The Music of Hindostan c15.5

c15.5

The Rgveda is recited now, as it has always been, to three tones; for the accent was originally a mark of musical pitch, and became a mark of stress only after the beginning of our era. The ‘raised’ (udātta) and ‘not raised’ (anudātta) sounds represent the two main pitches of the speaking voice; this is the prose accent of the Brāhmaṇas; and there is nothing to show whether these two prose accents had any musical relationship. In addition to these two there was, for the reciting voice, the ‘sounded’ tone (svarita), which is shown on philological grounds to have been originally between the two others in pitch, but which is in the Rgveda above the udātta. No explanation is given as to what is exactly meant by ‘sounded’,¹ although it seems clear from the treatment of svarita that it means ‘graced’. The svarita is in effect ‘a falling accent of a dependent nature, marking the transition from an accented to a toneless syllable. It regularly follows the udātta, to the rise of which its fall corresponds in pitch.¹ But also, ‘the first part of the svarita sounds higher than the udātta’ (ibid.), so that the svarita is practically an ornamented udātta falling to an indefinite pitch below it. This indefinite pitch is called pracaya (‘throng’), in allusion to the number of unaccented syllables which occur there in succession; the pracaya is toneless, as distinguished from the udātta and anudātta, which are toned.² Before the rise from the pracaya to the next udātta or svarita, the voice descends to a ‘lower’ (sannatara) or ‘more lowered’ (anudāttatara) note, which is below the anudātta.