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Tāla and melody in early Indian music: a study of Nānyadeva's Pāṇikā songs with musical notation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
Detailed information about the rhythmic organization of Indian art-music in the pre-Muslim period is provided by three Sanskrit treatises: the Nātyaśāstra attributed to Bharata (compiled before the fifth century A.D.: hereafter cited as BhNS); the Dattilam of Dattila (DD; of similar date); and the Saṅgītaratnākara of Śārṅgadeva (SSR; written between 1210 and 1247). The system of rhythm described in these texts differs in many respects from the tālasystems of modern North and South Indian music. It is therefore of the greatest interest to find, albeit in a comparatively late source (c. 1100), examples of melodies from the pre-Muslim period preserved in notation, which appear to exemplify the early Indian rhythmic system, and from which it is possible to draw conclusions about the relationship between tala and melody.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , October 1981 , pp. 481 - 508
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1981
References
1 BhNS, ch. 31 (Gaekwad's Oriental Series no. 145, Baroda, 1964); DD, 109–242 (ed. with translation and commentary by Nijenhuis, E. te, Dattilam: a compendium of ancient Indian music, Leiden, 1970Google Scholar; and by Lath, M., A study of Dattilam, New Delhi, 1978Google Scholar); SSR, ch. 5 (Adyar Library Series, no. 78, 1951). For discussion of the ancient tāla-system see especially Lath, pp. 313 ff. We are not concerned here with the deśī tāla system, described only in texts of the late pre-Muslim and Muslim periods.
2 Melodies from these sources are examined in Widdess, D. R., Early Indian musical forms: a study of examples in notation from sources c. 600–1250. Ph.D. thesis (unpublished), Cambridge, 1980Google Scholar.
3 Widdess, D. R., ‘The Kuḍumiyāmalai Inscription: a source of early Indian music in notation’, in Musica Asiatica, 2, Oxford, 1979Google Scholar.
4 Petech, L., Mediaeval history of Nepal, Rome, 1958, 51 f., 194Google Scholar.
5 Govt. MS no. Il l of 1869–70, tinder title Bharatabhāṣya; in devanagari script. For an account of this work see Kavi, R., ‘King Nānyadeva on music’, in The Quarterly Journal of Andhra Historical Research Society, 10 1926Google Scholar. Chs. 1–5 have been published by C. P. Desai, Khairagarh, 1961.
6 Gangoly, O., Rāgas and rāgiṇīs, I, Calcutta, 1935, 29 ffGoogle Scholar.
7 The principal gītakas or prakaraṇas were seven (saptarūpa): Madraka, Aparāntaka, Ullopyaka, Prakarī, Oveṇaka, Rovindaka, and Uttara. To these, other genres, including Vardhamānaka, Āsārita, Rk, Gāthā and Pāṇikā, were closely related. See BhNS, 31.55 ff.; DD, 368 ff.; SSR, 5.53 ff. Note also Yajñavālkyasmrti, 3.113 f.; Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇw, 18.20 f.; Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, 23.60 f.; Vāyu Purāṇa, 87.34 f.; Kālikā Purāṇa (see Hazra, R. C., Studies in the Upapurāṇas, II, Calcutta, 1963, 237Google Scholar). In length and complexity of organization these vocal suites are perhaps to be compared with the ‘Long suites’ of T'ang China (tach'u), the Tajik/Uzbek maqeām suites, and the nūba of Morocco and Algeria.
8 See Lath, p. 142, who suggests, however, that the Pāṇika is among the oldest of the gītaka compositions.
9 See Widdess, , ‘The Kuḍumiyāmalai Inscription’, and Early Indian musical forms, I, 112 ffGoogle Scholar.
10 2.4.1.82 ff. (ed. P. L. Sharma, I, Banaras, 1963). It seems probable that the examples of melodies for the saptarūpa gītakas given in this source are late reconstructions.
11 I am grateful to Professor J. Brough (St. John's College, Cambridge) for making a preliminary examination of the song-texts.
12 In the MS, folios are numbered on the verso.
13 The significance of the individual titles of the songs is obscure.
14 On the early rāga-system see Widdess, , ‘The Kuṇumiyāmalai Inscription’, and Early Indian musical forms, I, 15 ffGoogle Scholar. Cokṣa = śuddha, ‘pure’, the first category (gīti) of rāgas, comprising the seven grāmarāgas, Madhyamagrama, Ṣaḍjagrāma, Ṣāḍava, Sādhārita, Pañcama, Kaiśika and Kaiśikamadhyama. The only other rāga represented here is Gāndhārapañcama (Pāṇikā 9), a grāmarāga of the sādhāraṇī (‘mixed’) gīti. The rāgas of Pāṇikās 6, 13 and 14 can be identified by comparison with Pāṇikās 4, 5 and parallel melodies in SSR.
15 Lath, p. 317, n. 1.
16 BhNS, 31.3 f.; DD, 116 f.; SSR, 5.10 f. Lath, 320, states that ‘basically, kalā was a unit of time measured on the basis of two mātrās or ten nimeṣas’, but provides no evidence for this assertion.
17 The Śarīra of Pāṇikā 12, for example, appears to require double the pace of the Mukha (see example 1). 
= MM 60 seems in general too slow for the transcriptions; 
= 60, or in some cases 
= 60, would be more plausible, bearing in mind that the Pāṇikā was a dance of light character.
18 DD, 232b–235a; SSR, 219–23.
19 See for example Marcel-Dubois, C., Les instruments de musique de l'Inde ancienne, Paris, 1941, 26Google Scholar; pl. I, 1.
20 op. cit., p. 31. Cf. Lath, pp. 105 ff.
21 DD, 232b–235a; SSR, 219–23. These patterns are not indicated in the notation of Nānyadeva's Pāṇikās. For the method of performing the four silent gestures, see BhNS, 31.32 ff.
22 DD, 233b–234a, evidently refers to the alternation of texted and vocalized phrases, and to two different arrangements of them; the exact sense is debatable, however.
23 Cf. Widdess, D. R., ‘Trikāla: a demonstration of augmentation and diminution from South India’, in Musica Asiatica, I, Oxford, 1977Google Scholar.
24 Also called Pañcapāṇi or Uttara. See BhNS, 31.17 ff.
25 The melodies have much in common with measured melodies in SSR; shared modal and rhythmic characteristics suggest a common origin in the living tradition. In addition, the lively melodic and rhythmic idiom, especially of the Mukha-Pratimukha sections, is strongly suggestive of dance, and is hardly to be expected in a purely academic exercise. Striking rhythmic similarities in melodies of first-millennium Central Asian origin, preserved in the Japanese T'ang-music (Tōgaku) tradition, demand further investigation (cf. Picken, L. E. R., ‘Central Asian tunes in the Gagaku tradition’, in Festschrift Walter Wiora, Kassel, 1967Google Scholar).
26 It is not sufficient to attribute to the gestures a purely ritual significance (Lath, pp. 25, 109 f.). I do not agree that ‘Such elaborate gestures were certainly not for merely indicating or marking time during tāla movements [aṇgas], for which purpose these complex movements [gestures] are obviously quite pointless’ (Lath, p. 25). On the contrary, the seven gestures— four silent, three claps—are probably the simplest mechanism that could be devised, given the length of the longest angas and the demands of unambiguity, memorability, and audibility and visibility.
27 SSR, 5.107, and example following v. 133.
28 The simultaneous division of a ternary period into three binary and four ternary units is reflected in the structure of Ṣaṭpitāputraka tāla itself (see p. 499), in which, during six kalās, the right hand executes three claps at intervals of two kalās, while the left hand executes four claps at intervals of one-and-a-half kalās. As often happens in the early Indian tāla-system, the organization at one level is paralleled at another.
29 On the possible relationship between Caccatpuṭa tāla and the Āryā metre, see Widdess, , Early Indian mvsical forms, I, 138 fGoogle Scholar.
30 Aṅga in the modern South Indian tradition denotes a segment of a tāla-cycle demarcated by claps (corresponding to vibhāg in the Northern tradition). Several such segments of unequal length complete the cycle. (I am indebted to Dr. J. R. Marr for his comments on the South Indian tāla-system.)