Muthuswami Dikshitar - Disciples

Disciples

Muttuswami Dikshitar was approached by four dance masters from Tanjavur: Sivanandam, Ponnayya, Chinnayya and Vadivelu. They expressed their desire to learn music from him and entreated him to accompany them to Tanjavur. There, Dikshitar imparted to them the 72 mela tradition handed down by Venkata Vaidyanatha Dikshita. The students showed their gratitude by composing a set of nine songs called Navaratna Mala glorifying their guru. These four disciples became what is known as the Tanjore Quartette and are revered as the prime composers of music for Bharatanatyam.

At a young age, Dikshitar was also exposed to the music of the Western bands at Fort St. George. At a later stage, Dikshitar composed some forty songs to several (mostly western folk) tunes loosely adopted to ragas such as sankarabharaNa. This corpus is now known as nottusvara sAhitya (etym. nottusvara = "notes" swara). The influence of Celtic and Baroque styles in these compositions is quite evident (e.g., Sakthi Sahitha Ganapatim, to the tune of voulez-vous dancer, Varashiva Balam). There is an erroneous belief that these were composed at the behest of CP Brown, the Collector of Cuddappah. This is not possible as the two could have never met. Muttuswami Diskhitar had left Madras by 1799. Brown came to Madras only in 1817, learnt Telugu in 1820 and moved over to Cuddappah the same year.