Foreword
Nobody will believe this magniloquent volume is a work of a bureaucrat. Sri Rajagopalan has missed his profession, for such a philosopher cum scholar could not have been confined within the perimeters of a soulless government department. Here is a great soul bursting out of his shackles and like the true genius he is, finding himself at home in the oceanic vastness of carnatic music. The Eloquent Garland' like Draupadi's divine 'vastra' is vast and expanding and it is a great pilgrimage from the plains of Kanyakumari to the spiritual heights of the Himalayas. Only an Indian scholar can produce such a magnificent work. India has never taken kindly to the rude arts of war or the sordid arts of money making. From the days of the Vedas and Mohenjadaro, the strength of our culture has been the Fine Arts of architecture, sculpture, poetry, music and dancing and in his work, though confined mainly to music and musicians, we can have a glimpse of the spiritual spires of Tanjore, Srirangam, the Meenakshi Temple, the Nataraja of Chidambaram, and Krishna, playing the Flute, the beautiful poetry of Valmiki and of course, the sweet concord of Saint Thygaraja, Dikshitar, Sama Shastri and Swathi Thirunal and many more great composers and musicians. He has not merely produced the biographies of some of the sublime musicians the world has seen but presented a grand procession of the all-time greats in all their glory, never before seen by any generation except in hear-say words. Halfway through, we are hypnotized by Mali's magical Flute, falling later into the enchanting spell of Veena Danammal and the modern magician, E. Gayathri to be caressed out of our reverie by Ariyakudi KVN, Semmangudi, Chembai and so the list goes, all these in the space of one book. Anyone reading it will wonder like the school boy of Goldsmith-"the wonder grew, how so small a head could contain all he knew"! Sri Rajagopalan has got us all flabbergasted by the range of his knowledge of music, the depth of his scholarship, a perfect musicologist, historian, a biographer par excellence and so learned in all the fine arts for which India is justly proud. And don't forget, but remember till your last breath, he gave this to us when he should have been in bed receiving medical care, when he is in mortal pain but preferring to heap happiness on all of us - a sacrifice that takes him to divine heights marking out his immortal character.
Preface
With due respect to the learned Professor, Carnatic [Indian] Music can be added to it, since it is but the continuation of the timeless Indian Music as it was prior to the advent of its twin sister, Hindustani Music. Composers, musicians vocalists, instrumentalists including percussionists, musicologists as well as dancers and folk artistes appear, perform and depart in a never-ending chain. Votaries of arts have been fortunately increasing fast in numbers keeping pace with the popularity of arts and the increase in population. It is a familiar scene that recognition, honours, fortune and publicity crown the lives of just a few of them while many a musical genius is born and left to blush unseen and waste the fragrance of his art in the desert air of neglect, lack of opportunity and perhaps suffer contempt too. Destiny, Luck and Time, with a complexity of their unraveled pulls and pressures, whims and fancies, choose to take notice of but a few. Fortune and Recognition confer their benign smile selectively with spartan frugality on fewer still, many a time sans basis. Even if some happen to be recognised, how many of them are remembered after their heydays? Gems of men with noble and immortal contributions have faded into the realm of anonymity with the passage of time.
Acknowledgements
IN A WORK such as this 'The Eloquent Garland', sources are widely scattered, multitudinous, overlapping or conflicting. In this task of pearl fishing and gold mining, the net was cast wide and deep to collect the good oysters and pure gold through requests in newspapers, hundreds of individual letters and numerous personal contacts, by visits to libraries, newspaper offices and cradles of arts, apart from visits to individual artiste homes.
At the outset, I offer my humble obeisance to H.H. the Paramacharyal, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Swamigal who blessed the manuscripts of the first edition before they were entrusted to the press, to H.H. the Sankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt Sri Jayendra Saraswati Swamigal, who released the First Volume, to Swami Haridhos Giri Swamigal who received the First Copy and to H.H. Sri Vijayendra Saraswati Swamigal who graced the release function.
