99th Annual Conference of The Music Academy - Day 10

 

The first lecture of the day was by Vidwan Ravi Rajagopalan on “The chronology of Muthuswami Dikshitar’s biographies.”

Hagiography and blatant falsehoods often pass into history. I am currently reading a book titled Fake History, which takes ten stories widely accepted as historical fact today and carefully dismantles the myths around them. These are stories from the western world, where record keeping has generally been more rigorous than in India. While we have stone inscriptions from a thousand years ago that give us precise details of donors involved in the construction of the Big Temple in Thanjavur, our more recent history is often lost, distorted, or repainted without hesitation. The tendency to canonize people we admire does little to help the preservation of historical truth.

The question of who Muthuswami Dikshitar really was clearly requires serious reexamination. Layers of dust need to be cleared, cobwebs removed, and coats of paint peeled away before we can begin to glimpse the person behind the stories.

Unfortunately, we are not even certain of his year of birth, even as we observe 2025 as his 250th birth anniversary. In an earlier article, I had mentioned his birth year as 1776, based on some reading I had done. I later corrected this to 1775, which is widely believed to be the year of his birth. Today’s lecture brought this question back into focus. Was he born in 1775 or in March 1776? The simple and honest answer is that we do not know.

Was he a performing musician? Did he play the veena? Was he showered with gold? Did he have a daughter? Did he actually travel to all the places he sang about? Did the royal elephant of Ettayapuram run amok before his death? Did he compose all the works attributed to him today? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the same. We do not know.

What struck me deeply was that even arriving at this admission of uncertainty requires enormous scholarly effort. That was precisely what Ravi Rajagopalan brought to us through this lecture. He has painstakingly compiled available writings on Dikshitar, attempted to collate and correlate the information they contain, flagged possible fabrications, and presented a carefully reasoned account of what we do not know. I mean this entirely as a compliment. The word dispassionate was used by several people to describe the lecture. But I believe it takes immense passion to be that dispassionate. I was glad Shriram acknowledged this in his concluding remarks.

Ravi Rajagopalan sought to present Dikshitar the man, not Dikshitar the myth. Romantic notions such as him spontaneously producing lyrics after eating a sugar candy diminish his genius and deny the rigor of his intellectual and creative labor. Recognizing him as a human being who lived a normal life and yet produced such monumental artistic work only deepens our appreciation of his legacy.

This was stellar work in separating fact from fiction. The post lecture interaction raised several thought provoking questions, and Shriram, as always, handled the summing up with admirable diplomacy. I have deliberately avoided discussing specific details from either the lecture or the discussion here. This is one presentation that deserves to be listened to in full.

For me, it was heartening to see that a space exists where such questions can be examined with scholarly rigor, without inviting hostility. In my experience, this is not always the case in other public forums, particularly on social media. I thank everyone involved for creating and sustaining that safe space, and for participating in an enlightening and necessary discussion.

The second lecture of the day was on “The Veena tradition of Muthuswami Dikshitar” by Vidwan J.T. Jeyaraaj Krishnan and Vidushi Jaysri Jeyaraaj Krishnan. They are also the recipients of the TTK Award for this year. They trace their lineage to Muthuswami Dikshitar through tutelage and have performed widely as a vainika duo.

They played the veena, sang, and explained how Dikshitar’s compositions are particularly well suited to the veena. Dikshitar, of course, referred to himself as a vainika even before identifying himself as a gayaka. The first aspect they highlighted was the use of gamakams that are naturally suited to the veena. To illustrate this, they chose the composition Jambupathe in Yamuna Kalyani, an apt and evocative choice. The handling of gamakams in Purnachandrika once again demonstrated Dikshitar’s brilliance.

The manner in which both of them sang and played emphasized the importance of a deep understanding of sahityam, even for instrumentalists. The Ramakali they presented was strikingly different from the version I am accustomed to hearing and offered a fresh perspective on the raga.

They then demonstrated the difference between Kalyani and Yamuna Kalyani through the usage of kampitam. Subramanyena Rakshitoham was chosen to explain Spuritam. Arabhi, Sahana, Kannada, and Ananda Bhairavi flowed seamlessly from their veenas as they elaborated on various gamakams and plucking techniques.

The lecture concluded with an explanation of Tribinnam, a gamakam unique to the veena, where two or more strings are played simultaneously. The nottuswaram Varasivabalam was used to illustrate this technique.

It was difficult to believe that it was merely a coincidence that this lecture demonstration took place on the same day as the earlier lecture that raised questions about Dikshitar as a vainika. The manner in which these gamakams are embedded in his compositions clearly establishes him as a veena player, as Shriram noted in his concluding remarks.