The Music of Hindostan c15.s1.7

c15.s1.7

Atisvārya, extremity of the cadence. This is a curious name for the lowest note of the full scale, to which we should naturally have attached some idea of a tonic. But it is obvious that it is not a substantive note of the scale at all. In line 4 it only exists by permission of the mandra; in line 10 there is an uncertainty about the pronunciation of its name (atisvārya, atisvāra, anusvāra), and alternatives are suggested—ṣaṣṭha (sixth) and antya (last); in lines 17, 19, and 25 the ‘musical hand’ does not provide for it, and line 4 does not appropriate to it an organ of the body. It is clearly an ‘extra’ note; and it may be observed that the Greeks similarly regarded their scale as stopping normally at the B, while they called the note A below it ‘extra’ (proslambanomenos).