The year
beginning August 31 this year is Adibhatla Narayana Das’ sesquicentennial as he
was born on August 31, 1864. Over the next few weeks we will present you
interesting snippets – excerpts from a new biography - from the life of the
great man. The biography is planned to be released during the sesquicentennial.
‘I Don’t Know Anything About Ragas’!
Suryanarayana had his initial Samskrit
education from his father and Vedic studies
from Peraiah an elderly, irascible tutor. In those days, the teaching of Vedas was as per the gurukula system in which the pupils had
to do a lot of errands around the guru’s ashram. This gave young Suryanarayana an opportunity to roam the
hills surrounding their village, singing like a lark; swimming in the streams
and wandering in the woods that abound in the area; soaking in the beauties of
nature and frame them in the mind’s eye of a future artiste.
However small pox
intervened to put an end to his stay in the gurukula – and in effect his formal
education in Samskrit and Vedic studies - at the age of nine.
In the meantime his melodious voice and the minstrel that was taking
shape within him were noticed not only by his parents but also by Vasa Kamaiah
a noted veena vidwan from Bobbili who
offered to take him under his wing as a disciple and teach him classical music.
However, for the boy this meant relocating to Bobbili which his poor family
could not afford. Kamaiah offered to put him up at his own home and offer free
food one day a week. He was to look for six other households that would offer a
‘varabhojanam’. Under the varabhojanam practice prevalent at the
time, a household offers free food to a poor scholar one day a week (varam), so that if the scholar could
find seven households he could pursue his studies without hindrance.
One day he was passing by the fort crooning a tag
oblivious to his surroundings and two people following him. One of them,
Tumarada Venkaiah a music vidwan, stopped him to enquire of his antecedents and
asked him whether he knew what raga he was singing. On being replied that he
did not, Venkaiah complimented him on his melodious rendering of ‘subhapantuvarali’
and prophesied that the boy would grow into a great musician. The boy nonchalantly replied that the vidwan’s praise was ‘all right’, but could he arrange a varabhojanam? The vidwan happily agreed to offer a varam. In spite of such munificence, try as he might, the boy could
not find the necessary seven households in Bobbili and after a month of
privations he returned home.
This in effect put an
end to his formal education in music - lasting all of a month!
At the tender age of nine Narayana Das was able to sing
in a complex raga like Subhapantuvarali even though he was oblivious to it as
he had no formal training in music. This was perhaps the reason why the famous
poet Chellapilla Venkata Sastry described him as Pumbhäva Saraswati - a male
incarnation of the Goddess of learning! (We will see in another snippet the
anecdote relating to Chellapilla Venkata Sastry’s description of Narayana Das
as Pumbhäva Saraswati.)
