120.Kumaragurupara Swamigal’s Sakalakalavalli Maalai-Stanza 8 Poem by rajagopal haran

Tamil Transliteration:

Solvirr panamu mavadhaana mungkavi sollavalla
Nallvidhdhai unthandh thadimaikoll vaainali naasananjchaer
Selvik karidhen drorukaala munj sidhaii yaamainalghum
Kalvipp perunjchelvapp paerae sakala kalavalliyae!


Translation poem:

Amassed Wealth graced by Nalini,
The goddess of wealth,
Wanes up fast,
Upon spend after spend,
Stages the disappearing act
And decays ultimately!

The wealth of knowledge
Gained by thy grace
Multiplies for every payout
Overflows on lavishing
Shines and never chips in
And follows in the seven births to come

Hence my Mother Saraswathi!
Bless with the speaking skill
And the wonderful Avadhanam,
Also seek thy sanction that
I compose poems that surpass time;
Endow me with the power of imparting my knowledge
That can be comprehended by all!
Ultimately I should serve you only by your favour!



Message:

Knowledge is permanent; should strive to acquire the same; my Mother has to shower Her grace to realize the same

Explanation:

This stanza is a comparison between knowledge gained thro’ education and wealth accumulated by hard work.

The superiority of knowledge over wealth can be explained simply as:

It’s possible to gain wealth through knowledge, yet it's hard to gain knowledge through wealth

Avadhanam

Avadhanam is a literary performance popular from the very ancient days in Sanskrit and more exclusively in Telugu, kannada and Tamil. It requires immense memory power and tests a person's capability of performing multiple tasks simultaneously. All the tasks are memory intensive and demand an in depth knowledge of literature, and prosody. The tasks vary from making up a poem spontaneously to keeping a count of a bell ringing at random. No external memory aids are allowed while performing these tasks except the person's own brain, not even so much as a writing utensil.
Avadhani refers to the individual who performs the Avadhanam; the group who queries the performer are the prucchaka.The first person to ask the question is called 'Pradhana prucchaka; ' he is the same as any other prucchaka except that, he asks the first question. The Prucchakas put forth questions to the avadhani which are primarily literary in nature. The Prucchakas can optionally place additional constraints. Though it is not stated explicitly, conformation to Chandassu (The syntax for poems) is mandatory. Avadhani should answer them in the form of a poem. The literary questions generally consist of a description given in prose and the avadhani has to express it as a poem. The additional restrictions placed by the Prucchakas can be anything like asking the avadhani not to use a given set of alphabetical characters in the entire poem or to construct only a particular type of poem etc.
Characteristics of Avadhanam:

The beauty of Avadhanam is, the avadhani is not allowed to recite the entire poem in a single go. After listening to the Prucchaka's question, the avadhani constructs the first line of the poem, recites it and moves to the next Prucchaka. After listening to all the Prucchakas, and reciting one line of poem each, the avadhani shall return to the Pradhana prucchaka (in Round-Robin fashion) and continues with the second line of the poem. The beauty and challenge here is that, the avadhani has to remember the question, the line of poem said before and all the additional constraints placed. They shall not be repeated and any mistake shall disqualify the person from being entitled to 'Avadhani'. Every poem has 4 lines, so every Prucchakas turn comes 4 times. Avadhaani has to recite the full poem once he finishes constructing all the lines of the poems. This is called 'dhaarana' and forms the culmination of the Avadhanam. Avadhani should use only his memory for all this. Some times, Avadhanam goes for days at an end! ! !

30 8 09