Divine Melodies

The temple at Śrīraṅgaṃ, India is one of the largest functioning temples in the world and the deities enshrined there are Lord Raṅganātha and his consort goddess, Raṅganāyakī. A brief account of the temple and the deities enshrined therein, is studied from the point of view of several topics like location, geography, architecture, legends associated with them, history, festivals etc. In this book the lives of the two composers and their styles of composing are also studied. The various anecdotes about the spiritual experiences of the composers at these two temples, have also been researched and encapsulated. The comprehensive list of compositions by these two composers on this temple has also been compiled and so are the notations of each of those kṛti-s. The video/audio file/link of these kṛti-s by various eminent artists are also made available in the appendix. A thorough musical analysis of these 9 kṛti-s has been undertaken. The major points investigated are lyrics, context of the kṛti, dātu and mātu details, rāga, tāḷa, and tempo; style of construction, connections between the different paragraphs like samvādi or anuvādi etc.; grammatical points like aṅgā-s, āvartā-s, saṅgati-s etc.; prosodic embellishments like the prāsa-s and svarākṣara; lakṣya and lakṣaṇa of the composition; graha/nyāsa/aṁśa svarā-s, viśeṣa prayōga-s etc. Comparisons have been drawn between the two composers with respect to several factors like style, language, subject or theme of the composition, orientation, language used, rhythmic patterns, prosodic embellishments etc.