OK. Yesterday I was commenting purely based on the sahitya. I have not dug out BMK's recording from my collection yet, so I did not know how many tala avartanas are in the pallavi. Yes, if it is an odd number, we can forget about it. I thought the number of tala avartanas might have been 4 or 6.keerthi wrote: 1. I don't see a case for yati here.. MD has used 5 Avarta-s of a 5 akSara tAla here.. MD doesn't seem to have consciously maintained yati in his krti corpus.. While he is very particular about DAP..Tell me more about how imperative it is to have yati in musical compositions.. As far as I see, even poets don't adhere to it too tightly, in metric poems..
Disagree about MD not "consciously" maintaining yati. My observation is that when he composed "important" pieces (which are regarded as masterpieces) or "flagship compositions" in a raga, he is always very careful. Just look at "vatapiganapatim", prasa and yati are conscientiously maintained. Or akshayalingavibho. It is highly unlikely that yati was 100% satisfied in these compositions purely as a subconscious/accidental occurrence.
Comparison to metric poems is a bit apples and oranges. Yati on the first akshara is essentially a form of punctuation indicating where the second half of the line begins. In metric poems, the syllables are already distributed in the padas according to the meter, so there is no doubt. In musical compositions, there is no prosodical meter, only the chronometer (tala). So it is useful to have the yati.
Guru-laghu and hrasva-dirgha are different classifications. Remember: a guru syllable is one which has a dirgha vowel, or a hrasva vowel followed by a anusvra or visarga, or a hrasva vowel followed by a compound consonant, or a hrasva vowel at the end of a word/line. A laghu syllable is one containing a hrasva vowel, apart from above exceptions. Of course the guru-laghu and hrasva-dirgha classifications often coincide, as in the "made-up" prasa examples I mentioned earlier. Or taken another way, guru syllables are those which are made dirgha either by the nature of their vowels or by their association with consonants that lengthen the syllable. Laghu syllables are essentially hrasva with no modifications. Exceptions apply to syllables at the end of a word/line - we don't need those details in the present discussion..... however your use of hrasva/dIrgha troubles me.. the du-s in durgE and dundubhi are hrasva..
By chandasshAstra reckoning, the former is a guru and the latter a laghu..
In dumdurgE, if you want to take "dum" on samam, then the syllable length is NOT defined by du but dur...one has to count the "r" also in the syllable. But in dundubhi it is only "du". Hence, one is dirgha (therefore guru) and the other is hrasva with no modifiers (hence laghu).
Note this is not a technical defect as far as DP is concerned. As I have already mentioned, all the prasas you mentioned (ie. the sriranjani, sriraga, yamunakalyani etc) are *technically correct* in terms of the basic requirements for DP. I pointed out some exceptions where the DP is *technically incorrect* (the kannada, surati etc).
The hrasva/dirgha match is an additional aesthetic issue, that elevates it to "uttama" in my mind. You are considering technically correct as enough for "uttama". That is perfectly fine. But it is a fact that the effect is more pleasing if hrasva/dirgha syllables are matched. See vatapiganapatim for example. It is perfectly proportioned.
Will comment more later, must run. *Added later - I am back, more comments included above*
SR
