Friday Review
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Religious fervour, literary flavour
G. SWAMINATHAN
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The musical aspects of Naalayira Divyaprabhandam were elaborated by Uma Maheswari.
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Uma Maheswari
The lecture-demonstration ‘Panns in Divya Prabhandham’ by P. Uma Maheswari deserves special mention for the chaste Tamil she employed. That aptly suited the topic of the Tamil literary work with religious sentiments of the topic on Divya
Prabhandam. Uma Maheswari, principal of Thiruvaiyaru Music College focused her talk on the literary and musical aspects of the famous Nalayira Divya Prabhandham in an educative and interesting style.
At the outset Uma Maheswari traced the origin of Divya Prabhandham which belonged to the tenth century. She narrated how Nadamuni was motivated to start collecting the 4,000-odd verses of different Azhwars of varying genre after listening to the song ‘Aara amudhe’ of Nammazhwar. The collection of first thousand covers the verses of Periazhwar, Andal, Tondaradippodi Azhwar, Kulasekara Azhwar to name a few. The rest contains the songs of Nammazhwar, Thriuvoimozhi, Poigai Azhwar, Boodhathazhwar, Thirumazhisai azhwar and others.
The objective of this particular session was to highlight the fact that even during their time the Azhwars had used a raga referred to in Tamil as ‘Pann.’ Uma Maheswari quoted that ‘pann’ had been used in 40 places and ‘innisai padi’ in about 120 places. These only referred to the raga or melody. In fact, there were even references to a particular raga or pann; these pann in Tamil carries a different name in the present generation of Carnatic music.
‘Kaamaram’ is Nadanamakriya,, ‘Naivalam’ or ‘Nattabadai’ is Natakurunji, ‘Paalai’ is Harikhambodi, ‘Panchamam’ is Ahiri, ‘Thakkari’ is Kambodi and ‘Chenturuti’ is Madyamavati.
Being contemporary devotees some of the ragas used in Thevaram, Thiruvachagam the Saivaite hymns had been used in the same way to sing the Pasurams too.
Uma Maheswari recalled the great services rendered by M.M.Dhandapani Desikar, Prof. Ramanathan and Embar Vijayaraghavachariar in propagating the Divya Prabhandham through musical forms.
Uma Maheswari with her sonorous voice and clear enunciation made her lecture more appealing by singing the pasurams and verses in the ragas mentioned earlier.
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
|
