Remnants of Tallapaka Annamacharya's time - Ragas, Compositions etc.

[shreyas]

Tallapaka Annamacharya was one of the finest composers to grace the Carnatic milieu, and as on date we have the sahityam of thousands of his compositions with us. He is a personal favourite of mine, especially with brilliant minds such as SK Dr. Pinakapani, Voleti Venkateswarlu and SK Nedunuri Krishnamurthy taking pains to set many of his kirtanams to tune. [I have attempted one myself, but it came out more like a padam than a kirtanam ]. We are said to have found the sahityam for these krithis inscribed in the famed copper plates, adorned with the name of the ragam but with no notations to guide us through their rendition. Some attempts have been made by the aforementioned vidwans to tune them in the ragams indicated, but for others we are left guessing.

I was recently browsing Mr. Ragde's index of Annamacharya sahityam on karnatik.com, and came across a series of ragas I am completely unaware of. What is even more surprising is that a lot of these ragams have a large number of compositions tuned in them. Some of these are (vide karnatik.com):

samantha
padi
ahirinata
telugukambhoji
malava (labelled as malavi - apparently an audava janya of Mayamalavagowla)

I have heard a rendition of Vishwanathena, a spurious MD creation in Samantha, and Sri Guruna Palitosmi, an authentic MD creation in Padi. Were these two different ragas altogether, since neither of them seem to lend themselves to much exploration in the modern context? Which of these other ragas have been mentioned in later periods?

[SrinathK]

Shreyas why not this be taken up in Vaggeyakaras.

Since usually gd is the most viewed forum. You can open thread there and maybe give a link here.

There is a list of ragas given by the great Prof SRJ along with which ones are still around and which do not exist anymore in an article in shruti magazine and it is definitive.

[Ananthakrishna]

A very interesting topic for discussion.

Most of the ragams that Annamacharya and the other Tallapaka composers used, date back to when the Vijayanagara kingdom was flourishing. Samanta, Padi, Telugukambhoji, Gummakambhoji e.t.c date to this period. However, when the Vijayanagara empire fell out of power, these ragams lost their place in the Carnatic sphere.
Admittedly my research in this topic has been superficial, but I have not heard of any oral history of most of these ragams being extant even in the 18th century. The last composer to have worked with gummakambhoji, as far as I’m aware, was Shahaji maharaja.

A friend of mine once spoke to a few folk musicians based in and around Tirupati, and asked them the same question. Their reply was “we don’t know what ragam it is based it, but we can sing tunes and you tell us what you think.” Several songs they sang and danced to were set in what he could best describe as a baroque mishra harikambhoji, or maybe a jenjhuti sung in shadjashruti. Some others had tunes with uncanny similarities with a baroque lalitha. Could this “baroque lalitha” be the Padi of the past? I confess I don’t know. Could the “baroque harikambhoji” be the Telugukambhoji we are searching for? I really can’t say.

It is my personal belief, that many ragams of the past still thrive in our system today, but have been given different names. Gummakambhoji was said to be a janyam of MMG. Maybe a janya ragam we know of today was Gummakambhoji in the past?

I’m positive there exists a lakshana geetham in Ahirinata by Govindacharya. His lakshana geetham tells us that Ahirinata was a rishabhavarjya janyaragam of Shankarabharanam. I have not heard of any oral or written history of Ahirinata after Govindacharya.

With respect to Telugukambhoji, it has been noted by Rallapalli Ananthakrishna Sarma, that there may exist a link between this ragam and the Hindustani ragam Tilak Kamod. Tilak Kamod is very similar to the Nalinakanthi of today.

Similarly other ragams like Bhallati, Pantumukhari, Bhouliramakriya e.t.c. were used by Annamacharya. We do know that Mukhari being a very old ragam might have existed at that time. In that case Pantumukhari might be a ragam with a similar style of gamaka interpretation as Mukhari.

[Ananthakrishna]

Regarding Samanta, it’s quite likely that Samanta’s lakshanam was similar to Gambhiravani or a vakra sancharita Naganandini. An oral history luckily exists. I think T S Kalyanaraman has rendered Satileni Dinamu-Samanta-Tyagaraja, and recordings of Pranatarthiharaya-Samanta-Mudduswami Dikshitar are available in the public domain.

[shreyas]

@SrinathK I was referring more to the time period and not Annamacharya himself, but sure.

@RasikasModerator1 would it be possible to move this thread to Vaggeyakaras?

[rajeshnat]

Mods
Merge it to Tallapakka Annamacharya thread
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=148&hilit=annamach ... 62#p224762

[RasikasModerator1]

Since the discussion is raga focused, it has been moved to Ragas section. Maybe compositions, lyrics and recordings would be more suited for the vaggeyakaras page.

[The Lost Melodies]

Gummakamboji is same as Mecabauli says SuRa. I have seen a mangalam of Sri Muthuswamy Diksitar in the raga Mecabauli in the manuscripts said to be written by Tanjavur Quartette.