Saint Thyagaraja- Shedding more light on his last days and the events thereafter

Thyagaraja Swami, also known as Tyagayya, was a virtuoso musician of the 18^th century. His lyricism and Ramabhakti stand unparalleled. He is regarded as one of the Trinities of Carnatic classical music along with his contemporaries, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri.

Much is known and discussed with respect to his compositions, which flowed out seamlessly from this bard of Thiruvaiyaru. A detailed discussion in this regard can be seen in the following link.

http://musicinfoguide.blogspot.com/2007/07/biography-of-sri-thyagaraja-swami.html

Incidently my guru, Sri Srikantam Nagendra Sastry narrated to me a string of events that happened during Tyagaraja’s  last days and thereafter which has remained quite hidden from our eyes. My guru’s grandfather, a great musician in his own rights belonged to the Tyagaraja lineage. He learned from Pallvai Seshayyar who is the son of Neyakkarpatti Subbayar, a disciple of Saint Thyagaraja.  As the incidence pass on from generation to generation, even though it gets warped with time some essentialities remain the same. Hence I attempt to bring forth a different twist to the tale of Saint Tyagaraja.

Tyagaraja swami’s last composition happens to be Paritapamu in raga Manohari. In this composition he says that 10 days from now, Rama will come and take me with him in a golden chariot. The legend has it that Tyagaraja took to sanyasam just one day before his death.

Now from my guru’s narrative, it is clear that Tyagaraja swami’s last days were turbulent and health was faltering. Many of his disciples were not by his side when he was in his death bed. Tyagaraja swami has been described as having become very lean, bent, and ribs protruding.  He had huge swellings under both his eyes.  He is said to have seen in his dreams that he had one more janma left and he may finish all the’ karmaphalas’ (the results of your deeds across janmas) and attain moksha in this janma itself if he takes up sanyasam. He faced great difficulty trying to find a person to give him ‘Deeksha’ so that he can enter the sanyasashrama. No one was ready to oblige him. Finally he found a sanyasi at the banks of Cauvery who agreed to give him ‘deeksha’. He thus entered sanyasashrama just 24 hours before his death. His relationship with his elder brother, Japyesayya, was strained. Still, towards his last days they were in quite amicable terms. The last few days of his life he is said to have  taken only milk and his health deteriorated quickly.

As  predicted in his last composition, he died around 10 days after composing the song on a Pushya Bahula Panchami, January 6^th 1847. 

His death unleashed a debate on how the body should be cremated. Since he was a grihasta just 24 hours back, it warranted burning his body whereas a sanyasi’s body in those days used to be buried with entirely different rituals. Torn between the two, his brother decided to do both!.

One of his students performed the last rights as per the rules for a grihasta, and the dharba used ( a special grass used in the rituals) was then burnt as a representation of his body. His body was then buried as per the status of a sanyasi. As folklore has it, the people use coconuts in those days to break open the skull before burial of the body of saints. Whatever the brutal ways of those days were, we know that the body had to be dug up 4 days later and set to Samadhi in a place close to the Samadhi of the guru. So Tyagaraja’s Samadhi was placed at Tiruvaiyaru close to Sri Sonti Venkatramayya, his guru’s Samadhi.  

There were a lot of samadhis in the place and soon people forgot where Tyaraja’s  samadhi was exactly located. Forgotten for around 80 years, the whole land passed many hands until the determination of a women, named Rathnamma lead to the rediscovery of the place where a proper shrine was built in his honour. Rathnamma was a veshya. She was extremely rich and was a talented singer herself. She had great respect and adoration for Tyagaraja and took up the mission of setting up a proper shrine at the place of his Samadhi. She requested the Maharaja and obtained a recommendation letter from him. By this time the place was under British administration. After a lot of hardships, finally Lord Curzon assented to the request to transfer the place to her name.

Rathnamma had to painstakingly search the burial grounds to locate the crystal (spadikam) idol that was buried with Tyagaraja’s body and finally managed to pinpoint the Samadhi. Here she built a memorial shrine in the name of Tyagaraja. She sang and popularized various compositions of Tyagaraja here. Her selflessness in dedicating the rest of her life to the cause of Tyagaraja earned her the name, Tyagarathna. Every year to this day, during the months of Jan-Feb, a commemorative music festival called the Tyagaraja Aaradhana is held at this place in Thiruvaiyaru. 

Thyagaraja is a confluence of bhakti and music, being gifted with felicitous expression of Sahitya, he is a vaggeyakara par excellence.

 Ananthalakshmy.S

December 18^th 2010