 Not many would know of Soolamangalam Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar today. The art that he practised, Harikatha, is on its last legs and that could account for it. In addition, Bhagavatar shunned awards and other forms of recognition and chose to lead a life dedicated to his art and to his patron saint,
Tyagaraja.
Accounts of his life are sketchy and brief, one of the more frequently seen ones being E Krishna Iyer’s write-up, published in 1965. Yet another is Prof P Sambamoorthy’s article republished recently in a compilation of his works under the title 'Professor Sambamoorthy, the visionary musicologist', put together by Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Bombay Jayashree and T M Krishna and released under the aegis of the Music Academy.
A study of Bhagavatar's life shows him as yet another great Vaidyanatha of Carnatic music, who like Maha Vaidyanatha Sivan, is entitled to his place in the sun.
Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar was born on November 16, 1866, to Atmanatha Iyer and Kamakshi. The family belonged to the Kashyapa gotra of the Brhaccharana sub-sect. There is a dispute on his place of birth. Some claim it to be Kunnakkudi, which, as per family tradition, was his mother’s native place.
Others say it is Soolamangalam, a village in Thanjavur district, which was where his father lived. It was Soolamangalam Bhagavatar was to be associated with for the rest of his life and he proudly sported the village name as a prefix to his own. Perhaps it gave him greater happiness than all the recognition that others sought.
The Sharma namam given to him was Venkataraman. But the family deity was the presiding Lord of Vaitheeswarankoil and so he came to be called Vaidyanathan at home and that was the name with which he became famous.
Bhagavatar’s family was rich in musical tradition. His father, as per the account of E Krishna Iyer, had learnt music from Tyagaraja himself. He had in his possession palm leaf manuscripts of over 650 Tyagaraja kritis. Bhagavatar’s uncle was Khamas Krishna Iyer, well known for his rendition of the eponymous raga.
The village too was rich in musical tradition for its Soundararaja Perumal Swami Sannidhi Agraharam, where Bhagavatar lived, was the venue of one of the six Bhagavata Melas for which Thanjavur district was famous.
Atmanatha Iyer had composed several sabdams and other musical forms suitable for the Bhagavata Mela that survived him in manuscript form. While music was taught at home, Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar was also sent to school to acquire conventional education as we understand it, an education that was then slowly and steadily making inroads into our value systems.
While Bhagavatar was still young, he lost his father. He continued his musical training under his uncle. He also acquired proficiency in playing the violin. He enrolled for higher studies at the Maharajah’s college in the princely state of
Pudukottai.
His tutor there was the redoubtable mathematician, Radhakrishna Iyer. On the successful completion of the FA course, he enrolled in the late 1880s at the Teacher’s College, Saidapet, in Madras.
Among his classmates were silver tongued orator, Rt Hon V S Srinivasa Sastry, and Kirtanacharya C R Srinivasa Iyengar, who later became a musicologist of great repute. In impromptu music sessions among students, Bhagavatar would provide accompaniment on the violin, while Srinivasa Iyengar sang.
Bhagavatar was appointed as the deputy Inspector of schools at Mannargudi. While there, he happened to hear the scintillating Harikatha performances of Tanjore Krishna Bhagavatar and was sufficiently motivated to try his hand at the same art.
In order to equip himself, he took a year’s sabbatical from work and threw himself wholeheartedly into the task. This involved acquiring mastery in seven languages, namely Sanskrit, Tamizh, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Hindi and English.
Of course, he was proficient in Sanskrit, Tamizh and English to begin with, but the others had to be acquired afresh. He also had to equip himself with sufficient musical "pieces" in various languages to sustain his Harikatha performances and in these he was greatly helped by a number of people.
Being a tall person, he was naturally impressive on stage. To provide him accompaniment in terms of vocal music came his brother Panchapakesa Bhagavatar. Known to the world of Harikatha by the affectionate sobriquet of Chinna Hari, he had provided vocal support for the performances of artistes such as Natesa Dikshitar and Tillaisthanam Narasimha
Bhagavatar.
Chinna Hari was known for his expertise in keeping time and was considered a wizard of the 'vushi' tALam, the mainstay of Harikatha performers. It is said that once he was so enraged at a slip in the tALam of the mridangist, Arupathi Natesa Iyer, that he smote him with his 'cipla'. This resulted in a permanent scar on Natesa Iyer’s forehead, which he sported proudly as a permanent gift from Chinna
Hari.
To come back to the main story, Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar was warmly received by the audiences of the time. His Harikathas on the lives of the 63 Nayanmars, in particular, were very popular and in a short while, by 1890, as per E Krishna Iyer, he rose to the levels of popularity that reigning monarch Krishna Bhagavatar enjoyed.
His mridangam accompanists were of the highest order, namely Narayanaswamappa, Tukkaram Appa, Pudukottai Dakshinamurthy Pillai and Kumbakonam Azhagianambi Pillai. Later, Tanjore Vaidyanatha Iyer too joined this galaxy.
Bhagavatar could also count among his friends such eminent personalities as the blind flautist Sarabha Sastrigal, composer and vocalist Patnam Subrahmanya Iyer, violinist Tirukkodikkaval Krishna Iyer and composer and singer Ramanathapuram Poochi Srinivasa Iyengar.
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Soolamangalam Vaidyanatha
Bhagavatar-I
