continued from my previous post:

 

2. Dominik Wajastyk

> This study, although an Indological one, is an attempt to
answer the universal question what music is, i.e. how music is created in
the human body, what the effect of music on the human body is, and what
music aims at.

 

This knowledge, of how music is affected by and affects human body, though can be assumed to have been in the background of most of the Vaggeyakaras, it is in Tyagaraja that it finds articulation as part of the text of the lyrics itself:

 

for example, in the kriti 'mokshamu galada' (is there liberation), he says:

 

prANAnala samyOgamu valla

 

praNavanAdamu saptasvaramulai paraga

 

(While the praNavanAda (= the sound of Om) takes the form of the seven musical notes through the combining of prANa =vital 'breath' and anala=the fire (inside the body) )

 

In fact the pallavi talks about moksha( =attainment of Brahman) through music only.

 

'mokshamu galadA bhuvilO jeevanmuktulu gAni vAralaku' = is there liberation (attainment of brahman) for those who do not become living-liberated ( through the method of music)

 

is the pallavi (lyric-beginning refrain)  of the lyric.

 

He describes the production of music through the different parts of human body in another lyric 's'Obhillusptasvara'. In that he says, "Oh mind, relishingly meditate on the 'beautiful women' in the form of the seven musical notes which glow in nAbhi, hrit, kaNTha, rasanA nAsA and so on " in  the pallavi (lyric-beginning refrain).

 

He describes s'iva as music-bodied in his Sanskrit lyric nAdatanumanis'am. Since s'iva is taken as the mythological narrative form of Brahman here, this is another way of saying Brahman is music-bodied.

 

"Spiritual Heritage of Tyagaraja" by V Raghavan

 is one of the references that could be useful in this.

 

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