Tyagaraja: Is Wealth Happiness

The refusal

The Raja of Thanjavur, of the Maratha line, sent for him.

What was offered: wealth, and a position at court. The accounts describe gifts sent in advance, and a formal invitation.

What a court position meant: security for life, for him and his family. Land. A salary. Status. It is what every musician in the region wanted, and his own grandfather had held it.

What he did: he composed a song and sent it back.

Nidhi chala sukhama, in the raga Kalyani.

What it says, in substance:

Is wealth happiness, or is the nearness of Rama happiness? Tell me truly, my mind. Is bathing in cool water happiness, or is devotion happiness? Is worship of the highest happiness, or is the company of the worldly happiness? Tyagaraja says: tell me the truth.

And he stayed where he was.

What it cost

This is the part that is usually left out.

His elder brother Japyesa was furious.

The household was poor. The wealth would have been shared. Tyagaraja had refused a fortune on behalf of a family that had none, and his brother, who had a family to feed, did not accept the reasoning.

What Japyesa did: he took the idols of Rama and threw them into the Kaveri.

That is the worst thing anybody did to him, and it was done by his brother, in his own house, over money he had refused.

What happened after

He was destroyed by it. The compositions from this period are among the most desperate he wrote, addressed to a Rama who was no longer there.

He left. He went on pilgrimage, travelling through south India, to Tirupati, Kanchipuram, Srirangam, Kovur, Lalgudi and many other temple towns, and composed at each of them. A large part of his surviving output is from those journeys, and the kritis are often named for the places.

And he found them again. The tradition says the location was revealed to him in a dream, and that he recovered the images from the river.

What to notice about this whole sequence

One. The refusal was not costless and did not only cost him. It cost his brother, his household and his wife, none of whom had been consulted.

The tradition does not hide that, and Japyesa's anger is recorded rather than suppressed.

Two. The response to the loss was not resignation. It was pilgrimage, and several hundred songs.

Three. And a practical note, since renunciation stories get used badly: refusing money on behalf of dependents who need it is a different act from refusing it for yourself. Tyagaraja is admired for the first and the tradition still records what it did to his household.

The traditional claim: 24,000 compositions, one for each syllable of the Gayatri, or in some accounts of the Ramayana.

What survives: around 700 kritis, with reliable attribution for a substantial portion of that.

The language: mostly Telugu, some Sanskrit. He was a Telugu speaking brahmana in a Tamil region, which was entirely normal in Thanjavur at the time.

What a kriti is

The form he perfected, and the standard vehicle of Carnatic music since.

• Pallavi: the opening line or two, returned to throughout
• Anupallavi: the second section
• Charanam: the verse or verses
• Set in one raga and one tala
• With sangatis: successive variations of the pallavi line, each elaborating a little further, which is Tyagaraja's specific contribution

The sangati is the innovation. The same line is sung several times, each time with more melodic development, so that the piece opens out from within rather than moving on.

The Pancharatna kritis

The five gems, his best known set, and the ones sung in chorus by thousands of musicians together at the Aradhana:

• Jagadananda Karaka, in Nata: a hundred and eight names of Rama, in Sanskrit
• Dudukugala, in Gaula: a catalogue of his own failings, and it is unsparing
• Sadhinchane, in Arabhi: an argument with Krishna about his conduct
• Kanakana Ruchira, in Varali: on seeing him
• Endaro Mahanubhavulu, in Sri: salutations to the many great ones, and the most famous piece in Carnatic music

Endaro Mahanubhavulu is worth expanding. It is a long enumeration of all the kinds of people who have reached, across every path and every condition, and it ends by saluting all of them. It is the single most performed Carnatic composition and it is essentially a list of other people being praised.

Dudukugala is its opposite and just as famous: a list of his own faults, in detail, without self pity and without excuse.

The other groups

• Utsava Sampradaya Kirtanas: around thirty songs for the domestic worship of Rama through the day, from waking the deity to putting him to sleep. These are simple, use folk metres, and were meant for households rather than concerts
• Divya Nama Kirtanas: group singing pieces on the name
• Two musical plays, the geya nataka: Prahlada Bhakti Vijayam and Nauka Charitram, the second on Krishna and the gopis in a boat

On music itself

He wrote a great deal about what music is for, and his position is specific.

Sangita jnanamu bhakti vina sanmargamu galade: without devotion, is knowledge of music a good path? The answer the song gives is no.

Nada sudha rasambilanu: sound as nectar, and the identification of the seven notes with the deity.

Sogasuga mridanga talamu: a song about how a composition should be constructed, which lists the technical requirements of a good piece and is itself an example of them.

And repeatedly: attacks on musicians who perform for money and applause, on technical display without content, and on people who know the ragas and have nothing to say in them.

His end: at Thiruvaiyaru, in 1847, on Pushya Bahula Panchami.

He took sannyasa shortly before, and his samadhi is on the bank of the Kaveri at Thiruvaiyaru.

The Tyagaraja Aradhana

What it is: the annual observance at his samadhi, and the largest event in the Carnatic music calendar.

When: on Pushya Bahula Panchami, generally in January.

What happens:

• Musicians come from across India and abroad
• There is continuous singing over several days
• On the main day, the Pancharatna kritis are sung in unison by everybody present
• Thousands of musicians, professional and amateur, singing the same five compositions together, in order, accompanied by a large body of instrumentalists
• There is no ticket, no audition and no hierarchy in the group singing. Anybody who knows them sings

Why the group singing matters. Carnatic music is otherwise an intensely individual art: a soloist, a chosen raga, personal improvisation. The Pancharatna singing is the one occasion where everybody sings the same thing at the same time, and it is deliberately levelling.

A note on the history of the Aradhana: it was revived and reorganised in the twentieth century, and there was a period when the observance was divided into competing camps, including a dispute over whether women could sing at the samadhi. The Bangalore Nagarathnamma episode is part of this: a distinguished musician and devadasi who rebuilt the samadhi shrine in the 1920s and successfully fought for women's participation.

That is worth stating plainly. The Aradhana as it exists, in which women musicians sing, was fought for by a woman within living memory, against opposition, and she is buried facing the samadhi she restored.

Thiruvaiyaru today:

• Around 13 kilometres from Thanjavur
• The samadhi on the Kaveri
• The Panchanadeeswara temple
• His house is shown
• The Aradhana in January, which is when to go if you want the full thing

Where to hear him

• Any Carnatic concert. He is the most performed composer in the repertoire
• The Pancharatna kritis, which are recorded by everybody
• Endaro Mahanubhavulu, Nagumomu Ganaleni, Marugelara, Samaja Vara Gamana, Chakkani Raja, Nidhi Chala Sukhama
• The Utsava Sampradaya Kirtanas, which are simple, singable at home, and were written for exactly that

Start with the Utsava Sampradaya Kirtanas if you are not a trained listener. They are short, folk based, and were composed for households doing daily worship rather than for concert halls.

One. Nidhi chala sukhama, as a question rather than an answer.

The song does not assert that wealth is worthless. It asks, of the mind, which of two things is actually happiness, and it repeats the question in several forms.

Used honestly, it is a question to sit with rather than a slogan, and it works on any choice where security is on one side and something else is on the other.

And the honest caveat: he had dependents, they did not agree, and his brother threw his idols in the river over it. The question is real and the cost was real.

Two. Dudukugala.

He wrote a full length composition cataloguing his own faults, and it is one of the five pieces sung in chorus by thousands of people once a year.

Consider what that means: the tradition's central group ritual includes everybody singing a list of one man's failings in the first person.

That is a usable practice. An honest inventory, without self pity and without excuse, is more useful than an inventory of what has been done to you.

Three. Endaro Mahanubhavulu.

The most performed piece in Carnatic music is a list of other people being praised: everybody who has reached, by whatever path, in whatever condition, saluted by name and by category.

It is generous in a way that is rare. The greatest composer of his tradition wrote its most famous piece about how many other people had got there.

Four. Without devotion, is knowledge of music a good path.

His position on technique: the skill is not the point, and skill without content is worse than no skill, because it is convincing.

Generalised: whatever you are good at, the question is what it is in service of, and being extremely good at something is not by itself an answer.

Five. Unchavritti.

He went door to door singing and took what was given, in a region where he could have had a salary at any time.

Not a recommendation, and this app will not pretend otherwise: he had a family who bore the cost of that choice and did not all agree with it.

But the underlying principle survives: he decided what his music was for before he decided what it should earn, and he kept the order that way round for eighty years.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Rama Rama or Sri Rama Jaya Rama Jaya Jaya Rama
• One Utsava Sampradaya Kirtana, which is simple and was written for the house
• Endaro Mahanubhavulu, listened to once, with the words in front of you
• In January, on Pushya Bahula Panchami, the Aradhana, in person at Thiruvaiyaru or wherever it is being kept

A closing thought

A king offered him money and a place at court, and he wrote a song asking his own mind whether wealth was happiness or whether being near Rama was, and sent the song instead of himself.

His brother, who had children to feed and had not been asked, took the family's Rama idols and threw them into the Kaveri.

He walked south for years, composing at every temple he came to, and eventually found them again.

And every January a few thousand musicians sit down on the bank of that river and sing five of his compositions together, one of which is a list of his own faults, and one of which is a list of everybody else who ever got there.

Who: Tyagaraja, 1767 to 1847, born at Thiruvarur and resident at Thiruvaiyaru on the Kaveri in Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu. One of the trinity of Carnatic music with Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, all three contemporaries in the same region, and the most performed of the three.

His deity: Rama, exclusively. His family had inherited images of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana and his practice was their daily worship.

How he lived: unchavritti, going door to door singing and accepting whatever food was given, in a region where he could have had a court appointment at any time.

The refusal: the Raja of Thanjavur offered him wealth and a position at court, and he composed Nidhi Chala Sukhama in Kalyani, asking his own mind whether wealth is happiness or the nearness of Rama is, and sent it instead of going. His elder brother Japyesa, who had a family to feed and had not been consulted, threw the Rama idols into the Kaveri. Tyagaraja left on pilgrimage across south India, composing at each temple, and later recovered them.

His work: tradition claims 24,000 compositions; around 700 survive, mostly in Telugu. He perfected the kriti form with its pallavi, anupallavi and charanam, and invented the sangati, successive melodic variations of the opening line.

The Pancharatna kritis: Jagadananda Karaka, Dudukugala, Sadhinchane, Kanakana Ruchira and Endaro Mahanubhavulu. Dudukugala is a catalogue of his own faults; Endaro Mahanubhavulu is a salutation to everybody else who has reached, and is the most performed piece in Carnatic music.

The Aradhana: at Thiruvaiyaru on Pushya Bahula Panchami, generally January, where thousands of musicians sing the five Pancharatna kritis in unison with no ticket and no hierarchy.

What to keep: is wealth happiness, asked as a question rather than answered as a slogan.