Module 7: Composers and figures · Lesson 1

Early composers

◐ Confidence: medium Last verified: 12 Oct 2026

Before the Trinity

Long before the Trinity, devotional poet-musicians composed songs in their own languages. Three are especially important for the story of the songs sung today. Dates for this early period are approximate and are given as the sources give them.

Purandara Dasa (died 1564)

A Haridasa who composed in Kannada under the Vijayanagara rulers, Purandara Dasa is remembered mainly for the teaching system that is credited to him: graded exercises, simple songs and the use of the raga Mayamalavagowla for first lessons. He is called Sangita Pitamaha (“grandfather of Carnatic music”) by many musicologists.

Many sources, including the NIOS textbook and Artium Academy, give his years as 1484 to 1564, but Wikipedia’s article on him lists other proposals for his birth year (between about 1470 and 1494), so this site gives the firmer death date. He signed his songs “Purandara Vitala” (NIOS). Traditional accounts claim hundreds of thousands of songs, of which only about a thousand are available according to the NIOS textbook, so the claimed count is a tradition and not a documented number.

Annamacharya (1408 to 1503)

Annamacharya was a Telugu composer connected with the Venkateswara temple at Tirumala. His devotional songs, called sankirtanas , praise Venkateswara. They fall into two groups: spiritual songs and romantic songs.

Traditional accounts credit him with about 32,000 songs, of which about 12,000 are said to survive. They were reportedly forgotten for some three centuries before being found engraved on copper plates at Tirumala. The large gap between the claimed and surviving numbers is one reason to treat the figures cautiously.

Kshetrayya (c. 1600 to 1680)

Kshetrayya, born in the village of Movva, composed in Telugu and is the best known writer of padams . His songs are devotional, with the theme of love standing for the soul’s yearning for god, and are signed with the mudra “Muvva Gopala”. Padams are still central to Bharatanatyam and are also sung in concerts. Sources credit him with over four thousand compositions, though only a fraction survive.

What these early composers left

• Songs in local languages (Kannada, Telugu), not only Sanskrit.
• Devotion as the central theme, which carries on through the Trinity.
• Forms that developed later: the training pieces (Purandara Dasa), the devotional song (Annamacharya) and the expressive padam (Kshetrayya).