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MADRAS MISCELLANY
A mission of knowledge
S. MUTHIAH
As The Season builds up to a climax, I look back once more to a person little remembered in the world of music but who in his time considered spreading knowledge of Carnatic music a mission. The climax of that mission was to spread the meaning of Ty
agaraja’s compositions to a wider, even an international, audience. Fifty years ago, this missionary, C. Ramanujachariar, mainly with the help of Dr. V. Raghavan, the music scholar, completed the work of providing the meaning in English of 565 songs of the saint-composer. The Spiritual Heritage of Tyagaraja, with the lyrics in Sanskrit and their meaning in English, was published by the Ramakrishna Misison in 1958, sadly, after the death of Ramanujachariar. But the work lives on, with the book still in print after several reprints.
A couple of examples will suffice to not only give a flavour of the translation but also a glimpse of the wisdom and narrative talent of the composer:
* “Worldly men will assert that theirs is the only path. Don’t follow it and get deceived.”
* “Catching the brocaded saris of some, pushing the feet of some away from his own, gazing at the beauty of some, speaking to some after reading their thoughts, lying on the laps of some, sporting with the bodies of some, Krishna played with the Gopis.”
That the Ramakrishna Mission would publish Ramanujachariar’s work was most appropriate for it was he and his brother, C. Ramaswami Iyengar (they were known as Ramu and Ramanuja), who played a major role in persuading Swami Vivekananda, during his visit to Madras in 1897, to start a chapter of the Ramakrishna Mission in the city. When Swami Ramakrishnananda arrived to start the Mission, it was the two brothers who worked with him to get it going, its activities starting with two orphans and growing into the thousands of children who have passed through what became the Sri Ramakrishna Home by 1905. Expanding these activities, it was Ramanujachariar again who helped start the Sri Ramakrishna Boys’ School in Theagaraya Nagar 75 years ago this year.
It was to music that Ramanujachariar turned to collect funds for the Mission. He (his brother had died young) organised numerous concerts in the Mission premises — the present home in Mylapore was ready for occupation in 1907 — and elsewhere, including Ceylon and the Federated Malay States to which he persuaded Musiri Subramania Iyer to go on a concert tour. Navaratri concerts at the Mission was another activity Ramanujachariar started — and the tradition continues to this day. But as much as concerts, the transfer of musical knowledge mattered greatly to him. He was instrumental in getting Annamalai University to establish its College of Music. Its syllabus, as well as syllabuses framed for other colleges and the University of Madras, owed much to him. He was, however, less successful in sustaining the Society to Preserve Carnatic Music which he founded in 1952. The first meeting was attended by the stalwarts of the Music Academy — with which he was associated, mainly as a discussant — but obviously they thought the Academy was enough to preserve Carnatic Music, and the Society never met again.
Another interest of Ramanujachari was the stage. He often bestrode it as an actor — no doubt at the Victoria Public Hall during the Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar era.
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