Tuesday, June 16, 2015

కంద పద్య మహత్యం...Beauty of Constraints

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Bear with me, I shall now explain the challenge of constraints I am facing to compose a few verses daily in Telugu in the prosody known as Kanda Padyam:

1. It has 4 lines of unequal length. The first and third have 3 ganas each while the 2nd and 4th have 5 ganas. A gana is an ordered sequence of long and short syllables.

2. Of the dozen-odd approved ganas, the Kanda Padyam choses just 5 ganas (bha, ja, sa, nala, gaga). 

3. The ja gana is disallowed in the odd-numbered ganas that occur in the verse.

4. Prasa should be strictly followed in all the 4 lines. This means that the second letter in each line should have the same sound value. 

5. The rule of yati should be followed in the 2nd and 4th lines. This means that the first letter in the 1st gana and the 1st letter in the 4th gana should have the same sound value.

6. Prasa-Yati is disallowed.

7. There is no yati restriction in the 1st and 3rd lines.

8. The gana before the yati gana should be either ja or nala.

9. The last letter in the 2nd and 4th lines should be long. This means that the last gana in those two lines should be either gaga or sa.

10. If the first letter in the first line is long, the first letter in all the lines should be long. 

11.  If the first letter in the first line is short, the first letter in all the lines should be short. 


I wondered for long how and what for our ancient poets invented all these queer prescriptions. Now I know, since I am in the thick of following them every day.

If  you write any stuff and nonsense but follow strictly all these constraints, the result would invariably sound nice. It is like a puri press...you just insert a ball of dough in it and press, and you will surely get a nice round puri shape, whatever its taste is.


An example of the rhythm of the Kanda Padyam:


paapapa papaapa paapapa
paapaa papapaa papapapa paapapa paapaa
paapaa papapaa papapaa
paapapa paapapa papaapa papapaa papapaa




జొన్న కలి జొన్న అంబలి
జొన్నన్నము జొన్న పిసరు జొన్నలె తప్పన్
సన్నన్నము సున్న సుమీ
పన్నుగ పల్నాడు పోవు ప్రజ లందరికిన్

...'Kavi Saarva Bhouma' Sreenaathudu





...Posted by Ishani

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