Hamsa Dhwani

Whoever named raaga Hamsadhwani probably did not pay attention to the facts that Swans do not have an attractive voice! Take a look at the following videos to hear how exactly swans sound! Not very melodious!

But one good thing about raga Hamsadhwani is that unlike many ragas, its history can be traced quite accurately.

Ramaswamy Dikshita (1735AD-1817AD), father of Muttuswamy Dikshita is credited with the creation of this pentatonic raaga. However, this may be partly true. The Ragalakshana appendix to Chaturdandi Prakashike mentions Hamsadwani. Although the main text of Chaturdandi was composed by Venkatamakhi (~1650 AD), the Ragalakshana appendix was added by is grand-nephew Muddu Venkatamuchi couple of generations after Venkatamakhi.  He describes Hamsadwhani as a pentatonic raga, born of Shankarabharana mEla omitting ma and da. (S R G P N S  – S N P G R S). The current form of Hamsadwani is exactly the same.

This brings the time when Hamsadhwani first appeared around the beginning of 18th century. It is likely that Ramaswamy Dikshita was one of the early composers who popularized it, and hence the credit that goes in his name.I wonder why it took as late as 18th century to come up with this very attractive pentatonic scale. However, once it became popular, there was no going back!

18th century composers Tyagaraja and Muttuswamy Dikshita, each comosed two compositions in this raga.  It can be safely said that the composition Vatapi Ganapatim Bhajesham of Muttuswamy Dikshita is the most famous composition in this raga. Listen to Dr M.Balamuralikrishna singing this compositon.

With this composition, Hamsadhwani raga became a natural associate of Ganapati, and there are a number of nice compositions in this raga with Ganapati as the theme.  Vandenishamaham of Mysore Vasudevacharya, Gam Ganapate of Muttaiyya Bhagavatar, Vara Vallabha Ramana of GNB, Gajavadana Beduve of Purandara Dasa – all these come to mind. Listen here to – Gam Ganapate of Muttaiah Bhagavatar – This is from a concert here in the bay area (Veena-Jyothi Chetan; Mridanga- Ramesh Srinivasan)

During the 20th century saw many raagas from Karnataka sangeetha were adapted to Hindustani. How could they leave out a very appealing raaga like Hamsadhwani?  Not only did they adapt the melody, but also the popular composition Vatapi Ganapatim Bhajeham!

Listen here to Rashid Khan, who sings a beautiful Alap followed by “laagi lagan”. You can’t miss the similarity to Vatapi Ganapatim Bhajeham.

For whatever reason, Hamsadhwani does not seem to have inspired kannada film music composers as much as some other raagas have. I can just think of a few Kannada film songs – ಇನ್ನು ಗ್ಯಾರಂಟಿ from ನಂಜುಂಡಿ ಕಲ್ಯಾಣ and   ಮೀನಾಕ್ಿ ನಿನ್ನ from ರಣಧೀರ. If you are aware of any other songs, post a comment.

-neelanjana

Another Yugadi

Many people in South India celebrate Yugadi on 14th of April every year. This includes districts from coastal Karnataka as well.

You may wonder  how this festival falls on the same day everyday? This is because it is a festival based purely on the solar calendar – instead of the luni-solar calendar which is used to calculate the date the dates for most other Indian festivals.

This is the day when the Sun enters mESha rAshi (Aries). But if you are used to read your predictions from the newspapers everyday, I’m sure you’d have noted they assign Aries to those who are born between March 21st to April 21st.

So where is the catch? Who is right?

Both , in their own ways.

The year used to be calculated from the Vernal Equinox. Back in that time when constellation boundaries were drawn, the Vernal Equinox also coincided with the time when Sun entered the boundary of Aries and hence the Zodiac begins with the constellation Aries. This point (where the ecliptic, and the celestial equator crossed each other was termed the “First point of Aries”, since it actually was close to the beginning of this constellation boundary. This was made the starting point (zero degrees) for all celestial calculations.

Due to precession, Vernal Equinox falls behind (in time) every year and now it occurs around the 20th/21st of March. The western astronomy found a way to get out of this problem by moving this reference point, and so the “First point of Aries” does not occur near the real boundary of the constellation Aries. However, it is still called by the same name, and causes some confusion. By doing this, the Vernal Equinox, always falls at the time when the Sun is at the “First point of Aries”.

Indian astronomy, on the other hand,  does not move the reference point for the calculation of festivals. Hence, the mESha sankramaNa is celebrated on the day Sun enters the real boundary of Aries,  and not when the Sun is at the “First point of Aries”. The equinox and the beginning of the year have been thus de-linked.

Here are couple of sky simulations showing the position of the Sun, around these days.

Around March 20th,2009 – Beginning of the ‘tropical’ year

Around March 20th,2009 - Near Vernal Equinox

Around April 13th, 2009 – Near the beginning of the traditional Indian solar year:

Solar position near the beginning of Indian solar new year

-neelanjana

Ugra Narasimha of Vijayanagara

The statue of Ugra Narasimha (Narasimha, the ferocious) in Hampe (or Hampi) was erected in the year 1528 AD. This was commissioned by Sri Krisnadeva Raya.

In the year 1565, after the war of  Talikote between Vijayanagara and combined force of Bahamani sultans, tragedy befell on this statue just like most of the monuments in Vijaya Nagara. Today the place goes by the name Hampe or Hampi.

During the 1980s, the Department of Archeology took to some restoration and reconstruction of the statue after excavations revealed many broken pieces of the statue around it.  It was also speculated that the statue depicted Lakshmi Narasimha, instead of Ugra Narasimha as it was believed earlier.

However, there was a court stay order on the restoration (if my memory serves me right), and Lakshmi did not come back  to take her place on Narasimha’s lap. So, to this day, he remains somewhat ‘ferocious’ Narasimha.

Here is a collage showing how the statue looked around 1900 AD, and how it looks today.

Left: Around year 1900 AD. Right: A century later

The picture on the left is taken from the book – “A Forgotten Empire – Vijayanagar” by Robert Sewell. The picture on the right is taken from a blogpost on Sampada, by Nagaraj.

-neelanjana

Thanksgiving, in April!

No, my sense of time is not warped. Or at least, not yet. I know it is April, and realize Thanksgiving is not until November.But I wanted to thank two people specially, among my online friends today. Hence the title!

Sri Shreekant Mishrikoti, tells me that all the compositions (more than 1200) of Purandara dasa we had in our database are online as of today on Haridasa Sampada. Yippee! It’s been my dream of several years to have all the available compositions of Purandara Dasa online. I had some work on it on Rasikas wiki earlier too. But as all big dreams go, it is not enough just to dream, and it needs the participation of a community to make such dreams a reality. So, even as I thank everyone who has contributed their bit to Haridasa Sampada, my special thanks to to Shreekant Mishrikoti, who has been the most prolific contributor to this project.

Purandara Dasa

This work would not have been completed in such a short span of time if we did not have an e-text to start with. Even though we typed in a number of compositions afresh, a large number of the 1200+ compositions came in from the e-text provided by Sri Lakshman Ragde of Toronto. We had to go through each composition, and fix the typos etc, but having something to start on was indeed great.

All dasa sAhitya lovers are indebted to Sri Lakshman. What else can I say? Lakshmanam namaami rasikapriyam, once again!

Right now, Haridasa Sampada is a all-kannada site. But hold on! We have plans of making it easy to those who can not read kannaDa to be able to search the composition database on Haridasa Sampada, and render the text in their favorite script – roman or other scripts that supports unicode . I will surely provide details as and when new features are available.

Our aim is to make Haridasa Sampada a very comprehensive site about Haridasa Literature.After completing the work on Purandara Dasa, we will move on to other haridAsas.

Please help spread the word about Haridasa Sampada.

-neelanjana