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50 articles for 2019-2020
33 of 50
Structure of Krithis part 2

Annamayyas krithis dont have an Anupallavi passage and His Samkeertanas have multiple charanas. While Puradaradasa's compositions have mixed variety as in some have anupallavi passages and some dont. Thiagaraja Swami and Syama Sastry compositions have multiple charanams and its not a LH thumb rule since there are uni charana compositions too. We can conclude that due to lack of evidence of a structure for Krithis as a standard, the brilliants minds explored many formats.

We must mention a Margadarshi. A pre trinity composer Sesha Ayyangar composed in Sanksrit, His kritis have triple charanams, and he experimented with the traditional pallavi-anupallavi-caraNam structure of kritis.

The famous musician Shatkala Govinda Marar brought with him a collection of the songs of Margadarsi Sesha Iyengar and sang many of them before the king, Swati Tirunal. Impressed by their novelty, adopted them as models for his own compositions and also wrote a tract on the verbal embellishments like assonance, alliteration and rhyme to be adopted in musical compositions. Because he paved the way for a systematic style of compositions for all composers that followed, his title Margadarshi (one who shows the direction), is appropriate

Now we must mention Dikshatar here. Who composed without multiple charanams. His is always Uni charana composition and we are happy to hand over the Crown of Individuality and Innovativeness to Him. Its time to visit an apocryphal incident. After his first krithi Dikshatar was asked by his brothers Baluswamy and Chinnaswamy about the limitation of one Charanam. Dikshatar replied in his second krithi that it was by intent not by accident he composed in Unicharana. The second krithi is the gem

mAnasa guruguha rUpam
raagam: Anandabhairavi

(last line of the krithi)
nAma smaraNamjitvA mOhAvaraNam matvAtvadEka sharaNam
Matva tvad eka sharanam (having considered him your only refuge

Its time already to explore the Samashti Charanam kri

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