Anectode behind the birth of 72 MelaragaMalika
In the palace of Sakharam Saheb of Tanjore, there was an ancient maraathi manuscript in 72 mela ragamalika composed by the court poet Venkata Rao. The Raja desired that. this should be sung by a veteran muscisian. Patnam Subramanya Iyer and Namakkal Narasimha Iyengar tried it, but in vain. Maha Vaidyanatha Iyer set it to music in a week’s time and sang it before Raja Sakharam Saheb. The Raja was very pleased and gave large presents. But Maha Vaidyanatha Iyer was not pleased with himself. The whole composition in Sakharam’s Court was a mere nara-stuthi. So he reached Thiruvaiyaru and in the temple precincts composed the 72 melaragamalika in praise of the presiding deity, Pranatharthihara.
These 72 ragas were divided into twelve chakras with six ragas in each. It begins in Sri Ragam with the opening words “Pranartharthihara prabho purare”. It is set to adi talam. It covers all the mela raagas starting from Kanakangi to Rasikapriya. As mela ragas contain a vivadhi ragas, Shri Maha Vaidyanatha Sivan sang the pallavi “Pranartharthihara prabho purare”at the end of each chkara, First version of this ragamalika had only 72 mela ragams. Ramaswami Sivan added chittaswarams to this piece. After singing the first mela ragam, the swara-amaippu (solkattu) of the second mela raga would follow, and in this fashion the entire swarams were made.
72 Mela Raga Malika, written by Shri. Maha Vaidyanatha Sivan.is a Magnum Opus Composition in Sanskrit The great musical composition, is well-known as one of the few works that contain Charanams in all 72 Melakartha Ragas. It is in praise of Lord Shiva of Tiruvaiyaru, and the Sahitya contains references to many ideas and stories from the Vedas, Puranas and works such as Periya Puranam and Tiruvilaiyadal Puranam.
A detailed Tamil commentary named “Sivapriya” was written on it by Sri VSV Guruswamy Sastrigal and was released by the Music Academy, Chennai in 1989. In 2018, the same book was released again, with the English translation of Vidushi Smt. Sumitra Vasudev. This book can be bought at the Music Academy.
Discussions and lec-dems have been done in detail, of the Sangita and Sahitya aspects of this great work, by many scholars and musicians over the years and some of them can be read or heard from archives.
This article attempts to provide word-by-word meaning as well as running translation of the Sahitya, along with some additional notes on the ideas and stories being referred to etc. The Sahitya is given in Devanagari script, as well as in Roman script as per the ISO transliteration scheme.
1. Long Samaasas (compound words) in the text, are hyphenated for reading ease
2. The word-division of the text is found along with the translation.
3. ‘Sivapriya’ refers to the Tamil commentary on this work, authored by Sri VSV Guruswamy Sastrigal. Wherever the translation differs from his, his interpretation is given in the Notes.
We are grateful to artist Sri Maniam Selvan (Ma.Se) for allowing us use his father’s painting (Charanam 9). We thank Sri R.Gopu of Tamil Heritage Trust for sharing his photographs of sculptures, and the Himalayan Academy, which has allowed permission to use pictures from their gallery by anyone for non-commercial use.
The naming convention of the Chakras follows a traditional method of indicating a number with the name of an object which is well-known to be found in that number.
Indu (moon) refers to one, since our earth has one moon.
Netra (eye) refer to two.
Three fires were worshipped by householders in the Vedic tradition, so Agni (fire) is synonymous with three.
There are four Vedas,
Manmatha has five arrows (Bana) and there are
Six seasons (Ritu).
Seven sages are famous as the Sapta-rishis and hence Rishi indicates seven.
Vasus are a group of eight gods.
Nine Brahmas (or Brahma-rishis), Bhrgu, Pulastya, Vasishtha etc. were created by Lord Brahma to further creation.
Ten directions (Disha) are the eight cardinal and ordinal directions, and also above and below.
Rudras are Devas who are aspects of Shiva, eleven in number.
Sun takes twelve forms (one for each month) to protect the world and so Aditya means twelve.
Thus, we get the names of the Chakras of the Melakartha Ragas.
SRI GUHADASA TRUST wishes to place on record, sincere thanks to Smt.Rajani Shankar for providing her consent to post the contents of her blog on 72 Mela Raga Malika, in trust website.