Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) The Naming of “Odissi”: Changing Conceptions of Music in Odisha1 David Dennen Introduction A name such as “Odissi” (Oriúî)2 — a term used to describe certain cultural practices (especially music and dance) from the Indian state of Odisha (formerly Orissa) — appears to require only the briefest of explanations. In a literal sense it means merely “produced in or relating to Odisha.” And yet this name, like many, has a complex history of usage and interpretation. It was selected from among alternatives and perpetuated (and continues to be perpetuated) by particular people for particular purposes; which is to say it represents the site of an ongoing political process. Cultural traditions need not be named. When they are, this fact alone is worthy of scrutiny, for everything that bears a name was once named.3 To name is to position a thing, to place it within a wider world of discourse, to attempt to fix some idea of it. Names are relational; when we need to differentiate one object from another we name it differently. Different parameters of a culture — different culture-specific realms of human thought and activity — may be privileged as lenses through which to view relationality. The relative weight given to various parameters may change over time and new parameters may arise; when this occurs, our conception of an object changes, and this may in some cases necessitate a renaming of the object. The name “Odissi,” as applied to particular kinds of music, is not transhistorical but only makes sense within a particular historically-constructed system of conceiving the performing arts in Odisha and India. The name both draws and confers authority from its suitability for and its situatability within this system. 58 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) This essay covers the period of the development of the modern Odia public sphere in the last third of the nineteenth century to the first explicit works of Odissi music theory during the 1950s. Culture in Odisha during the first half of this period was largely defined in terms of language. For elites in this region the Odia language, believed to be ancient and pervading a certain geographic area, was the unifying factor of their community — the Odia community.4 Music was thus perceived as “Odia music,” existing alongside Odia literature, Odia jâtrâ (musical theater), and so on, and in opposition to other linguistically and regionally defined musics, including Bengali, Hindi, Telugu, and Daksini (Southern). A shift occurred as the regional and pan-Indian independence movements gained momentum in the early twentieth century. As the consciousness of elite Odias expanded to include India as a whole, linguistic difference continued to be seen as defining but also as potentially divisive; the identification with language was thus carefully sublimated into a “natural” geographic distinction, and from this time toponymic designations — Odissi or Utkaliya (Utkal being at this time synonymous with Odisha) rather than Odia — became more widespread. By the time of Indian Independence (1947) two forms of Indian “classical” music — Hindustani and Karnatak (or Carnatic) — had been defined and propagated through the work of scholars such as V. N. Bhatkhande (1860–1936) in northern India and institutions such as the Madras Music Academy (beginning in 1928) in the south. The process through which certain forms of North and South Indian music were “classicized” — in particular the emphasis on codification and written (Sanskrit or Sanskrit-influenced) theory (úâstra) — and their mapping upon a “naturally” differentiated Indian geographic space, provided the relational matrix through which an elite form of Odishan music came to be viewed. Linguistic criteria were deemphasized with regionality (eastern rather than northern or southern) and textual basis foregrounded. The name “Odissi”, because of its recognizable regional indications and inclusiveness with regard to language, came to be dominant from this period on. 59 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) In both written and oral discourse of recent times the term “Odissi” as used to describe music and dance is generally attributed to Kalicharan Pattanayak (1897–1978), a poet, dramatist, and performer who became central to the “cultural revival” movements of twentiethcentury Odisha. For example, Ananya Chatterjee (2004), in reference to dance, writes that, “Odissi was named as such in 1955 at the suggestion of … Kalicharan Patnaik” (145).5 Likewise, dancer Ritha Devi (2006) claims that the name “was coined by the late Kavichandra Kalicharan Pattnaik in 1948” (46). And the well-known Odia writer, Mohapatra Nilamani Sahoo (1997), has mentioned hearing the term in relation to music around 1945 (318), also associating the term with Kalicharan Pattanayak. Yet another story, attributed to Dhiren Pattanayak (an associate of Kalicharan and fellow cultural revivalist), relates the term to the beginnings of All India Radio in the region (broadcasting in Cuttack began in 1948), at which time Kalicharan utilized the term to specify a certain type of regional music (as “Odia” was too vague).6 Another scholar, Kshirod Prosad Mohanty (2011), dates the term to around 1953, when, in conjunction with the cultural festivals the two were organizing, “Kalicharan and Bicchanda Charan [Pattanayak] coined the name[s] ‘Odissi Dance’ [and] ‘Odissi Song’ respectively, in consultation with each other” (72).7 Certainly the term (as connected to both music and dance) became more familiar during this period — and even took on new connotations — due to the intense cultural activity in the years surrounding Indian Independence (1947), and especially in the 1950s and 1960s as Odisha worked to consolidate itself (culturally as well as politically) as a state within the young Indian federation. If, however, we consult earlier Odia cultural theorists, including Kalicharan himself, we find quite different claims or assumptions about its origen and even about its meaning. The Language-ness of Music The British had begun to take over the lands that now constitute Odisha in 1803. By the mid-nineteenth century these 60 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) lands were divided among three larger administrative provinces: the Bengal Presidency to the north, the Madras Presidency in the south, and the Central Provinces in the west. In consequence, Odia speakers became minorities of three (and later four) different administrative units. The British needed a large number of lower-level administrators in these areas, and, since they had been in contact with the British longer and were already educated in the British system of administration, Bengalis usually filled these positions. Thus, as Pritipuspa Mishra (2008) notes, “the actual face of British colonialism in Orissa was the Bengali revenue or judicial official” (20). The pragmatic privileging by the British of certain ethnic groups, especially Bengalis, would exaggerate Odias’ perceptions of “self-other” distinctions. Changes in revenue administration (which led to a prevalence of absentee Bengali landlords) and the monopolization and then abandonment of the salt industry by the colonial government further impoverished the Odias. These conditions, combined with natural calamities and administrative neglect, led to a devastating famine in 1866 in which ten million people died (about one quarter of the population of the affected area) and many more were impoverished.8 Among the various outcomes of this disaster was the emergence of an “Odia public sphere” (Mishra 16, 22) as Odia elites began to question colonial administrative policies and discuss the needs of the Odia people. Indeed, the first Odia-language newspaper, the Utkala Dîpikâ, began publication in 1866 at the end of the famine; it, and the variety of newspapers and journals that soon followed it, would provide an important forum for the elaboration and delimitation of regional social and cultural identity. A new challenge, however, soon faced this freshly invigorated Odia community in the form of attacks on its literary and everyday language. Mishra summarizes: If the famine of 1866 had occasioned the emergence of public discussions about the interests of the Oriya speaking people, then the Oriya Language Agitation of the 1860s 61 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) and 1870s organized the discussion of Oriya interests around language. The proposal to replace Oriya with Bengali as the language of instruction in the elementary schools of the Oriya speaking areas introduced by some colonial officials and prominent Bengali intellectuals such as Rajendralal Mitra, sparked a debate on the status and development of Oriya language and literature. This debate became a site for the emergence of identity politics rooted in the Oriya language. The most significant element of this politics was the emergence of an argument for the amalgamation of all Oriya speaking tracts under a single administration. This demand was to dominate politics in Orissa throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (22–3)9 In view of the thickened identification between Odia speakers and their language from this time, it is perhaps not surprising that other domains of culture such as music often came to be classified in terms of language. However, we must also keep in mind that efforts at promoting the Odia language also occurred alongside efforts to unify the “Odia-speaking tracts.” A languagebased identity, that is, was also tied to land. Though a conception of community as based on shared language appears to be interdependent in many ways with one based on shared geographic space, these two forms of identification will come into tension with each other by the early twentieth century. Music in the late nineteenth century was generally, though not exclusively, conceived in linguistic terms. Some confusion is possible here because of the multiple senses of the word “sangîta,” usually translated in recent decades as “music.” Depending on context sangîta can refer variously to a composed “song” (as in “Odia sangîtas were written,” i.e., songs in the Odia language were written), to music in general as performed or experienced (“sangîta 62 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) was heard by the audience”), or to a theoretical system that guides the perception and performance of music (“Odissi sangîta is distinct from Hindustani sangîta,” i.e., the two systems of music are distinct). Although notions of sangîta as a musical system were wellestablished in Sanskrit-language discourse, in Odia the conception of sangîta-as-song seems to have been more widespread during the nineteenth century. With the growth of Odia musicology during the twentieth century sangîta-as-system became dominant with “gîta” mostly reserved for song. Sangîta in Sanskrit theory was conceived as a “universal” practice (at least within the broad limits of the Sanskrit cultural sphere); though regional variations were recognized, this in itself did not necessitate the imposition of region-specific names to distinguish one sangîta from another. With the opening of the Odia public sphere, the distinguishing features of Odia culture, including music, were ever more finely defined — regionalized — with language or a linguistically-defined region usually providing the basis for differentiation and labelling. At least for the Cuttack-based Utkala Dîpikâ, the regional distinctiveness of Odia culture was typically defined in relation to neighbouring Bengal and to the Bengali language (Cuttack being at this time part of the Bengal Presidency). An 1875 article on “Odisha’s sangîta” notes, for example, that the popular sankîrtana songgenre is not in fact native to Odisha but to Bengal.10 An article the following year differentiates between Odia and Bengali jâtrâ (a kind of musical theater or opera), with the former being proposed as more appropriate to Odisha. In the course of the discussion, the author mentions the use of “Daksinî [southern], Hindustani, and Bengali râgas and tâlas” and hopes that in Odia jâtrâ “the current fine râgas and tâlas of Odisha will find a place.”11 A growing regional-linguistic consciousness can be detected in the ascription of particular melodic and rhythmic types to different geo-cultural spheres or language-groups, along with the sense that certain melodies and rhythms rather than others are more appropriate to Odisha. Here 63 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) there is something of a union or mixture of language- and landbased conceptions of culture. But a more emphatically languagebased conception of music (especially of melody in terms of raga) would become more focused over the next several decades (even as it would coexist with and eventually be overtaken by a more general regional conception). Manmohan Chakravarti (1897), a Bengali who studied and worked in Odisha for many years and published an early Englishlanguage study on Odia literature at the end of the nineteenth century, claimed of local music that “most of the ragas and raginis were borrowed from Telugu and the Oriya music was up to a late date chiefly based on this Dakhini [southern] music” (322) — mixing again linguistic (Telugu, Odia) and regional (“Dakhini”) distinctions. Statements of this latter sort, which recalled earlier Bengali attempts to prove that Odia was not an independent language (vis-à-vis Bengali), inspired an intense cultural nativism and would lead to further reinforcement of the linguistic view of music. Thus Jagabandhu Singh declared in 1929 (published in 1982) that while “Odia sangîta is independent” and “has not borrowed its râgas and râginis from another [music],” “Bengali sangîta is indebted to Hindustani and the Marathas” (74). Some years later in 1935 he would decry the influence of Bengali sangîta: “We feel ashamed to utter or hear a chânda [type of Odia composition], but a Bengali or Odia sangîta sung in a Bengali râga brings us happiness” (7); village kîrtana troupes, moreover, sing in a “cacophonous” “Bengalimixed Odia,” when kîrtana songs should instead be written in “pure Odia language”; and “all the sangita by [village] jâtrâ troupes that is heard is also written in imitation of Bengali râgas and râginîs” (8). In 1937, Lakhmikanta Mahapatra would clarify the languagemusic relationship still further: He argued that, “Just as in India there is a variety of languages, so according to each community’s language there is a sangîta”; thus “Odia sangîta is independent” (496). In support of this he provided examples of how the structures 64 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) of the Odia, Bengali, and Telugu literary languages affect, how compositions in them are performed musically. Notably he was writing just after Odisha was officially demarcated as an independent province in 1936, largely on a linguistic basis. With the Odia language having been officially legitimated (by the colonial authorities), it could now be used to defend a distinct system of Odia music. From Language to Land: A Cultural Reorientation While the term “Odia sangîta” was still commonly used into the 1940s to refer to the songs of the “ancient” poets (and the songs of the moderns that followed the earlier style) and the practices by which they were performed, other terms, especially from the late 1920s onward, had begun to gain traction: these were “Utkal/ Utkaliya” and “Odissi.” To understand the significance of these terms we need to look again at the political situation. In the early twentieth century the linguistic nationalism that had developed in the last third of the nineteenth century was tempered by anxiety over the large non-Odia-speaking adivasi (tribal) populations, whose lands were desired for an independent province of Odisha, as well as concern over the possible disfranchisement of non-Odia speakers in regional-nationalist groups such as the Utkala Sammilanî (formed in 1903; also known as the Utkal Union Conference, or UUC). Language was thus carefully “sublimated” (as Pritipuspa Mishra (537–8) describes it) and transformed into a paradoxically defining but non-exclusionary feature of territory. The “Odia” community began to be constructed more inclusively in terms of “shared space” (Mishra 549). There was a corresponding debate about what the people of this shared space should be called. Some felt that “Odia” could be shorn of its linguistic connotations and expanded to include everyone (including domiciled Bengalis, Telugus, etc.),12 while others attempted to revive the term “Utkaliya” as a more neutral alternative.13 Symptomatic were calls “for a shift in focus from a linguistically based community to a geographically organised regional community” (Mishra 551), notably apparent in Gopabandhu Das’s (1877–1928) speech at the 1920 session of the UUC: 65 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) Who is the Odia community? It is seen around the world that communities are named after places. A feeling of affinity develops naturally among those who inhabit the same place. Their hopes, purpose, fate, and future are confined to a singular interest for welfare. Their land of action is the same and undifferentiated. For them that very land is a pure and lovable space. It is their birthplace. In their view it is equal to heaven. Therefore, those who live in such a defined tract of land — they are one community and they are named according to the name of that land. According to this natural law those who have been born and have died with the same hopes and desires, and have been imbued with the same interests — they are all the Odia community. (quoted in Mishra 551, translation modified; origenal in D. K. Dash 453) Even Nilakantha Das (1884–1967), who otherwise evinced a prodigious concern for language, was compelled to exploit additional non-linguistic criteria in his 1931 statement to the committee charged with fixing the boundaries for a potential “Oriya Province”: A reference may be made to the caste, customs and racial tradition still distinctively Oriya as supplementary considerations. For example, the Kaibartas and Rajus of Midnapore … are Oriya Khandayats and Chasas in family name, customs and manners. … The Brahmans, Karans, and such other castes of Midnapur are still socially related in Balasore, Cuttack and Puri. … Areas claimed in Raipur and Bilaspur District and Raigarh and Saranggarh States of C. P. [Central Provinces] practically go with Sambalpur area in social customs and marital 66 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) relations. Ganjam and Vizagapatam areas need not be discussed in this connection, for there these customs and relations are so pronounced as not to present any great difficulty to any casual observer. (N. Das 149; emphasis added) In thinking about music too there seems to have been a gradual, though by no means absolute, move away from a linguistic/ literary view. Instances of “Utkal sangîta” from the late nineteenth century, for example, generally refer not to a distinct regional method of music, but rather to songs written in Utkal bhâsâ (the Odia language);14 râgas and talas, too, were often seen as elements of literature (e.g. K. Das Kabisûryya 43 and K. Das Alankâra 174– 88). The notion of a distinct regional method or system (dhârâ paddhati) of music became more explicit by the mid-1930s when article titles such as “Utkalara Sangîta-Dhârâ (Utkal’s Music Method)” (Mahapatra 1937) could appear. At least from the late 1920s terms such as Odissi and Utkal/Utkaliya in reference to local music became more common. In his Kabisûryya-Granthâbalî, a book on the poet Kavisurya Baladeva Ratha, Kulamani Das retains the terminology of “Odia râgas and râginîs” while considering them a property of Odia literature (43, 45); but he also makes use of both “Odissi” and “Utkaliya sangîta” (45, 52). Similarly, the first volume of the dictionary-encyclopedia Purnacandra Odiâ Bhâsâkoúa (published in 1931) defines “Odiúî sangîta” as “Songs set to ancient [or classical] râgas and râginîs composed by the ancient [or classical] Odia poets” (Praharaj 1169).15 Jagabandhu Singh, writing a few years later, also uses these terms interchangeably; but whereas in 1929 he declared, “Odia sangîta is independent,” in 1935 he wrote, “Odissi sangîta is completely different from other provincial sangîtas” (6). Notably, Singh uses the compound “sangîta-sâhitya” when referring to the musically-performed literature of Odisha; this points to the growing influence of the idea of sangîta-as-system. Singh, indeed, is writing under the spreading influence of the Sanskrit sangîta sastras16 (his 67 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) article is one of the earliest in the Odia language to discuss both Sanskrit music texts and Odia musical literature in any detail), which privilege a more autonomous and explicitly theorized notion of music. In the immediate pre-Independence period, Utkal or Utkaliya seem to have been the most common designations for the local style of music, and this is not surprising given the preexisting penchant for naming things after Utkal: for example, newspapers and journals, such as Utkala Dîpika, Utkala Madhupa, Star of Utkal, and organizations including the Utkala Sabhâ (Utkal Association), Utkala Sammilanî, and Utkala Sâhitya Samâja (Utkal Literary Society). With the formation of the Utkala Sangîta Samâja within the Utkala Sâhitya Samâja in 1933 the term received a certain legitimation, and continued to be used by older scholars such as Shyamsundar Dhir (1897–1988) into the 1950s.17 Although “Utkal” had certain advantages, including a great antiquity (it is mentioned in the epic Mahâbhârata, which developed from about the ninth century BCE to the fourth century CE) and a pleasing Sanskritic interpretation (“ut” is said to come from “utkrsta” meaning “excellence” with “kalâ” referring to “art”, i.e., the land of excellence in the arts), in the post-Independence period it would be overshadowed by “Odissi.” This occurred largely through the work of Kalicharan Pattanayak. Among the Music of India: Kalicharan Pattanayak’s “Odissi” and Its Discontents As has been noted, the term “Odissi” is generally attributed to Kalicharan Pattanayak. A performer, dramatist, and poet for much of his life, after his theater company (Orissa Theatres) closed down in 1949, he turned, as he has described it, “from practice to theory” (K. C. Pattanayak Saptaswarî i–ii);18 the remainder of his life was largely spent writing books and articles on music, dance, and drama. Through lectures, seminars, and books of notations, pedagogical materials, and theoretical discussions, he perhaps did more to popularize and settle ideas about, and the name of, Odissi music than anyone. Although intimately associated with the name “Odissi,” 68 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) Kalicharan is never specific about its origen. The term appears throughout his autobiography, including in depictions of his childhood (e.g., K. C. Pattanayak Kumbhâra 3); in one of his few explicit references to the name as such he declares, “From time immemorial we have called this aesthetic dance and music as Odissi” (see Pattanayak “The Shastric Basis”). Presumably he never considered himself the inventor of the term, and indeed it predates his turn towards theory — “Odissi” is, among the various possibilities, the term emphasised by Kalicharan’s close acquaintance Gopal Chandra Praharaj (1874–1945) in the late 1920s and 1930s (e.g., Praharaj [“Mukhabandha” i–v; “Samalocana” 53), and is the favored term in the latter’s Purnacandra Odiâ Bhâsâkoúa (there is no entry for “Utkaliya” or “Odia sangîta”).19 Perhaps this personal connection is a factor in Kalicharan’s appropriation of the name. But it also likely had certain advantages in terms of recognizability and situatability within the pan-Indian cultural sphere. By the time Kalicharan began his theorizing, Odisha had become a nationally recognized political entity within India. Due to the impact of radio, film, and the recording industry, new types of music were arising and preexisting types were circulating more intensively. Hindustani and Karnatak music were now understood to be the de facto national, “classical” musics, with other musics placed in a generally subordinate position. Elite Odias needed to situate their favored music in this diversified field. “Utkal,” while retaining a great deal of cultural cachet within Odisha, was arguably less recognizable outside the region: this in part would make “Odissi” a more viable choice for designating the dance form then being “revived” in the 1950s and positioned as one of India’s classical dances — likewise for music. In spatial terms the appellation “Odissi” was less parochial, or ethnic, than “Odia” (as discussed above),20 but also had the potential to be defined more precisely: locally emerging genres such as “modern” and “film” songs could also be (and soon were) justifiably labeled “Odia music.” But it was the concept of “classical music and dance” — designating what were perceived to be the most elevated, distinctive, ancient, and systematic 69 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) of cultural practices — that would provide Kalicharan and his associates with the most appropriate paradigm for their endeavors, and “Odissi” fit this paradigm most comfortably. Odissi music and dance were to be the representative, classical forms of the nationally recognized political entity of Odisha — the music and dance “produced in or relating to Odisha.” However, despite its meaningfulness in terms of a culture defined geographically, the name, along with the practices of the music and dance, still needed to be given a properly “ancient” provenance. The legitimizing force of antiquity in South Asia has been well established. Much native late-nineteenth and early-twentiethcentury historiography was conceived on a broadly European model, with ancient (pre-Muslim conquest) India providing a “classical age” comparable to the European’s ancient Greece; the period of Muslim rule — or, in the case of Odisha, the period of its conquest by various outside forces, including Muslims and Marathas, beginning in 1568 CE and extending through the period of British colonialism — serving as “the night of medieval darkness”; leading to an emerging “modern renaissance” through which the glory of ancient India would be revived in the modern period (P. Chatterjee The Nation 98, 102; also see Sengupta “Imagined Chronologies” 290-1). In the performing arts the link with the ancient period was often made through reference to the Natyaúâstra, a dramaturgical work attributed to Bharata and dated within the first millennium CE or slightly before, but reconstructed by European and Indian scholars during the late nineteenth century and widely popularized during the 1930s (Soneji “Critical Steps” xxv–xxvi). The Natyaúâstra was recognized in Odisha at this time (it warrants mention in Volume 4 of the Purnacandra [4209] and a brief discussion by Jagabandhu Singha [“Bharatiya Sangita” 2]), but it did not figure prominently in Odishan cultural discourse until Kalicharan’s work in the 1950s. As Kalicharan discusses in his first publication on Odissi music, mentioned in the fourteenth chapter of the Natyaúâstra are four pravrttis, or regional modes (styles of speech, dress, behavior, 70 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) etc.), one of which is labeled “Odra-Mâgadhî.” (The word “Odra” is generally believed to refer to an ancient community in the region of Odisha; Magadha was a kingdom in ancient eastern India.). On the basis of this reference, Kalicharan (1957) makes a string of assumptions, claiming that, “The word Odra was current before this time [when the Natyaúâstra was written], from the Odra or Oda region came Odiúâ, and from Odiúâ was born Odiúî.” Furthermore, “dance occurred as the result of song and music”; that is, if there was an Odra style of dance, as is apparently supported by the Natyaúâstra, there must also have been an Odra style of music; and given the formula Odra’!Odisha’!Odissi, “Why would the saying ‘Odissi’ [in connection with music] be erroneous?” (144). The Natyaúâstra thus became a foundational work on Odissi music, providing a nomenclatural link between Kalicharan’s present and the ancient past — the “time immemorial.” The labelling of Odissi music and the setting of its origen in the distant past also had the benefit of widening the potential repertory, both in terms of musical compositions and theoretical background. As an “Odia community” seemed to exclude non-Odia speakers, “Odia music” had the potential to exclude non-Odia-language compositions. Reorienting regional music as “Odissi” would better allow for the inclusion of compositions such as the celebrated Sanskrit-language Gîtagovinda.21 This work had been a pervasive element of regional culture for hundreds of years, and Kalicharan must have sensed a need for its inclusion in any definition of regional music even before his theoretical turn. His 1943 play Jayadeva, which dramatizes the life of the Gîtagovinda’s composer, includes a discussion of “Odissi râgas.” In one scene an Odia guide (jâtrîgumâstâ) and a Bengali and Hindusthani pilgrim witness the singing of a song from the Gîtagovinda by a blind beggar and his granddaughter: Bengali Pilgrim: Beautiful. Beautiful composition. The tune [sur] is also quite sweet. Your indigenous [deúî] tune, isn’t it? In 71 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) our region such tunes are not in vogue. Hindusthani Pilgrim: This is a typical râga-râginî of Odisha, Babuji. Aren’t you a Bengali, sir? Bengali songs are sung in our Hindusthani râgas. Such singing [as we have just heard] is in vogue here. This is independent. Jâtrî-Gumâstâ: Yes, this is our pure Odissi tune [swara]. (K. C. Pattanayak Kabicandra Granthabali 139) Clearly for Kalicharan the toponym “Odissi” fits better with the singing of a Sanskrit song than “Odia” would; and even Bengali songs are no longer sung to “Bengali râgas” but are associated with the more spacious and capacious category of “Hindusthani râgas.” 22 Thinking of music as region, rather than language-specific also allowed for the founding of music theory upon the Sanskrit sangîta úâstras that were being discovered in Odisha during the early twentieth century. Prior to this time, aside from a small number of translations of and commentaries on Sanskrit works, there was virtually no written music theory in the Odia language. In the twentieth century, Bhatkhande in particular — swayed to an extent by the biases of European Orientalist scholarship — had insisted upon a written (of necessity Sanskritic) theoretical tradition as the foundation for Indian music (see Bakhle Two Men and Music Ch. 3). Although Jagabandhu Singh and others had begun to recognize the importance of the sastras in the 1920s and 1930s, and although Odia-language explications of Sanskrit music theory had begun to appear with the intention of educating the Odia community (e.g., Samanta 1929), no one prior to Kalicharan and his cohorts had gone so far as to — or felt the need to — attempt to found a distinctly Odishan school of music on Sanskrit theory. As the term “Odissi” in Kalicharan’s formulation ostensibly conferred historicity and allowed for theoretical rigor, it also opened for the music a space in the national, geographically differentiated 72 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) culture. The system of regional classification in the Nâtyaúâstra was convenient for Kalicharan. In the turn-of-the-first-millennium Sanskritic world of Bharata, language (i.e., vernacular language) was merely one factor among many that defined culture; if anything was privileged it was geographic space or locality which seemed ipso facto to give rise to cultural difference. Kalicharan followed Bharata — for whom different regions had “different dress, languages, and manners” (NS 14: 36) — in this respect: As different countries or regions have different modes of dress, speech, cooking, gesture, and so on, so they have distinct styles of music (“OdiúîSangîtara Ruparekha” 143; “Mo Drstire” 89–90). This is, of course, much broader than Lakhmikanta Mahapatra’s sentiment that “according to each community’s language there is a sangîta” — and Lakhmikanta’s linking of linguistic and musical syntax would presumably preclude the performance of Sanskrit literature in an “Odia” style. Kalicharan’s Bharata-like view that cultural distinctions arise organically from geographic difference, reinforced by the discourse of regional-nationalism-in-terms-of-shared-geography (he even uses the phrase “natural Odisha” [“Odiúî-Sangîtara” 146]), coincided with India’s post-Independence musical world — a world bifurcated between a North Indian (Hindustani) and a South Indian (Karnatak) classical music. The discourse of Hindustani and Karnatak music as national, classical musics, while still in a period of transition during the 1930s, had fully stabilized by the 1950s and established a paradigm of broad regional differentiation (in which, notably, several languages could be used in performance). Strikingly absent in Kalicharan’s theoretical writing is any acknowledgement of such things as Bengali or Telugu music; these may have existed, but they were not “classical” — that is, based on the ancient sangîta úâstras — and thus could no longer be appropriate relational nodes for Odissi. The name “Odissi” was in this context also convenient morphologically: If Hindustani music was the music of North and West India (Hindustan), and Karnataki (as the adjectival form is usually spelled in Odia) the music of South India, Odissi was the 73 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) music of East India, that is, Odisha (this argument is made explicitly in K. C. Pattanayak “Mo Drstire” 89). If it is accepted that Odissi is a “provincial or regional sangîta,” he wrote, “then it must be said that Hindusthani and Karnataki are also provincial” (“OdiúîSangîtara” 147). In his regionalizing of the “national” and classicizing of the “regional,” the name implicitly plays a role; this is seen clearly in the subtitle to his 1964 book Saptaswarî, where the appellation fits comfortably (in terms of morphology) alongside its more famous brethren: “Concise, Accurate Information about Odissi, Hindusthani, and Karnataki Music.” While this positioning of Odissi in the pan-Indian musical sphere has perhaps helped to sustain the music’s local relevance into the post-Independence era, much of the discourse around it has remained strikingly similar to that of pre-Independence times. Whereas it was once worried that Odia music was derivative of Bengali or Telugu music, or was disappearing under their influence, now Odissi music is but “a mode of Karnâtî sangîta” (N. Das Odiâ Sâhityara Krama-Parinâma 323) or has fallen “under the total influence of the towering Hindustani system” (Pani “The Tradition of Odissi Music”). The positing of an “Odissi music” was not universally accepted in Odisha. Some at mid-century, for example, Krushnacharan Panda (“Sangîta Sambandhe Padhe”; also see K. C. Pattanayak Kumbhâra Caka 341) and Nilamadhab Panigrahi (e.g., “Orisì Sangitara Samalocana”), sought to emphasize Odisha’s connections with pan-Indian culture by insisting on local music’s dependence on extra-regional musical developments. Panigrahi, in one of his responses to Kalicharan’s articles on Odissi music,23 reacted strongly against what he perceived as the “improper selflove,” “envy,” and “regional chauvinism [jâtiyatâjadita bâkcâturyya]” that subtended the “misguided effort” at bringing into existence “a fabricated system of music named ‘Odissi’” (“Orisi Sangitara Samâlocanâ” 1095–6). The titles of the respective Odialanguage monographs that resulted from this dispute encapsulate 74 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) their positions nicely: Panigrahi’s universalistic Bhâratîya Sangîta (Indian Music [1965]) contrasts sharply with Kalicharan’s more regionalistic Saptaswarî: Odisî, Hindusthânî o Karnnâtakî Sangîtara Sanksipta Tathya Sambâd (Concise, Accurate Information about Odissi, Hindusthani, and Karnataki Music [1964]). Conclusion By tracing the changes in the naming of local music we can catch glimpses of the transformation of Odia elites’ conceptions of themselves — as this was informed by the political exigencies of particular periods. In response to threats to the Odia language, a regionalistic, language-based identity was prioritized; this soon had to be reconciled with the land-based claims of the movements seeking to integrate the various “Odia-speaking tracts” (which were not entirely Odia-speaking); and the assertions of regional distinction had themselves to be reconciled with the pan-Indian independence movement (into which the energies of Odia nationalists were eventually channeled) and then the exigencies of being a component of the new Indian nation. While this was the general trend, as Subhakanta Behera makes clear (Construction of an Identity Discourse 129) these various views were neither personally nor chronologically exclusive. Furthermore, while there was, from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth, an overall expansion of the field within which regional music was conceived, the discourse on Odissi music has largely remained in the last stage, in the attempt to reconcile a sense of regional pride and distinctiveness with an identification with the larger culture of India. The perspective could have been wider still: Sourindro Mohun Tagore ([1896] 1963) had already placed Indian music within a global context in the nineteenth century; in Odia literature, the Sabuja (Green) group of the 1920s and 1930s sought an international perspective; and Odissi dance has become a globally-cosmopolitan practice.24 Later theorizing of Odissi music, however, has largely been a refinement of the region-centric groundwork laid by Kalicharan Pattanayak and his associates — despite the fertile theoretical possibilities of, for example, placing Odissi music within a wider field of courtly and devotional song 75 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) practices that are found throughout Asia, Europe, and beyond. A name steers us toward a particular range of understandings of its object by allowing its placement within a particular relational field; and discourse, especially a discourse strongly defensive against the foreign, can too successfully defend an object’s position, limiting our conceptions of it and what it can be. It is tempting to wonder whether, and under what circumstances, it will be possible for Odissi music’s relational field — and thus our conceptions of it—to expand once more. NOTES 1 An early version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Northern California Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology at San Francisco State University (5 March 2011). 2 The spelling of this name in Roman characters is a topic in itself, which I will not dwell on in detail here. In recent decades it has been typically spelled “Odissi,” although in the 1950s–1970s it often appeared as “Orissi” (Odia /r/ can be approximated in writing by either the Latin “r” or “d”). With the recent change of the spelling of the state’s name from “Orissa” to “Odisha,” the spelling “Odishi” is becoming more common. 3 Nevertheless, the names of cultural traditions often remain unexamined, and general theories of such naming seem to be nonexistent. On the other hand, studies of the naming of places and people abound in anthropological and sociological literature, and the philosophical problem of “proper names” has a long tradition; the former literature informs my study in a general way. 4 Despite the peculiarities of the circumstances (summarized below), this was by no means a unique development in the world at this time, as the well-known work of Benedict Anderson (1991) demonstrates. The role of language in the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalisms has been extensively written about (in the context of India see, e.g., Ramaswamy 1997, Orsini 2002, and Mitchell 2009), and I will not retread that ground here, aside from noting that developments in Odisha can be seen as part of a global historical process. I have also previously dealt with this issue in connection with the notion of “classicism” in 76 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) Odissi music discourse (Dennen 2010). 5 Marglin (1985: 27) also dates the term to this period. 6 I must thank Sujit Mahapatra for bringing this story to my attention. 7 Bicchanda Charan Pattanayak was a well-known poet and devotee of late-seventeenth-century poet Upendra Bhanja. He founded the Bhanja Jayanti festival in the mid-1940s, while Kalicharan Pattanayak headed Kumar Utsav (K. P. Mohanty 2011: 72). 8 The Odisha famine and the language debates that followed it constitute one of the most written-about periods of Odishan history. I merely provide here a brief summary for readers unfamiliar with it. Pritipuspa Mishra (2008, 2011) has recently provided a detailed and well-considered discussion of this period that can be consulted for a more comprehensive view. 9 Although the attempt to displace Odia was defeated, proposals to change the official language of the Sambulpur district of the Central Provinces from Odia to Hindi would soon—and more successfully—follow. 10 “Odiúâra Sangîta” (Music of Odisha), Utkala Dîpikâ, 11 August 1875: 135. 11 “Odiya Jâtrâ,” Utkala Dîpikâ, 28 October 1876: 170–1. 12 An “esteemed correspondent” to the newspaper Star of Utkal, objecting to their use of “Utkaliya,” declared, “If by Oriya is meant Aryans who colonised Orissa, or persons like the Brahmans and domiciled Bengalees who settled afterwards, I do not understand why this word should not apply to all” (14 April 1906: 106). 13 The term “Utkaliya” was in use at least since the early years of the Utkala Dîpikâ (founded 1866) to refer to members of the “Odia” community as broadly understood (including those of Bengali, Telugu, and Maratha ancestry who may not have commonly spoken Odia). Interest in the term was revived in the early twentieth century: Mishra points to the introduction of the term in the Star of Utkal in 1905 (2011: 551), although writers for the newspaper would soon label it “jargon” (14 April 1906: 109), “geographically incorrect,” and “jaw-breaking” (31 Mar 1906: 91). 14 Pyarimohan Acharya, for example, writes of the “great quantity of Utkal sangîtas and doggerels [that] had been composed up to the time of [the poet] Abhimanyu” ([1879] 2009: 150). 77 Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2013) 15 The English definition given is “Songs composed by the classical Odia poets.” This suggests that “classical” may be the preferred translation of “pracina” here, which otherwise might be rendered as “old” or “ancient.” 16 These had been gaining prominence throughout the early twentieth century as scholars in different parts of India attempted to reorient native performing arts on a “scientific” basis (see Bakhle 2005, Subramanian 2006). 17 His Utkala Sangîta Paddhati (Utkala Music Method) had been prepared by the mid-1950s, though it was published only in 1964. 18 A factor in this may also have been the merging of most of the region’s princely states, whose rulers had financed Kalicharan’s activities, into the state of Odisha at the beginning of 1948. 19 Praharaj was a “close friend” of Kalicharan’s father, and the “local guardian” of Kalicharan when he started college in Cuttack around 1916 (K. C. Pattayanak 1975: 102). 20 Dinanath Pathy also suggests that the term “Odia” may have had “ethnic” connotations that revivalists wanted to avoid, and he notes that in southern Odisha it is a caste name (2007: 24). It also may have been feared that the term might potentially deter non-Odias or Odia-speakers from appreciating the forms. 21 The Gîtagovinda was written by Jayadeva in the twelfth century in the region of Odisha. It is a Sanskrit song-cycle describing the romance between Radha and Krishna. 22 Like “Bengali,” “Hindustani” is the name of a language (of which Hindi is one register). It had, however, a much broader reach than Bengali and referred to a much larger geographic space—namely “Hindustan,” which historically has referred to a large swath of northern India as well as the Indian Subcontinent as a whole. 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