A History of Sandeśa on Stage (and Its Aftermath)Sanskrit Padams from Eighteenth-Century Thanjavur

The Dautyapañcakam, or The Five Messengers, is a short composition for stage written by Vasudeva of Thanjavur in praise of his patron, King Shahaji (r. 1684–1712). Here five different messengers—a parrot, a cloud, a bee, a goose, and a female friend—are assigned to carry the message of a lovesick woman to her beloved, the king. The work departs from earlier courier poems in its genre and language. It is written in simple, melodious Sanskrit, and it belongs to a markedly Tamil performative genre of music and dance. Building on previous sandeśa poets, Vasudeva creates a new performative space for his own voice as a poet alongside his multiplied messengers. The result is a playful and erotic praise of King Shahaji. By way of contextualizing Vasudeva’s experiment, we discuss another one of his courier-themed padam compositions, this time in Tamil. The comparison with the Tamil padam shows how Vasudeva’s choices of language and genre are informed by a specific interpretation of the multilingual and multicultural space at Shahaji’s court in Thanjavur. We conclude with a reflection on the ways in which The Five Messengers stages the question of human agency, and how this question plays out in Vasudeva’s related vision of praise and subjectivity.