The children were awestruck by the musical overtures coming from the sculptures of the Madurai Meenakshi temple. They were overjoyed to come across the Musical Rathi on a Swan, and took turns in striking the surface with their palms and knuckles. Shyamala Miss said, “Children, we are now going to see the most marvellous of all these sculptures — the Musical Pillars.”
“Musical pillars?” asked the children, jumping in excitement.
“Miss, can we see them now? Please, tell us where they are.”
Musical monoliths Shyamala Miss led the way to the five musical pillars. They are famous, and attract tourists and devotees from all over the world.
“Here we are, children. These five pillars are monoliths. Do you know what that means? A monolith is any structure which is carved or shaped, out of a single large piece of stone or granite. Here, we see one large, central, pillar surrounded by 22 smaller pillars.”
“Can we count the number of pillars?” they asked.
They began counting the pillars and tapped them while doing so.
Shyamala Miss pulled out sticks with hard knobs at the end, and handed them out to the children. “Take two sticks each and strike it in turn so that we can identify the notes,” she said. The children struck the pillars and were happy to find that they had formed musical phrases.
“Just think about it. Many thousands of years ago, our kings and sculptors identified resonant stone and granite, and thought of making structures like these. And they have been preserved through the ages.”
“What a beautiful idea, and how much joy and happiness it brings to all who see and strike it!” exclaimed Laya.
“Okay. Let us play the thalams in order — Thisra , Chathurasra , Kanta and so on. One group will recite the jathis as Konnakkol , while the other group will strike the notes in harmony. Shall we start?”
A long session of jugalbandhi , sawaal-jawaab of jathis and swaras followed with the children finally flopping down, tired but happy to have made this musical journey!
Crack it
The Madurai Meenakshi Temple has a unique feature. Find out what it is by breaking the code.
The musical pillars are
B2 C3 D1 E2 A4 B5 D4 E5 C5
