Ashta avadhana
Recently I happened to witness an extraordinary art called Ashtavadhaana. My friend Madhu told me about this event being held in Bangalore. He gave me the address and though it was not publicly announced, it was open to public. I went to this place with a vague sense of what I was about to see. Though I had heard about it, it was the first time I was about to see it live.
Avadhaana apparently means concentration in Sanskrit. Ashta avadhaana means concentrating on eight different aspects in parallel. The Avadhaani at this event was Shathavadhaani Dr R Ganesh. He had 8 people around him. 4 on each side. The idea of Avadhaana is that the Avadhaani responds to the art question (more a challenge) put forward by questioners (pruchhaka) almost in parallel with all the others. There would be four rounds, and for each pruchhaka either a paada or in the case of aashu kavithe and kaavya pruchhaka a complete response would be done.
That day, we had the following eight roles of pruchhaka.
1. This person would give a theme and a chandas (meter, explained later). And then provide a letter that should not be the used. For eg., assuming if the pruchhaka felt the avadhaani would start with the word Ravi (Sun God), and that the meter would make sure that the first letter would be a laghu and then a guru, then the pruchhaka would rule would the occurance of Vivaswatha by saying "No" to va-kaara. The avadhaani could then either pick a different word to start the poem or pick a new letter to denote the same meaning, say divaakara and come out with the letter dhi. Then the pruchhaka would say no to va again, and the avadhaani would change the intended word to dinaakara. A letter after another, one fourth of the verse known as a paada would be complete before he would move on to the next one.
2. The second pruchhaka would pose a question with a complex statement and challenge the avadhaani to compose a poem that will integrate the question into itself and provide an answer. It is also to imagine the relevant context. Even here after finishing a paada, the avadhaani would concentrate on the next person.
3. This person would give some words and a meter and a theme. The avadhaani would need to compose a poem with those words in the given meter on the theme. The catch here is that none of the words should be used in their own meaning, for eg., shaanthi should not used as a word that will mean peace or lack of peace etc., it should be used as a samasa or sandhi between two words (a words ending with sha and another word starting with anthi).
4. This pruchhaka would look at an art called as chitra kavithe. I did not comprehend the different aspects of this one, but it looked like composing on a picture in a picture.
5. There would be a pruchhaka who would give various themes on aashu kavithe. ie., composing on will. He would give themes and meters and ask the avadhaani to compose a complete poem on each round.
6. There was a musician who would sing gamaka on different poems in different works. The avadhaani has to recognise the songs and respond in a kaavya manner.
7. There was a pruchhaka maintaining a matrix of size 5x5. He would give a number at the start of the avadhaana and throughout the four rounds ask for numbers in specific cells. He would note the number down and at the end of the avadhaana, all of the rows and columns should add up to the number given at the start. This pruchhakka has the additional responsibility of distracting the avadhaani just when his concentration is on prime to compose an answer to the other pruchhakkas.
8. the last one but the most interesting pruchhaka would intend just to disturb the concentration and ask all sorts of idiotic questions. Both this pruchhakka and the matrix person do not participate in the rounds and they just interrupt whenever they feel like.
In the midst of all this, we had some amazing samskrutha poems and Kannada poems. It is amazing to look at and its appreciated more only if one tries to even write a simple sentence in meter.
I took out of the event, the meanings of three poems:
The avadhaani was asked to come out with poems to describe the falling of raindrops on a still lake. He had two descriptions. One meant "Like notes coming out of a jal tarang, music is created out of the drops falling radially across the lake. The beautiful image of the sky that was captured by the lake got destroyed by the falling drops. With the drops both creation(of the musical notes) and destruction(of the picture of the sky) happened on the lake". The other was about the symbolism found in the story of prince and the pauper. "A single drop, falling in the lake is bound to create a wave that is far reaching. However too many drops will mean that a wave created by one ends with the wave created by another, thus limitign the impact" In life, this can be seen once too often. Any new event will have a popularity only when it is rare, but however nice the event is, if it is accompanied by many such it will have limited impact. The events could be anything from the arrival of a new technology to the birth of a new philosopher.
The other poem I remembered was sung by the Kaavya pruchhaka. This was a description that was provided on kurukshetra after the war is over. When people were asked - "How did the battlefield look?". the response was like this - "Like a new son-in-law arriving in a house, where everyone grabs the person and pulls them with lot of enthusiasm. A soldier who has died while fighting with his bows and arrows in a fighting position, on arrival into veeraswarga, is being pulled with a lot of viour and torn apart by dogs, wolves and jackals." This has so many rasas and the movement from one rasa to another is fascinating.
One another interesting point to note was that out of the eight pruchhakas only three had grey hair, the rest seemed very young around 30ish. All of them pursuing their day jobs with Samskrutha as their primary fuel. This gave me a lot of hope....
Vinay
PS: Here's a link that explains meters well: http://cs.annauniv.edu/insight/insight/chhandas/pages/typepage.htm
Avadhaana apparently means concentration in Sanskrit. Ashta avadhaana means concentrating on eight different aspects in parallel. The Avadhaani at this event was Shathavadhaani Dr R Ganesh. He had 8 people around him. 4 on each side. The idea of Avadhaana is that the Avadhaani responds to the art question (more a challenge) put forward by questioners (pruchhaka) almost in parallel with all the others. There would be four rounds, and for each pruchhaka either a paada or in the case of aashu kavithe and kaavya pruchhaka a complete response would be done.
That day, we had the following eight roles of pruchhaka.
1. This person would give a theme and a chandas (meter, explained later). And then provide a letter that should not be the used. For eg., assuming if the pruchhaka felt the avadhaani would start with the word Ravi (Sun God), and that the meter would make sure that the first letter would be a laghu and then a guru, then the pruchhaka would rule would the occurance of Vivaswatha by saying "No" to va-kaara. The avadhaani could then either pick a different word to start the poem or pick a new letter to denote the same meaning, say divaakara and come out with the letter dhi. Then the pruchhaka would say no to va again, and the avadhaani would change the intended word to dinaakara. A letter after another, one fourth of the verse known as a paada would be complete before he would move on to the next one.
2. The second pruchhaka would pose a question with a complex statement and challenge the avadhaani to compose a poem that will integrate the question into itself and provide an answer. It is also to imagine the relevant context. Even here after finishing a paada, the avadhaani would concentrate on the next person.
3. This person would give some words and a meter and a theme. The avadhaani would need to compose a poem with those words in the given meter on the theme. The catch here is that none of the words should be used in their own meaning, for eg., shaanthi should not used as a word that will mean peace or lack of peace etc., it should be used as a samasa or sandhi between two words (a words ending with sha and another word starting with anthi).
4. This pruchhaka would look at an art called as chitra kavithe. I did not comprehend the different aspects of this one, but it looked like composing on a picture in a picture.
5. There would be a pruchhaka who would give various themes on aashu kavithe. ie., composing on will. He would give themes and meters and ask the avadhaani to compose a complete poem on each round.
6. There was a musician who would sing gamaka on different poems in different works. The avadhaani has to recognise the songs and respond in a kaavya manner.
7. There was a pruchhaka maintaining a matrix of size 5x5. He would give a number at the start of the avadhaana and throughout the four rounds ask for numbers in specific cells. He would note the number down and at the end of the avadhaana, all of the rows and columns should add up to the number given at the start. This pruchhakka has the additional responsibility of distracting the avadhaani just when his concentration is on prime to compose an answer to the other pruchhakkas.
8. the last one but the most interesting pruchhaka would intend just to disturb the concentration and ask all sorts of idiotic questions. Both this pruchhakka and the matrix person do not participate in the rounds and they just interrupt whenever they feel like.
In the midst of all this, we had some amazing samskrutha poems and Kannada poems. It is amazing to look at and its appreciated more only if one tries to even write a simple sentence in meter.
I took out of the event, the meanings of three poems:
The avadhaani was asked to come out with poems to describe the falling of raindrops on a still lake. He had two descriptions. One meant "Like notes coming out of a jal tarang, music is created out of the drops falling radially across the lake. The beautiful image of the sky that was captured by the lake got destroyed by the falling drops. With the drops both creation(of the musical notes) and destruction(of the picture of the sky) happened on the lake". The other was about the symbolism found in the story of prince and the pauper. "A single drop, falling in the lake is bound to create a wave that is far reaching. However too many drops will mean that a wave created by one ends with the wave created by another, thus limitign the impact" In life, this can be seen once too often. Any new event will have a popularity only when it is rare, but however nice the event is, if it is accompanied by many such it will have limited impact. The events could be anything from the arrival of a new technology to the birth of a new philosopher.
The other poem I remembered was sung by the Kaavya pruchhaka. This was a description that was provided on kurukshetra after the war is over. When people were asked - "How did the battlefield look?". the response was like this - "Like a new son-in-law arriving in a house, where everyone grabs the person and pulls them with lot of enthusiasm. A soldier who has died while fighting with his bows and arrows in a fighting position, on arrival into veeraswarga, is being pulled with a lot of viour and torn apart by dogs, wolves and jackals." This has so many rasas and the movement from one rasa to another is fascinating.
One another interesting point to note was that out of the eight pruchhakas only three had grey hair, the rest seemed very young around 30ish. All of them pursuing their day jobs with Samskrutha as their primary fuel. This gave me a lot of hope....
Vinay
PS: Here's a link that explains meters well: http://cs.annauniv.edu/insight/insight/chhandas/pages/typepage.htm
posted by Vinay Murthy at 1:08 AM
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