Kshetrayya

Kshetrayya was a Telugu poet and composer of love songs called padams.¹² His songs speak of the love of Radha and Krishna.² They were sung by dancers and by trained musicians.³⁴ He is linked with the court of Vijayaraghava Nayaka of Thanjavur (then Tanjore) in the 17th century.²⁴

What the sources say about his life

The sources used here say very little about his life. K. Sitaramaiya, writing in Hyderabad in 1943, calls him a contemporary of Vijayaraghava Nayaka of Tanjore.² He says Kshetrayya wrote many songs on that king.² P. T. Raju, in 1944, places him in the 17th century and names Vijayaraghava as his patron.⁴ Vijayaraghava was the son of Raghunatha Nayaka.⁵

None of these sources gives his birthplace, his family or the years of his birth and death.

The padams

C. R. Day wrote a survey of South Indian music in 1891.³ He described padams as “exclusively love songs”, sung in plays and by dancing girls.³ The singers often left the tune to make up their own flourishes, and then came back to it.³ “The most popular composer of pathams was Kshattrya”, he wrote.³ In his list of famous musicians, he called “Kshetrya” “a poet as well as a musician”.¹ He wrote that the words of the songs “are often very beautiful”.¹

Day printed the tune of one of these songs, “Yalla tella vara”, in Western notation.³ He compared the ghazals of Hindustani music to them.⁶

Raju calls the songs Muvvagopala padams.⁴ He says they were meant mainly for dance, but that advanced musicians sang them too.⁴ In his view they are in Telugu what the Sanskrit Gitagovinda is in Sanskrit.⁴ Sitaramaiya also wrote that they were modelled on the Gitagovinda, and were still widely read and sung.²

How he was judged

The sources set Kshetrayya beside Tyagaraja, and differ in the weight they give him.

• Praised. Day found in his songs “some of the most beautiful and poetical sentiments that can be found”.³ Sitaramaiya called them “of perennial interest”.²
• Ranked lower. Raju wrote that Kshetrayya “does not command the same respect” as Tyagaraja, whose songs make no appeal to sex.⁴ Sitaramaiya drew the same contrast between Kshetrayya’s love songs and Tyagaraja’s devotional ones.²

See also Music & dance.

Footnotes

1. Day, Music of Southern India (1891), p. 156 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. K. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 56 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. C. R. Day, The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan (1891), p. 81 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. P. T. Raju, Telugu Literature (1944), p. 49 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

5. Sitaramaiya, A Hand Book of Telugu Literature (1943), p. 57 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

6. Day, Music of Southern India (1891), p. 86 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩