The Music of Hindostan c8.s2.13

c8.s2.13

There is a pretty story about Tyagarāja’s meeting with ‘Shatkāla’ Govinda Mārār, a fine musician of Travancore. Shatkāla means ‘six-time’, and ‘time’ is here used in the sense of ‘diminutions’, i.e. that a piece that had been in crotchets was now sung in quavers; and the point is that he could ‘diminish’ six times over, i.e. begin with his theme in semibreves and end with it in semi-demi-semi-quavers. He used to sing to a Tāmbura with seven strings—the ordinary Tāmbura has only four; and this instrument seems to have been a sort of bow of Ulysses to inferior singers; in token of which, apparently, it was adorned with a flag. They met at Tyagarāja’s house at Tiruvaiyyar near Tanjore in 1843, where the great man was sitting with his disciples. Mārār, after listening to the disciples, expressed a wish to hear Tyagarāja himself. ‘Who is the man’, said Tyagarāja in Telugu, ‘that can ask me to sing?’ Apparently the audience were to hear him only when he sang of his own accord. He asked who was the man, pointing to Mārār, who sat with a flagged Tāmbura in his hand; and was told that Mārār could sing a little. A Pallavi was then sung round, and when it came to Govinda Mārār’s turn the other instruments had to be laid aside and his Tāmbura only used, so high was the pitch of the music. He sang it in Shatkāla, and Tyagarāja, after remonstrating with the understatement of Mārār’s powers, improvised on the spot a song in the Śrī Rāgam, which is the Ragam sung at the close of performances, of which the burden was, ‘There are many great men in the world, and I respect them all.’ This contrasts well with the many stories there are of professional jealousy, which are too unlovely to repeat here.