Kunangudi Masthan Sahib (1800-1847) was a Tamil Qadiriyya Sufi poet and composer.[1] His songs remain popular today, especially in the Gaana music of Chennai.[2]
Masthan Sahib was born Sultan Ahmad Kadiri Lebbai to wealthy parents in Kunangudi, near Tiruchirappalli.[3][4] In his early life, he was a vendor of attar, or perfume.[3] Eventually he gave up a worldly life and became an ascetic and mystic, wandering from place to place, living in forests, and eventually settling in Chennai.[3] He spent his last years in a home in the garden of a wealthy person named Baba Lebbai.[5]
He studied under the Marakkar Sufi legal scholar and poet Takya Sahib, who composed texts on Arabic grammar, theology, and jurisprudence.[1] Takya Sahib had founded one of Tamil Nadu's major regional Muslim foundations, the Kilakarai takya.[1] His Tamil verse, just like his disciple's, is still popular.[1]
At the Tirupparankunram shrine, Masthan Sahib is said to have experienced as profound mystical awakening while undergoing chilla, a forty-day period of secluded meditation.[1] His major verse collection, the Masthan Saheb Padalgal, deals with the power of this shrine.[1]
Masthan Sahib taught his many disciples by composing around one hundred devotional and philosophical poems, totaling some 5000 lines.[3] Many of them were modeled on the work of kirtan composers and hymn writers like Thayumanavar.[3] Masthan Sahib's work has been described as having "pathos and feeling" equal to Thayumanavar, but with simple and colloquial language that was sometimes crude or obscene.[3] Masthan Sahib was also influenced by the works of Tamil siddhars (tantric adepts).[1]
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Aiyacami Mutaliyar composed a praise-poem on Masthan Sahib entitled Kunankutiyar Patirruppattantati.[3] Twentieth-century veena player V.S. Gomathisankara Iyer set his songs to Carnatic tunes, making them suitable for concert play.[4] An album of his works sung by notable Gaana singer Mylai Venu, was released by India's National Folklore Support Center in 2008.[5]
His dargah in Chennai still attracts pilgrims and visitors.[4] It is constructed with an architectural style influenced by Hindu temples.[1] Most notably, it has a mandapam (ceremonial hall or platform) resembling those in Tamil temples.[1] That he fused influences from Hindu singers with Sufi Muslim asceticism and teachings suggests his religiosity was syncretic, combining many strands of Tamil spirituality.[1] Also buried at his dargah are four of his disciples - Pulavar Nayagangal (Hazrath Sheikh Abdul Qadir), Hazrath Qadir Mastan Sahib, Madhar Bibi and Hazrath Ibrahim Sahib.[4]
The locals of North Chennai, where he spent his last years, referred to him as Tondiar ("someone from Thondi").[4] So the neighborhood of Chennai where he lived became known as Tondiarpet.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Bayly, Susan (1989). Saints, goddesses, and kings : Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700-1900. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37201-1. OCLC 70781802.
- ↑ Valan, Antony Arul (2020). "Gana (Gānā)". Keywords for India : A Conceptual Lexicon for the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. pp. 83–84. ISBN 978-1-350-03927-8. OCLC 1134074309.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Zvelebil, Kamil (1974). Tamil literature. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 114–115. ISBN 3-447-01582-9. OCLC 3053475.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 V, Sriram (2013-09-03). "To sing like Mastan Sahib". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "NFSC Releases". Indian Folklife: A Quarterly Newsletter from National Folklore Support Centre. 28: 22. January 2008.