Macharu Gopala Naika, the internationally-known singer and exponent of Tulu’s ‘Siri Epic’, passed away in the early hours of 24 April 2023. He was 85 years old. In this essay, Prof Chinnappa Gowda pays tribute to the artist whose singular talent captivated the well-known Finnish folklorist and scholar, Lauri Honko.
Gopala Naika during a performance of the 'Siri Sandhi' (K Chinnappa Gowda)
‘The Siri Epic’ is an epic poem in Tulu composed about 400 years ago.
It was Macharu Gopala Naika from Ujire in the Beltangadi district of Karnataka who called the ‘The Siri Epic’ the “light of Tulunadu”, Tulunadu being the predominantly Tulu-speaking area of Karnataka.
When Naika said this, he was mostly referring to ‘Siri Sandhi’, the epic he became famous for singing.
Gopala Naika performing during the Siri Jaatre (K Chinnappa Gowda)
There are about 15,683 lines in the version of the Siri Sandhi that Naika has sung. Naika’s talent is the talent of a truly great poet.
In Siri jaatres (festivals), during the dalya ceremonies that happen in families, in times of medical treatment — these are occasions when the Siri Sandhi is sung.
Consequently, it remains relevant and vibrant to this day. It is this Siri poem that Naika has called the “light of Tulunadu”.
By ‘Tulunadu’, Naika is referring to the people, the women, the agricultural world, the ceremonies and the religious rituals that occur both annually and as part of people’s lives. It is the light of the world that contains all of this!
Let me tell the story of how Naika, the man who called Siri Sindhi the ‘light of the (Tulu) world’, himself came to light.
Lauri Honko was a Finnish scholar who made an academic study of the world’s folklores. In 1985, Ku Shi Haridas Bhat had organised a celebration in Udupi on the 150th anniversary of Finland’s epic national poem, Kalevala, a celebration that Honko attended.
It was at this celebration that Honko noticed the richness of Tulunadu’s folk tradition, in particular, the tradition of epic Sandhi Paddanas.
At the time, Honko had just begun the task of collecting, studying, editing, and publishing the world’s oral poem epics. As a part of this, he began the Finnish Indian Folk Recording scheme and undertook two major projects.
One was the study of oral Finnish and Indian folklore and fieldwork training workshops. The other was the textualisation, i.e. the writing down of the Siri epic poem.
It was as a part of this enormous project of collecting, editing, and textualising the world’s epic folk poems that Lauri Honko and his Finnish-Indian team (that included Prof BA Viveka Rai, Prof K Chinnappa Gowda, and Anneli Honko) worked on the Siri poem for about eight years, beginning in 1990.
Gopala Naika (K Chinnappa Gowda)
Gopala Naika coming to Honko’s attention during this period was especially fortuitous.
I had previously textualised the Siri Sandhi Naika used to sing and, based on it, had sent a summary of the epic’s story to Honko. His interest piqued by this summary, Honko set up a project to record Naika’s performance of the Siri Sandhi poem, the world’s longest textualised folklore epic.
The performance was recorded in both video and audio form and brought the epic poem Siri to the world’s attention!
Naika has an encyclopaedic knowledge and a nuanced understanding of the myths and traditions of Tulu folklore.
He has an unparalleled mastery at determining the pace of the poem’s presentation, at breaking the story into units and retelling it (impromptu!), at selecting felicitous descriptions from tradition, at wordplay that extended or abridged descriptions as the situation warranted, at using poetic tropes in the right places.
He is able to extend or abridge a situation or a unit of the Siri epic without doing damage to the poem’s beauty.
Under the recording scheme set up by Honko, Naika began singing the Siri epic on 20 December 1990. He took nine whole days to finish singing the entire Siri poem. About 25 hours in total!
At most, he sang for about 4 hours a day. There were 30-45 minutes long sequential presentations of the poem, with breaks now and then for Naika to rest.
Naika sung the entire Siri epic by dividing it into six easily-classifiable units: Ajjeru Sandhi, Siri Sandhi, Sonnegindye Sandhi, Abbaya Daaraya Sandhi, Kumara Sandhi, and the coda.
Besides the Siri epic, here are the other Sandhis (or oral folk epics) Naika has sung: Koti Chennayya Baidyere Sandhi (7,000 lines long), Ekasaalyere Sandhi (1,800 lines long), Maisandaaya Sandhi (1,150 lines long), Eshwara Sandhi (2,080 lines long), and Koddabbu Sandhi (3,000 lines long).
All in all, the number of lines of all the sandhis Naika can sing crosses 30,000. Only an immense talent like Naika is capable of performing a feat of this magnitude.
Naika is also a folk doctor and the leader of a folk dance troupe. He has a particular affinity for and experience with farming and agriculture. As a consequence, he is a rich mine of “work songs” (songs sung while working in the fields).
He is also an accomplished teller of folktales and has organised a Siri troupe of which he is the main ‘Kumara’ (singer); this troupe participates in the annual Siri jaatre.
Naika is equally adept at explicating the creation of the Siri epic, of speaking about its importance, of providing information about the place-names that appear in the epic, detailing the geography of the epic, and talking about the actual learning of the poem.
Volume Two of ‘The Siri Epic’ (K Chinnappa Gowda)
All the information related to the recording project of the Siri epic can be found in the ‘Siri Archive’, available at Finland’s Nordic Institute of Folklore and the RRC (Regional Research Centre) in Udupi.
The collection contains 350 hours of audio, 250 hours of video, and about 5,000 photos. Naika’s knowledge of Tulu folklore is singular. Consequently, he was never simply an informant in the programme; instead, he was an active participant in the study and research of the Siri epic.
The names of the two volumes of the Siri poem are called ‘The Siri Epic as performed by Gopala Naika‘.
Naika created two separate texts of the Siri poem. The text of the sung poem is 15,683 lines long. The second text is the text of the poem as he spoke it (to make textualisation easier). That is about half as long as the sung version.
These two recensions of the same epic, both of which are in Naika’s name alone, provide material for a comparative study. As a matter of fact, only a small portion of the Siri Sandhi is sung during the jaatre; there is not enough time to sing the whole poem. Nor is it necessary.
Naika is of the opinion that the Siri poem should be learnt and recorded differently, depending on the situation.
Here are a few things he had to say when I interviewed him.
“I have sung the Sandhi several times before you. When I do this, the Sandhi is never in just one form. Some words, sentences, and descriptions may be left out, some others may be added. The Siri Sandhi takes on different forms on different occasions. The Sandhi can be made better or worse, larger or smaller,” said Naika.
“It is textualisation that creates a single form. It is not possible for a single oral form to exist.”
“To sing a Sandhi is both easy and attractive. To speak or recite it is more difficult and requires more waiting. Singing is easy, though it might not seem so to onlookers. One needs a good voice to sing. Sandhis must be learnt and taught through singing alone.”
“I adhere to the rules of building a Sandhi. There are several incidents in the Sandhi. Of sitting on the cot and eating adike (areca nut), of going to the fields to farm and look at the growing crop, of lying on the bare ground and spilling tears about not having children, of rejuvenating the temple on the orders of the Brahmana, of Siri being born from the prasada received in the jaatre…these are the main incidents that comprise the Siri epic.”
“I sing the epic by bringing all the details of these incidents to mind. [Naturally], my own experience determines the character of the Sandhi I sing. I rely on my own experience when I describe the eating of the areca nut and its leaf. The extent of the Siri depends on the extent of the singer’s worldly experience. I myself critique the Sandhi I am singing. Like one stream comes and mixes with another, so do several different matters come together to make a Sandhi.”
“I do not know the Siri Sandhi by heart. Once I get hold of a strand of the story, I begin to recall the story’s details. Each time I sing the Sandhi, I sing it anew,” says Naika. His words offer an important insight into the creation and the presentation of an oral epic like Siri.
Gopala Naika, second from left, with the troupe he established (K Chinnappa Gowda)
Naika’s Siri Sandhi assumes importance for a number of reasons.
His Siri Sandhi is the longest of the Siri poems that have been published so far. His epic tells the story of three generations of women, Siri being the epic’s protagonist.
Through his epic, Naika has described the troubles and distresses of Tulu women within patriarchy and their struggle for emancipation. Consequently, his Siri poem is a narrative of social struggle.
In his mid-80s now, Naika is now old and ailing. For more than 60 years, he has performed at the Nidgal Siri jaatre at Ujire with the troupe he himself established.
That his name and his ideas are discussed at international folklore conferences speaks of his stature. It is equally a matter of pride for Tulunadu.
As matters stand, Naika’s ‘Siri Kavya’ is one more reason in favour of making Tulu an official language of Karnataka.
(This article is a translation by Madhav Ajjampur of portions of a Kannada essay by Prof K Chinnappa Gowda. The original essay was first published in ‘Prajavani’ on 12 March 2023.
Prof K Chinnappa Gowda is a retired Professor of Kannada, Mangalore University and was, for a while, the vice chancellor of the Karnataka Folklore University. His important works include Bhutaradhane: Jaanapadeeya Adhyayana, Samskriti Siri, and Mask and the Message. He has visited Germany, Finland, and Japan on various academic assignments and is the recipient of several prestigious awards. In collaboration with B Surendra Rao, Prof Gowda has published several works including Ladle in a Golden Bowl (2017), an English translation of an anthology of modern Tulu poems, and Sati Kamale (2019), an English translation of the first Tulu novel from 1936.)
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