Creation of Space: The Metaphor of Architecture

14 ntroduction: A Subject, An Object, A Relationship Musical forms, like architectural structures, can describe our experience of spatial relationships. Our study will demonstrate this through a particular musical construction of the Carnatic (South Indian) tradition that is further enhanced by the composer’s religious perspective. The piece is a composition (“kriti”) by Muthusvāmy Dīkshitar (1775-1835) entitled “Brhadīśvaram.” The title refers to a particular temple, the Rajarajesvara Temple in Tañjāvūr, Tamilnadu, also known as the “Brhadīśvara Temple.” Our purpose here is to consider Dīkshitar’s profoundly Tantric conception of space and relationships in this kriti and see how the musical structure both mirrors and embodies the creation of temple spaces delineated by the relationships of the worshippers to the Divine. It is clearly reasonable to perform such examinations through the windows of musicology, religion, or anthropology, but we should also open up the possibilities for other disciplinary engagements that can perform comparative or supportive functions. Among these paradigms there is a commonality: each seeks to reconcile, address, or otherwise elucidate on the relationship between the subject and the object; the perceiver and the perceived. Since this commonality aims at the heart of the matter, we will treat these paradigms as possible windows through which to examine this composition. It is the hope of this paper to make a reasonable case for such a comparative approach to understanding the relationships and spaces within “Brhadīśvaram”. Let us begin our work with one of these models in order to create a framework from which to place some useful ideas.