The emperors new song the 18th century overhaul of the padam genre

This paper revisits the concept of authorship, by mining examples of a poetic-performative genre, from 18th century South India. While our ideas of authorship are mostly derived from text-centric traditions, I look at how an author emerges from his corpus of songs through the embedded significations of place, patron and deity. Further the identity of the author is reified, formulated and kept current, through the performing arts of music and dance; in a process involving the performers as well as the audiences.

The pada(m) is a musical-poetic genre, with an interesting provenance, and has always straddled the twin domains of literature-poetry and music-dance, thereby offering itself to slightly different audiences. In its early stages, the padam restricted itself to themes of love (shringara) and devotion (bhakti). In this article, I discuss how Srangapi an 18th century padam poet from the principality of Krveinagaram in South India innovated and expanded the scope of the padam, exploring themes that his predecessors the Tapkkam poets (16th century) and Ketrayya (17th century) did not utilize.

Srangapis innovation is consonant with the sophisticated, syncretic and experientially rich humanism embodied in the Tamil Bhakti literature, which reemerged albeit differently, in the literary and musical output of the extended Vijayanagara empire. He has deliberately embedded in his musical compositions, information from disciplines such as alchemy, geography, botany, and medicine (Ayurveda). This has interesting consequences for the circulation of certain streams of knowledge that were typically the preserve of the literate elite.

Further, Srangapi is an example of an author whose biographical details are scarce, and therefore his identity is subtended by the textual, and more importantly the recitative and performative circulation of his songs. The signification of the site, deity and patron in his songs are equally worthy of attention, and are constitutive of the identity of the poet and his songs; often serving as Srangapis signature, writing the poet into the song. Finally, I examine the padam corpus of Srangapi as a metonym for the cultural universe of Krveinagaram, and by extension, of a significant part of 18th century South India.