8. MANIPRAVALA KRITIS
In the sāhitya of these songs, the words of two or
three languages figure and the sentences are so coined and
presented, that they are in consonance with the rules of
grammar and prosody. A complete idea is conveyed in
each case. Muttuswāmy Dīkshitar’s kriti in Kāpi raga,
Venkatāchalapate
, is a good example. The sāhitya of the
pallavi and anupallavi of this song are given below in the
scripts of the respective languages for the sake of clearness.
The matter given within brackets is in Telugu.
Pallavi: ---
वेंकटाचलपते
(निन्नु
नम्मिति
वेगमे
नन्नु)
ர க்ஷியுமையா ॥
Anupallavi:
पंकजासनप्रमुखादिविनुत
(पदमु
नाश्रयिंचिन
वारि
केल्ल
संकटमुलु
दीर्िच
संपदलिच्चि)
மங்களம் பொருந்திய புலிவலத்தில் விளங்கும் ॥
The kritis:
Ni sari samāna
in Bhairavi raga and
Sri Tyāgarāja Swāmi mahimanu
in Vāchaspati rāga are also
instances of manipravāla kritis. (The former song is given
in notation on Pp. 119-120 of Practical Course in Karnatic
Music Book Ⅲ 8th Edition.)
The sāhitya of the latter kriti is given on the next
page. The Telugu part is printed in Devanāgari characters
and the Tamil part is printed in Tamil. This is a song in
praise of the great composer, Tyāgarāja.
(page) 166
Vachaspati raga - Rupaka tala
Pallavi:---
श्री
त्यागराजस्वामि
महिमनु
சிந்திப்பாய் நீ மனமே ॥
Anupallavi:
नित्यानन्दमनुभविंचिन
நித்யமங்கள சொரூபியான ॥
Charanam:
श्रीनगरमन्ढु
पुट्टि
xxீநாரத முனியினருளால்
गानशास्त्र
मर्ममुलनु
கருத்துடனே யுணர்ந்து
भानुवंश
र्ितलक
कृपकु
பாததிரரான பரம பக்தர்
मानवुलकु
मोक्षमिच्चे
மஹிமை வாய்ந்த கிருதிகளைச் செய்த ॥
Note
. --- This song is given with notation in the Author’s
Kīrtana Sāgaram
Bk. Ⅱ (Third Edition) Pp. 87-88.
Mani
means a gem (ruby) or a precious stone and
Pravālam
means a coral bead
(நற்பவழம்).
Thus
mani-pravālam
is a jewelled combination of two languages.
Mani-pravāla hīram
(மணிப்ரவாளஹீரம்)
is a case wherin
three languages figure ---
hīram
means diamond. The
Dikshitar’s song referred to above is an instance of
Mani-pravāla hīram
and the other two songs,
Manipravālam
.
As compared to the sāhitya in a single language, a
manipravāla sāhitya affords greater scope for the introduction of
svarāksharas.
The information on this page is from “INDIAN MUSIC BOOK Ⅲ SIXTH EDITION”
by Prof. P. Sambamoorthy, published in 1964 by The Indian Music Publishing House, Madras.
The “xx” in the first line of the Charanam, p. 166, Tamil portion, represents the
ligature “shra”. I don’t have a clue as to how to encode it in Unicode. In the Tamilnet
and Tamilfix fonts it is character # 0251. In the Indoweb-Tamil fonts, it is character # 0194.
The Internet Explorer 5.x offers partial support for Indic scripts.
There is still work to be done. The Devanagari and Tamil portions
of this document do not display properly, but the encoding is
correct to the best of my ability (per the Unicode 3.0 standard).
For information about the Tamil script, along with downloadable font,
please visit the
Tamil Research
page.
There are articles in Tamil exploring the current state of Tamil
computer encoding as well as items in English (in both HTML and PDF).
Unicode possibilites are being explored and the site also offers
interesting graphic exhibits concerning the origins of the Tamil
writing system.
For more information about Tamil, please visit TamilNet 99
http://www.tamilnet99.org/
If an encoding for additional Tamil glyphs using the Private Use Area
of Unicode was employed, such as used by Code2000
(see
TAMSHEET.HTM ),
the following resource link would appear correctly:
ககான
த தரக
(Standards for Tamil Computing).
The same title in ‘regular’ Unicode would be:
மின்கணிப்பிற்கான
தமிழ் தரங்கள்.
With the Private Use Area, the “” character represented by “xx”
in the sample text above could be displayed. With the vowel sign, “”.
Likewise, the first line of the Charanam above which appears:
श्रीनगरमन्ढु
पुट्टि
xxீநாரத முனியினருளால்
... could appear as:
ीनगरमढु
पुि
நாரத னளா
... except my browser won’t swap the Devanagari vowel sign with a PUA consonant. (Sigh.)
The Private Use Area is only a work around for older systems, though.
Windows 2000 offers support for Indic scripts using OpenType and
Unicode techniques. Microsoft has reportedly indicated that it will
not provide upgrades for Windows 9x in this regard. Programs like
Outlook Express and Internet Explorer, however, should display Indic
scripts correctly even on Windows 95. This is because such programs
use a newer *.DLL file for this purpose, and this *.DLL file ships
with the latest versions of the browser and e-mail programs.
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