The Song World in Tamil: A Glimpse

The Song World in Tamil:

A Glimpse

BY T. K. CHIDAMBARANATHA MUDALIAR, B.A., B.L.

(Ex-Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras)

The Tamil language has through the course of thousands of years, developed wonderful poetic forms. The forms are the outcome of the pulsating rhythm and music that pervade the song as a spirit; and it would be no exaggeration to say that to miss that spirit is to miss the whole poem; and, further, that the forms thus evolved are untranslatable. An attempt, however, has been made to indicate, in English prose, how the poets have been trying to express their emotional realities. In the process of rendering, names of places and deities have been omitted, lest these things, gritty to the unaccustomed ear, should stand in the way of appreciating the sense of the poem. Again to give to the prose rendering the simplicity of the song, the narrative forms in the original have been changed, when needed, to vocative forms. The originals are given as foot-notes.

(1)

Here is a love-song of the twelfth century (A.D.). The lady love expects her lover to return in the evening. She is alone in the house and is waiting till it is almost midnight. Then she goes to bed. But she is restless, walks to the door and opens it to see if her lover is coming. The lover is not seen. She closes the door and returns to her bed. In a few minutes she goes again to the door, and in despair returns to the bed. This going and returning goes on incessantly till sunrise. All this is expressed in a couplet:

Expectancy opens and Despair shuts;
And thus swings the door from eve to morn
Thereby wearing out the hinges.

(2)

We know that the eye reaches the very stars; but not the ear and the other senses.

We know also that, for a girl who is married, the husband is the only one, in the world of relations, to be taken into account. When the youth goes to a distant land, perhaps never again to return, the young wife has only to follow him, bidding farewell to her dear father, mother and other kindred.

Again a man may have abounding wealth. Is there any worth in it all if, in the evening of his life, he has to see his sons playing ducks and drakes with the property, thus giving him endless worry and anxiety?

As for the mother’s affection for her child, it is something incomprehensible. It really transcends all considerations of self–nay, reason itself. Now for the song (1st century A.D.?):

There is no member, precious as the eye;
No kindred, close as the husband;
No wealth covetable as wise sons;
And, to compare unto the mother,
there is no God whatever.

(3)

The joy that comes of temple worship has been and is a living reality for the pious. Those that have gone through that pious experience, by strewing flowers at the feet of the Deity and doing obeisance before the sanctum sanctorum, can easily understand the depth of the feeling that found expression in the following song, (some three hundred or four hundred years ago).

Why art thou restless, my heart?
Peace be with you:
The Lord’s feet ate there,
and there are the sages’ songs in praise of them.
And there is my mouth to sing,
and my hands are there to strew flowers.
And, to bow homage to them,
there is my head:
Why art thou restless, my heart?
Peace be with you.

(4)

The image of Nataraja, its transcendent beauty, and the interpretative art enshrined therein are now familiar to the entire Art-world. Through the dancing pose of the Deity at Chidambaram, we have to see a vast figure, filling the very heavens, dancing and whirling in ecstatic joy; and again, through this cosmic image, one has to perceive the oneness and harmony that governs the whole universe, and thus realise the joy infinite. Here is a glimpse of such a realisation:

Thy matted locks waving in the skies.
Thy complexion resplendent,
The milk-white ashes besmeared thereon,
Thy arched brow, Thy ruddy lips.
Thy smile mysterious,
And, above all, Thy lifted foot,
dripping as though with honey.
These, O, Lord! if one could have a vision of,
Even the birth, on this earth, as a human mortal is worth striving for.

(Found in the hymns of Appar, 5th centuryA. D.)