The light at the end of the tunnel

Six years after initiating the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarsini, Project with Dr.P.P.Narayanaswami, the moment is finally here. The 'formal' completion of the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarsini (SSP here onward)- English Edition. Over the course of the last 5 years with the help of several volunteers across the world, we had finished up the 'notation portions' and the Vaggeyakara Caritram of the SSP and had released a version at: http://ibiblio.org/guruguha/ssp.htm. However there was still work to be done including the translation of the musicological portions of:


1.Sangita Lakshana Pracina Paddhati
2.Lakshana Sangraha
3.A section titled Porabataluna sulabhamuga teliyadagina vishyamulu or Means of Identifying printing errors.



In 2010 January, we came up with the idea of reading the text out on Skype to veteran musician-musicologist Prof.S.R.Janakiraman. He had worked on this with his teacher Brahmasri.P.K.Rajagopala Iyer way back in 1989 and 1990 for the Journal of the Music Academy and the project had stopped midway like many good initiatives in India do.  He was delighted with the idea and so it began. We worked this way for over 3-4 months, with Prof.SRJ translating line by line with extempore critical comments and translation sometimes over skype and at other times over the telephone and thus we completed the translation in June 2010. But that was not the end. There were still mountains to climb and many things that needed clarity for there were some errors in the original work itself. For the next two months, we then edited this with able and tremendous editorial guidance of  two wonderful scholars.

This  first volume is available with a revised and edited Vaggeyakara Caritram, Translation of the prefaces and the Methods for identifying mistakes which was part of the SSP1904, Sangita Lakshana Pracina Paddhati, Sangita Prashamsa, Lakshana Sangraha and Sangita Sampradaya Pradarsini - Ragas of Melas 1-6 with the tappoppulu and these printing errors marked and identified with applicable footnotes.The book will be available next week and is printed on a publish on demand priced at an at-cost basis. This English edition is dedicated to the memory of the indefatigable spirit of A.M.Chinnaswami Mudaliar who dedicated his entire life to the cause of English language printing of Indian music.


At the end of this exercise, one feels utterly humbled looking at this vast ocean that lays before us with the early stars in the firmament such as Bharata, Matanga followed by Abhinavagupta and Nissanka Sharngadeva who is truly the polestar and Venkatamakhi and Ramamatya the medieval lighthouses and Subbarama Dikshita's work the early cartographer's maps finally the Dr.Premlata Sharmas , the Dr.Satyanarayanas and the Mukund Laths serving as the modern GPS systems in navigating through the pathways  and sometimes dense ravines of musicology. It gave me tremendous insight into the mind of Subbarama Dikshita as a person, as a teacher, as a musician and a musicologist and where his strength of convictions and shortcomings lay and where his mind confronted conflict and how he chose to deal with it and why he made the choices he made. It enabled me to learn enough Telugu to be able to read and understand the text line by line myself to be able to realize the idea of  'closeness to a source text' and what it entails and to make it as error-free as possible.