“BHAGAVATULA”
Kshetrayya
and padas are so inseparably associated that either of them cannot but suggest
the other. The amorous sankeertanas of Annamachar1ya were the sources for the
development of the later Pada literature in Telugu. Thus, as the founder of
padas Annamacharya is called Padakavita Pitamaha (the grandfathter of Pada
songs) and as the perfector and master of technique in Raga and Bhava of Pada,
Kshetrayya may be called Padakavita Pita. The Padas have been considered to be
the best compositions for the exposition of the Subtleties in Raga and Sringara
and thus they are supreme items in Solo dance performances and Yakshaganas.
Scholars
are at variance regarding the important points of Kshetrayya’s life. Leaving
aside their different versions, we shall take up certain undisputed facts about
his life to reconstruct his personality as the most excellent Pada composer. In
the first place he belonged to the village “Movva” or “Muvva” near the well
known Kuchipudi, the centre of classical dance, drama and music. His village
also was teeming with artists and connoisseurs of art. He was devoted to the
Lord Muvva Gopala of his village and by the Lord’s grace he acquired
scholarship and artistic talent. Besides divine gift, he was immensely
encouraged by an accomplished and cultured lady who loved and adored him, in
the cultivation of his talents.
Associate
Kshetrayya
probably got this name by his pilgrimage to different temples of divinity and
culture whereas he was originally called Varadayya. He must have been
proficient in the fine arts even while he was young and must be of a
sufficiently fine disposition (Rasikatwa) to secure the love of a handsome
courtezan (Devadasi) a maid of equal merits. Their association must have
commenced at quite an early age of their life to be ripened into a strong bond
of love. Parity in temperament and tastes above the physical graces, must have
united them. They enjoyed the sweetness of love and the subtleties of amorous
dalliance. He learnt every emotional shade of love by her presentation and
direct experience and thus he could exhibit them in his songs. In
one song he expatiates upon her amity and submission making for sustained
attachment. In another Pada she expressed how he has enamoured
her gradually, even from their childhood by her amiable association:
He
sweetly called me to his warm abode;
In
his lovely arms I lay in charming repose.
He
dressed my plait with colourful flowers;
He
reminded our pledge in sweet musing words.
We
studied together in our impressionable age;
He
took my word to be his future maid.
I
worshipped Gowri in the mango grove;
He
then assured me of his warm love.
He
says why he has been so addicted to her sweet presence:
Why
are you so fascinated by her?
Is
she too lovely in looks and stature,
O
young one! to be left even a minute?
Does
she worship the Almighty, seeking your lordship?
Does
she cast her graceful looks on you,
And
in sweet consonance embrace you?
Does
she exult in your outstanding talents?
Does
she confide in you her personal affairs?
Why
are you so fascinated….
Does
she sing and dance to tune and rhythm?
Does
she read and write your songs besides?
Does
she suggestively talk to enlighten you?
Does
she act your heroines to entertain you?
Why
are you so fascinated…...
Kshetrayya
and his paramour are like Jayadeva and his wife padmavati. His beloved was his
partner not only in his love and life but also in his exclusive occupation of
Pada composition.
We must now see how their collaboration started. The gift of poetic imagination was vested in him and the talent of presentation or action in her, while music was their common ground. They must be meeting every day in the temple–in the holy presence of Movva Gopala Swamy. While he was composing and singing the sweet songs of love, she must have suggested to him to compose padas addressed to the Lord. Incidentally he determined to meditate upon him when his first song in Ananda Bhairavi Raga sprang forth from his mouth beginning with the auspicious sound of Sree:
Sree
Madana stirs my innocent heart
To
implore you; Are you angry, my Gopal?
Do
you dote on her every hour
And
cruelly neglect me altogether!
Tour
Kshetrayya
belonged to a respectable and cultured Brahmin family but was associated with a
maid of low caste, though otherwise equally qualified. He so fully enjoyed the
pleasures of youth that he acquired the highest stability and tranquillity of
mind. Perhaps in his later life he went on a tour pilgrimage, of course there
are different versions for the cause of his tour. His separation from his
beloved must have been least painful and most natural, so that he was well
inclined to undertake this journey. He might have been obliged to do so due to
severe social censure of his illegitimate contact or he might have been
encouraged by the trend of the age. The scholars were flocking the Andhra Court
rehabilitated in Tanjore after the fall of Vijayanagara.
At
any rate he went on a piligrimage never to return to his village. So he was
called Kshetrayya, especially in the South. He must have become a real
Kshetrajna, as explained in Gita, at the end of his life’s journey. He visited
about eighteen great temples in different places.
Kshetrayya
graced the court of Vijaya Raghava in Tanjore and when he was charged with
obtrusion he smartly gave a fine repartee:
The
needy men of their own accord
Approach
the generous, O Lord!
Has,
the lotus invited the bees
To
enjoy its honey quite freely?
Thus
his merit was definitely divine to challenge the entire scholarship of the
Royal Court. On one occasion the court poets grew envious of his gifted talents
and complained to the king regarding his not only intimate but also impolite
way of addressing the latter in one of his songs. Then he recited the following
Pads, leaving the last two lines and challenged the court to supply them.
Giving sufficient time for them, he then undertook a trip to Rameswaram and
when they failed even after his return, he himself completed the song and established
his supremacy as the personification of the Lord Movva Gopala.
Go,
dear! do not prate but go!
No,
let him not come, no!
Hell
was past my recall
I
were again born!
I
pined for him with weary sight,
Expecting
him highly every night
With
hope and frustration alternating,
And
with parched lips by long sighs frequenting.
Go,
dear……
I
spent many a giddy dreary night
As
under the grip of the eternal cruel time,
Under
scorching moonlight radiance,
And
among the noisy cuckoos of many a spring’s exuberance.
Go,
dear…….
I
asked the wise about my presages,
I
waited and waited for his bare graces;
I
envied my mates clinging to their lovers–
Should
I now meet him again? Already I had enough.
Go,
dear………
He
composed some padas addressed to the king and was highly honoured accordingly.
Object
What
do the padas of Kshetrayya in general contain? The modern critic observes
sensual poetry in them presenting a host of amorous situations. However sensual
his padas may be, he described the various dispositions of the partners of sex
love, especially the woman partner, while the man partner is her shade. This
shows how important she is as a delicate instrument of love play while he is
the player. Her mentality is more complicated and variegated. Each of his padas
describes a real situation of sex life in three stanzas; there is a gradual
rise in the principal sentiment to a climax (Rasa Nishyanda) while the select
acts of love and the accompanying feelings (Vibhavas and Anubbavas) accelerate
it.
The
object of Kshetrayya in composing his padas is not to indulge in sexual passion
or to give posterity scope for such indulgence. It is to achieve a three-fold
purpose. His padas reveal his profound knowledge of Alankara Sastra and Kama
Sastra. He must have read the Rasa Tarangini and Rasa Manjari of his
predecessor Bhanudatta, a Sanskrit poet, who had comprehensively dealt with the
subject, with additional varieties of hero and heroine as his innovations and
described Lord Krishna in different romantic situations by way of examples.
They must have been ripe in the memory of Kshetrayya when he composed his padas
in delicious words and dulcet tunes. His padas, therefore, constitute a work in
music, in literature and in Alankara Sastra–a three-fold purpose indeed,
and Sri Madhavaraya Sarma contends that they reveal also the technique of love
play (Kama Tantra). Further, the learned critic observes that Kshetrayya
primarily concerned himself with examples rather than principles of Alankara
Sastra and so he could describe them in his padas from real situations in
life while the exponents of the Sastra supplied them by their
imagination.
The
padas of Kshetrayya are sufficiently comprehensive and fine to be examples of Alankara
Sastra. This fact was recognised by an eminent, though
anonymous, writer of a later age who claimed to his great credit, that he
translated Bhanudatta’s Rasamanjari into verses entitled Sringara
Rasa Manjari, citing the padas of Kshetrayya as examples. Thus these works
served the professionals of Yakshagana as text books and Kshetrayya’s
padas as typical lessons in dancing and drama. Sri V. Appa Rao too corroborated
the inter-relation between the works of these authors by saying that
Kshetrayya’s padas are more glorious examples than the above versified
examples. His padas reveal animated and typical characters among men and women
and thus they show his wide experience of society and especially of the
Devadasi community.
The
hero of all his padas is invariably Movva Gopala Swamy and he manifests Him as
the different types by attributing the relevant qualities to him. The heroine
is broadly classified as a loyal wife, a disloyal wife and courtezan but more
elaborately into a number of types, definitely more than the hero. The third
character is a mediator, a friend, bawd etc., between the hero and the heroine,
who is expected to make for their union. Depending partly upon combinations of
these types, the love situations are innumerable, yet most of the prominent can
be found in his padas. In most of his Padas the heroine
expresses her physical and mental states, pleasing or distressing or whatever
they might be, in detail in clear and glaring hues, while the hero’s
paraphernalia is brief, indirect and shadowy, for the overwhelming complexity of
her physical and psychic entity. He had a wide experience of the world of
women, specially the courtezans, so that he could depict a galaxy of heroines
like the Gopikas.
Philosophy
Most
of the Indian schools of philosophy postulate that the entire creation is a
manifestation of the Divine Consciousness and that the Lord, the Iswara of the
“being, Enlightening and Supreme Delight”, in the delight of becoming by the
principle of Sakti; or Iswari invests every activity with the joy
of manifestation. The Bliss of the finite world is a part of the Bliss of the
transcendent infinite Sex activity, for instance, is an intense form of worldly
pleasure. Sri Aurobindo remarks are enlightening here: “All recognition of the
sex principle, as a part from the gross physical indulgence of the sex impulse,
could not be excluded from a divine life on earth; it is there in life, plays a
large part; it cannot be simply ignored, merely suppressed or held down or put
away out of sight. In the first place, it is in one of its aspects a cosmic and
divine principle: it takes the spiritual form of the Iswara and the Sakti,
and without it there could be no world, creation or manifestation of the
world, principle of Purusha and Prakriti.…..”
In
the light of the foregoing, Kshetrayya could not be sexy just because his padas
are sensual or sex appealing, His physical indulgence at any rate must be
normal, though he was a veteran in Kama Sastra and though his partner
belonged to the famous courtezans. They were devoted to each
other in pure and true love and dedicated their lives to the
Lord. They were highly educated and cultured, and in consecrated service of the
Lord conceived and chanted His glorious creative principle manifesting in human
form in the different individuals in their Pada literature.
His apparent sensuality
or obscenity must belong to the mental and spiritual planes or it must be in
his opinion the divine Sringara as Sri V. Appa Rao terms it. It is an
experience attained by him assuming the role of each heroine in identification
with the Lord by self-consecration, self-surrender and devotion. It is in the
cherishing of the divine Sringara, in the identification with the Lord’s
creative glory (Kama Kala) that a devotee like him would attain higher
spiritual experience but not in appropriating the lurking incidental pleasure
for himself.
This
is the way perhaps that Kshetrayya, as a true aspirant in the beginning, had
the spiritual development even as a Pada writer, that he later renounced his
mate and everything to become the real Kshetrayya in realising Nirguna
Brahman. It is a paradox to some that a composer of sensual songs, as he,
living with a courtezan maid, could ever become the enlightened. He sought
spiritul ends also by his padas as well as his amorous and enlightening
association. There were few Pada writers later who attempted or succeeded in
his path of realization. They wrote padas just for the sake of the arts, music
and literature. He on the other hand, was supreme in padas in their various
aspects.