Music and Musical Thought in Early India 9780226730349

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MUSIC AND

MUSICAL THOUGHT I N

EARLY INDIA

CHICAGO STUDIES IN ETHNOMUSICOLOGY Edited by Philip V. Bohlman and Bruno Nettl EDITORIAL BOARD Margaret J. Kartomi Hiromi Lorraine Sakata Anthony Seeger Kay Kaufman Shelemay Bonnie C. Wade

MUSIC AND

MUSICAL THOUGHT I N

EARLY INDIA

Lewis Rowell

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 1992 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 1992. Paperback edition 2015 Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15   2 3 4 5 6 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73033-2 (paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73034-9 (e-book) 10.7208/chicago/9780226730349.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rowell, Lewis Eugene, 1933– Music and musical thought in early India / Lewis Rowell.   p. cm. — (Chicago studies in ethnomusicology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-73032-8. — ISBN 0-226-73033-6 (pbk.) 1. Music—India—Theory. I.Title. II. Series. MT6.R87M9 1992  91-38791 781’.0954’0902—dc20 CIP MN

a This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

CONTENTS

PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii THE SOUNDS OF SANSKRIT xv ABBREVIATIONS xvii ABOUT THE FRONTISPIECE 3 1

INTRODUCTION

5

1.1 Music and Musical Thought in Early India 1.2 The Divisions of Music 9 1.3 Microcosm and Macrocosm 16 1.4 Chronology and Sources 18

2

THOUGHT

23

2.1 Introduction 23 2.2 Continuities of Indian Thought 2.3 Systematic Thinking 27 2.4 Symbolic Thinking 32

3

SOUND

24

35

3.1 Introduction 35 3.2 The Divisions of Sound 35 3.3 The Theory of Sound 38 3.4 Sound: A Lexicon 41 3.5 Causal Sound: Niida 43 3.6 AkiiSa, the Medium of Sound 47 3.7 Sound and the External World 50 3.8 Three Ancient Conceptions of Musical Sound

4

CHANT

5

51

56

4.1 Introduction 56 4.2 Samavedic Chant 57 v

CONTENTS

VI

4.2.1 The Role of Memory 64 4.2.2 Chironomy 65 4.2.3 Duration and Tempo 67 4.2.4 Dynamics 68 4.3 The Phonetic Treatises 68 4.4 Some Distinctive Features of Sanskrit and Their Musical Consequences 70 4.5 Narada's Sik$a and the Organization of Musical Pitch 75 4.6 Milieu 85

5

THEATER

91

5.1 Introduction 91 5.2 The Natyasastra 96 5.3 The Preliminary Rituals 101 5.4 The Incidental Music 108 5.5 Instruments 112 5.6 Epilogue 117

6

SASTRA

119

6.1 Introduction 119 6.2 Musical Scholarship 124 6.3 Musical Discourse 130 6.4 The Language of Musical Speculation 6.5 Notations 140

7

PITCH

134

144

7.1 Introduction 144 7.2 The Gamut and Its Tuning 145 7.3 Philosophical Arguments on ,5ruti and Svara 7.4 The Gamut and Its Variables 152 7.5 Sonance 157 7.6 The Tanas 160 7.7 Melodic Choices 162 7.8 The Concept of Raga 166

8

TIME

180

8.1 Introduction 180 8.2 The Idea of Time in Ancient India

182

149

CONTENTS

VII

8.3 Tala

188

8.4 Chironomy 193 8.5 Rhythmic Patterns 196 8.6 The Concept of State 199 8. 7 Timing 202 8.8 The Dest Talas 207 8.9 The Influence of Metrics 215 8.10 The Rhythms ofIndian Music 222

9

FORM

225

9.1 Introduction 225 9.2 Formal Archetypes 230 9.2.1 The Human Body 232 9.2.2 Organic Growth 233 9.2.3 Ritual 236 9.2.4 Creation 237 9.3 Formal Components 243 9.4 Formal Tactics 247 9.4.1 Upohana 248 9.4.2 Upavartana 250 9.4.3 Prastara 251

9.5 Ritual Forms 9.6 Minor Forms

10

SONG

252 265

269

10.1 Introduction 269 10.2 The Prabandhas 274 10.3 Song Forms 276 10.4 A Garland of Songs 280 10.5 Expansion of the Genre 281 10.6 Cultural Mapping 284 10.7 The Theory and Practice of Song 290

11

STYLE

295

11.1 Introduction 295 11.2 Gender 298 11.3 Qualifications 301 11.4 GUIJas and DO$as 304

Vll1

CONTENTS

11. 5 The Qualities of Musical Sound 308 1 1.6 Style as a Composite 312 11.7 Levels of Ornamentation 319 11.8 Rasa

327

11.9 The Values of Indian Music

334

12

338

AFTERTHOUGHTS

NOTES 345 GLOSSARY OF SANSKRIT TERMS BIBliOGRAPHY 387 INDEX 397

381

TABLES 1 The Six Orthodox Systems of Indian Philosophy 28 2 The Forms of the Atman according to the Maitri Upani$ad

37

3 Two Perspectives on Sound Production, according to the Krama System of Kashmir Shaivism 47 4 The Twenty-Five Mute Consonants of Sanskrit 47 5 Three Ancient Conceptions of Musical Sound 52 6 The Sanskrit Morphophonemes 73 7 The Seven Svaras 78 8 Correspondences to the Seven Svaras 89 9 The ga1')a Elas as a Cultural Map of Medieval Indian Song 288 10 Coordinates of Style from Matanga's Brhaddesi 314 11 Coordinates of Musical Style in the Smigitaratnilkara 319

PREFACE

What was music like in early India? What were its sounds, rhythms, tunes, and forms? How did it differ from today's music, or from music in the ancient and medieval West? What was it about? What did it mean to those who sang and played it, and to their hearers? I have undertaken this book as an exercise in musical archaeology, with the hope of giving provisional answers to these questions. The aim was not only to pursue a technical investigation of the materials and structures of music but also to increase our awareness and understanding of the intellectual foundations of India's ancient musical culture. I shall reserve further explanations for chapter 1, but one guiding assumption of this project must be clearly stated here. My study has been motivated by the unshakable conviction that the organization of music (by which I mean not only sounds, but also behaviors and concepts) has been continuously informed and molded by the prevailing framework of ideas. Accordingly my purpose has been not only to determine as precisely as possible what we may call the "facts" of music (the tunings, scales, modes, rhythms, gestures, patterns, and formal structures) and the conceptual basis for these facts but also to place these facts and concepts within their proper cultural context and examine their many connections with the fabric of ideas in early Indian philosophy, cosmology, religion, literature, science, and other relevant bodies of thought. I am particularly gratified that this book appears as a part of the Chicago Series in Ethnomusicology, because I have always thought of it as a study in historical ethnomusicology. Readers will find few references to ethnomusicological theory and method in these pages, but I shall return to make the connections explicit in my final chapter. Any book could have been several different books, and this one is no exception. Specialists in ancient Indian music and music theory would welcome, and perhaps expect, a comprehensive study that proceeds step by step through each of the surviving texts, attempting to resolve every philological question, proposing and defending each of the necessary reconstructions of the many textual gaps and passages mangled in the scribal tradition, explaining each musical concept and tracing its development throughout the corpus of literature, reconciling the many contradictions, and exploring IX

x

PREFACE

the wider realm of these concepts with far-reaching etymological analyses. Such a book would indeed be welcome. It would also be massive, ponderous, largely in Sanskrit, quite beyond the reach of most of those who are curious about the early history of Indian music, and, alas, by another author. In short, this is not that book, and I mention all of this to defuse unrealistic expectations. Some of my fellow specialists may also feel uncomfortable with the level of generalization that I permit myself in this study, but I am convinced that much of what we do know about the music of ancient and medieval India remains all but inaccessible as the result of scholarly hesitation to venture any statement whatsoever to which a qualification can be attached. Valid general statements can and should be made, and I count on the intelligence of the reader to recognize that there may be qualifications and exceptions to all such statements. I have proceeded under the assumption that, despite the intractability of the sources, it is nevertheless possible to assemble an intelligible synthesis of early musical doctrines and the supporting fabric of ideas-a synthesis that will be not only informative but also accessible to various segments of a broad readership: to Western musicians with a lively curiosity but no expertise in either Indian music or intellectual history; to ethnomusicologists with expertise in other world cultures as well as a professional interest in the music of India; to specialists in other fields of Indic studies who may wish to learn how Indian music and musical teachings have been influenced by their own body of literature; and most of all, to general readers whose curiosity has been whetted by their own experience with Indian music today and who wish to learn more about its background. I hope this study will also be of some value to the handful of Western students of ancient Indian music, not for the general synthesis I present, but for the individual translations, analyses, and points of interpretation along the way. This study has been preceded by a series of technical articles published in various journals during the last fifteen years; for these see the bibliography. This volume differs from the earlier publications in two ways: first, readers will find additional technical material and supporting evidence in the separate articles, and I have provided citations to point the way. In this volume I have confined the technical material to concise illustrations of the principal pointe s ) under diSCUSSion, and I have been highly selective in choosing passages for translation and musical issues for illustration. In no case has any unrevised material been transferred to this study. And second, I have ventured much farther here in matters of interpretation and analysis of the cultural background than was possible in a series of articles on individual

PREFACE

XI

topics. Above all, I have attempted here to present the subject as a whole, not in compartments. The book is organized thematically, not chronologically, and is based on a set of keywords; I think of it as a thematic analysis, not a historical account per se, and my views on the problems of Indian music history will emerge clearly in chapters 1 and 12. Once the reader is past chapters 1 and 2 there is no reason to read in any particular sequence. The development of concepts for the organization of pitch is presented in two installments: first, an account of their early evolution based on the evidence of one of the ancient phonetic manuals (§ 4.5); and second, a step-by-step exposition of the entire system of musical pitch in chapter 7. Chapters 7-9 constitute what I see as the technical core of the study; they will be of special interest to musicians. I hope, however, that other readers will persevere when technical issues arise; in each case the accompanying commentary will offer explanations and interpretations from various branches of Indian learning that can be read profitably without reference to the figures or musical notations. (Western staff notation appears only in chapters 4 and 7, and rhythmic notation only in chapter 8; I have devised my own system of notation for reconstructing musical forms, one based on the traditional gesture language of tala, but no musical expertise is required to decipher it.) Readers should expect to encounter many Sanskrit words, but in virtually every case they appear in the form of single terms, in transliteration, and have been provided with either a translation or an explanation. A glossary of Sanskrit terms has also been provided for quick reference. The book includes a large number of English translations from the major Sanskrit treatises on music, and I have selected a wide range of translation stylesfrom the painstakingly literal to the happily periphrastic. My own translations, of which there are many, fall somewhere in between. It has seemed better to me to give some indication of the breadth and diversity of Indian musical scholarship than to take advantage of the translator's prerogative to channel his subject into his own lexicon and style. Scholarship does not stand still when we are working on a project, and I should like to have seen the fruits of several current works in progress, including D. R. Widdess's study of the ragas of early Indian music, the second edition of Mukund Lath's Study of Dattilam, R. Satyanarayana's translation of Parsvadeva's Sangitasamayasara, and Prem Lata Sharma's translation and critical study of Matanga's Brhaddesi. Tentative publication information has been included in the notes and bibliography. I have found this project a musical and intellectual adventure, and I invite readers to share it with me.

ACI(NOWLEDGMENTS

Before proceeding to some special acknowledgments, I wish to express my deep gratitude to a large number of professional and personal friends to whom I am indebted for their many and diverse contributions to this project: W. Sidney Allen, Anand Amaladass, S. J., Abhijit Basu, Bettina Baumer, David W. Beach, Judith Becker, Anil Bihari Beohar, Anil K Bhandari, Ravi and Rita Bhatia, John Blacking, John Clough, Eliot Deutsch, Jack Douthett, Joan L. Erdman, Allen Forte, Robert Gauldin, Edwin Gerow, Robert Gjerdingen, William Jackson, S. S. Janaki, Jonathan Katz, Jonathan D. Kramer, Mukund Lath, J. R. Marr, Prithwish Neogy, Bruno Nettl, Claude V. Palisca, Raimundo Panikkar, T. S. Parthasarathy, L. E. R. Picken, Sheldon Pollock, Prema and William Popkin, Harold S. Powers, K Kunjunni Raja, Anthony Seeger, S. Seetha, Steven Slawek, Barbara B. Smith, Ron Smith, Ruth M. Stone, Eero Tarasti, Ricardo Trimillos, Allen Trubitt, and Kapila Vatsyayan. Several agencies and institutions have been of major help in funding various periods of research in India. I am particularly grateful to the American Institute of Indian Studies and to P. R. Mehendiratta for two senior research fellowships and friendly support while I was in India. I wish also to acknowledge the kind assistance of V. R. Nambiar and P. Venugopala Rao. Indiana University has provided smaller amounts of research support when they were most needed, and I am grateful to John V. Lombardi, Morton Lowengrub, Alex Rabinowitch, Henry Remak, Charles H. Webb, and Albert Wertheim for their advice and support. I am also deeply grateful for the academic hospitality extended to me. at Banaras Hindu University, the Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute, the University of Madras, the Madras Music Academy, and the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. I am particularly grateful to a few special people whose contributions have been vital to this project: to the late B. C. Deva, for a friendly reception and a chance remark that put my first period of research in India into an entirely new perspective; to J. T. Fraser, who has been my guide in the study of time and a supportive witness to numerous important events in my life; to Wayne Howard, for invaluable advice and information; to Gayathri Kassebaum, for her patient instruction in South Indian singing; to Walter Maurer, XIII

XIV

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

for many years of expert instruction in Sanskrit and for his scholarly example; to the late V. Raghavan, both for his scholarly contributions (which have been of the utmost importance to this study) and for his generous investment of time; to N. Ramanathan, for a continuing friendship and scholarly collaboration; to Prem Lata Sharma, for her gracious academic hospitality and for numerous acts of kindness and bits of helpful information over the years; to the late R. K Shringy, for friendly advice and for his dedicated labors on a massive translation project; and to D. R. Widdess, for sharing some of his research with me in advance of publication and for many pieces of information and interpretation. Thanks too to the many friendly and helpful people at the University of Chicago Press for their professional expertise in translating my manuscript into book form. And finally, thanks must go to my two children, Alison and Jim, whose lives have been disrupted as a result of this project but who have given me constant love and support; to two furry friends, who saw to it that I never lacked for companionship; and til min elskede Unni, for reasons that she alone knows.

THE SOUNDS OF SANSI(RIT A complete display of the forty-eight Sanskrit morphophonemes appears in table 6, and readers with more than a passing interest in phonetics will find relevant material in § 4.4. My purpose here is to guide English-speaking readers toward a rough approximation of Sanskrit pronunciation. In general consonants are more problematic than vowels, and some of the distinctions are difficult for English speakers. In this book all Sanskrit words are transliterated according to international conventions. Heavy syllables may be accented, that is, syllables containing a long simple vowel, a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by more than one consonant. For this purpose aspirated consonants are regarded as single consonants. Vowels are pronounced as follows:

a a i i u it

r e ai 0

au

as u in but (as in rasa) as injather (as in raga) as in bit as in ravine as input as in rule similar to ri in rick as ay in hay as in aisle as in go as ow in cow

Consonants are generally similar to those of English, with exceptions as noted below. The distinction between aspirated and unaspirated stops is essential, and aspirated consonants should be pronounced with the same heavy aspiration they would normally receive at a syllabic juncture in English, e.g., kh as in bunkhouse, dh as in mudhen, and th as in coathook (N. B.: not a spirant as in the English word thin). A second distinctive feature is the important opposition between the dental (tongue in contact with the teeth) and retroflex (tongue flexed back under the hard palate) consonants, i.e., t, th, d, dh, n in contrast to t, th, fj, 4h, 1J. xv

THE SOUNDS OF SANSKRIT

XVI

Note also the following: c ch g n

S $

IJ

as ch in church but lightly aspirated the same, but aspirated more heavily as in game as in the Spanish word senor as sh in share similar to the above a rough breathing at the end of a syllable or word ( visarga)

m

nasalizes the preceding vowel

Unless in context, Sanskrit verbs appear in their root form and nouns in their uninflected stem form, to which plurals are formed by the addition of s. In the case of modern names, diacritics appear only when employed by the author or editor. A number of familiar Sanskrit words that have made their way into the English language are treated as English words.

ABBREVIATIONS

AB BN IC D

K MB NB N5 P5 5M

55

Abhinavagupta, Abhinavabharati Bharata, NatYaSiistra lLankoo, Cilappatikaaram Dattila, Dattilam Ku@