'The Triple Stream'

...he that laboureth right for love of Me
Shall finally attain! But, if in this
Thy faint heart fails, bring Me thy failure!

-The Song Celestial

‘The Triple Stream’¹

DIVIDED ALLEGIANCE

In the Art Gallery of the Jaganmohan Palace, Mysore, there is a famous water-colour, ‘Mad after the Veena,’by Mr. K. Venkatappa. It represents the artist himself, as being torn between his loyalty to music and to painting. At one stage, his madness for the Veena is so great that, in sheer despair, he veils the bust of his great teacher in painting, Dr. Abanindranath Tagore. The curse of divided allegiance was never more strikingly portrayed. For fourteen months, the Editor tried to shut out the Triveni from his vision and to devote his attention to the Jatheeya Kalasala, which was dear beyond words. It was difficult to adjust the rival claims of education and journalism. At times, the Triveni tore off the veil, and flashed forth anger from her ruby-red eyes. In trying to serve two institutions, each of which required utter consecration, the Editor caused harm and loss to both. Towards the middle of January last, the call of the Triveni became insistent, and with considerable pain he resigned the Principalship. Thus it happens that these Notes are being written from the ‘Triveni’ Office in Madras, and not within sight of the spacious lawns of the Kalasala, carpetted emerald green and filled with ‘the peace which passeth understanding.’

‘WHERE FLOWERS DO NOT FADE’

During that brief tenure of office he was privileged to take part in a function which marked the commencement of a new epoch in Telugu literature. The Poets Lakshmikantam and Venkateswara Rao dedicated their first long poem to their Guru, Venkata Kavi, the forerunner of the literary renaissance in Andhra. Seven hundred years ago, the poet Ketana offered homage to Tikkana, the poet of the Telugu ‘Mahabharata,’ by the dedication of the ‘Dasakumara Charitra.’ Amidst scenes of truly Oriental charm, with music and the lighting of camphor, the authors of ‘Soundara-Nandam’ laid their precious offering at the feet of the poet of the ‘Buddha-Charitra.’

Nanda, a brother of the Lord Buddha, joins the Buddhist Sangha as a ‘Bhikku’ under circumstances of intense pathos. Nanda and his wife Sundari are perfect aesthetes living in a world of dreams, ‘of eternal spring, where leaves do not fall and the flowers do not fade.’ The Lord points the way to a higher love which comprehends the entire universe, and is not rendered painful by the fear of separation. In a style which recalls the chiselled grace and sweetness of the ‘Prabhavati Pradyumnam’ of Surana, and the ‘Vijaya Vilasam’ of Venkana, Lakshmikantam and Venkateswara Rao have created this modern classic, achieving perfect poise between thought and language, form and content. To one like the present writer who has day after day, and month after month, listened to the ineffably melodious chanting of the verses by Venkateswara Rao, the ‘Soundara Nandam’ represents the high-water mark of Telugu poetry in the present century. Among the poets of the Renaissance certain figures stand out prominently: Krishna Sastri, author of ‘Krishna Paksham’ and ‘Urvasi’; Viswanatha Satyanarayana with his ‘Nartanasala’ and ‘Andhra Prasasti’; and the poets of the ‘Soundara Nandam’ which is the fulfillment of the rich promise held out years ago in their ‘Tholakari.’

INDIAN ART IN LONDON

We invite the attention of our readers to the valuable Note on ‘Indian Art in London.’ Mr. Oswald Couldrey, formerly Principal of the Rajahmundry College, nursed the artistic genius of the late lamented Damerla Rama Rao, and inspired students like Adivi Bapiraju with a love of Indian Art. He is justifiably annoyed with the Regional Committee for Madras for failing to secure a larger and more representative collection of pictures from South India. Some works of Ananda Mohan Sastri, Ram Mohan Sastri, and Kesava Rao–all among these that ‘blossomed at Masulipatam’–were exhibited, but most of these found their way into the Exhibition rooms without the aid or the local committee. Though, for some years, the Oriental Art section of the Kalasala has been in abeyance, the Art Gallery of water-colours by former teachers and students remains; and some of these could have been loaned, as well as others from the Rama Rao Art Gallery at Rajahmundry. Individual artists scattered all over South India ought to organise themselves and make such studied neglect impossible in future. Art is not the preserve of an officialised clique, and the expanding art-consciousness in South India should not get stifled for want of adequate opportunity for self-expression.

INDIA SAYS ‘NO’

It is a progressive decline from Independence to the substance thereof, then to Dominion Status with safeguards, and finally to Diarchy at the centre and veiled autocracy in the provinces. Was it for this that generations of Indian publicists, from Dadabhai Naoroji to Rangaswami Iyengar, gave their precious lives? The National Congress has ‘rejected’ the J. P. C. Report and the Bill based on it. The Assembly has, in effect, confirmed the decision of the Congress. Every-day the view is gathering strength that the dropping of the Bill at this stage will not adversely affect the political destinies of India: that India need not submit to the fetters forged for her in the shape of unending reservations in favour of the agents of British Imperialism, and a corresponding denial of power to the advocates of Indian nationalism. Wise statesmanship could have reconciled these conflicting claims, but the divisions in our own camp have robbed us of the strength to make an effective demand for the reality of power. Whether ‘rejection’ implies abstention from the new legislatures, and refusal to accept office as Ministers, is yet in doubt. But there is no vital contradiction in rejecting the Reforms and yet accepting office under them. If a continuous fight has to be kept up on all fronts, it is perfectly open to the Congress and other progressive groups to seize the limited power that is so grudgingly conceded, and retain the right to press for the powers withheld. After all, these terms ‘rejection’ and ‘acceptance under protest’ merely indicate the temper of different sets of politicians, and may not correspond to differences in the actual course of action pursued by them. If, as seems likely, Mr. Jinnah and Mr. Rajendra Prasad are able to arrive at an amicable settlement of the communal problem on the basis of joint electorates, the first great step forward will have been taken on the road to freedom. Then it will be time enough for an All-Parties Conference, and a Constituent Assembly entitled to speak on behalf of the entire nation and to demand a treaty between England and India, in place of this dole of Reforms which withholds infinitely more than it concedes.

THE ‘TWENTIETH CENTURY’

When Mr. Iswara Dutt published his brilliant sketches of South Indian worthies–Sparks and Fumes–the Rt. Hon. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri complimented the young writer by saying that, after reading the book, he had become ‘hopeful of the literary future of India.’ Today the sight of the first few numbers of the Twentieth Century makes us hopeful about the future of Indian journalism. Starting as a freelance, and serving on daily newspapers like Swarajya, The Hindu and The Leader, Mr. Dutt has at long last found his true vocation in journalism of a more enduring type. Choice in its get-up, varied and brilliant in its literary fare, and pervaded by an atmosphere of cultured leisure, the Twentieth Century is not only an ornament to Indian journalism, but also its loftiest expression. Its roll of contributors is perhaps the most distinguished in India. The Twentieth Century is, in addition, influentially supported and run on excellent business lines. Mr. Dutt is an old and valued friend of the Editor of Triveni, and between them is the bond of common endeavour which neither time nor circumstance can ever weaken. Triveni welcomes this baby-brother, born so near the real ‘Triveni’ of Allahabad. And is it not the most wonderful baby that ever was, or can be?

THE ‘TYAGARAJA’ PORTRAIT

Mr. V. Raghavan sends us the following Note on the correct identification of the Tanjore picture published in Triveni during 1932:

As Frontispiece to the 1932 July-Aug. number of the Triveni (Vol. V. No.1) appeared a portrait identified as that of Tyagaraja, the immortal South Indian musician-composer. The owner of the portrait, Mr. C. Jinarajadasa, wrote in a Note on that portrait that he was informed by the person from whom he got it that it was a portrait of the Tanjore school, and that the name of the personality as Tyagaraja ‘was suggested later, though tentatively.’In Madras, music enthusiasts ardently received this as a new portrait of the immortal musician and it got circulated as a contemporary portrait of Tyagaraja. In the Nov.-Dec. issue of the same Journal for the same year (Vol. V. No.3), the portrait was discussed and its identification as Tyagaraja was doubted. It was put forward by a writer (p. 281) that the subject was a typical Lingayat Saivaite Bhagavatar and that the portrait was not of the Tanjore School but it was ‘typical of the Mysore School.’ This portrait does belong to the Tanjore school and it does not represent any Lingayat Bhagavatar. But it is not Tyagaraja’s portrait. It is a portrait of a well-known and much revered contemporary of Tyagaraja, Sri Gopala Bhagavatar of Varahur, a village in the Tanjore Dt.

Gopala Bhagavatar was not a musician as Tyagaraja was. He was a Bhakta and performer of the traditional ‘Bhajana’ with singing and dancing, as the Tambur on his shoulder and the bells on his feet show. Gopalasvamin or Gopala Bhagavatar was besides a gifted exponent of the ‘Bhagavata-purana,’ the Veda of the ‘Bhakti-marga.’ It is now about sixty years since Gopala Bhagavatar passed away. He belonged to the ‘Sishya-parampara’ of the famous saint-composer, Narayana Tirtha Yati, the author of the ‘Krishna Lila Tarangini.’ During his life-time, Gopala Bhagavatar heard that the Tanjore court had a portrait of their first Guru, Narayana Trirtha; he went to the court and brought a copy of his guru’s portrait; and along with Narayana Tirtha’s second portrait, one of Gopala Bhagavatar also was prepared. Those two original portraits of Narayana Tirtha and Gopala Bhagavatar are now in the ‘Puja-griha’ of the grandson of Gopala Bhagavatar, Mr. Bharata Sastry, Ayurvedic physician, Triplicane. It was through Mr. Bharata Sastry’s brother, Mr. Lakshmana Sastry of the Madras Govt. Oriental MSS Library, that Mr. Vetury Prabhakara Sastry of the same Library published with a Note those two portraits of Narayana Tirtha and Gopala Bhagavatar in the Madras Telugu Monthly Bharati in 1925 (part 6, facing p. 16). If one turns to the Bharati for 1925 or visits Mr. Bharata Sastry’s house in Triplicane, he can see for himself that what was published in the Triveni as a portrait of Tyagaraja is really a portrait of Varahur Gopala Bhagavatar.

Gopala Bhagavatar is a well-known name in all places in South India where the traditional ‘Bhajana’ is still going on. Many ‘Bhajana-maths’ must have had his portrait and there must have been more than one portrait of his. That published in the Triveni is one of those other portraits of Gopala Bhagavatar. The Triveni portrait shows the Bhagavatar slightly younger with a recently shaven face, whereas the original in Mr. Bharata Sastry’s house which was reproduced in the Bharati has an older face with a beard. There is yet another portrait of Gopala Bhagavatar in Mr. Bharata Sastry’s possession, in which is painted the same person at a ripe old age, sitting and doing ‘Japa’ with a red silk rosary in his hand. I am also told by Mr. Bharata Sastry that the Zamindar of Udayarpalayam has in his mansion a big portrait of Gopala Bhagavatar which the Zamindars of that house worship.

We have made the pilgrimage recommended by Mr. Raghavan, and we are convinced that he is right. But the picture published in Triveni will always be valued as a rare gem of Indian Art, of the Tanjore School.

1 20th February, 1935