Candram bhaja mānasa - Asāveri - Maṭya - Muttusvāmi Dīkṣita

This kīrtana is about Candra, the Moon, and is one of a set of seven – not nine. Subbarāma Dīkṣita, in the Saṅgīta Sampradāya Pradarśini (1904), sometimes calls these pieces ‘navagraha’ kīrtanas, which might lead one to think there are nine compositions; one for each of the nine grahas (loosely, planets) that move against a background of 27 nakṣatras, or fixed lunar mansions. The grahas canonically comprise the Sun and Moon, the planets from Mercury to Saturn, and Rāhu and Ketu: malefic figures who bring about eclipses by devouring the Sun and Moon from time to time. Most of the time, however, Subbarāma calls them ‘vāra’ kīrtanas, one for each of the seven days of the week. This raises the interesting question of why he occasionally calls them ‘navagraha’ kīrtanas at all. Certainly, he lists only seven compositions in the SSP, and the scholarly consensus is that the Rāhu and Ketu compositions, which are excluded from the SSP, were not composed by Muttusvāmi Dīkṣita but likely by his brother Bālusvāmi Dīkṣita and his great-nephew Muttusvāmi (‘Ambi’) Dīkṣita. Bālusvāmi and Ambi were respectively the father and the son of Subbarāma. Neither Smarāmyahaṃ sadā rāhuṃ nor Mahāsuraṃ ketumahaṃ has the touch and mouthfeel of an authentic Muttusvāmi Dīkṣita composition. Perhaps Subbarāma used the term ‘navagraha’ out of respect for his father, who composed at least one of the two ‘spurious’ kīrtanas. Like the piece in the previous post, this kīrtana is set in the second vibhakti (accusative case) and also contains only one verb – bhaja, ‘to worship’ – around which the entire song turns. As in the other vāra kīrtanas, the lyrics or sāhitya are an aphoristic summary of the graha’s attributes and legends as derived from the purāṇas. My favourite is the description of the Moon as paṅkaja ripuṃ, ‘enemy of the lotus’. Lotuses close up at night. More fascinating, perhaps, is the description of him as tāreśa, often euphemistically translated as ‘lord of the stars’. A better, more revealing, translation, however, is ‘lord of Tārā’, because it points to a recurring theme of the vāra kīrtanas: the legendary love triangle between the Moon, Jupiter (Bṛhaspati) and Tārā, Jupiter’s wife. Apparently, the Moon was conducting a rājasūya sacrifice, to which all the celestials were invited. Jupiter declined the invitation but sent his wife instead. Now, the Moon was the kind of fellow who was so good-looking that women simply could not resist his attentions. One thing led to another, and the Moon and Tārā had a child: Budha, or Mercury. The understandbly upset Jupiter cursed Mercury to be genderless and the Moon to be a leper. Each was eventually released from their relevant curse. For all that, Jupiter does not seem to have held anything against Tārā. Such is related in the Wednesday song in Nāṭakurañji rāga / Jhampa tāḷa – where Mercury is described as candratārāsuta and napuṃsaka (genderless) – and in the Thursday song in Aṭhāṇā rāga / Tripuṭa tāḷa – where Jupiter is described as tārāpati. As regards the rāga, Asāveri is a prime exemplar of the Karnatic sound. Thought to be particularly auspicious, it is a staple of weddings, where nāgasvaram and tavil ensembles regularly play Tyāgarāja’s Rārā mā iṇṭidāka. Dīkṣita’s Asāveri differs from Tyāgarāja’s subtly but significantly. First, contrary to the general rule that Dīkṣita’s versions of rāgas are sinuous while Tyāgarāja’s are linear, Dīkṣita’s Asāveri is linear, while Tyāgarāja’s is sinuous. See my video of Tyāgarāja’s Janakajā samēta to hear the difference. Second, Dīkṣita’s Asāveri contains no triśruti or catuśśruti ṛṣabha (approximately, the major second). The now conventional view that it does probably owes something to the traditional designation of Asāveri as a ‘bhāṣāṅga’ rāga. That term now denotes a rāga containing notes foreign to its ‘parent’, but originally meant a regional variation of some common archetype. In my opinion, the triśruti/catuśśruti ṛṣabha of modern Asāveri emerged from practitioners finding it musically attractive and subsequently confabulating scholarly authority for their innovation.