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Book Review
Songs of Purandara Dasa
SRI PURANDARA DASARA JANAPRIYA KEERTHANEGALU: Srinivasa Havanoor and H. R. Satyanarayana Rao — Editors; Ankita Pustaka, 53, Sahsingh Complex, Gandhi Bazaar Main Rod, Basavanagudi, Bangalore-560004. Rs. 90.
SOME FACTS about Purandara Dasa's songs are not so well known. The Dasa passed away in 1564 A.D. and the next year the Vijayanagar Empire collapsed at the battle of Talikota. In the chaos that followed the saint's sons moved from Hampi to their native Purandaragad near Poona taking with them whatever material they had like the text of the saint's songs as noted down by them.
These were in Marathi script, were brought to Mysore 200 years later and transliterated into Kannada script. Then followed printing of these songs in any number of books, paying little attention to the correctness of the texts. Many faults were there naturally. Many good editions have also been brought out, the latest being the one by the Karnataka State Government and edited by S. K. Ramachandra Rao.
The present compilers felt that even the best editions contained many mistakes like those relating to Northern Kannada usage, repetition of many songs in slightly different forms and so on. They set about collecting the most authentic versions, made necessary corrections and have brought out this book with 311 songs. It is a creditable work.
But the literary side is less than half the work needed. To Purandara Dasa's reforms on the music side we owe the present Carnatic system. Carnatic music, after separating from Hindustani music, had started showing signs of breaking up into a number of local variations. It was the Dasa who arrested this trend with his farsighted reforms.
Among others he restricted the number of ragas to around 35-called Batteesa ragas. All his compositions were in these ragas. It is therefore surprising that in this book the ragas mentioned for many songs were not there in the saint's time. Some of these ragas are "Peelu," "Hindusthani Kapi," "Behag," "Kharaharapriya," "Kambodhi" "Mohana"(?), and "Dahanasri". The tunes of these songs are obviously by half-baked pseudo composers. Care should have been taken to point out these oddities. It is somewhat easy to differentiate an original Purandara Dasa composition from others. He had brought about a complete fusion of the three ingredients of a song — raga, sahitya and tala. It is to be noted that the only other composer to have achieved perfection in this respect is Thyagaraja himself.
The mood or rasa of a raga matches well with the sahitya in these compositions and the sahitya has been composed in such a way that the number of syllables matches perfectly the beat of the tala.
With this advantage it becomes easy to spot out the real original tunes and the spurious ones. Attempts to ensure the authenticity of the songs on the music side would have enhanced the value of the book.
G.D.
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