India has always reverenced its music-makers, composers, patrons and students for preserving and adding to the precious heritage of our civilisation. In Carnatic music, Thyagaraja (1767-1847) is exalted as a composer of genius whose songs (‘kirtanas’) are rendered and listened to with profound joy and abiding wonder. He is commemorated as a saint every year in festive homage, close by his tomb in Thiruvaiyaru on the banks of the holy river Cauvery. In 2015, the aradhana falls on January 10. I remember the musical concourse as a boy of 12, with the star singers and accompanists of the 1940s, joined by amateurs, rendering the ‘Pancha Ratna’ (five gems) of Thyagaraja in soulful ecstasy.
The composer paid his own homage to music in many lyrics. In “Naadha Thanumanisham Shankaram” he sanctified the seven notes of the octave, Sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-da-ni, so memorably that I retain it as a lifelong talisman of grace that passes understanding.
Perhaps we become music lovers by listening to lullabies, nursery rhymes, ditties, bhajans and filmy geet, if melodiously sung by Lata Mangeshkar and other exceptional vocalists. I myself could never sing the seven note octave without rousing the nearby dogs and donkeys. But a school mate of mine once came home and regaled us with this very song, keeping in tune with a sruti box.
Decades later I acquired a recording of this kriti by M S Subbulakshmi. This urged me to look up the text of libretto and understand its significance. Intuition tells some of us that our music springs from a divine source. Thyagaraja alludes to it. He bows down to Shankara as the embodiment of Nada (music). Mythology pictures Shiva as that symbolic essence of Sama Veda, originating the seven sacred swaras (or ‘tones’). Thyagaraja led a pious life beyond the feuds of sects and cults. In his bhakti marga (path of devotion), Lord Rama was the supreme rasika (connoisseur of our music), who should be immersed in raga, rhythmic beats of mridanga tala and devotion. This raga, Chittaranjani, has a feature that he employs in his hymn-like tribute to the seven basic notes of the octave. The ancients have chosen lovely names for the ragas. For me ‘Chittaranjani’ is “delighting the mind” or consciousness. It has the unique feature of being confined to just one octave.
Savants have classified it as a ‘janya’ or offspring of the 19th Mela or basic scale, but it is closer to the 22nd Mela, Kharaharapriya, which Thyagaraja immortalised in kritis like “Chakkani Raja Margamu” and “Pakkala Nilabadi”. It has a pleasing assonance of melody between the notes ri-ga and dha-ni. I bow to our music, with heart and mind: “Namaami me manasa sirasa”, in the saint’s words.