Purandara Dasa
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Purandara Dasa (1484-1564) ("the follower (dasa) of Lord Purandara Vittala, Lord Vishnu in one of his many avatars.") is known as the father (Pitamaha) of Carnatic music. The dasas, among them Sripadaraya, Kanaka Dasa, Jagannatha Dasa, Vijaya Dasa, and Kamalesha Vittala and others, propounded bhakti to the Lord through music over several years.
Purandara Dasa always concluded his songs with a salute to Lord Purandara Vittala. He is believed to have composed around 475,000 songs, although only a thousand or so of them are known today. All his musical compositions are in Kannada language, the state language of Karnataka. Purandara dasa is among the great saints of India in his understanding of the power of music and its appeal to illiterate common folk.
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[edit] Life and work
Purandara Dasa was born to a pawnbroker named Varadappa Nayaka. Varadappa Nayaka and his wife Lakshmi Bai had been childless for several years, and finally, after praying to Lord Srinivasa of Tirupati, they became proud parents of a child whom they called Srinivasa. The family are supposed to have hailed from Pandarapur in modern day Maharashtra but Purandara Dasa lived in Hampi during the latter part of his life.
Srinivasa Nayaka grew up and entered his father's business. However, unlike his father, he was a miser, so much so that it is said that he even baulked at spending money on treatment for his father's illness. His wife Saraswathi bai was the opposite: always wishing to contribute to charity much to the displeasure of her husband.
Legend has it that one day Lord Vishnu in the guise of a poor priest visited Srinivasa Nayaka's shop who wanted some alms to perform the thread ceremony for his son. Srinivasa Nayaka, being a miser, asked him to return the following day, and kept the Brahmin coming for another six months. Finally, fed up with the Brahmin's persistence, he gave him one fake coin that he played with as a child. Vishnu as the priest then told Srinivasa's wife Saraswathi the pitiful story of how a miserly pawnbroker made him come to his shop every day for six months only to give him a fake coin in the end. Saraswathi's heart melted and she gave the Brahmin her nose ring as alms (a gift from her parents and thus not something that she got from her husband). The Brahmin promptly took the nose ring back to Srinivasa Nayaka's shop, where he wanted to pawn it for money. The pawnbroker recognized it, however, so he locked it up in his safe and hurried home. He demanded that Saraswathi produce her nose ring immediately. Struck with fear, Saraswathi locked herself in the kitchen and tried to swallow poison. Miraculously, the nose ring dropped from the heavens into her cup of poison and she was able to produce it for her husband. Upon returning to his shop, he opened the safe, only to find that the nose ring in the safe had vanished. Wonderstruck and ashamed of himself, Srinivasa Nayaka decided to renounce all material belongings and become a dasa (servant)of god. Thus, Srinivasa Nayaka came to be Purandara Dasa. In gratitude for this event, he would later compose a song dedicated to his wife, for having shown him the path to God.
[edit] Poet composer
Purandara Dasa's songs are filled with rhyme and meaning. One song talks about how it is human nature to have desire for material objects, only for God to dispose of them, that the human has to suffer without them (kudure andhana aane bayasodhu nara chiththa paadhachaari aagodhu hari chiththavayya - to ride on a horse chariot or elephant is human desire, but to be a pedestrian is what God wills).
| Indian Music | |
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| Indian classical music | |
| Carnatic music | |
| Composers | |
| List of Carnatic composers | |
| Singers | |
| List of Carnatic singers | |
| Hidustani music | |
| Modern music | |
| Filmi music | |
| Folk music (Indian) | |
| Concepts | |
| Śruti | |
| Raga | |
| Melakarta | |
| Katapayadi sankhya | |
| Swara | |
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| Mudra |
