KB Sundarambal - When life gave her lemons, she made lemonade.

This is the story of a woman, a singer, who is a living memory for many of the older generations in South India. Sundarambal’s life and career coincided with several crosscurrents in twentieth century India - the arrival of an increased number of gramophone companies from Europe into the country in search of new voices, the introduction of cinema and its slowly increasing popularity and the escalation in political activity in India because of the freedom struggle. It was also the time when, increasingly, young women joined the nascent theatre and film industry which stigmatized them rather unfairly. Many traditional patrons of artistes, basically royalty and landed gentry, had lost the resources to continue to extend their age-old support to musicians, actors and dancers. In the changed scenario drama troupes and film studios became the new venues for artistes to showcase their talent, and earn a living.

Photograph taken October, 1932

(https://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:K.B.Sundarambal.jpeg)

The Early Years

Kodumudi Balambal Sundarambal was from Erode, Tamil Nadu, born in October 1908. Her early life was one of extreme privation. At one point, unable to cope with dire poverty, Sundarambal’s mother was about to jump into the Kaveri with her three children, when the little girl convinced her to give life another chance. Sundarambal, even at that young age, promised her mother to earn for the family by her talent for singing. And she kept her word.

Sundarambal began to sing on trains to entertain passengers, and earned money. This was all the musical training Sundarambal had, but one apparently so complete that it stood her in good stead all her life. Her strong and resonant voice, her dignified demeanour and her confidence on stage became her hallmarks. Soon she came to the attention of people connected with Tamil theatre who were on the constant look-out for fresh talent.

Bahinabai - The Traditional Non-Conformist

Bahinabai’s life (1628-1700 CE) and the events in it are known to us today because of her unusual practice of noting them all down precisely in her verses, in seventy-eight abhangas with her exact date of birth. She also wrote her autobiography Atmamanivedana.

Abhanga is poetry with verses in praise of Vithoba, Panduranga or Vitthala, a form of Vishnu predominantly worshipped in Marathi-speaking areas. Abhangas of several poets are sung to this day in temples or enroute on varkari, pilgrimage by vari, pilgrims who walk great distances to temples.

The Bhakti Movement

Bahinabai is one of the important poets of the Bhakti period of India’s history. Her verses are particularly autobiographical. The Bhakti movement is a significant development in medieval India which saw the flowering of religious feeling and devotion to God over a period of nearly 700 years, from the 9th to the 16th centuries CE. Several religious teachers took the message of Sanatana Dharma to the people through personal interaction, verse and song. The Bhakti Movement’s impact on literature and the arts was huge. This peoples’ movement occured spontaneously all over India with no ruler or leader in charge. It touched various facets of life - religion, the arts, women’s status. The result was increased geographical and cultural awareness between different parts of India, especially of far-flung areas, since devotees travelled across the country on pilgrimage and artists for work opportunities. 

The Marathi scribe Mahipati (1715-1790 CE) wrote biographies of Varkari saints. His work is still considered the most authoritative. He wrote hagiographies of Vaishnava poets who lived between the 13th and 17th centuries CE, and mentions Bahinabai in his Bhakta-Vijaya.  

Avantisundari - Princess of Intellect

Avantisundari

Princess of intellect - rhetorician and poet

Avantisundari - Her life and her times

Avantisundari was an exceptionally accomplished woman who lived in the 9th and 10th century CE in the kingdom of the Gurjara-Pratihara, a dynasty which ruled over an extensive area in North India extending upto the Narmada in Central India. Her husband Rajasekhara, court poet and grammarian, writes of her as ‘a jewel of a Chahamana or Chauhan family’ which means she was a princess, in the opinion of Sanskrit scholar and musicologist V Raghavan. The couple entered into anuloma, an intercaste marriage. The practice was accepted by society at the time. 

Rajasekhara the mentor

Rajasekhara was an unusual individual in that he not only encouraged the talented Avantisundari in her literary pursuits but also wrote of other talented poetesses in his own verses. Even today when this open-hearted attitude towards female accomplishments is not all-pervasive, what Rajasekhara did more than ten centuries back was unusual. The references he makes have in turn come down to us today. For example, verses attributed to Rajasekhara in Jalhana’s Suktimuktavali (1258 CE) mention the poetesses Shilabhattarika, Vikatanitamba, Vijayanka among others. Rajasekhara firmly says that poetic ability is not based on gender but is a part of the inner soul. He writes "Women also can become poets like men. Culture is really an element of the soul. It does not make a distinction between male and female. We have heard of and even seen princesses, daughters of great officers of the state, courtesans and the wives of cultured people who had all the refinements of learning and were poets too."

Avantisundari and her work

Such were Avantisundari’s abilities that Rajasekhara freely acknowledged her poetic talent and quoted her in his work Karpura Manjari written in Prakrit. He acknowledges that he produced and staged this work at her encouragement and request.

Avantisundari had opinions on three aspects of literary criticism that Rajasekhara mentions in his Kavyamimamsa. These were -
what is meant by maturity of expression
what exactly is the poetic idea
the broader aspect of poetic borrowing, which at a base level becomes plagarism.

These are issues that creative artists are grappling with even today, more than ten centuries later!

Avantisundari wrote in Sanskrit and Prakrit. Apart from that, Avantisundari’s work as a rhetorician led to her stanzas being quoted by Hemachandra in the 11th century CE in his Deshi Namamala to illustrate the meanings of Prakrit expressions. 

Nothing much else is known about this interesting literary luminary who chose to specialise in an esoteric aspect of rhetoric and poetry. Today we only know of Avantisundari thanks to references to her works in others’ anthologies. Unfortunately none of her works has been discovered so far.

Relevance of the Avantisundari-Rajasekhara partnership today

Reading about Avantisundari and Rajasekhara’s mindsets at the period from the end of the 9th century CE to the beginning of the 10th century CE brings one thought to mind. Trends and thought processes in society seem to go around in circles. What goes around comes around. It’s fascinating how the issues we face today on gender parity, encouragement to female education and intercaste marriages are nothing new at all. We really don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we only need to take a look at how Avantisundari and Rajasekhara twelve centuries back negotiated their way with finesse and an openmindedness we would do well to emulate. 

Do you agree with me? Do write in. 

Reference:

Prekshanakatrayi - V Raghavan

Great Women of India - Editors: Swami Madhavananda and Ramesh Chandra Majumdar