Remembering Old Tanjore

The author, E. Vinayaka Rao, was the Founder of the Mahratta Education Fund, in 1912. His 125th Birth Anniversary (Quasquicentennial) is being ­celebrated in July this year. This article on Tanjore was written by him in 1912.

King Sivaji.

Born in 1891, almost within a stone’s throw of the Palace walls in Tanjore and brought up in what may well be regarded as an ideal atmosphere typical of the best culture and traditions of Tanjore became familiar early in life with the conditions of life in the Mahratta community of Tanjore.

Some of the Maharani, wives of the late Sivaji Maharaja, the last ruler of Tanjore, were living in seclusion in the Palace, enjoying their modest pensions and incomes from their properties. Several other members of the Royal Family were also living in the Palace. The old forms were kept up, thought they were only the tattered remnants of the past magnificence and splendour. A few elephants still swayed in the outer courtyard. Mornings and evenings playing of the Nawbat and Nagara went on as usual at the front gate of the Palace. Armed sentinels stood at the main entrance leading to the inner quadrangles, looking at, with philosophic indifference, the covered house-bullock-drawn ‘carriages’ conveying gosha relatives of the Royal family. Half-sleepy sepoys would be arranging and rearranging a few clerks dusty old record bundles or leisurely examing the musty old papers and cadjans to unearth the palace copy of some ancient grant, or pedigree, or order of precedence or point of ceremonial.

The Royal traditions were kept up, though on a very reduced scale. The astrologer, the doctor, the musician and the scholar each had his share of Palace patronage in such measure as the depleted finances would permit. The palace was not open to sight seers. The large hall containing full-size painting of the Maharajahs of Tanjore from 1676 to 1855 was eloquent in its very silence with the pictures seeming to tell the sad story of the rise and fall of the Tanjore kingdom. Day in and day out, the old watchman at the main entrance rings the hour bell with melancholy precision, announcing as it were the hourly receding into the dim past of the palmy days that were.

One after the other old Ranies passed away. So did many other members of the Royal family. The end of one establishment meant the destitution of a large number of families of clerks, dependents and poor relatives and a diminution of patronage to a number of pandits, priests, doctors, musicians, painters and the followers of fine arts. This side of Tanjore history made a deep impression on me as I had frequent opportunities of going to the Palace and spending hours at a time within its walls.

A 2008 picture of a portion of the Tanjore Palace.

I remember with gratitude the long historical accounts which I heard about Tanjore affairs from several old family friends. One of them, happy alive now, is closely related to the Royal family and gave me very faithful accounts of the last days of Sivaji and the cultural history of Tanjore after the annexation in 1855. With the decline of the fortunes of the Royal House, there began also the .decline of the fortunes of the nobility, Brahman, Kshatriya and others. Outside the Palace walls the story of Tanjore was no less melancholy. By temperament and equipment, the noble houses of Tanjore were not ready to change over to the new order of things which the Annexation meant. One after the other, noble houses went down, their mansions were mortgaged, their lands, were alienated, and their sons and daughters were driven to a life of chill penury. It was most painful to see this slow but sure grinding of good, noble and generous men and women, whose only fault was that the new times sprang upon them with lightning speed and they were not alert enough to save themselves.

The conditioners of the comers was not so bad. A few families had already gone out of Tanjore and had obtained good situations in British Service and the Princely States. Many of them won laurels as administrators and educationists. But they still regarded Tanjore as ‘home’ and hoped to spend their last days after retirement in the city.

Many middle class families in Tanjore continued the cultural traditions. In most such homes there was music of one kind or another. In their leisure houses, men loved to sing to the accompaniment of the melodious thambur. Some practised on the mridanga, some on the veena, and some others on the gote vadhya. The Ganapathi festival, annually celebrated in West main Street, attracted huge crowds of music lovers, when men rivalled with one another in showing their skills. The love of the fine arts among the people gave ample opportunities to professional musicians, pipers, bandsmen, the exponents of Bharata Natya, pith workers, florists, etc., to distinguish themselves. The great Maharashtrian scholars pursued their studies in Sanskrit and Marathi, largely depending upon their modest private incomes. Men like Rajwade came and collected Marathi manuscripts of historical value. Every year, Maharashtrians from all over India stopped at Tanjore on their way to Rameswaram. At Tanjore, they always had a warm welcome. Some of them who were musicians gave their performances and listened to Tanjore music with rapt attention and all enjoyed enormous cultural gains. Those of them who were Sanskrit or Marathi scholars gave, and listened to, many discourses, to mutual advantage. After the famous Vishnu Bava Morgaumkar made his kirtan-s famous in Tanjore, year after year, a regular stream of kirtankar-s from all over India visited Tanjore and received the homage of the people and their patronage, which in terms of money continued to diminish with the decrease in the material resources of the people. I have myself listened to many Marathi kirtan-s of the famous Ramachandra Bawa of Banaras and attended some of the musical and Bharata Natyam performances of some of the celebrities. I also saw all this sweetness and grandeur passing away, with nothing worth mentioning taking a place.

In my house, where I spent most of my vacations, the morning programme included a group study of some great Marathi classics like Dasa bodh, Gnaneswari, Ekanathswami’s Ramayana etc. Verse by verse these great books were read and explained in Marathi to a large group of listeners, young and old. Every Saturday and every Ekadasi there was Marathi bhajan. The sound of the cymbals and chipri used to fill my soul with inexpressible joy. My own grand-aunt, who did not know to read or write, knew by heart literally hundreds of abhang-s, pada-s, ovi-s, bhupali-s etc., which she used to sing every morning most delightfully. The cult of Pandharpur was a living reality. In the bhajana hall, over the pictures of Rama and Krishna, there hung the portrait of Sri Samarth Ramdas Swami in only loin cloth. The story was often repeated to me, and every time I loved to listen to it with the same joy, as to how Ramdas Swami came all the way to Tanjore, when there were no railways to found the Big Mutt there. I love to see the copy of the great Dasabodh written or used by Ramdas himself still happily preserved by the family in-charge of the Mutt. I knew that this saint was the spiritual guru of the great Sivaji himself.

I remember the occasion when the Sivaji Janmothsav was celebrated in Tanjore. The picture is unforgettable. The portrait of the great hero was put in a howdah on a Palace elephant. There were camels, horses and uniformed retainers in front. The Palace nobles, including the two grandsons of the last ruler, walked in procession, along with a large crowd of Maharashtrian and non-Maharashtrian citizens. To my young mind, Mahratta history and mahratta traditions acquired a new meaning and a new fascination.

The rapidly growing impoverishment of the community and the intellectual stagnation and decay that appeared to have set in had also a pathetic significance to me. A good many old families had lost all, and were leaving Tanjore for good in search of employment elsewhere.

With the meagre knowledge of Mahratta history that a boy of 16 could have had in 1907, I had a special sense of pride in being a Maharashtrian. At the same time, I had a passionate desire to understand more of the history and the problems of my community and to do my bit of service to stem the advancing tides of economic distress and intellectual decay and to arrest the process of regression from true Maharashtrian ­culture and traditions which had already set in . And so was born the Mahratta Education Fund.

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