Friday, December 15, 2006 at 2:02am
Begging for God's attention through music
Column: Of Karma and Dharma
Living in big-city Bangalore (recently renamed Bengalooru) in the 1970s, I observed for the first time what my mother used to recall and tell us children about the Haridasas (beggars or slaves of God) who used to come dancing and singing to homes in the 1940s when she was growing up in small-town India. These Dasas, she would tell us, sang the beautiful songs composed by the great Dasa composers like Purandaradasa, Kanakadasa, Jagannathadasa, and others, and danced in heartfelt ecstasy carrying their hand-held tamburas and keeping beat with their small, brass cymbals.
Dressed in simple saffron dhotis, shoulder cloths, and turbans, and singing these songs set to classical ragas and talas, these humble, talented devotees of God impressed my mother as a 10-year-old girl. As she told us of her experience growing up, she would also tell us short stories from the lives of the great saint musicians who were part of the Bhakti movement in 15th- and 16th-century South India.
Living in the 1970s in a fast-changing urban setting, we did not expect that there would be any chance for us to experience what our mother and her generation saw of the ecstatic devotional singing by wandering minstrels. Maybe the 1940s phenomenon itself was a short revival of the 15th-century Dasa movement, and as of this day, there seems nothing left of it.
But we did experience it briefly, when a man, in his late 60s or early 70s, turned up one day on the street where we lived, singing beautifully the songs of Purandaradasa and Kanakadasa. He walked slowly down the street, dressed in a saffron dhoti, in the traditional style, with the dhoti tucked between his legs, bare-chested except for a shoulder cloth loosely placed around his shoulders and a cloth bag hanging over one shoulder. The bag was to collect the uncooked rice that people offered him as he slowly ambled down the street or stood in front of a house to complete a sweet ugabhoga or a suladi. Unlike the Dasas that my mother had observed in her youth, we saw this man carrying a harmonium, which he played to accompany his singing.
I must have seen him about three times over a period of three years, and every time we heard him in front of our house, a powerful emotion flowed over us. My mother's eyes would moisten, and she would quickly bustle to fill a big cup with rice and check feverishly in her purse for a coin to give to this devotee of Vishnu. The man would walk down our street rather late in the morning, after about 10 a.m., when the early bustle and noises of street-hawkers of vegetables and fruits had died down. His singing was almost soft, and you would miss it if you were too busy inside the house, or if there was some hubbub outside.
My mother would rush out with the cupful of rice, and the 50 paise or one rupee coin, and would wait for this gray-stubbled, aging Dasa to come by our house. The houses were all cheek by jowl, and we would see a couple of housewives, or young children waiting just outside the front gates of their homes, also with cupfuls of rice and maybe a coin.
In my teens, by then, I had picked up interest in South Indian classical music, and I had learnt the simple Geetas (songs) that we all learned by rote as students of classical music, and which were composed by the great Dasas. While the concert musicians sang the kritis, ugabhogas, and suladis (varieties of song) beautifully, and the great violinists and veena players displayed their wonderful artistry, there was something unbearably wrenching and sweet, and cleansing, and moving in the singing of our old, alms-seeking Dasa.
His only acknowledgment of us would be to pause his singing for a second as we walked out the gates to pour the rice into his cloth bag. No words were exchanged, and his looking into our eyes did not convey any kind of emotion except a kind of benign acknowledgment. He stayed maybe just a few moments more in front of our home, because the tears in my mother's eyes made him acknowledge her piety, her love of song.
My mother would stand there at the gate for a while as the man walked away down the street, and till she could no longer hear him sing. She would walk back into the house, lost in thought, and I could sense that for a brief while there was a deep, romantic longing in her heart to be herself a wandering minstrel. If we had time that day, she and I would talk about our local Dasa, and we both sometimes expressed concern that a man of his age would walk under the bright, hot South Indian sun singing, and carrying the rather heavy harmonium.
Finishing college, and moving out of Bangalore, I lost track of our Dasa, and my mother told me a couple of years later that he no longer came by on his once a year, or once in six months, visit to our street. A nameless Dasa, another servant of Lord Vishnu, we don't know what happened to him, except the fact that the Gods would have kindly welcomed him to a happy afterlife.
I remembered this Dasa when I received from Amazon the copy of the book that I had ordered of "Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints" by Professor William Jackson. Reading the short but beautiful and moving commentary of Professor Jackson on the Dasa tradition, I wished that I could move back in time to listen to the great Purandaradasa, or Kanakadasa, and experience their ecstasy of singing in praise, longing, and beseeching of God. Professor Jackson writes, correctly, "In our age, traditional saints often seem far beyond the ordinary person's reach."
Writing about Annamacharya, Purandaradasa, and Kanakadasa, Professor Jackson observes that these saints "were known for the intensity of their bhakti [devotional] feelings, but also for their loss of illusions and their sage insights." Finally, Professor Jackson says that "the singer saints call to us, inviting us to join them in celebrating the beauty with which the holy attracts us, and to contribute service to the community of life around us, and to find fulfillment in the grace which reintegrates our shattered psyches in a love and peace beyond our understanding. They don't make life easier, but they promise to make it more interesting. We can still hear their voices singing if we try, in their life stories and their songs, and sometimes in our own lives."
The love and longing for God, expressed by myriad Indian saints, is part of the great Bhakti tradition. The great saints did not care for societal norms, mocked the powerful and the egoistic, and as part of their practice of selflessness, they went out seeking alms — for there is no more humbling human act than begging.
India was known, and still is, for its teeming beggars in small and big towns, in front of temples, and in train compartments, and wherever there is humanity. Most of these beggars are victims of the great grind of poverty and the vicissitudes of life. Some of them sing in train compartments or on buses to catch your attention, and you are almost forced to give them money so that they will stop their raucous singing! They are no Dasas and Dasis, but merely forced into begging, or as it also sometimes happens, making an "easy living" out of begging.
Purandaradasa is known as the great "sangeeta pitamaha" (musical grandfather) of South Indian classical music, because he was the one who reformulated the rules for teaching and learning South Indian classical music. He was born in 1485 and died in 1565, and the Dasa movement that he was a part of, and which was encouraged and supported by the great Vijayanagara kings, collapsed or scattered when the Vijayanagara kingdom was defeated, ransacked and destroyed by Muslim kings in 1565.
But the Bhakti tradition is alive and well in India, and has also spread around the world, as can be witnessed with the Hare Krishnas, who in the 1960s and 1970s attracted a large Western following, and in whose temples we can still witness ecstatic and devotional singing and dancing.
But for those who are curious about the grand and beautiful tradition of South Indian bhakti, and song, there is no better primer than Professor Jackson's book. The songs of the three South Indian saints that he has translated into English will provide a peep into the world of South Indian Hindu devotion and music, but one would have to learn Kannada and Telugu to experience the lyrical and ecstatic beauty of the songs.
— — —
Dr. Ramesh N. Rao, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Theatre at Longwood University, Farmville, Va. The views expressed here are his personal views and not those of the institution to which he belongs. His email address is {email raorn@longwood.edu}raorn@longwood.edu{/email}. © copyright 2006 by Ramesh N. Rao
Dressed in simple saffron dhotis, shoulder cloths, and turbans, and singing these songs set to classical ragas and talas, these humble, talented devotees of God impressed my mother as a 10-year-old girl. As she told us of her experience growing up, she would also tell us short stories from the lives of the great saint musicians who were part of the Bhakti movement in 15th- and 16th-century South India.
Living in the 1970s in a fast-changing urban setting, we did not expect that there would be any chance for us to experience what our mother and her generation saw of the ecstatic devotional singing by wandering minstrels. Maybe the 1940s phenomenon itself was a short revival of the 15th-century Dasa movement, and as of this day, there seems nothing left of it.
But we did experience it briefly, when a man, in his late 60s or early 70s, turned up one day on the street where we lived, singing beautifully the songs of Purandaradasa and Kanakadasa. He walked slowly down the street, dressed in a saffron dhoti, in the traditional style, with the dhoti tucked between his legs, bare-chested except for a shoulder cloth loosely placed around his shoulders and a cloth bag hanging over one shoulder. The bag was to collect the uncooked rice that people offered him as he slowly ambled down the street or stood in front of a house to complete a sweet ugabhoga or a suladi. Unlike the Dasas that my mother had observed in her youth, we saw this man carrying a harmonium, which he played to accompany his singing.
I must have seen him about three times over a period of three years, and every time we heard him in front of our house, a powerful emotion flowed over us. My mother's eyes would moisten, and she would quickly bustle to fill a big cup with rice and check feverishly in her purse for a coin to give to this devotee of Vishnu. The man would walk down our street rather late in the morning, after about 10 a.m., when the early bustle and noises of street-hawkers of vegetables and fruits had died down. His singing was almost soft, and you would miss it if you were too busy inside the house, or if there was some hubbub outside.
My mother would rush out with the cupful of rice, and the 50 paise or one rupee coin, and would wait for this gray-stubbled, aging Dasa to come by our house. The houses were all cheek by jowl, and we would see a couple of housewives, or young children waiting just outside the front gates of their homes, also with cupfuls of rice and maybe a coin.
In my teens, by then, I had picked up interest in South Indian classical music, and I had learnt the simple Geetas (songs) that we all learned by rote as students of classical music, and which were composed by the great Dasas. While the concert musicians sang the kritis, ugabhogas, and suladis (varieties of song) beautifully, and the great violinists and veena players displayed their wonderful artistry, there was something unbearably wrenching and sweet, and cleansing, and moving in the singing of our old, alms-seeking Dasa.
His only acknowledgment of us would be to pause his singing for a second as we walked out the gates to pour the rice into his cloth bag. No words were exchanged, and his looking into our eyes did not convey any kind of emotion except a kind of benign acknowledgment. He stayed maybe just a few moments more in front of our home, because the tears in my mother's eyes made him acknowledge her piety, her love of song.
My mother would stand there at the gate for a while as the man walked away down the street, and till she could no longer hear him sing. She would walk back into the house, lost in thought, and I could sense that for a brief while there was a deep, romantic longing in her heart to be herself a wandering minstrel. If we had time that day, she and I would talk about our local Dasa, and we both sometimes expressed concern that a man of his age would walk under the bright, hot South Indian sun singing, and carrying the rather heavy harmonium.
Finishing college, and moving out of Bangalore, I lost track of our Dasa, and my mother told me a couple of years later that he no longer came by on his once a year, or once in six months, visit to our street. A nameless Dasa, another servant of Lord Vishnu, we don't know what happened to him, except the fact that the Gods would have kindly welcomed him to a happy afterlife.
I remembered this Dasa when I received from Amazon the copy of the book that I had ordered of "Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints" by Professor William Jackson. Reading the short but beautiful and moving commentary of Professor Jackson on the Dasa tradition, I wished that I could move back in time to listen to the great Purandaradasa, or Kanakadasa, and experience their ecstasy of singing in praise, longing, and beseeching of God. Professor Jackson writes, correctly, "In our age, traditional saints often seem far beyond the ordinary person's reach."
Writing about Annamacharya, Purandaradasa, and Kanakadasa, Professor Jackson observes that these saints "were known for the intensity of their bhakti [devotional] feelings, but also for their loss of illusions and their sage insights." Finally, Professor Jackson says that "the singer saints call to us, inviting us to join them in celebrating the beauty with which the holy attracts us, and to contribute service to the community of life around us, and to find fulfillment in the grace which reintegrates our shattered psyches in a love and peace beyond our understanding. They don't make life easier, but they promise to make it more interesting. We can still hear their voices singing if we try, in their life stories and their songs, and sometimes in our own lives."
The love and longing for God, expressed by myriad Indian saints, is part of the great Bhakti tradition. The great saints did not care for societal norms, mocked the powerful and the egoistic, and as part of their practice of selflessness, they went out seeking alms — for there is no more humbling human act than begging.
India was known, and still is, for its teeming beggars in small and big towns, in front of temples, and in train compartments, and wherever there is humanity. Most of these beggars are victims of the great grind of poverty and the vicissitudes of life. Some of them sing in train compartments or on buses to catch your attention, and you are almost forced to give them money so that they will stop their raucous singing! They are no Dasas and Dasis, but merely forced into begging, or as it also sometimes happens, making an "easy living" out of begging.
Purandaradasa is known as the great "sangeeta pitamaha" (musical grandfather) of South Indian classical music, because he was the one who reformulated the rules for teaching and learning South Indian classical music. He was born in 1485 and died in 1565, and the Dasa movement that he was a part of, and which was encouraged and supported by the great Vijayanagara kings, collapsed or scattered when the Vijayanagara kingdom was defeated, ransacked and destroyed by Muslim kings in 1565.
But the Bhakti tradition is alive and well in India, and has also spread around the world, as can be witnessed with the Hare Krishnas, who in the 1960s and 1970s attracted a large Western following, and in whose temples we can still witness ecstatic and devotional singing and dancing.
But for those who are curious about the grand and beautiful tradition of South Indian bhakti, and song, there is no better primer than Professor Jackson's book. The songs of the three South Indian saints that he has translated into English will provide a peep into the world of South Indian Hindu devotion and music, but one would have to learn Kannada and Telugu to experience the lyrical and ecstatic beauty of the songs.
— — —
Dr. Ramesh N. Rao, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Theatre at Longwood University, Farmville, Va. The views expressed here are his personal views and not those of the institution to which he belongs. His email address is {email raorn@longwood.edu}raorn@longwood.edu{/email}. © copyright 2006 by Ramesh N. Rao