The Music of Hindostan c15.63

c15.63

The practical directions for the singing of these hymns are given in the *Gānas*. These give the text of the *Sāmaveda* (which has been culled, with modification, from the *Ṛgveda* chiefly) with the syllables vocalized (i. e. with prolongation and modification of vowels) and farsed (i. e. with insertion of vocal syllables between those of the text). These insertions (*stobha*, praises) are the exact counterpart of the *jubila* interpolated in Plain-song in the ninth and tenth centuries, out of which ‘tropes’ were developed in the eleventh,² as the *bhakti* of the *Sāmaveda* are also of the ‘strophes’ of Plain-song, which, like them, were of indefinite number; the idea, too, of singing the hymn in *stotras* (stanzas) and *stomas* (groups) is reproduced in the sometimes single, sometimes repeated performance of the strophe.