About Purandaradasa’s life

Popular legend narrates a miraculous incident in Srinivasa Nayaka’s life, owing to which, he was led to devote himself to the practice, propagation and inculcation of Bhakti (devotion) towards Lord Krishna through musical compositions. As a natural, inescapable consequence of such a transforming event, ubiquitous in the lives of several saints throughout the ages, he is believed to have relinquished his former greedy and miserly self of a wealthy, having realized the worthlessness of attachment towards worldly possessions.  The Lord, in a bid to cure Srinivasa of his tenacious materialistic delusion and attachment, and thereby claim his devotion to Himself, approached Srinivasa in the guise of a poor man, with a piteous plea for money; ostensibly, the money was direly needed to perform His (!) son’s upanayana (sacred initiation). Having been summarily rejected, mocked and turned out, the ‘poor man’ surreptitiously repeated his plea before Srinivasa’s wife; a generous soul of rigorous spiritual nature, she gave away one of her precious nose rings, unbeknownst to her husband; the ‘poor man’ sold the nose ring back to none other than Srinivasa himself! The shrewd Srinavasa, privy to his wife’s openhandedness, immediately identified the nose ring as his wife’s and hurried home; enraged and anxious to ascertain the truth of the matter, he demanded his wife to produce the nose ring before him immediately. Realizing that Srinivasa had grown wise to her secret donation, the wife decided to end her life with poison. Having completed her prayers to the Lord before her attempt, she was shocked to see a nose ring inside the poison cup – completely identical to the one she had just given away. Incredulous and rapturous, she recounted the entire episode to her husband, who was bewildered and lost. Meanwhile, a search for the ‘poor man’ was of no avail; he had as mysteriously vanished as he had appeared! At that very propitious moment, Srinivasa’s old self – convinced of the inscrutable ways of the Lord, having witnessed the unfailing Grace that saved his pious wife, bewildered at the Power that could, in a moment, produce a gold ornament by mere Will – instantly shook off that beginningless, persistent veil in the form of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, which masks the men’s vision of the Divine. At 30 years of age, he gave away all his wealth in charity, and together with his family, abandoned his house to lead the life of a mendicant – living on alms and singing the glories of the Lord. In his very first song composition, he laments his wasted life of indulgence. It begins with the words ‘Analaekara’ in the Shuddha Saveri raga, set to Triputa tala.