple of lines in the Svati Tirunal composition “Dhanyoyam eva khalu” , sport NDP. Another sangathi of the same line also has NDM, the default Dikshitar phrase. By eliminating NDP sporting sangatis alone which provides a much homogenous version of the kriti, I have attempted to render it with fidelity to the notation (otherwise) as provided by Sangita Kalanidhi Govinda Rao. Below is my rendition.

Leaving aside the PNDP prayogas found in a few sangatis we see that the version conforms ‘broadly’ to Dikshitar’s Gopikavasanta with a couple of caveats. We see SNDM in the mandara sthayi. Absence of SRGM phrase and usage of SP instead is also seen. But the construct of “Dhanyoyam” is so done that it doesn’t in anyway dilute the overall melodic identity of Dikshitar’s Gopikavasanta. This Svati Tirunal composition in misra capu tala is classified as a jnana vairagya composition and is again on Lord Krishna, the text of which is below:

Dhanyoyameva khalu bhavati bhUtale ( Dhanyoyam) anyasamadaivatAganya mahimAnam vinyasyAti hrdIyo visadmiha mukundam ( Dhanyoyam) kAmakrodhalobhAdi khalavairi samudAyam BhImamatibhaktyA sambhidya nirayamUlam dAmodara hare MAdhava padmanAbheti nAmAni japati yo nata kaivalyakArinI ( Dhanyoyam)

CONCLUSION

And so this is the riddle about the correct lakshana of the raga Gopikavasanta which is hidden from plain view by the hauntingly beautiful ‘bAlakrishnam bhAvayami’ . The SSP tantalizingly makes it mysterious for those of us who try to prise it open. But for performers and students, what they need to do is very clear. The implementation of the raga by the nonpareil Muthusvami Dikshitar has now become the lakshana for us. One has to just render the composition with/without an alapana, neraval svara kalpana in Gopikavasanta in perfect alignment and fidelity to the intent of the great composer, in this instant case being Muthusvami Dikshitar who apparently in his infinite wisdom decided to give a go by to the text book definition and went ahead to chisel out another facet of the raga. And in that process he thus reset the very aesthetic form of the melody for us centuries down the line.

REFERENCES:

1. Subbarama Dikshitar (1904)- Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini Vol III– Tamil Edition published by the Madras Music Academy in 1968/2006 – pages 314-315 & 426-429
2. Dr Hema Ramanathan(2004) – ‘Ragalakshana Sangraha’- Collection of Raga Descriptions- pages 485-486 & 565-567
3. Prof R. Satyanarayana(2010) – ‘Ragalakshanam’ – Kalamoola Shastra Series- Published by Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, New Delhi
4. Dr S. Sita (1983) – “The Ragalakshana Manuscript of Sahaji Maharaja’ – Pages 140-182- JMA Vol LIV
5. Prof S. R. Janakiraman & T V Subba Rao (1993)- ‘Ragas of the Sangita Saramrutha’ – Published by the Music Academy, Chennai, pages 241-245
6. T K Govinda Rao(2002) – Compositions of Maharaja Svati Tirunal – Ganamandir Publications – pages 126-127

FOOT NOTES:

1.  The Experts Committee of  Madras Music Academy seems to have discussed the lakshana of Gopikavasanta in its 10th Annual Conference Year 1937-38. However the pages of the said Journal of the Music Acadamy is electronically unavailable.  Hence I am unable to include that in this narrative.
2. Sri Rangaramanuja Iyengar’s ‘Kritimanimaalai’ list a composition of Krishnasvami Ayya starting with the pallavi refrain “govindarAjam bhaje” and tags its raga as Gopikavasanta. This is not found documented by Subbarama Dikshitar in his SSP. We do have evidence to believe that Subbarama Dikshitar had a hand in setting the music for Krishnasvami Ayya’s compositions. The analysis of the notation of this composition however reveals a confusing picture. Murcchanas like PDPS as well SNS, SPND and such other prayogas show up in profusion giving a different hue to the raga.
3. There is a Northern variant or namesake of our Gopikavasanta and its named Gopika Basant. Some commentaries on this Hindustani raga place it as a melodic equivalent of our Hindolavasanta, dealt with in an earlier blog post. A brief commentary and a clipping of the rendering of the raga can be heard here, scrolling down to the bottom of the page. As an aside, In passing one wonders why composers haven’t taken note of this raga to sew in a Vasantha ‘mAlA’ ragamalika composition, much on the lines of a Ranjani mala or a Gaula/Priya series of ragas. Vasanta, Hindolavasanta, Gopikavasanta, Suddha Vasanta and Viravasanta could be an exotic combination!
4. We do have quite a few ragas with implicit octaval constraints in our music much like Gopikavasanta as below.

• Nilambari, Anandabhairavi and Surati almost as a rule do not have sancara below mandara nishadha.
• Ritigaula has a different svara murrcana/progression for mandara sancaras. NPNNS its leitmotif is rendered only in the mandara sthayi. It is not to be done in Madhya sthayi, where it morphs as MNDMNNS which should not be used correspondingly in the mandara sthayi- vide the pithy cittasvara section of Subbaraya Sastri’s ‘Janani Ninnuvina’ and of Dikshitar’s “Sri Neelotpala nayike’ documented in the SSP.
• As we will see in an upcoming blog post, Natanarayani another raga from the SSP stable, too has an octaval constraint, with no sancara in the tara sthayi. Also while PDS is permitted in the mandara sthayi, only PS is used in the madhya sthayi.
• Old timers would aver that musicians of the era bygone, would not perform sancaras below mandara nishadha or above tara gandhara, in Pantuvarali/Ramakriya

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Introduction:

Ghanta or Ghantarava as it has been known all through musical history has been a raga with a recorded history of more than 500 years. Though the notes forming the raga has apparently undergone change, the form of the raga today can be gauged completely only from the authoritative commentary of the raga provided by Subbarama Dikshitar in the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini and the two examplar kritis of Muthusvami Dikshitar therein. Curiously we do have a couple of compositions of Svati Tirunal too which depict the raga as found in the kritis of Dikshitar. The raga being purva prasiddha and takes multiple types of the some notes, it defies a categorization under any raganga/mela and its alignment under Todi (mela 9) or under Natabhairavi (mela 20) is a mere formality as these rAgAngAs do not contribute to Ghanta’s melodic individuality in any way.

Simply put, Ghanta is usually labeled as a misra raga – a raga which is an admixture of two or more ragas. In fact practitioners usually opine that the hues of a number of ragas including Dhanyasi, Bhairavi, Todi, Asaveri and Punnagavarali show up in this raga.

However the commentary provided by Subbarama Dikshitar and the two compositions of Dikshitar provides us with an ample view of this raga which is hardly ever performed on the concert stage today. Its musical definition also gives us a perception that it is a ‘designer’ raga – in other words it is a raga which can be interpreted or presented in different hues and colors and thus provides the performer or the composer as the case may be the leeway to present it as they imagine.

Ghanta is sought to presented in this blog post as a musical offering to the Mother Goddess on the auspicious occasion of Navaratri. Two prime exemplars presented in this post have been composed on the Devis from two kshetras namely Goddess Kamalamba of Tiruvarur and Goddess Mangalambika at Kumbakonam.

Over to the raga and the compositions!

The History:

Starting from Svaramelakalanidhi of Ramamatya ( circa 1550 ) to the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini (1904) Ghanta has been part of the southern musicological literature. Barring Somanatha (circa 1609) almost all Southern musicological texts talk of Ghanta or Ghantarava. The parent mEla/ragAngA and therefore the notes seem to have changed over a period of time, oscillating between Kannadagaula or Sriraga or Bhairavi mela. Meaning the rishabha or the dhaivatha svara or both has been changing. The gandhara, madhyama and nishadha svaras have been unchanged and have been only sadharana (G2), suddha( M1) and kaishiki (N2) respectively.

To assess the musical worth & history of a raga in currency today, one needs to look at the compositions of the Trinity and the musicological literature which were authored in the run up to the times of the Trinity & it is the triad of:

1. The Ragalakshanamu of King Sahaji (circa 1700)
2. The Sangita Saramruta of  King Tulaja (circa 1730)
3. The Ragalakshanam or the raga compendium of Muddu Venkatamakhin (circa 1750)/Anubandha to the Caturdandi Prakashika which is documented by Subbarama Dikshitar in his Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini (SSP hereafter)

In the context of Ghanta as a melody, with reference to the above three musicological texts the following is the summary for our understanding:

1. All the three texts in unison place the raga under Bhairavi/Narireetigaula – modern mela 20. The original Caturdandi Prakashika (circa 1620) also places Ghanta under Bhairavi.
2. The note dhaivata (suddha) or D1 is prescribed as the graha, amsa and nyasa according to Tulaja and Muddu Venkatamakhin. Even in Chaturdandi prakashika, Venkatamakhin marks dhaivatha as the graha, amsa and nyasa svara.
3. Ghanta is described as both a ghana and naya raga by Shahaji
4. While according to Venkatamakhin and Tulaja, the raga can be sung at all times, Muddu Venkatamakhin deviates and prescribes that the raga is to be rendered in the evenings.
5. Sahaji has not only documented the raga in his work but has also used it in his Pallaki Seva Prabandha. This opera was resurrected by the Late Prof Sambamoorthi who notated & published it after hearing it being rendered by an aged performer in Tiruvarur. Bottom-line is that this melody had been extremely popular and had been used well by composers in the 1700’s in the run up to the Trinity.
6. Barring a cauka varna, a pada and a handful of kritis, the raga has not been invested with any tAna varnAs or tillanas or such other compositional forms.
7. Tulaja and Sahaji also refer to another raga named Indughantarava which has no relation to Ghanta. It is melodically equivalent to Margahindola of modern times.
8. In the run up to the Trinity, Ramasvami Dikshitar, father of the Trinitarian has utilized Ghanta in his ragamalikas – for example ‘sAmajagamana’, corresponding to the same lakshana adopted by Dikshitar which has been covered in an earlier blog post.

From a musical angle the following points merit our attention:

1. From the fact that the raga had been placed under the Bhairavi, it follows that the dominating notes/svaras are catusruti rishabha R2, sadharana gandhara G2, suddha madhyama M1, pancama P, suddha dhaivata D1 and kaisiki nishada N2. The usage of suddha rishabha R1 and catusruti dhaivatha D2 notes and the combinations in which they occur is pointed only by Subbarama Dikshitar in his SSP. In fact none of the older treatises including the Sangraha Cudamani as a rule, talk about the anya svara/foreign notes of the so called bhashanga ragas.
2. So one has to fall back on the commentary provided by Subbarama Dikshitar for assessing the so called foreign notes in this raga. Curiously in his notation for the two compositions of Muthusvami Dikshitar and his own sancari that he gives under the raga, Subbarama Dikshitar does not mark the types of rishabha and dhaivata in the notation of the compositions.
3. Only in his raga commentary does Subbarama Dikshitar elucidate the svara type to be used for rishabha and dhaivata. Also he alludes to the usages as prevalent in practice and we need to resort to that when we interpret the notations.
4. The usage of the dhaivata note as graha svara is evidenced by the fact that the graha svara passage for the raga is present in the lakshya gita printed by Subbarama Dikshitar, which he attributes to Venkatamakhin, but it could have been actually composed only by Muddu Venkatamakhin. In the modern context the graha svara does not have any melodic or practical significance. In a related context there has also been a view that this raga is a dhaivatantya raga, but the notation or the raga lakshana documented in major treatises do not support this view.
5. We do have some ragas in the firmament of our Southern music, which have designated times for rendering. In the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini we do have a small set of ragas which have time designated as a part of the lakshana shloka ( of Muddu Venkatamakhin), some of which are under:
   1. Gaurivelavali, Dhanyasi, Bhupala, Sailadesakshi – Early morning – ‘prAtah kAlE pragIyatE’
   2. Revagupti & Bhauli – last or fourth quarter of the night – ‘tUrIyayAmE gEya’ or caramE yAmE pragIyatE
   3. Gauri, Sri, Bhairavi, Ghanta, Madhyamavathi – evening – ‘sAyamkAlE pragIyatE’
   4. Ahiri – First quarter of the night – ‘bAnayAmE pragIyatE’

The time of rendering of a raga in the context of Carnatic ragas seems to have gone out of vogue completely. The type of notes constituting the raga and the time of rendering also doesn’t seem to have a plausible correlation, making this entire feature an archaic one. Irrespective of that, Ghanta has been marked for rendering in the evenings in the company of Bhairavi, with which it shares a common body of murccanas/notes.

 SUBBARAMA DIKSHITAR’s COMMENTARY ON THE RAGA:

From a raga lakshana perspective according to Subbarama Dikshitar on the authority of Muddu Venkatamakhin, the murccana arohana & avarohana for Ghanta are as under:

Arohana murccana :    S G R G M P D P N D N S  (or) S G R G M P D P N S

Avarohana murccana :S N D P M G R S

Before we embark on dissecting the raga lakshana in the SSP, a few clarifications are in order:

1. The raga is classed as a ‘upAnga’ raga under nArirItigaula ( rAgAngA 20) by Muddu Venkatamakhin and by Subbarama Dikshitar. The word upAnga/bhAshAnga had a different connotation then in 1750’s in contrast to what is prevalent today. Suffice to say that in today’s parlance, Ghanta is a bhAshanga rAga irrespective of whichever mElA we put it under as it employs both varieties of rishabha and dhaivatha. Point is one shouldn’t be confused with Subbarama Dikshitar’s grouping of this rAga as an upAngA in the SSP.
2. In his commentary for Ghanta, Subbarama Dikshitar alludes to the terms pancasruti dhaivata and trisruti rishabha. In the modern context they refer respectively to catusruti dhaivatha (D2) and suddha rishabha (R1) only.

That said, a reading of Subbarama Dikshitar’s commentary in the SSP together with the notation of the two Dikshitar compositions provides us with the following inputs:

1. Permitted murccanas  in the arohana & avarohana krama are as under:
   • SGR1S, SR1S, SGR2GMP, PD1P, ND2NS, PNS
   • SND1P, MGR2S
2. According to Subbarama Dikshitar, the repeated usage of the phrases SGR2GM and PND2NS makes the raga beautiful. In other words they are the leitmotifs of the raga. The compositions also make use of another leitmotif D1ND1P as well.
3. The notes G, M, D and N are heavily ornamented with the kampita gamakas.
4. Catusruti dhaivatha ( D2) occurs only in the phase ND2NS. All other usages are only of suddha dhaivatha (D1)
5. Suddha rishabha occurs in SRS , nRS and SGRS
6. Subbarama Dikshitar makes no mention of Ghanta being a misra or a chAyAlaga rAga, just as how he makes a mention as a footnote for raga Jujavanti.

While Subbarama Dikshitar has indicated these in the commentary, he has put some qualifiers on the usages of the suddha rishabha and catusruti dhaivata. Interpreting them provides us with insights as to how the raga evolved.

1. Subbarama Dikshitar opines that the singing of both types of rishabhas and dhaivatas seem to have been a post Venkatamakhi development.

Implication: So what it implies for us is that the original Ghanta/Ghantarava was a very Bhairavi’sh one and it must have been like this SGR2GMPD1NS/SND1PMGR2S. It has to be pointed out that Venkatamakhi has classed Ghantarava under Bhairavi mela in his Caturdandi Prakashika.

2. The gita provided in the SSP for the raga which can be attributed to Muddu Venkatamkhin is dominated with downward/avarohana phrases. The few aroha purvAnga phrases found therein use only SGRGM. There is no SRGM or SGM found anywhere.

Implication: So SRGM and SGM were not utilized in practice in Ghanta even though there is no express disqualification. For example the lakshana sloka of Muddu Venkatamakhin does not talk about rishabha being vakra in the arohana. Thus it seems to be more a convention to use only SGRGM in Ghanta. Therefore the only route to reach madhyama from sadja is through the phrase SGRGM. In olden days it was SGR2GM only & it continues. SGR1GM is not permitted as Subbarama Dikshitar says very clearly that the suddha rishabha usage is confined only to SRS and SGRS. The leitmotif of Ghanta is therefore SGR2GM.

3. Suddha rishabha occurs explicitly in SGR1S, NR1S and SR1S and nowhere else. Should we strictly interpret that these murccanas alone with R1 should be used as is, as one unit? This leaves a question whether MGRS or PMGRS should use R1 or R2. Since Ghanta is classed under Narireetigaula/Bhairavi, the default rishabha is R2 and that is what should feature in PMGRS. Interpreting or extending Subbarama Dikshitar’s commentary one can argue/surmise that if SRS or SGRS or in essence if a downward move to sadja is involved it should always feature R1 and this implies that PMGRS should feature only R1. Since Subbarama Dikshitar has not expressly called out PMGRS  to be used with R1 or R2, it makes it look that either of the rishabhas can be used in PMGRS. In fact Subbarama Dikshitar says that even though it has become a practice that in other prayogas depending on circumstance both rishabhas are being used, some people sing only suddha rishabha R1. So what it means is that Subbarama Dikshitar, an avowed votary of the Venkatamakhin tradition, implicitly believed that in line with the raga’s classing under Bhairavi, only R2 should dominate but he reluctantly concedes that R1 is being used. This verbiage provides the basis for the usage of MGR1S.
4. Given that the types rishabha and dhaivata has not been notated in the two exemplar compositions, based on Subbarama Dikshitar’ commentary one can derive the following rule-set to define when to use R1/R2 or D1/D2

If the murrchana is an arohana phrase- that is going to end at madhyama, the rishabha note to touch would be catusruti(R2) and the murccana will only be SGR2GM. If the murrcana is tending to the madhya sadja/avarohana phrase the preceding rishabha will be suddha(R1) and the phrase will be MGR1S. And D2 is used only in ND2NS. All other phrases would involve D1 only.

5. From the commentary one can construe that by using PMGR2S one can impart the Bhairavi flavor to Ghanta and with PMG1RS an overall Todi/Asaveri feel can be given to the raga.
6. The compositions in the SSP do not have phrases which avoid rishabha such as SGMP. It is always vakra as SGRGM. The usage of the phrase SGMP and the SND1PMGR1S and its prolific use imparts the Dhanyasi charge/color to Ghanta. In fact there is a documented cauka varna of Svati Tirunal ‘sA paramavivAsa’ in which the caranA refrain is only SGMP.

GHANTA RAGALAKSHANA AS DISCUSSED BY THE EXPERTS COMMITTEE OF THE MUSIC ACADEMY:

The Experts Committee of the Madras Music Academy debated the lakshana of this raga in the year 1933 ( 25^th Dec) wherein it was concluded that the raga took the svaras of Todi and additionally catusruti dhaivatha (D2NS) and catusruti rishabha ( R2GM). The proceedings do not provide us with any more material evidence beyond whatever we see in the SSP.

SUMMARY:

1. Ghanta had dominant notes coming from Bhairavi. Most possibly as it evolved, it picked up R1 and D2 to impart itself a different color/hue, to differentiate itself from Bhairavi.
2.  The phrase SGR2GM and PND3NS is to be used to impart ranjakatva/beauty to the raga.
3. With R1 usage becoming more pronounced R2 usage got restricted to GR2GM.
4. With R2 being so restricted and D2 being used only through ND2NS, the raga acquired a Todi flavor. Added to this was perhaps the fact that in certain versions even the SGR2GM too was dropped /deprecated and SGM coming to be used, the raga acquired a definitive Dhanyasi flavor.
5. It is also likely that upper/tAra sthAyi phrases were also eschewed with the compositions using more purvanga phrases with denser R1 usage & thus giving Ghanta a more Punnagavarali feel.
6. Given the usage of the two types of rishabha and dhaivata and considering its antiquity like Bhairavi, Ahiri etc it would be a futile exercise to group it under a particular mela/rAgAngA.
7. From an interpretation perspective, instead of individual notes Ghanta can at best be understood in terms of murcchanas/phrases which would be the building blocks. The choice phrases are SR1S, SGR1S, SGR2MGR1S, SGR2GMGR2GM, GMPMGR2GM, MGMPD1P, D1PND1P, D1ND1P, PND2NS, PNS, SND1P, ND2ND1P, PD1MPGMP, PMGR2GMGR1S etc
8. Rishabha is never a graha/nyasa note – in other words it is never a starting or an ending note.
9. PMGR1S and PMGR2S may both be permissible. However if we have to have a consistent way for usage of R1 it may be better to avoid PMGR2S. That way the application of the R1 note would be explainable and orderly.
10. SGM or SMGM or SRGM usage is not permitted or atleast is not a permitted usage in the tradition of Venkatamakhi as evidenced by the compositions of Dikshitar
11. If one were to render the two compositions of Dikshitar given in the SSP, one can use the above rules to interpret the notation without doubt and derive a clear version of the raga.
12. In sum Ghanta is a designer raga with the liberty to a composer or a performer to choose amongst those melodic blocks to build a particular version/flavor of raga. In fact with this conclusion in mind one can even hypothesize that Dikshitar in fact chose to impart a unique melodic feel to this raga by emphasizing GR2GM, ND2NS etc which is pointed out by Subbarama Dikshitar as imparting beauty to the raga.

GHANTA ONE SEES IN PRACTICE:

As one can see from the above by adjusting the usage of R1/R2 and to a lesser extent D1/D2, Ghanta of a type or flavor can be created for a composition or a portion of the composition. This can be as under:

1. Dominant usage of R1/D1 along with SGMP usage – Dhanyasi flavor- portions of Svati Tirunal’s cauka  varna is an example
2. Dominant usage of R1/D1 eschewing tara stayi phrases and having denser purvanga phrases with more Todi/Punnagavarali flavor – portions of Neyyamuna- Kshetrayya padam can be cited as an example
3. Dominant use of R2 and the phrase ND2NS/SND1P to get a Bhairavi flavor including the usage of the MGR2S phrase which Subbarama Dikshitar perhaps believed was the version in the true Venkatamakhi tradition.
4. Equal usage of R1 and R2 through the appropriate phrases and embellishing it with the GR2GM and ND2NS and generating the flavor of Ghanta , with MGR1S. Most of the available versions of the relatively better known Dikshitar Navavarana composition ‘Sri Kamalambike’ fall in this category. Other examples are the kritis of Svati Tirunal notated by Sangita Kalanidhi T K Govinda Rao- for instance the kriti ‘pAlaya pankajanAbha’.

DISCOGRAPHY:

1. Presented first is the Dikshitar Navavarna kriti as found in the SSP rendered to tanpura sruti by the late Vidvan Pattamadai Sundaram Iyer, from a home recording. This is an example of Category 4 above. Apart from the standard phrases, Sundaram Iyer unambiguously uses only PMGR1S only and the catusruti rishabha usage is restricted to SGR2GM & such other madhyama/pancama ending phrases.

Two curious points in his rendering merit our attention. One is the way he intones the dhaivatha occurring in the carana portion santApahara trikona gEhE. He also renders the madhyamakala carana line as “pancadasa tanmAtra visikA”. The SSP as well as Sri Sundaram Iyers’ guru Sangita Kalanidhi Kallidaikurici Vedanta Bhagavathar’s ‘Guruguhaganamruta varshini’ carry the text of this composition only as ‘pancatanmAtra visikA’. The incorporation of the words “dasa” seems inexplicable.

2. Sangita Kalanidhi T Visvanathan, who comes in the lineage of Sathanur Pancanada Iyer, a disciple of Tambiappan in the sishya parampara of Dikshitar renders this navAvarnA composition. This version is perhaps traceable to Sri T Visvanathan’s guru Sangita Kalanidhi Tiruppamburam Svaminatha Pillai. Though Sri T Visvanathan was a grandson of Veena Dhanammal and learnt a number of Dikshitar compositions from his mother, mother’s sister and off course from his sisters Sangita Kalanidhis T Balasarasvati and T Brinda, this composition and the other navAvaranA ( except the dhyAna and the mangala kritis) krithis were never part of their repertoire, since it was not taught to them. This version of the Ghanta navAvaranA must have been possibly learnt though Flute Svaminatha Pillai tracing back to Tiruppamburam Natarajasundaram & to Sathanur Pancanada Iyer who in fact was the guru of Veena Dhanammal as well.

The recording below is an excerpt from Sri T Visvanathan’s lecture demonstration in the Music Academy on 27^th Dec 1986 . He is accompanied by Vidvan Sri Tyagarajan on the violin and Vidvan Sri Raja Rao on the mrudangam. And rightly so at the outset Sri Visvanathan provides his commentary on Ghanta ahead of the rendering.

Attention is invited to the kAlapramAna of his rendering, the gAyaki style in which he plays so much so that one can decipher the sahitya & its intonation and the delightful way in which he sings in the interludes which enhances the overall appeal of his presentation.  As in the case of Sri Sundaram Iyer’s rendering, attention is invited to the carana sahitya  “santApahara trikona gEhE” wherein the dhaivata being intoned by Sri T Visvanathan is very much closer to D1.

Overall while Sri T Vishvanathan sticks to the standard version of Ghanta in his presentation,   attention is specifically invited to the madhayama kala section of the carana beginning ‘amtah karanE’. In this section, in the sahitya line ‘dyamta-rAga-pAsadvEsAm-kusadharakarE(a)tirahasya-yOginiparE’  he completely eschews R1 both in the madhya stAyI and in the tAra sthAyi segments and gives a completely Bhairavi’sh touch to Ghanta. The svara notation for that portion as he renders is “N..S G R2 R2 S N N S D1 N S R1 S N D1P M G R2 S || P D1”. In the concurrent versions, this entire segment is always rendered with R1 only and R2 is not invoked at all. It needs to be pointed out that this interpretation is well within the ambit of Ghanta and has been pointed out for we do have a reliable authority for such an interpretation. One can reasonably surmise that for ranjakatva, usage of R2 had been sanctioned as needed! Thus while for most of the kriti, the rendering falls in category 4 above, the rendering of the carana madhyamakala sahitya portion qualifies for categorization under 3 above.

3. Presented next is the rendering of the very rare Dikshitar composition ‘Sri Mangalambikam”, composed by him on Goddess Mangalambika, the consort of Lord Kumbesvara at Kumbakonam. She is said to be residing on a Sri Vidya mantrapeetha. Govinda Dikshitar the grand patriarch of the Venkatamakhin school after illustriously serving the Nayak King Raghunatha , sometime circa 1600 retired to Kumbakonam to spend his last years worshipping this Devi. Even today right outside the prahAra of this Devi’s temple one can see the vigrahas/statuettes of Govinda Dikshitar and his wife Nagamamba (parents of Venkatamakhin) facing Goddess Mangalambika. A towering and beautiful idol/mUla vigraha in the sanctum sanctorum is an awe inspiring sight for the devout. The Goddess has also been eulogized by Mahavidvan Meenakshisundaram Pillai ( the preceptor of Dr U Ve Svaminatha Iyer) through his Mangalambikai Pillai Tamizh. ( See Foot note 1) The rendering is by this blog author, inspired by the notation in the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini and validated by a senior performing musician.

The rendering is as per the standard interpretation of Ghanta under category 4 above. The composition is extremely heavy and of the highest stylistic order. It resembles in its construction, the rarely heard Bhairavi kriti “AryAm abhayAmbAm”, in terms of both musical and lyrical worth. The composition bears the raga mudra as always along with the composer’s guruguha mudra.

There are a bunch of compositions which are available from other composers in Ghanta & the recordings of which are available in the public domain. The following are some of them which may be listened to enhance our understanding.

1. The rendering of “Neyyamuna” , pada of Kshetrayya by Sangita Kalanidhi T Brinda  – Labeled as Ghanta, this version does not have R2 and D2 at all.
2. Tyagaraja’s mangalam in Ghanta – Renderings of this mangalam has more of Punnagavarali as its flavor.
3. The rendering by Sangita Kalanidhi Mani Krishnasvami of Tyagaraja’s ‘ gAravimpa rAdA’ – The contour of the melody which is being sung is nowhere near the classic melodic identity of Ghanta. I believe it is a case of mis-labeling this composition’s raga. Tyagaraja apparently never disclosed the raga of his songs and it was finally left to his disciples and latter day editors of his compositions notably the Taccur brothers to tag the compositions with raga names they though fit. In fact Sri K V Ramachandran and a host of others with authority/evidence, in their lecture demonstrations in the Music Academy have forcefully argued that a number of the Bard’s compositions have been a victim of this mis-labelling. I strongly feel that this composition is yet another victim. The raga of this song is not Ghanta and is something different which I leave it to the discerning listener to discover.

CONCLUSION:

A raga of great antiquity which has been classified as a rakthi raga and yet hadn’t had much of airtime, languishes in the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini. More specifically the magnum opus ‘Sri Mangalambikam” composed on the Goddess enshrined at Kumbakonam, has never at all been encountered in the concert circuit. Given the grand edifice of the composition, once can reasobaly surmise that Muthusvami Dikshitar could not have perfunctorily composed this masterpiece. Similarly he must have given considerable thought to assign Ghanta to his navAvarana composition as well. The navAvaranAs are all composed in ragas of great antiquity, with each of which of them being crown jewels of our music system. It would be in the fitness of things that concert performers resurrect and present the raga and the two exemplar Dikshitar compositions.

REFERENCES

1. Subbarama Dikshitar (1904)- Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini Vol III– Tamil Edition published by the Madras Music Academy in 1968/2006 – pages 666-671
2. Dr Hema Ramanathan(2004) – ‘Ragalakshana Sangraha’- Collection of Raga Descriptions- pages 1005-1013
3. Prof R. Satyanarayana(2010) – ‘Ragalakshanam’ – Kalamoola Shastra Series- Published by Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, New Delhi
4. Dr S. Sita (1983) – “The Ragalakshana Manuscript of Sahaji Maharaja’ – Pages 140-182- JMA Vol LIV
5. Prof S. R. Janakiraman & T V Subba Rao (1993)- ‘Ragas of the Sangita Saramrutha’ – Published by the Music Academy, Chennai, pages 201-205 & 207-210
6. T V Subba Rao (1934) – Journal of the Music Academy Vol V, page 111
7. T S Parthasarathy (1987) – Journal of the Music Academy Vol LV11 Page 55-56

 FOOTNOTE:

Mahavidvan Meenakshisundaram Pillai’s “Mangalambikai Pillai Tamizh” can be found in tamil script here. Amongst many of his other works, he has also composed a Pillai Tamizh on Goddess Kanthimathi the presiding deity of the temple at Tirunelveli. The legendary Sangita Kalanidhi K V Narayanasvami used to frequently render a verse as a viruttam in rAgamAlika from this work, starting with the words “vArAdhirundhAl un vadivEl vizhikku mai ezhuthEn”. Below is a clipping of one such rendering in Valaji, Varali, Nattakurinji, Begada, Saveri, Sanmukhapriya and finally Behag.

Every time I hear this rendering I get goose bumps, for I consider this veteran one of the finest in rendering ragas with the greatest rakthi and this rendering is testimony to that. One wishes if only somebody were to as soulfully like Sri K V Narayanasvami, render say the verse starting “thanE thanakku sariyAya” from the “Mangalambigai Pillai Tamizh” -Part 6 ( vArAnai paruvam), Verse 10 in a garland of rakti ragas like Begada, Sahana and Surati finally tailing into Ghanta as a prelude to “Sri Mangalambikam”. And wont it be be grand?

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Introduction:

Very many ragas were mere theoretical constructs of Muddu Venkatamakhin when he tabulated his rAgAnga scheme available us today as the Anubandha to the Caturdandi Prakashika. It is undeniable that they were given life, flesh and blood only by the composer nonpareil Muthusvami Dikshitar. One such raga is kalAvatI, the 31^st rAgAngam or the head of the 31^st mela/clan in the raga scheme. Many of these derived ragas were anointed as the clan heads/rAgAngAs such as Tarangini, Ragacudamani and whole bunch of prati madhyama ragas. To provide a formal musical expression for these still born rAgAngas , Dikshitar almost as a rule created short compositions with just a pallavi, anupallavi and a cittasvara/muktayi svara section for these rAgAngAs. Perhaps he feared that since they were neither ghana or rakti ragas, a huge monolithic kriti construct for these so called svara based ragas would be burdensome and repetitive. However for a select few of these rAgangAs, for reasons known to himself, Dikshitar created a full-suite kriti with pallavi, anupallavi and lengthy multiple tala avarta caranam with or without the cittasvara section,  for example Vamsavathi,  Phendyuti, Viravasanta, Tarangini and off course Kalavati- the subject matter raga for this blog post.

kalAvatI as a raga according to Prof S R Janakiraman is exclusive to the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini, as the raga is documented and illustrated for the first time in musical history, only in that treatise. The raga has no connection with the raga of Tyagaraja’s two compositions – ‘ennadu juthano’ and ‘okapari’ – both being composed in a melody being a janya under 16th mela Cakravaka. The said compositions have been given the same raga name of Kalavati on the authority of Govinda’s Sangraha Cudamani. This blog post has nothing to do with this raga Kalavati under the 16th mela, (which has an entirely different svarupa) and is only about the raganga representing mela 31, Kalavati as handled by Dikshitar. It needs to be noted here that Tyagaraja has no composition under mela 31 raganga Kalavati or its heptatonic equivalent Yagapriya or any derivative raga therefrom. Neither do we have any recorded composition by any other composer of repute.

Thus for all practical purposes this melody is a eka kriti raga with Muthusvami Dikshitar’s ‘ kalAvatI kamalAsanayuvatI’ extolling Goddess Sarasvati, being the sole kriti exemplar ( barring a couple of other ones found in the SSP namely the gitam, tanam, sancari and a couple of ragamalikas where the raga finds a place).

On the occasion of Sarasvathi Pooja today being celebrated as a part of Navaratri, this raga and DIkshitar’s composition on the Goddess of Learning is presented through this blog post as obeisance to Her.

Over to the raga and the composition!

 BRIEF BACKGROUND:

As pointed out earlier, Muddu Venkatamakhin’s raga compendium, Raga Lakshanam/Anubandha to the Caturdandi Prakashika, dateable to 1750 or thereabouts is the first musical text mentioning this melody. On that strength the SSP documents this raga as the implementation of the 31^st mela or as the rAgAnga therefrom. The raga sports two vivadi note combinations (R3G3 and D1N1) both in the purvanga and uttaranga sections. As we have seen in an earlier blog post the raga architecture in the case of vivadhi notes has two important components :

1. Taking into account the vocal renditional felicity & harmonics the vivadhi notes are made devious in the arohana/avarohana. Thus we see the R3G3 (shatsruti rishabha and antara gandhara) combinaton can be lineal in the ascent but has to be devious/vakra in the descent – that is they are implemented as PMG3MR3S or simple PM1R3S. Similarly for the D1N1 combination we do not see a lineal PD1N1S in the ascent – the suddha nishada is avoided or made vakra in the ascent as PD1N1DPS or PDPS or PDS or PDDS while in the descent it can be lineal as SN1D1P as the transition from N1 to D1 can be facile in the descent.
2. The dissonant notes are necessarily ornamented with a gamaka for example by the the jaaru/glide in S\N1D1P or D1/N1D1P while R3 is usually given emphasis through the kampita gamaka.

Kalavati is no exception to this rule. And so predictably Subbarama Dikshitar in perfect accordance to Muddu Venkatamakhin’s lakshana sloka provides the nominal arohana/avarohana murcchana as under:

 Arohana :           S R3 G3 M1 P D1 N1 D 1 P S

Avarohana:         S N1 D1 P M1 R3 G3 M1 R3 S

Subbarama Dikshitar adds that the two prayogas which makes this raga shine are PDNDP and SNDP with emphasis on sadja and nishadha in the later prayoga. The SSP provides us with the following exemplar compositions.

1. Lakshya gitam of Muddu venkatamkhin in Jhampa tala
2. Two sets of tanam of Muddu Venkatamakhin
3. Muthusvami Dikshitar’s adi tala kriti ‘kalAvatI kamalAsanayuvatI’
4. Subbarama Dikshitar’s sancari in matya tAla

In the anubandha the following two ragamalikas are found both being composed by Subbarama Dikshitar which sport this raga as one of it anga.

1. 72 ragAnga rAgamAlika- I Kanakambari in which the 31^st section is in kalavati beginning ‘ gAnalola’
2. ‘kAmincina kalAvatI’ in the ragas kalAvatI, srI, todI, Manohari, Kannada, Sankarabharanam, purnacandrika, varali, sama, kedaragaula, khamas, maruva , kapi, Sahana, mohanam, vasanta as anuloma svara sahitya ( 16 ragas) sections and saveri kuranji, saranga, Kalyani, kambhoji, pantuvarali, arabhi, ahiri, gaula, nata, Yamuna, padi, nayaki, Lalitha, paras and Gauri( 16 ragas)  as the viloma svara sahitya sections. Here Kalavati raga section is the pallavi refrain which is rendered once at the beginning and one at the end. This mammoth composition in tisra eka tala is on the Maharaja of Vijayanagaram .

THE COMPOSITION:

The kriti has been constructed in true Dikshitar style and the key points are summarized below.

1. The kriti has the pallavi, anupallavi and the carana together with the final madhyamakalasahitya section.
2. The standard colophon of Dikshitar ‘ guruguha’ is found as in ‘purAri-guruguha-hrudaya-ranjanIm’. The raga names is conspicuously embedded right at the very beginning glorifying Goddess Sarasvati as perhaps the moon or embodiment of arts.
3. Given that the raga is svara oriented/scalar raga (and is certainly not a ghana or rakti raga type) , we do not find too much of gamaka embellishments in Subbarama Dikshitar’s notation of this composition.
4. While the composition is in praise of the Goddess of learning one is unable to specifically place the location or shrine to which can be attributed, like how very many of Dikshitar’s kritis could be. There is one reference though which could be a potential pointer. In the beginning of the carana he says ‘kAsmIravihArA’. Dikshitar was an itinerant musician and one therefore could conjecture his visit to Kashmir. We do not have any more evidence beyond that. See Foot Note 1.
5. The kriti conforms to prAsA concordance as one can expect and it extolls the Goddess of Learning in such terms including ‘ murAri snushAkA’

DISCOGRAPHY:

We will conclude this blog post with the analysis of the recordings of this composition. The earliest recorded performance of this raga and the exemplar composition is arguably by Veena Vidvan S Balachandar. Given that we have a recorded version also by his brother Sangita Kala Acharya S Rajam also of this composition, it is likely that the version was sourced from Ambi Dikshitar, from whom Sri S Rajam had learnt quite a few Dikshitar compositions during the brief stay of Ambi Dikshitar in Madras circa 1930.

Here is the recording of Vidvan’s Balachandar’s rendering. See Foot note 2.

And not unsurprisingly the printed sleeves & cover for this gramophone record, represents the raga of this composition wrongly as ‘Yagapriya’, the heptatonic equivalent of Kalavati. Sri Balachandar’s raga exposition as well as his svara kalpana follows the Yagapriya – complete lineal heptatonic route.

This kriti rendering tracks to Sri S Rajam’ rendering, which can be heard on Youtube here.

S Rajam renders Kalavati

In comparison to the SSP notation, one can notice that these renderings deviate in quite a few places. And its indeed an element of puzzle as this oral version traceable back to Subbarama Dikshitar through Ambi Dikshitar, his son does not compare well with the written notation as provided by Subbarama Dikshitar himself in the SSP, making us wonder as to who effected the change in the pAtham. In passing we can notice that the rendering of many contemporaneous vidvans would show that they learnt it either directly from S Rajam or from this recording.

Presented next is the lecture demonstration of Prof S R Janakiraman,(Prof SRJ) which is much like a lodestar for understanding the raga. This is an excerpt from a Music Academy lecture demonstration from the year 2005

Prof SRJ with great verve and passion, in this gem of an exposition, takes us on a tour, elaborating the raison d’etre for this raga being the subject matter of his demonstration, how it differs from Yagapriya, the logic of the vivadi notes being vakra, the need to sing the composition with absolute fidelity to the notation and lastly if not the least an exposition of the contours of the raga and his interpretation of the Dikshitar composition.

Laced with pungent humor Prof S R Janakiraman laments how this composition has been recast as if it was a Tyagaraja composition, speeded up and dealt with in a casual manner. It goes without saying that this kriti too has to be rendered in the majestic cauka kala pace, typical of Dikshitar’s compositions without accelerating the tempo.

Presented next is a brief excerpt of the rendering of the composition by Sangita Kalandhi Vedavalli from her commercial release “Sarada Stuti Manjari”. See Footnote 3.

Presented next is a brief excerpt of the rendering of the composition by Vidushi Amrutha Murali from her commercial release “Sarvashree” released by Charsur. See Foot note 4.

Besides the above, we do have commercial recordings of Dikshitar’s composition by Vidusis Sowmya, and Vijayalakshmi Subramaniam in the public domain. It would not be out of place to point out very many of these renderings have the madhyama kala section “purAri guruguha hrudaya ranjanI” rendered in tara stayi whereas the section is expressly notated by Subbarama Dikshitar in mandhara sthAyi which Prof S R Janakiraman pointedly renders with fidelity to the SSP.

Also available is a privately recorded ragam-tanam-pallavi in three ragas, all of which bear the name of Kalavati under their respective sampradayas/genre – Dikshitar’s Kalavati, Tyagaraja’s Kalavati and Hindustani Kalavati akin to our Valaji. This is by Vidvan Sherthalai Ranganatha Sarma.

There are no extant recordings of both the Subbarama Dikshitar’s ragamalikas in the public domain as they are practically extinct on the concert circuit.

I present another interpretation of this composition with  straighter notes, providing food for thought:

 PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:

Given the notation as seen in the SSP and the available renderings I had always felt that the articulation of the PD1N1D and SN1D1P should be aurally even more nuanced and particularly the transition from D1N1D1 should be articulated even better. Given this, I have ventured to render it myself, the recording of which is below. One very good, close to the SSP notation, rendering which I have heard is of Vidvan T M Krishna’s, when he sang it soulfully in his Narada Gana Sabha 2014 Season concert.

In the context of interpreting the SSP notation, a personal view point needs articulation. Subbarama Dikshitar has notated the songs in the SSP based on his tutelage under Balasvami Dikshitar and perhaps other prime disciples of Muthusvami Dikshitar himself. Transcribing them into the SRGM notation along with his invented notation for the gamakas, Subbarama Dikshitar was attempting to distil the musical structure as much as he could. I don’t think it is humanly possible to “absolutely” transcribe with 100% fidelity, a rendering of a Carnatic composition into notation. And equally remote is a 100% high fidelity reproduction of the same by rendering the composition back from notation. This process cannot be loss-less by any stretch of imagination.

The task of converting a musical idea/notes into a 100% hi-fidelity lossless notation in written form is a semiotic impossibility. The un-notatables, the micro tones, grace notes and subtle nuancing of harmonics of the individual notes of our music are all too complex to be reduced to notation using a dozen signs. It is my earnest view that such a recreation, by reading the notation ‘verbatim’ would defeat the very purpose of the exercise as the output is more possibly a dull copy of the original. A more purposive or what I term as a creative interpretation or approach would be to ‘constructively’ interpret the notation taking the notation of Subbarama Dikshitar as road signs or as the means rather than the end in itself. Additionally versions from oral traditions and other inputs such as the mode of rendering the raga in authentic practice etc can be used to triangulate and optimize the interpretation.

With this view, I have as much as possible tried to keep to the spirit of the notation, attempting to interpret the notation in the Carnatic idiom to derive for myself the pen picture of this composition, as close as possible to how perhaps Dikshitar might have created in the original. In only the final avarta of the pallavi do I use PDSNDP. Otherwise I stick to PDNDP or SNDP as applicable.

Personally this composition for me represents a creation of the highest aesthetic order. The turns and bends, the almost lavish baroque use of the vivadhi combinations and the almost perfect blending of the sahitya with the notes makes this a perfect example of what the French would call the chef-d’-oeuvre !

 REFERENCES:

1. Subbarama Dikshitar(1904) -Sangeeta Sampradaya Pradarshini with its Tamil translation published by the Madras Music Academy
2. Prof. S R Janakiraman(1996) – Raga Lakshanangal(Tamil)
3.  JMA (2005)- LXXVI- Page 160- Proceedings of 3rd Jan 2005 published by the Madras Music Academy
4. Vidya Shankar(2005) – JMA 2005 LXXVI – Gamaka Notation in Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini – pp 191-206

   FOOTNOTE:

1. The Sarasvathi Devi or Sharada of Kashmir has very many interesting mythologies and legends associated with it. It could be that Dikshitar was perhaps alluding to Sharadha Devi at the temple in Kishenganj which is today in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. We have a similar point to ponder in the case of another Goddess Sarasvati related kriti namely the Sharavati raga kriti ‘Sharavathi tata vasini’. One cannot confirm the exact temple or place so signified in the composition which is the banks of the river Sharavathi. In so far as this Kalavati raga kriti is concerned, tagging a temple/location in KAshmir and also the visit of Muthusvami Dikshitar to that location if any detailed in popular Dikshitar literature is bereft of authority or evidence. Inside and outside of the SSP we do have Dikshitar kritis to which the holy places of the North such as Kedarnath, Pashupatinath and Badrinath have been tagged to. We do not know beyond reasonable doubt if he ever visited those faraway places. One can hypothesise that given the legends and association of deities to such places in our religious scriptures, Dikshitar could have simple alluded to the place on the strength of that reference, in the relevant compositions.Also from a historical perspective we have the works of scholars like Kalhana, Hemachandra and others which cast Goddess Sarasvati or Sharadha as having Her abode in Kashmir and thus one can only safely conclude that Dikshitar was merely following tradition and alluding to that in this composition. It will therefore only be an exercise in futility to determine the particular temple, deity he was alluding to or if he in fact visited Kashmir and composed it there given the poor internal evidence available in this instant case.
2. Vidvan Balachandar’s rendering has been in the public domain for many years now and from a copyright perspective please see disclaimer below.
3. Thanks are due to Sri Prashanth Prasad for sharing the rendering of the composition by Sangita Kalanidhi Vedavalli.
4. Vidushi Amrutha Murali’s rendering had been uploaded in the public domain and in the light of copyrights involved only an excerpt has been shared.

Safe Harbor Statement: The clipping and media material used in this blog post have been exclusively utilised for only for educational / understanding /research  purpose and cannot be commercially exploited or dealt with. The intellectual property rights of the performers and copyright owners are fully acknowledged and recognised.

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Introduction:

Very few ragas in our system have remained unchanged in terms of their melodic structure, since their time of conception/birth. Narayanagaula is one of them. Today it is a peripheral raga with a couple of varnams and a handful of kritis having yielded ground to its melodic siblings such as Kedaragaula and Surati, despite the fact that it can have an independent melodic existence.

This blog post is all about this beauty of a raga. There are two sterling compositions in this raga, one being ‘maguvA ninnE’,the ata tala tana varnam composed by Veenai Kuppayyar and the other being ‘Sri Ramam ravikulabdhi somam’ by Muthusvami Dikshitar. And equally there are two gold standard renditions of each of these compositions of the highest aesthetic order, which are classics for the sheer virtuosity with which they have been rendered. An in depth assimilation of these two compositions and the renderings can enable one to digest the entire form of the raga.

THE HISTORY OF THE RAGA:

Narayanagaula has been dealt with in almost all Southern musical texts. Govinda Dikshitar, Venkatamakhin, Sahaji, Tulaja and the rest have provided the lakshana of the raga as it existed during their times. It has always been bunched under the Kambhoji/Kedaragaula mela with Nishada as a graha svara. As a raga it has been part of two nominal groupings in musical literature:

1. In the company of Ritigaula, Malavagaula, Kedaragaula, Gaula, Kannadagaula, Chayagaula and Purvagaula, it has been grouped as a ‘Gaula’nta raga. See footnote 2.
2. It has been made part of a second set /dviteeya Ghana raga panchakam. The first set consist of universally agreed ragas namely Natta,Gaula, Arabhi, Varali and Sri. According to one school, the second set consists of Narayanagaula, Reetigaula, Bouli, Saranganata and Kedaram. Contrastingly in the Pallavi svarakalpavalli of Tiruvottiyur Tyagayyar in his gitam listing he makes the dviteeya pancakam as Ritigaula, Bhauli, Saranganata, Malavasri and Narayanagaula

In the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini Subbarama Dikshitar presents the following shloka of Muddu venkatamakhin as the authoritative and unambiguous definition of the raga.

syAn nArAyanagaulastU sampurnO nighrahAnvitah |

arohE gadhA varjasca vinyAsAt vidyatE kvacit ||

He illustrates the ragas lakshana with a set of exemplar compositions:

1. The Dhruva tala gitam of Muddu Venkatamakhin
2. The matya tala kaivara prabandha of Venkatamakhin himself composed on Lord Sarangapani at Kumbakonam with its alapa khanda section being oddly notated completely with gamaka signs
3. ‘Sri Ramam ravikulabdhi somam’ of Muthusvami Dikshitar in adi tala
4. His own sancari in matya tala

In his commentary he concisely provides the arohana/avarohana murccana as RMPNDNS/ NDPMGRGRS It’s important and worth observing that he begins the murcchanas on Ri and Ni, indicating pointedly that they are the jiva and nyasa svaras. He highlights three important melodic phrases which must be emphasized:

–          MGRGRS

–          MP\DMPMGR and

–          PNS

The definition having not stated expressly that dhaivatha is vakra in the arohana gives room for interpreting that PNS is the default prayoga and PNDNS is an ancillary prayoga. Nevertheless Subbarama Dikshitar clarifies that the converse is true for the raga’s lakshana. As one can see later, while the exemplar compositions have both PNS and PNDNS, modern day performers sing only PNDNS almost as a rule completely eschewing PNS or PNNS.

Also one can notice that again though the prescribed avarohana krama is MGRS and MGRGRS, we also see MG\S with a glide from gandhara to sadja being used in the raga. Both the exemplar compositions sport this motif.

THE RAGA’s LAKSHANA IN A NUTSHELL:

It is best left to the learned Prof S R Janakiraman to provide us an expert commentary on the raga based on the available corpus of compositions. Here is the summary of his take on this raga:

1. It is a ubhaya vakra shadava sampurna raga devoid of gandhara in the ascent under the 28^th begins in mela
2. The notes ri, ma and ni are unique dheerga svaras which function as graha svara as well. Thus Tyagaraja’s ‘Kadalevadu’ and Dikshitar’s ‘Sri Ramam’ begin on Rishaba while the ata tala tana varna begins on Ma. And most importantly the carana refrain of the varna begins on Ni. Additionally Dikshitar gives both Ga and Dha a unique placement and treatment in his composition.
3. All these three exemplar compositions sport MPDM in the Madhya sthAyi and SNNDDP in the mandara sthAyi copiously.
4. Apart from the above referred murcchanas, M.GRGRGS, R.MPN.DD, MGRGRSR, M.M.MNDNS, NSNGRGSR are seen as characteristic sancaras. ( svara followed by a dot indicates it is prolonged/dhIrgha)
5. The sancara NSNgrS is especially likely to sport a lowered gandhara especially in the tAra sthAyI.
6. NSRMGRPMG.. is a beautiful and distinct prayoga for this raga.

Further according to Prof S R Janakiraman, this raga’s lakshana has remained more or less the same as it was during Govinda Dikshitar’s times. The discography section below, has the video wherein the Professor dissects the raga with the exemplar composition.

COMPOSITIONS IN THE RAGA

VARNAS:

Musicologists have always reiterated that a raga is best understood very clearly from varnams as they encompass the complete melodic canvas of the raga. Common & jIva prayogas, arsha prayogas or murcchanas/svara combinations which are rarely rendered or gone out of vogue, beginning & ending svaras, weak and strong notes (graha, amsa, nyasa) indicating which are to be dwelt upon or elided/passed over, nature of the sancaras in tristhAyi, Ghana or rakti nature of the raga etc can all be inferred from a varnam of an expert composer.  A musical personage of such an illustrious pedigree is Veenai Kuppier, a disciple of Tyagaraja who has bequeathed us a number of varnas which are literally the encyclopedia for those respective ragas. His Adi tala varnas in Surati, Bilahari, Begada and Sankarabharanam and the Ata tala tAna varnas in Anandabhairavi, rItigaula & Narayanagaula are exemplars for the ragas in question, capturing for us the pen picture as it existed at that point in time.

In the case of Narayanagaula, Kuppayyar’s ata tala tana varnam which has ‘maguvA ninnE’ as its Pallavi is the very aigrette of this raga, much like how ‘Vanajakshi’ is for Kalyani and ‘Viribhoni’ for Bhairavi. See foot note 1. Furthermore, historical records have it that Kuppayyar excelled in rendering this raga as a performer. Prof. Sambamoorthi in his essay, ‘Madras a Seat of Musical Learning’ makes a telling statement that he was called ‘Narayanagaula’ Kuppayyar for the mastery he had over the raga and his ‘maguva nine’ is the best exemplar/lakshya for this raga. Prof S R Janakiraman in his commentary on Tulaja’s Saramruta, echoes Prof Sambamoorthy by saying that the tana varna is the lakshya prabandha for the raga.

Apart from Kuppayyar’s tour-de-force, in the varna category we have two more. One is the adi tala tana varnam ‘ calamEla jEsEvurA’ of Muthiah Bhagavathar. Another is the varna by Kalahasti Venkatasvami Raja who has composed a Nava raga Ghana ragamalika in adi tala, in which Narayangaula figures in one of the sections. This composition which is seen notated by Prof Sambamoorthi in his works has two odd features:

1. Sahitya is seen for all the svara sections including the anupallavi muktayi svaras and the four carana ettugada svaras.
2. While the prathama Ghana raga set as universally agreed is adopted in this varna, the composer Venkatasvami Raja in this case has made only 4 ragas as the dviteeya Ghana raga set, eliminating Bhauli and Saranganata and bringing Nattakurinji instead.

The varna is structured with its pallavi in Natta, anupallavi in Gaula and the anupallavi muktayi  svaras in Arabhi and Varali. The carana sahitya next is in Sri followed by four ettugada svara sections each in Narayanagaula, Reetigaula, Nattakurinji and Kedaram. Again this composition is rarely encountered in the concert platform.

KRITIS:

Tyagaraja to his credit has a number of compositions, the prominent ones being “kadalE vAdu”, ‘darshanamu sEya” and “Innalu”. In fact there is a version of ‘darshanamu seya’ in Kedaragaula the melodic sibling of Narayanagaula, raising the doubt as to the actual raga of the composition.

We do have compositions of Muthiah Bhagavathar & other modern composers as well. We do not have any kriti of Syama Sastri or his descendants in this raga. Apart from his ata tala varna mentioned above, Veena Kuppayyar has also composed a kriti in this raga, ‘nannu brocEvA’, which has been never at all heard of, let alone being heard! It’s indeed curious that we notice no compositions in this raga in the case of Svati Tirunal, despite the hand that both Gayakashikamani Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavathar and Sangita Kalanidhi Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer had, both in terms of resurrection and re-tuning of the melodies.

As an exemplar for the kriti format, we would be seeing the Muthusvami Dikshitar kriti notated in the SSP, “Sri Ramam ravikulabdhi somam” in the discography section in detail. We have one more kriti attributed to Dikshitar which is found in the collection published by Ananthakrishna Iyer much later. It is the Nilotpalamba Vibakti kriti ‘’nIlotpalAmbA jAyatI” in misra capu tala. Suffice to say that the melodic and lyrical value of ‘Sri Ramam’ is of the highest order and is a worthy exemplar for enhancing our understanding of this raga.

OTHER COMPOSITIONAL TYPES

Narayanagaula has also been utilized in Ragamalikas. Ramasvami Dikshitar for example has made use of the raga in his mammoth 108 raga tala malika. We do notice that this raga has been incorporated in a couple of other anonymous Ragamalikas found documented in the ‘Sangeeta Sarvartha sara Sangrahamu’ of Veena Ramanujayya. Another notable composition is a gitam in Narayanagaula published in the Pallavi Svara Kalpavalli of Thiruvottiyur Tyagayyar which concisely provides the raga’s lakshana. Needless to add, it reiterates the form of the raga as found in the Kuppayyar varna and the compositions of Dikshitar and Tyagaraja.

We do not have other compositional types in this raga ( padam, javali, tillana etc). Curiously enough if one can experience the raga in-depth and then ruminate it can be intuitively discovered in hindsight that:

1. From a compositional form perspective, It is perhaps suitable only for Varna and kriti templates
2. From a performance music perspective it is amenable to alapana and neraval but is best suited for tanam and svarakalpana.

Again from the discography one can infer that while the raga is ideal for madhyamakala/tAna exposition as exemplified by the ata tala varna and the kritis of Tyagaraja, the sedate pace of Sri Ramam of Dikshitar brings out another face of raga.

DISCOGRAPHY:

Addressed first in this section is the ata tala tana varna of Kuppayyar. Many renderings of this varna are available in the public domain. Among contemporary Vidvans, Sangita Kalanidhi T N Krishnan has rendered it time and again as a concert opener. His version is perhaps attributtable to Sangita Kalanidhi Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer from whom quite a few seem to have learnt. Tiger Varadachariar and the Kalakshetra school seem to have been another great repository of this varnam. Vidvan M D Ramanathan (MDR) from this school has soulfully presented this and many other varnams in his own inimitable style. It takes a while to absorb his sonorous style of presentation, but once we come to grips his presentation gets addictive.

Here is his rendering in the company of Sri T N Krishnan and Sri Umayalpuram Sivaraman which is a gold-standard for this composition if one may say so.

A number of features call for attention:

1. Sri MDR’s version tracks to the notation given in the anubandha of the SSP, almost to a T.
2. The raga sports both PNDNS as well as PNNS as per definition. Sri MDR demonstrates easily that the intonation of the PNS or PNNS in Narayanagaula is so distinct and no way can one confuse this with Surati. The intonation is all that matters as well as the fluid ease with which you move to the next note. There are very many modern day musicians who have changed the PNNS to PNDNS as if to normalize the Narayanagaula to have only PNDNS. So much so, in some days to come PNS will be an arsha prayoga for sure in this raga. Subbarama Dikshitar almost as a cautionary note says that PNS is also part of the raga DNA.
3. The Pallavi begins with Ma, the anupallavi with Sadja & the anupallavi muktayi svara with Ma. The carana begins with a lilting Nishada janta prayoga ,all jiva svaras for the raga.
4. The fourth ettugada svara section rendered by Sri MDR, beginning with M1 is unique in its structuring. This svara section is not found in any published versions of this varna. Neither is it found in any other renderings. Be that as it may, the ettugada svara section (as given below) and rendered by Sri MDR is so nuanced and delicate right from the way he intones the madhyama note. Contrast this with the madhyama note he invokes at the takeoff of the first ettugada svara line. Here is the svara notation for the fourth ettugada svara section which is not found in the SSP notation of the ata tala varna:

m,gr                    snsr                     m,pd                    pmgr                   m,pn                     |
nddp                   m,pS                    ndpd                   m,pd                    m,gr                      |
m,gr                    snsr          |           m,pm                   pmgr                                               ||
m,gr                    srmp                    Chi…                    iiii                         na,,,                    |

And as if for our benefit when he renders it the second time he shifts the focus and intones the madhyama alone leaving out the other notes with pauses. The result is electric as one can see for its produces a different aural effect. See foot note 3.

5. True to harmonic positioning and the gap between svarasthanas nishadha and the G3 gandhara, the gandhara value is lowered to sadharana levels almost in some phrases for example nG2RS.
6. The way Sri MDR renders it brings to our mind the mellismatic way a raga can be expounded. Fluidity marks the flow of the raga. There are no well-marked svarastanas, no sharp tones or abrupt jumps/turns/twists. The flow is liquid melody driven by janta notes and brisk progression in terms of pace. Is this what was referred to by the ancients as ‘ghana’ marga or the attributes of a ‘ghana’ raga? Sri MDR’s voice seem to have been tailor made for this way of rendering the raga and this varna is a telling example of exposition of a Ghana raga. Words – sahitya or the svara intonation seem a mere auxiliary/appendage to the entire musical rendering. The concept of ghana in our music and its link to scalar and mellismatic ragas in contradistinction is a topic worthy of a separate in depth blog post.
7. Attention is invited to the usage of the nishada svara especially in the janta form. The janta usage takes the form – PNNS and N.NDDPP the first N being extremely dheergha. The phrases PNDP or PNNDP takes the raga closer to Surati, which can and should be avoided. The said phrases can be replaced instead by PN.NDDP or PNDNPDMP giving unambiguously the unique flavour of Narayanagaula. Similar is his treatment of the madhyama note, as in M.MGRGRS.

Presented next is the version of Prof SR Janakiraman which can be tracked back to his days he spent in the Carnatic Music College @ Madras where he underwent tutelage under the legendary masters of those times. Worth its weight in gold, his telling illustration of the raga, its features and how it is distinguishable from Kedaragaula and Surati is presented in the following video in his very inimitable style, taking Kuppayyar’s magnum opus as exemplar.

Prof SRJ – Illustration

We move on next to the rendering of Muthusvami Dikshitar’s ‘Sri Ramam ravikulabdhi somam’. Again this composition has been rendered by many contemporaneous vidvans and vidusis. Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer used to soulfully render this in the past quite frequently and he is supposed to have learnt this from Tiruvisainallur Pallavi Narayanasvami Iyer, a giant from another era. See foot note 4.

Before his presentation however, we have to hear out the gold standard rendering of this composition which can only be that on the Veena by Sangita Kalanidhi Mysore Doresvami Iyengar in true Mysore style. See footnote 5.

Accompanied by his son D Balakrishna, here is the maestro rendering the composition.

The version is sought to be presented in this section as a primus inter pares from amongst the rendering of giants, for a number of reasons detailed below.

1. With a short sketch of the raga to begin with, the veteran embarks immediately on the tAnam of the raga, showing how madhyama kala pradhana the raga is. The mellismatic nature of the raga is brought to the fore by the vidvan coaxing those notes with his longer meetus from the strings on this hoary instrument of the South.
2. Following the tAnam, he presents a very stylized interpretation of the composition. Students of music should listen to this with the SSP notation in hand to understand how remarkably the titan follows the notation given by Subbarama Dikshitar, with great fidelity. For instance one sees no trace of sadharana gandharam in his rendering of “nAradAdi sannuta”
3. There no unnecessary sangatis, kaarvais and other embellishments, for the maestro in true Mysore style keeps gamakas to the minimum.
4. And as the final icing on the cake he plays a concise set of kalpana svaras, with nobility of imagination, in the first/mudhal kAlam adding a meditative touch to his rendering. And at the same time as if on cue from Subbarama Dikshitar, he repeats again and again by embedding the raga’s leitmotif ‘MPMG RGRS’ in his loop back to the pallavi line. In his svara essay he plays both PNNS and PNDNS equally, without deprecating the former prayoga. After first playing the svara kalpana in the first kAlam he then moves to the second kAlam giving the right contrast in terms of pace of delivery in true vaineeka style.

The Vidvans of the Kancipuram school of Naina Pillai have reveled in singing the raga. We have recordings of both the Tyagaraja and Dikshitar compositions by the vidvans of this school (Vidvans Chitoor Subramanya Pillai, Madurai Somasundaram & others) complete with alapana and svarakalpana Dr. S Ramanathan too used to render the Tyagaraja composition ‘kadalevAdu’ very frequently which is in the public domain. We have renderings of the Dikshitar composition by contemporaneous vidvans including Sangita Kalanidhi Sanjay Subramanian, Vidvan T M Krishna and Neyveli Santhanagopalan.

We next move on to an exemplar rendering of the raga as a part of a ragamalika. Sangita Kala Acharya Dr R S Jayalakshmi presents that portion of Ramasvami Dikshitar ‘s 108 raga tala malika, “Natakadi Vidyala”, set in Narayanagaula excerpted from a 2015 Nada Inbam Lecture Demonstration.

We move on to the manodharma section encompassing neraval and svarakalpana renderings in the raga. See foot note 6. Presented first is the svara kalpana rendering for the Kuppayyar Ata tala varnam on the carana line ‘cinna nATAdigA nItO’, by Vidvan Neyveli Santhanagopalan. In this AIR Sangeeth Sammelan Concert concert excerpt, we pick up action as the vidvan starts the final ettugada svara section and seamlessly moves on to the kalpanasvaras.

With Sri S Varadarajan on the violin and Umayalpuram Mali on the mrudangam providing competent support , the vidvan takes in the same melodic foot tapping tempo in singing svara kalpana, rolling out janta svaras dwelling on the jIva svaras as the eduppu svara for his sequences. The Vidvan again tellingly uses the leitmotif GRGRMP as his concluding svara refrain/makuta svara as he loops back to the carana line.

We should be eternally grateful to Sangita Kalanidhi Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer for consistently keeping ‘Sri Ramam’ alive on the concert platform through his renderings right through the latter half of the last century. His renderings include the one in his “Kalki Gardens Ramanavami Concert 1967” in the company of Sangita Kalandhi Smt M S Subbulakshmi, which had once been recorded but shared and heard innumerable number of times by die-hard rasikas of his brand of music.

We bring this blog post to a close with his rendering of the song together with svara kalpana for the pallavi line of ‘Sri Ramam”, as a musical homage to that titan, from a concert recording of his.

And again like Sri Doresvami Iyengar, Srinivasa Iyer repeats MGRGRS in his svarakalpana, which the great Subbarama Dikshitar calls as the core building block of this raga of great antiquity.

REFERENCES:

1. Subbarama Dikshitar(1904) -Sangeeta Sampradaya Pradarshini with its Tamil translation published by the Madras Music Academy
2. Prof. P. Sambamoorthy (1970) – A Practical Course in Karnatic Music ( Tamil)- Book III published by The Indian Music Publishing House
3. T K Govinda Rao (2006) – Varnasagaram – Ganamandir Publications
4. Prof. P. Sambamoorthy ( 1939)- The Madras Tercentenary Commemoration Volume- Republished by Asian Educational Services
5. Prof. S R Janakiraman(1996) – Raga Lakshanangal(Tamil)- Second Part
6. Prof. S R Janakiraman (1993)- Ragas of Saramrutha – Published by the Madras Music Academy

FOOTNOTES:

1. It’s indeed unfortunate that in older as well as modern publications ‘maguva ninne’ is attributed mistakenly to Tiruvottiyur Tyagayyar. This includes the Anubandha to the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini as well. Since we have a reliable authority, that of Thiruvottiyur Tyagayyar himself in his publication “Pallavi Svarakalpavalli” stating that the aforesaid varna is one of his father, namely Veena Kuppayyar, we need to infer/reconcile that it was perhaps a case of misconception / mis-attribution /printing issue on the part of the older publishers rather than simply carrying forward the error and perpetuate the same on unsubstantiated authority.
2. Shahaji, the Maharatta King of Tanjore has composed a ‘Saptasagara suladi prabandha lila daru” utilizing the 7 gaulanta rAgas( excluding Gaula itself) and the 7 talas on Lord Tyagaraja of Tiruvarur. The svara Ni is supposed to be one of the jiva svaras for all the gaulanta ragas. The sections in that composition are: Narayanagaula ( Dhruva), Kannadagaula(matya), Malavagaula(rupaka), Ritigaula (Jhampa), Purvagaula(Triputa), Chayagaula ( Ata) and Kedaragaula ( Eka) . We do have a set of compositions grouped as Vibhakti kritis on Goddess Neelotpalamba at Tiruvarur, attributed to Muthusvami Dikshitar. Apart from the Neelotpalamba Vibhakti set, we have from the SSP, compositions by Muthusvami Dikshitar individually in every one of these gaulanta ragas except Kannadagaula & Purvagaula.
   1. ‘Sri Ramam’ – Narayanagaula
   2. ‘Sri Nathadi’ – Malavagaula
   3. ‘Sri Nilotpala nayike’ – Ritigaula
   4. ‘Sarasvatya’ – Chayagaula
   5. ‘Nilakantham’- Kedaragaula
3. Unique as it may be, one has to wonder whose handiwork it was, for it is such a brilliant first rate piece of svara setting. Was it Sri MDR’s personal creation or a Kalakshetra/Tiger Varadachariar’ imaginative contribution to this varna? The Kalakshetra as an institution is famous for its imaginative melodic extensions to famous compositions. For example the Bhairavi magnum opus “Viribhoni” has a sahitya composed for all its ettugada svaras, which seamlessly segues with the svara setting and also the ata tala rhythmic setting. Whoever was the composer must be a genius to have retrofitted meaningful telugu words to a complex melodic and rhythmic setting and segueing seamlessly with the lyrical content of the pre-existing sahitya. Similar is the case of the Todi cauka varna ‘rUpamU jUcI’ as well, were sahitya has been incorporated for the ettugada svaras. All these have been more or less anonymous till date.
4. Newly anointed Sangita Kalanidhi Sanjay Subramanyam has acknowledged having learnt the Dikshitar Narayanagaula masterpiece from Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. According to him his guru Calcutta K S Krishnamurthi used to go into raptures recalling a brilliant rendering of that piece by the Carnatic veteran in a Bangalore Concert.
5. Equally so in his erstwhile Sangeetham.com musical musings Sri.Sanjay Subramanian wrote once about the Narayanagaula tanam and the rendering of “Sri Ramam” by Sangita Kalanidhi Doresvami Iyengar in a concert sometime circa 1980 at the Sastri Hall, Mylapore.
6. Another point to ponder is can the exposition of the raga be done through a viruttam. It’s not known for sure if there are any recordings of Ragam, tanam & Pallavi done exclusively in Narayanagaula, in the public domain. Performances have been made in the past such as the one by Vidvan T M Krishna in the 2009 Chennai Music Season at the Indian Fine Arts where he rendered 2 RTP’s back to back, the first one in Narayanagaula and the second in Rishabapriya. One other exhaustive rendering (40 mins+) of Dikshitar’s Sri Ramam is available in the public domain, probably a bootlegged recording of a Music Academy Concert from the year 2011 with alapana, neraval and svarakalpana.