Kavikokila - Part I

Fanship takes various forms. If there is one person whose writings I am always in awe of, whose erudite works I hold in complete veneration, whose works have put me in touch with a lot of other brilliant scholars, it is that of Dr.V.Raghavan(22 Aug 1908 - 5 April 1979). My first acquaintance with him was in 1991 through his rather longish introduction to the book, 'The Spiritual Heritage of Tyagaraja' by C.Ramanujachari.At that time I knew just enough to wonder how someone was allowed to write such a long foreword. But it was not until 1995 due to that NCPA book which Ramki reminisces about that I discovered this man as one of the greatest intellectuals South India has produced. That book is precious for more than one reason. More than the contents and it was the appendix that captivated me. It was a veritable treasurehouse of citations, research articles so well-organized, categorized. I have never come across a bibliography in an Indian publication with this many details. After this, my next Raghavan encounter was in 1997, in the form of a sadas (Sadas is a symposium of sorts where a lot of indigenous scholars meet. ) souvenir on 'Sankara and Shanmatha' where a group of scholars from various streams of the six religious systems pertaining to Siva,Vishnu, Shakti, Skandha, Ganapati and Surya had written articles. Dr.Raghavan's contribution was a scholarly article on Surya. I happened to listen to a copy of his suprabhata on Meenakshi rendered by MSS and it was authored by the same Dr.Raghavan. He used a pen-name Kavikkokila. I also discovered that he had authored a Sanskrt Kavya on the life history of the Carnatic Composer Muttuswami Dikshitar.

And then there is his monumental work on Bhoja's Sringara prakasa, his paper on the Mankhas (a set of wandering folks who exhibited pictorial scrolls), his edits in several works of manuscripts in various libraries including Adyar. The work on Shrngaraprakasha was his doctoral thesis and the published text is more than 600 pages thick. A lot of what I read in that book I was able to place in context only after a few years later.It was also the motivating factor in locating a sanskrt teacher worthy of this pursuit. Interestingly enough like my sanskrt teacher he also knew his Tamil fairly well. A great many linguistic scholars that one comes across are polyglots.

And soon I finally was able to get hold of a copy of a lot of his articles written during his tenure as the Secretary of the Music Academy.In particular there is one side story where he mentions how he uncovered the meaning of a line in Dikshitar's Bhupalam composition 'Sadacaleshwaram that goes ' Chaya rahita deepa prakasha garbhagriha madhyaraHngam' - The one who dwells in the sanctum sanctorum which as a lamp whose light does not produce a shadow. He says that while editing a manuscript of the Skanda Purana he came across a legend where Siva offers a king such a boon of a lamp that does not cast a shadow. Inspired by him I even undertook a historical-pilgrimage of sorts to all the places mentioned in his book. One such place was Tiruvarur which was Dr.Raghavan's home town. where the above composition was set.To my naive horror, my acquaintance pointed out that the line no longer holds good and the lamp does cast a shadow - probably due to repeated rebuilding and reconstruction of temples. or probably it was just a legend.