Muthuswami Dikshitar: The Map of Every Temple

The two men were born eight years apart in the same town and composed at the same time, and they are almost opposites.

Language

• Tyagaraja: Telugu, the spoken language, direct address, conversational
• Dikshitar: Sanskrit, almost exclusively, dense, formal, and grammatically elaborate

Tempo

• Tyagaraja: moderate, with the melody moving
• Dikshitar: vilamba kala, slow tempo, with long unhurried phrases. His pieces feel architectural rather than narrative

Address

• Tyagaraja talks to Rama: complains, argues, asks, reproaches
• Dikshitar describes the deity: iconography, attributes, the temple, the tank, the local legend, the philosophical position

Subject

• Tyagaraja: Rama, exclusively
• Dikshitar: whichever deity was in the temple he was standing in. Shiva, Devi, Vishnu, Ganapati, Muruga, the navagraha, and dozens of local forms

Structure

This is the technical difference. Dikshitar builds a kriti like a building.

• The madhyama kala sahitya, a fast section at the end of the anupallavi and the charanam, is his device
• Elaborate prosody: internal rhyme, alliteration, and grammatical patterning across a whole set
• The raga name is worked into the text, a device called raga mudra, so the piece names its own raga
• The signature Guruguha appears in a grammatical case that varies deliberately

What the songs contain

This is his real distinction and it is why the corpus is a resource beyond music.

A Dikshitar kriti on a temple typically names:

• The deity, with the local name
• The consort
• The temple and often the town
• The tirtha, the sacred tank
• The sthala vriksha, the temple's tree
• The local legend of the place
• The deity's iconography in detail
• A philosophical statement, often advaitic
• Sometimes the festival and the agama tradition of that shrine

So the corpus is a musical gazetteer of south India. He walked, he stood in front of the image, and he left a composition that records what was there.

Around 500 kritis survive.

A note on the two men and Syama Sastri: they were contemporaries in a small region, and the tradition says they knew of each other and met at least occasionally. There is no evidence of rivalry, and the modern habit of ranking them against each other would have puzzled all three.

He composed in groups, and the groups are the achievement.

The Kamalamba Navavarana kritis

His masterpiece, and one of the most formally ambitious things in Indian music.

The subject: Kamalamba, the goddess at Tiruvarur, worshipped through the Sri Chakra.

What the Sri Chakra is: the geometric diagram of Sri Vidya, consisting of nine enclosures, the navavarana, each with its own deities, mantras and meaning, moving from the outermost inward to the central point, the bindu.

What he did: composed eleven kritis, of which nine correspond to the nine enclosures in order, with a dhyana kriti at the start and a mangala at the end.

And the formal device: each kriti is composed in a different vibhakti, a different Sanskrit grammatical case.

The eight cases in order: nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, vocative. The goddess is addressed differently in each piece, so that the whole set moves grammatically as it moves inward through the chakra.

That is a composition where the grammar, the geometry, the ritual sequence and the music are all doing the same thing at once, and there is very little in world music that attempts it.

The Navagraha kritis

Nine compositions on the nine grahas: Surya, Chandra, Angaraka, Budha, Brihaspati, Shukra, Shani, Rahu, Ketu.

Each in a different raga and, notably, each in a different tala, cycling through the suladi sapta talas.

A note on how this app treats them: these are devotional compositions addressed to deities, in the same way as his kritis on Shiva or Devi. Vandnaa does not do astrology, does not do predictions and does not do remedies, and the Navagraha kritis are music, sung in concerts, and not a prescription for anything.

The other vibhakti sets

He used the grammatical case device repeatedly:

• Abhayamba kritis, on the goddess at Mayavaram
• Nilotpalamba kritis, at Tiruvarur
• Tyagaraja kritis, on the deity Tyagaraja at Tiruvarur, who is Shiva, and not on the composer of the same name
• Guruguha kritis, on Muruga
• Panchalinga sthala kritis, on the five element lingas at Kanchipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Chidambaram, Tiruvanaikaval and Kalahasti

The nottuswara sahitya

The oddest thing he did, and it is worth knowing about.

His brother Baluswami had learned the violin from a European teacher, and the family had contact with the British military bands at Fort St George in Madras.

Dikshitar took around forty European band tunes and set Sanskrit devotional verses to them.

They are called nottuswara sahitya, note swaras, and they use Western major scales and simple harmony based structures, which is unlike anything else in Carnatic music.

The most famous: Shakti Sahita Ganapatim, set to the tune of God Save the King.

How to hold that. He was living in a period of increasing British power in south India, he encountered their military music, he found it interesting, and he wrote devotional verses to it. It is neither an endorsement of anything nor a curiosity: it is a working musician noticing an unfamiliar structure and using it.

The nottuswaras are still taught to beginners, because they are simple, and generations of Indian children have learned Sanskrit devotional verses set to Georgian era British band tunes without anybody remarking on it.

Vatapi Ganapatim

In the raga Hamsadhwani. It is the most performed concert opener in Carnatic music, and probably the single best known Dikshitar composition.

Its subject: Ganapati, invoked at the start, as is standard.

Why Vatapi: the image at Tiruvarur is said to have been brought from Vatapi, modern Badami in Karnataka, after the Pallava campaign against the Chalukyas in the seventh century, which is a historical reference embedded in a devotional song.

The raga: Hamsadhwani was devised by his father, Ramaswami Dikshitar. So the most famous piece in the son's repertoire is in a raga the father made.

What to listen for: the text names Ganapati's attributes in sequence, the madhyama kala section accelerates at the end of the anupallavi, and the word Guruguha appears in the charanam.

Meenakshi Me Mudam Dehi

In Purvikalyani, also called Gamakakriya, and by tradition his last composition.

The subject: Meenakshi of Madurai.

The story of his death

At Ettayapuram, in 1835, on Deepavali day.

What the accounts say: he asked his students to sing Meenakshi Me Mudam Dehi. They sang it. At the line meena lochani pasa mochani, the fish eyed one, the loosener of bonds, he raised his hands, and he was gone.

Whether it happened that way is unrecoverable. What is recorded is that the tradition has held that account since, and that the phrase pasa mochani, the one who loosens the bonds, is what he was said to be hearing.

His samadhi is at Ettayapuram, in Thoothukudi district, Tamil Nadu, and there is an annual observance there.

Other kritis to know

• Mahaganapatim, in Nata
• Sri Subrahmanyaya Namaste, in Kambhoji
• Annapurne Visalakshi, in Sama, on the goddess at Kashi
• Akshaya Linga Vibho, in Sankarabharanam
• Balagopala, in Bhairavi
• Rangapura Vihara, in Brindavana Saranga, on Ranganatha at Srirangam
• Chintaya Ma Kanda, in Bhairavi
• Sri Varalakshmi, in Sri, sung at Varalakshmi Vratam
• Ananda Amrutakarshini, in Amritavarshini, which by tradition brought rain when he sang it at Ettayapuram during a drought

How to start listening to him

He is harder to enter than Tyagaraja, and the difficulty is worth naming: the tempo is slow, the Sanskrit is dense, and the pieces do not tell a story.

The approach that works:

• Start with Vatapi Ganapatim, which is bright, fast for him, and short
• Then Meenakshi Me Mudam Dehi
• Have the text and a translation in front of you. His kritis are informational, and half the pleasure is in what the words are naming
• Then a Navavarana kriti, with an explanation of which enclosure it belongs to
• Let the slow tempo be slow. It is not an obstacle to the piece; it is the piece

One. He composed where he stood.

He walked from temple to temple across south India and left a composition at each, naming the deity, the tank, the tree and the local story.

The result is that the songs are also a record. Details of shrines, festivals and local traditions survive in his kritis that would otherwise be lost, and people restoring temples have used them as sources.

The transferable version: attention to the specific place you are in produces something that generalised devotion does not.

Two. Description rather than demand.

Tyagaraja asks Rama for things and complains when they do not come. Dikshitar mostly describes what is in front of him.

Both are valid and the second is much less common. If your practice tends toward asking, a period of only describing is a real change and is worth trying.

Three. Form is not decoration.

The Navavarana kritis move through nine enclosures of the Sri Chakra, in nine ragas, in eight grammatical cases, in order.

Nobody could hear all of that in a concert. He did it anyway, because the structure was the offering, not the effect on the audience.

Four. He used what he found.

A man deeply trained in Sanskrit, in Sri Vidya, and in the strictest end of the Carnatic tradition, heard a British military band in Madras, thought the tunes were interesting, and wrote Sanskrit devotional verses to them.

No anxiety about purity. He was secure enough in what he was doing to take material from anywhere.

Five. And the standing note on the Navagraha kritis, since people look for them.

They are nine devotional compositions on nine deities, in nine ragas and nine talas, and they are performed as music. Vandnaa does not do astrology, does not offer predictions, and does not recommend planetary remedies, and nobody should be selling you one. If somebody is charging you for a graha remedy, that is a commercial transaction and not a tradition.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha, or the name of whichever deity is yours
• Vatapi Ganapatim, listened to once with the text
• When you next visit a temple, do what he did: find out the name of the deity, the tank, the tree and the local story, and take that home instead of a photograph
• On Deepavali, his death anniversary, Meenakshi Me Mudam Dehi

A closing thought

A young man from Tiruvarur spent five years in Varanasi learning Sanskrit and the worship of the goddess through a diagram of nine enclosures, and came back down the coast with a veena his teacher had told him to pull out of the Ganga.

At Tiruttani an old man put a piece of sugar candy in his mouth and vanished, and he began to compose, and did not stop for forty years.

He walked to temple after temple and left a piece at each one, naming what was there in such detail that people restoring those temples still use the songs as evidence.

And on a Deepavali day at Ettayapuram he asked his students to sing the one about Meenakshi of Madurai, and at the line about the one who loosens bonds, he put his hands up and went.

Who: Muthuswami Dikshitar, 1775 to 1835, born at Tiruvarur in Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu, eight years after Tyagaraja and in the same town. The second of the Carnatic trinity.

His family: his father Ramaswami Dikshitar was a composer who devised the raga Hamsadhwani, and his brother Baluswami introduced the violin into Carnatic music after learning it from a European teacher at Fort St George.

His training: five years at Varanasi with his guru Chidambaranatha Yogi, learning Sanskrit and Sri Vidya, the worship of the goddess through the Sri Chakra.

His signature: Guruguha, a name of Muruga, worked into the text of every kriti rather than appended. It came from Tiruttani, where an old man put sugar candy in his mouth and vanished, after which he composed his first piece.

How he differs from Tyagaraja: Sanskrit rather than Telugu; slow tempo rather than moderate; description of the deity, the temple, the tank, the tree and the local legend rather than direct address and complaint; every deity in every temple he visited rather than Rama alone.

His great sets: the Kamalamba Navavarana kritis, eleven pieces mapping the nine enclosures of the Sri Chakra, each in a different Sanskrit grammatical case; the Navagraha kritis, nine deities in nine ragas and nine talas; the Panchalinga sthala kritis; and around forty nottuswara sahitya, Sanskrit devotional verses set to European band tunes he heard in Madras, one of them to God Save the King.

His famous kritis: Vatapi Ganapatim in Hamsadhwani, the standard concert opener, and Meenakshi Me Mudam Dehi in Purvikalyani, said to be his last.

His end: at Ettayapuram on Deepavali day in 1835, while his students sang Meenakshi Me Mudam Dehi, at the line about the one who loosens bonds.

A note: the Navagraha kritis are devotional music. Vandnaa does not do astrology, predictions or planetary remedies.