muttusvAmi dIkshitar

[DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA]

At 10:42 AM 4/9/98 -0500, you wrote:

>MuttusvAmi Dishitar is the right spelling, I think.
>His Tamil forefathers wrote in Telugu to get
>Telugu Nayak court patronage.
>MuttusvAmi Dikshitar's descendent, Subbaraamar
>writes in SSP(telugu edition) as MuddusvAmi
>just to fit with the Telugu custom. As MuttusvAmi Dikshitar
>lived in Tamil country, the name  MuttusvAmi should get
>high priority compared to MuddusvAmi.
>

Since tamil does not have a letter for 'd' seperately
muttusvAmi dIkSitar is alright. But what about muthusvAmi
dIkSitar? The word muddu or muttu stands for charming.
muddu paLani, muddu kumAra stand for charming child
subrahmanya. ( cf., 'muddukumAra jananIM' in "bhajarE
chitta bAlAmbikAm" in kalyANi)


>17th/18th century Karnatic musicians,  mainly from Tamil lands,
>chose to write in Telugu because the ruling chieftains were Nayaks.
>Nayaks were Balijas or toTTiyas. The Nayaks usurped power at
>the right moment when the Vijayanagar kingdom was in decline.
>The Nayaks were mercenaries, not from cultured social background.
>The focus of Vijayanagar had always been Kaveri delta. (Trichy & Tanjore)
>Chieftains get culture, music etc., after a few generations.
>See B. Stein, Vijanagara, Cambridge univ. press.
>
>Nayak chieftaincy is like Texan Cowboys becoming
>millionaires when Oil was found :-)
>

Men of arms who are in the process of acquiring power usually do not
have much 'culture'. Usually culture comes much later when they settle
down. This is true whether the they are telugus or tamils.

Krishna and Godavari deltas were already in the hands of Vijayanagar
empire. These are richer than the Kaveri delta. Krishnadevaraya sent
Nagamanayaka to the south when the then pandya king sought his
assistance because of an usurper.

>The Telugu Nayak era is considered a period
>of heavy decline for Tamil literature. Kirthanas
>&c. flourished. In a mixture of telugu, tamil, sanskrit.
>May be sangitam is great, Yes, but many times sAhityam
>is very poor. The literary excellence is not that great
>usually. Also, the Telugu period in Tamil Nadu flourished
>music of erotic nature, devadasi tradition etc.,
>This is from Nayak courts' aspirations,
>A. K. Ramanujan, When the God is a customer: Telugu
>courtesan songs, Univ. of california.
>For Nayak's meager origins, see Shulman & Sanjay Subrahmanyam.
>

kSEtrajJa who is considered as erotic pada personified belongs to
this period. His sahityam is unequalled to this day. I do not know
what was the state of tamil padam at that time. But I think that
tamil padams had a new life after the kSEtrajJa. The great musicologist
vEnkatamakhi about whom the tamilians boast is in the court of
raghunAtha nAyaka.

The love of Nayak kings for telugu one may consider as love for the
mother tongue. But what about the unreserved patronage of maharastrian
kings of TanjAvur for telugu. This you cannot ascribe it to partiality to
the mother tongue. Sahaji's telugu writings attest to the beauty of
telugu as a language refined. ( Why even the great subrahmanya bhArati
gave his attestation to the sweetness of telugu).

>What a decline from classical sangam poetry, kuRaL, cilambu, tevaram,
>naalaayiram, kamban, etc., (2nd century BCE - 12th centuries) days
>to the tamil kiirthanam days (a heady mixture of erotic, different languages,
>slangs, etc..)! During the eclectic days of Telugu chiefs,
>the telugu kiirthanam evolved from earlier tamil musical
>traditions (paaNar of sangam, cilambu, pancha marabu
>in adiyaarkku nallaar, mainly the Tevaram Othuvaar tradition,
>araiyar sevai in srirangam etc.,)
>

Are the nAyak kings responsible for this decline of tamil literature
or the decline has already set in? If it has already set in,
making nAyak kings responsible for it is searching for scapegoats.

In telugu, kIrtanam was already there. As far as I know Bhadrachala
RAmadAs never visited tamil country to learn about kIrtanams.


>It took really giants like Ramalinga Vallalaar, Bharatiyaar,
>U. V. Saminataiyar, Arumuga Navalar, Maraimalai Adigal to rediscover and
>start a renaissance of Tamil letters and music.
>
>
>Regards,
>N. Ganesan
>
>