How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

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sridharrajagopal
Posts: 59
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 07:50

How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by sridharrajagopal »

Hi,

The Charchaari Anga Tala is defined as

D D A L D D A L D D A L D D L D D A L D D L D D A L D D A L - this adds up to 70 aksharas, whereas Charchaari is defined as 72 aksharas. Am I missing a couple of nishabda aksharas (I suspect the two D D L)?

Thanks,
Sridhar

msakella
Posts: 2127
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 21:16

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by msakella »

Dear brother-member, sridharrajagopal,
01. This Charchari is one among the 108 or 120 Talas of the old treatises and this has nowhere been described as an Anga-tala.

02. While Sangita Ratnakara furnished D DV D DV D DV D DV D DV D DV D DV D DV L (D-Druta carrying 2-Kriyas, DV-Druta-virama carrying 3-Kriyas & L-Laghu carrying 4-Kriyas) amounting to 44-Kriyas for this Tala Sangita Darpana furnished D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L amounting to 72-Kriyas.

03. Now, as the great authors of these treatises have never cared to furnish the authentic-serial-number of any of their Talas which has the great facility of check and cross-check basing upon Talaprastara, now, we all have to quarrel with each other which one is the authentic one in the absence of this serial-number. This applies to all the Talas they have very kindly and efficiently furnished in their treatises.

04. Basing upon the Talaprastara the serial-number of the former version is 8796093022208 the serial-number of the later version is 2361183241434822606848. amsharma

sridharrajagopal
Posts: 59
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 07:50

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by sridharrajagopal »

Dear Sri amsharma-ji,

Thank you so much for your reply! I have checked out so many sources on the internet, that I had to go back and look at where it was described as Anga Tala - it is mention in the wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tala_%28mu ... atic_talas. In that same article, it is also referred to as Chanda tala, though I've seen Chanda talas being described as something different (used in Tiruppugazh). As you can see, it can get confusing pretty quickly! :-) Now I'm learning that the talas themselves have different representations! :-)

It looks like the definition of Charchaari that I came across
(D D A L D D A L D D A L D D L D D A L D D L D D A L D D A L) - D = Dhrutham, A= Anudhrutham, L = Laghu, is closer to the latter version you described (Sangita Darpana) of

D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L D DV L, where DV fits the D+A above. What is missing in the above scheme I had come across is that two of the subsequences are different from the standard D D A L (or D DV L ) - they are D D L - that would explain the missing two aksharas, and I assume that they would be D D A L too - just a typo. Interestingly though, it seems the typo has been propagated across the internet - quite a few resources list it as I had described, which only adds to 70 aksharas.

How does the serial-number scheme work, and how does one compute the serial number of a tala? I tried searching for that, but have not found too much detail yet.

Kind regards ,
Sridhar Rajagopal

msakella
Posts: 2127
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 21:16

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by msakella »

Dear brother-member, sridharrajagopal,

I spent more than 4 decades of my precious life only to dig out the full details of the rarest chapter Talaprastara and, ultimately, only by the grace of the Almighty, I could succeed in this task becoming the only person to do this in the history of our music. In this process I was compelled to go through many of our ancient and modern texts on Tala. But, I did never find the name Anga-tala in any of them.

But, as per the link you have very kindly furnished in your post, I have gone through the Tala of Wikipedia and felt very happy to find many mis-spelt technical-terms like Chatusra, Dhruta & Anudhruta or Defective Rarer Carnatic Talas which are none other than the 16-Angas pertaining to Chaturashra-jati or mis-interpreted Anga or Chanda-talas. I do not know which gentleman wrote this in Wikipedia, but, I cannot rely upon such defective information. Nowadays we have umpteen gentlemen around us doing something or the other to pose as efficients and earn many titles or honours or money or fame.

To tell the fact each and every rhythmical form in the universe is a chando-rupa (not Chanda-tala) having a specific and authentic-serial-number linked with the seriatim of its constituent units of value. Among them, the rhythmical form which abides by the rules and regulations of the 10 elements of Tala could only be rendered and used as Talas and others should neither be called nor rendered as Talas at all. The persons who have fully learnt and well acquainted with the Talaprastara can only have this knowledge to differentiate the Talas to be rendered like Simhanandana-tala (the only longest in 108 Talas but not in the universe) or not to be rendered like Sharanabhanandana-chando-rupa or other Chando-rupas and all others cannot have this knowledge. If you want to know these details you can go through my book, Indian Genius in Talaprastara (English) available from the Karnatic Music Book Centre, Chennai. Some of these details are also furnished in ‘the sub-thread “Talaprasthara (Combinatorics)’ under the same main thread ‘Tala & Laya. amsharma

sridharrajagopal
Posts: 59
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 07:50

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by sridharrajagopal »

Dear amsharmaji,

Thank you for your reply! Thanks also for the link to your book - I will certainly check it out!

Wikipedia has emerged as a great provider of information, but as it is only community curated, one has to take the information presented with a pinch of salt, it seems! If you do have the time and inclination, it would be great if you can update some of the inaccuracies in that page!

Kind regards,
Sridhar Rajagopal

msakella
Posts: 2127
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 21:16

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by msakella »

Dear brother-member, sridharrajagopal, If you need any clarification of that book please write here for the benefit of the readers and I shall certainly attend to it.

In regard to the information furnished in Wikipedia we, unfortunately, have many differences of opinions in the guise of tradition. Moreover, it is always desirable to the knowledgeable people to discuss any anomalies with like-minded people by holding meetings and seminars and, later only, to publish correct information in such sites. But, unfortunately, many of our people prefer only to turn a deaf ear towards such things. I have many such bitter experiences in my life. For example I shall give a few of them hereunder for your kind information.

In fact, for the first time in the history, I have demonstrated the un-solved Nashta and Uddishta of Talaprastara on 13-04-1970 at Hyderabad in the presence of Prof. P.Sambamurthy and feeling extremely enthusiastic and happy when he suggested me to write a book on this topic I have requested him to write the Fore-word. He readily agreed and wrote the Fore-word on 24-05-1970. Later I handed it over to A.P.Sangita Academy to publish it. Later, many a time he even asked me for the published copy of the book as he immediately wants to make it the text book on Talaprastara in the Madras University. But, some of our Hon’ble Gentlemen in the Sangita Academy of Andhra Pradesh have very kindly thrown it into the cold-storage and, only after 15 years, it was first published in 1985 by the same Academy and received the award for the best book written on Fine Arts. Nowadays we have plenty of such Hon’ble Gentlemen.

Again, for the first time in the history, I have demonstrated this topic in the Madras Music Academy on 25-12-1983 only with the interference of Shri Shripada Pinakapani, Sangita Kalanidhi awardee of that year and many of the audience congratulated me for bringing out this lost topic into light. But, later, in the past 30 years, no other person had ever demonstrated this topic in the Music Academy or the Great Music Academy did never show any interest in propagating this lost topic. Instead of honouring me in 1910 with TTK award at this fag end of my life I would have been very happy had they arranged for the propagation of this rarest topic.

Even my very close friend Dr. N.Ramanathan, retired Professor and Head of the Department of Indian Music, presenting a paper on Taladashapranas on 27-12-2003 at the 77th Annual conference of the Music Academy, Madras, opined that this topic Talaprastara is unnecessary. More over, in 1990s, when an International Conference was held at Chennai on ‘Sangita Ratnakara’ by Dr. N.Ramanathan with Prof. Herald Powers as the Chairperson and Dr.Premlatha Sharma (teacher of Dr. Ramanathan) as other dignitary, he wantonly avoided to invite me to this conference in saving the skin of his teacher and declared that nothing new came into light in regard to the matter relating to Sangita Ratnakara which is an absolute blunder. Nowadays, we have plenty of such hypocrites around us. Unfortunately, many are not at all aware how much loss we have been incurring to our culture due to their egoistic and ego-centric attitudes of such Hon’ble Gentlemen.

For another such example, we have already lost much of the invaluable finger-techniques of the great legends of Violin, M.S.Gopalakrishnan, Lalgudi G.Jayaraman and M.Chandrashekharan as none of these Hon’ble Gentlemen had ever cared to take videos of their Violin-play and preserve them for educational purpose for our kids. This is the very sad state of affairs in our country and I think it is not worth toiling myself at this old age to correct the inaccuracies of Wikipedia. amsharma

sridharrajagopal
Posts: 59
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 07:50

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by sridharrajagopal »

Dear A.M. Sharma-ji!

I would like to let you know that I've incorporated the Ashtottara Talas into the latest version of Talanome (version 7.0), as best as I could (I've double checked the akshara counts and the structure from a couple of sources), including the Charchaari Tala - thank you so much for your input! :D

Best Regards,
Sridhar

http://upbeatlabs.com/talanome


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sridharrajagopal
Posts: 59
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 07:50

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by sridharrajagopal »

The Talas are themselves made up of the component parts (i.e. Dhrutham, Laghu, Guru, Plutam, Kakapada, etc) which are saved as "Tala Phrases", as shown below (the example is the Simhanandana Tala):

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msakella
Posts: 2127
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 21:16

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by msakella »

Dear Chi Shridhar,

Glad to see your post and I sincerely appreciate you for the pains you have taken to arrive at this end.

However, I sincerely feel that is it necessary to take this much of pains to bring out all this which are not going to be used by more than 95% of our students. However, sincere musicians will always remember your monumental work. amsharma/msakella

sridharrajagopal
Posts: 59
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 07:50

Re: How is Anga tala Charchaari 72 aksharas?

Post by sridharrajagopal »

🙏 Thank you for your kind words!

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