Re: On discussions reg. avadhanam
Ramakrishna S. Pillalamarri (pkrishna@ARL.MIL)
Sat, 14 Sep 96 4:27:47 EDT
On Chodavarapu Prasad's final comment in his post aboutmissing nishiddhAkshari,
I thout sometime ago of an experiment to try, if a willing asTAvadhAni is
found.
What if the pRcchaka, and the avadhAni are a bit open withthe audience,
without being so with each other? I mean, if the avadhAni not only gives a
syllable, but also the next two syllables, so that the audience knows what
he is going to (attempt to) say. Then, what if the pRcchaka guesses what
he thinks the avadhAni is going to say, and puts a kibosh on the next syllable?
At each sylllable, we would have two or more syllables of the avadhAni's
intent, and the guess of the pRcchaka. Of course this broader knowledge is shared only with the audience, and between the avadhAni and the pRcchaka.
This may be a test more of the queationer than the avadhAni. In any case,
one could compute how many times the avadhAni's intent was anticipated and
blocked.
Last year mEDasAni mOhan related an incident where they were gathering a
panel for an ashTAvadhAnam. One of the hopeful panelists seemed to have said,
"give me that category called nishiddhAkshari. That would be easy on me.
What is there? The avadhAni says a letterm and I say a letter. Isn't it?"
I have noticed that most of the nishiddhAkshari poems (always kanda) have
a low count of the total number of syllables, using a lot of guruvu's, thus
reducing the number of times an avadhAni gets a block. Also the words tend to
be short on syllabic count. For obvious reasons.
Ramakrishna