Kshetrayya, The Enlightened

Kshetrayya and padas are so inseparably associated that either of them cannot but suggest the other. The amorous sankeertanas of Annamachar1ya were the sources for the development of the later Pada literature in Telugu. Thus, as the founder of padas Annamacharya is called Padakavita Pitamaha (the grandfathter of Pada songs) and as the perfector and master of technique in Raga and Bhava of Pada, Kshetrayya may be called Padakavita Pita. The Padas have been considered to be the best compositions for the exposition of the Subtleties in Raga and Sringara and thus they are supreme items in Solo dance performances and Yakshaganas.

Scholars are at variance regarding the important points of Kshetrayya’s life. Leaving aside their different versions, we shall take up certain undisputed facts about his life to reconstruct his personality as the most excellent Pada composer. In the first place he belonged to the village “Movva” or “Muvva” near the well known Kuchipudi, the centre of classical dance, drama and music. His village also was teeming with artists and connoisseurs of art. He was devoted to the Lord Muvva Gopala of his village and by the Lord’s grace he acquired scholarship and artistic talent. Besides divine gift, he was immensely encouraged by an accomplished and cultured lady who loved and adored him, in the cultivation of his talents.

Associate
Kshetrayya probably got this name by his pilgrimage to different temples of divinity and culture whereas he was originally called Varadayya. He must have been proficient in the fine arts even while he was young and must be of a sufficiently fine disposition (Rasikatwa) to secure the love of a handsome courtezan (Devadasi) a maid of equal merits. Their association must have commenced at quite an early age of their life to be ripened into a strong bond of love. Parity in temperament and tastes above the physical graces, must have united them. They enjoyed the sweetness of love and the subtleties of amorous dalliance. He learnt every emotional shade of love by her presentation and direct experience and thus he could exhibit them in his songs. In one song he expatiates upon her amity and submission making for sustained attachment. In another Pada she expressed how he has enamoured her gradually, even from their childhood by her amiable association:

He sweetly called me to his warm abode;
In his lovely arms I lay in charming repose.
He dressed my plait with colourful flowers; 
He reminded our pledge in sweet musing words.

We studied together in our impressionable age;
He took my word to be his future maid.
I worshipped Gowri in the mango grove;
He then assured me of his warm love.

He says why he has been so addicted to her sweet presence:

Why are you so fascinated by her?
Is she too lovely in looks and stature,
O young one! to be left even a minute?

Does she worship the Almighty, seeking your lordship?
Does she cast her graceful looks on you,
And in sweet consonance embrace you?
Does she exult in your outstanding talents?
Does she confide in you her personal affairs?
Why are you so fascinated….

Does she sing and dance to tune and rhythm?
Does she read and write your songs besides?
Does she suggestively talk to enlighten you?
Does she act your heroines to entertain you?
Why are you so fascinated…...

Kshetrayya and his paramour are like Jayadeva and his wife padmavati. His beloved was his partner not only in his love and life but also in his exclusive occupation of Pada composition.

We must now see how their collaboration started. The gift of poetic imagination was vested in him and the talent of presentation or action in her, while music was their common ground. They must be meeting every day in the temple–in the holy presence of Movva Gopala Swamy. While he was composing and singing the sweet songs of love, she must have suggested to him to compose padas addressed to the Lord. Incidentally he determined to meditate upon him when his first song in Ananda Bhairavi Raga sprang forth from his mouth beginning with the auspicious sound of Sree:
Sree Madana stirs my innocent heart
To implore you; Are you angry, my Gopal?
Do you dote on her every hour
And cruelly neglect me altogether!

Tour

Kshetrayya belonged to a respectable and cultured Brahmin family but was associated with a maid of low caste, though otherwise equally qualified. He so fully enjoyed the pleasures of youth that he acquired the highest stability and tranquillity of mind. Perhaps in his later life he went on a tour pilgrimage, of course there are different versions for the cause of his tour. His separation from his beloved must have been least painful and most natural, so that he was well inclined to undertake this journey. He might have been obliged to do so due to severe social censure of his illegitimate contact or he might have been encouraged by the trend of the age. The scholars were flocking the Andhra Court rehabilitated in Tanjore after the fall of Vijayanagara.

At any rate he went on a piligrimage never to return to his village. So he was called Kshetrayya, especially in the South. He must have become a real Kshetrajna, as explained in Gita, at the end of his life’s journey. He visited about eighteen great temples in different places.

Kshetrayya graced the court of Vijaya Raghava in Tanjore and when he was charged with obtrusion he smartly gave a fine repartee:

The needy men of their own accord
Approach the generous, O Lord!
Has, the lotusinvited the bees
To enjoy its honey quite freely?

Thus his merit was definitely divine to challenge the entire scholarship of the Royal Court. On one occasion the court poets grew envious of his gifted talents and complained to the king regarding his not only intimate but also impolite way of addressing the latter in one of his songs. Then he recited the following Pads, leaving the last two lines and challenged the court to supply them. Giving sufficient time for them, he then undertook a trip to Rameswaram and when they failed even after his return, he himself completed the song and established his supremacy as the personification of the Lord Movva Gopala.

Go, dear! do not prate but go!
No, let him not come, no!
Hell was past my recall
I were again born!

I pined for him with weary sight,
Expecting him highly every night
With hope and frustration alternating,
And with parched lips by long sighs frequenting.
Go, dear……

I spent many a giddy dreary night
As under the grip of the eternal cruel time,
Under scorching moonlight radiance,
And among the noisy cuckoos of many a spring’s exuberance.
Go, dear…….

I asked the wise about my presages,
I waited and waited for his bare graces;
I envied my mates clinging to their lovers–
Should I now meet him again? Already I had enough.
Go, dear………

He composed some padas addressed to the king and was highly honoured accordingly.

Object

What do the padas of Kshetrayya in general contain? The modern critic observes sensual poetry in them presenting a host of amorous situations. However sensual his padas may be, he described the various dispositions of the partners of sex love, especially the woman partner, while the man partner is her shade. This shows how important she is as a delicate instrument of love play while he is the player. Her mentality is more complicated and variegated. Each of his padas describes a real situation of sex life in three stanzas; there is a gradual rise in the principal sentiment to a climax (Rasa Nishyanda) while the select acts of love and the accompanying feelings (Vibhavas and Anubbavas) accelerate it.

The object of Kshetrayya in composing his padas is not to indulge in sexual passion or to give posterity scope for such indulgence. It is to achieve a three-fold purpose. His padas reveal his profound knowledge of Alankara Sastra and Kama Sastra. He must have read the Rasa Tarangini and Rasa Manjari of his predecessor Bhanudatta, a Sanskrit poet, who had comprehensively dealt with the subject, with additional varieties of hero and heroine as his innovations and described Lord Krishna in different romantic situations by way of examples. They must have been ripe in the memory of Kshetrayya when he composed his padas in delicious words and dulcet tunes. His padas, therefore, constitute a work in music, in literature and in Alankara Sastra–a three-fold purpose indeed, and Sri Madhavaraya Sarma contends that they reveal also the technique of love play (Kama Tantra). Further, the learned critic observes that Kshetrayya primarily concerned himself with examples rather than principles of Alankara Sastra and so he could describe them in his padas from real situations in life while the exponents of the Sastra supplied them by their imagination.

The padas of Kshetrayya are sufficiently comprehensive and fine to be examples of Alankara Sastra. This fact was recognised by an eminent, though anonymous, writer of a later age who claimed to his great credit, that he translated Bhanudatta’s Rasamanjari into verses entitled Sringara Rasa Manjari, citing the padas of Kshetrayya as examples. Thus these works served the professionals of Yakshagana as text books and Kshetrayya’s padas as typical lessons in dancing and drama. Sri V. Appa Rao too corroborated the inter-relation between the works of these authors by saying that Kshetrayya’s padas are more glorious examples than the above versified examples. His padas reveal animated and typical characters among men and women and thus they show his wide experience of society and especially of the Devadasi community.

The hero of all his padas is invariably Movva Gopala Swamy and he manifests Him as the different types by attributing the relevant qualities to him. The heroine is broadly classified as a loyal wife, a disloyal wife and courtezan but more elaborately into a number of types, definitely more than the hero. The third character is a mediator, a friend, bawd etc., between the hero and the heroine, who is expected to make for their union. Depending partly upon combinations of these types, the love situations are innumerable, yet most of the prominent can be found in his padas. In most of his Padas the heroine expresses her physical and mental states, pleasing or distressing or whatever they might be, in detail in clear and glaring hues, while the hero’s paraphernalia is brief, indirect and shadowy, for the overwhelming complexity of her physical and psychic entity. He had a wide experience of the world of women, specially the courtezans, so that he could depict a galaxy of heroines like the Gopikas.

Philosophy

Most of the Indian schools of philosophy postulate that the entire creation is a manifestation of the Divine Consciousness and that the Lord, the Iswara of the “being, Enlightening and Supreme Delight”, in the delight of becoming by the principle of Sakti; or Iswari invests every activity with the joy of manifestation. The Bliss of the finite world is a part of the Bliss of the transcendent infinite Sex activity, for instance, is an intense form of worldly pleasure. Sri Aurobindo remarks are enlightening here: “All recognition of the sex principle, as a part from the gross physical indulgence of the sex impulse, could not be excluded from a divine life on earth; it is there in life, plays a large part; it cannot be simply ignored, merely suppressed or held down or put away out of sight. In the first place, it is in one of its aspects a cosmic and divine principle: it takes the spiritual form of the Iswara and the Sakti, and without it there could be no world, creation or manifestation of the world, principle of Purusha and Prakriti.…..”

In the light of the foregoing, Kshetrayya could not be sexy just because his padas are sensual or sex appealing, His physical indulgence at any rate must be normal, though he was a veteran in Kama Sastra and though his partner belonged to the famous courtezans. They were devoted to each other in pure and true love and dedicated their lives to the Lord. They were highly educated and cultured, and in consecrated service of the Lord conceived and chanted His glorious creative principle manifesting in human form in the different individuals in their Pada literature.

His apparent sensuality or obscenity must belong to the mental and spiritual planes or it must be in his opinion the divine Sringara as Sri V. Appa Rao terms it. It is an experience attained by him assuming the role of each heroine in identification with the Lord by self-consecration, self-surrender and devotion. It is in the cherishing of the divine Sringara, in the identification with the Lord’s creative glory (Kama Kala) that a devotee like him would attain higher spiritual experience but not in appropriating the lurking incidental pleasure for himself.

This is the way perhaps that Kshetrayya, as a true aspirant in the beginning, had the spiritual development even as a Pada writer, that he later renounced his mate and everything to become the real Kshetrayya in realising Nirguna Brahman. It is a paradox to some that a composer of sensual songs, as he, living with a courtezan maid, could ever become the enlightened. He sought spiritul ends also by his padas as well as his amorous and enlightening association. There were few Pada writers later who attempted or succeeded in his path of realization. They wrote padas just for the sake of the arts, music and literature. He on the other hand, was supreme in padas in their various aspects.