Place · composer's tomb · India
Ettayapuram Dikshitar samadhi
Also known as Ettayapuram, Ettayapuram, Thoothukudi, Muthuswami Dikshitar, Thoothukudi
The samadhi of Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835) at Ettayapuram in Thoothukudi district, Tamil Nadu — the burial place of the youngest member of the Carnatic music Trinity (with Thyagaraja and Syama Sastri). Dikshitar's samadhi is at Ettayapuram because he had been invited to perform at the Ettayapuram court by the local zamindar in 1835, after his career as a court musician at the Thanjavur Maratha court. He gave his last concert on 21 October 1835 at Ettayapuram, performing his 'Minakshi Me Mudam Dehi' kriti, and died the same evening. The current samadhi is a modest shrine at Ettayapuram palace grounds; the annual Dikshitar Aradhana festival each October-November draws Carnatic musicians and scholars from across South India. The 1998 Government of Tamil Nadu memorial complex preserved the samadhi; the annual Carnatic concert sabhas during the Aradhana continue the tradition.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 9.130, 77.980
Connections (1)
- Samadhi atMuthuswāmi Dīkshitar
Dīkshitar spent his last years under the patronage of the Ettayapuram zamindars and died there in 1835. The samādhi is in the town, and the Carnatic world still goes to it — the one of the trinity whose grave is far from the delta he came from. Ettayapuram also produced the poet Subramania Bharati a century later, so one small Tirunelveli zamindari holds the graves or birthplaces of two of the most consequential Tamil figures.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Ettayapuram”. The composers’ own kṛti corpora; the Madras Music Academy journals.
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