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The Music of Hindostan c8.s1: Legend

The Music of Hindostan c8.s1

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English

Legend

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On the shore of this eternal past lie fragments of the living rock rounded into pebbles. History’s *sic ibat, sic sedebat* is denied us; but in the legends we may gather some impression of what the reflective mind made of the daily happenings of the life around it.

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‘Once upon a time the great anchorite Nārada thought within himself he had mastered the whole art and science of music. To curb his pride the all-knowing Vishnu took him to visit the abode of the gods. They entered a spacious building the inmates of which were numerous men and women, who were all weeping over their broken limbs. Vishnu stopped short and inquired of them the reason of their lamentation. They answered that they were the *Rāgs* and *Rāgiṇīs* of music, created by Mahādeva; but as one anchorite of the name of Nārada, ignorant of the true knowledge of music and unskilful in performance, had sung them recklessly, their features were distorted and their limbs broken, and that unless Mahādeva or some other discreet and skilful person would sing them properly, there was slender hope of their ever being restored to their former state of body. Nārada, ashamed, kneeled down before Vishnu and asked to be forgiven.’

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So an unnamed Indian treating of undatable personages writes history and criticism in one. Believe, he says, in the divinity of the elements of your art, and know that your carelessness and ignorance will maim them, and you will not murder a song; and it may be doubted whether the well-weighed epithets and refined distinctions of musical ‘appreciations’ do the thing any better, or indeed achieve their object so well.

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With Nārada, the *Rishi* who first ‘heard’ the laws of music, are associated Tumburu, the first singer, and Bharata, the first to draw up rules for the drama, of which music formed a large part. Of Tumburu it is said that he increased the scale in which the *Sāma-veda* was chanted from five notes to six or seven. The treatise which purports to record the doctrines of Nārada, the *Nāradaśikṣā*, is probably of late date¹ and gives no clue whatever to the achievement of the Nārada of legend. The treatise which bears the name of Bharata, the *Nāṭyaśāstra*, is similarly an eponym. One or other of these three names appears probably in every book on music that has been written, and the existence of the authors is held, though in complete absence of any specific doctrine attributed to them, as a pious belief; the belief is equal to that which the Greeks professed in Olympos and Thamyris, the latter of whom some greatly daring philologist has connected with Tumburu, and the piety is something more than that which we accord to Jubal. The locus classicus for this posthumous fame is in Daṇḍin’s Mṛcchakaṭikā (sixth century A. D.), where a servant says:

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¹ The stage of the art which it describes is identical with that referred to in the Pañcatantra, the text of which may be dated circ. A.D. 1000 (see p. 82).

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‘I wish every one to take notice that the harder it rains the more thoroughly do I get ducked, and the colder the wind blows down my back the more do my limbs shiver. A pretty situation for a man of my talents—for one who can play the flute with seven holes and the vīṇā with seven strings, can sing like a jackass, and who acknowledges no musical superior except perhaps Tumburu and Nārada.’

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The musical inhabitants of Indra’s heaven were Gāndharvas,¹ Apsarāsas, Kinnaras, and Nāras. The original Gāndharva, in the singular, dwelt in the fathomless space of air and stood erect on the vault of heaven. He was the guardian of the nectar of the gods (soma). In later Vedic books the Gāndharvas² are many, and espouse the Apsarāsas, whose name describes them as ‘moving in the waters’ (sc. of the clouds). In still later Vedas these frequent the earth, and inhabit especially trees; their mission from Indra is to blunt the edge of human virtue which else, through abstinence and prayer, had grown too overweening; and one of them, Urvaśī, who hovers thus between earth and heaven, is the heroine of Kalidāsa’s Vikramorvaśī (fifth century). The Kinnaras and Nāras, possibly the same, are classed with the Gāndharvas as celestial musicians. Their name³ implies a superhuman form, said to have been a man’s body with a horse’s head. In company with them appear, in the Gāndhāra sculptures and elsewhere, Nāgas (snakes) with musical instruments, whose melodies are represented as coiling themselves about the hearts of men.

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¹ An etymological connexion between Gāndharvas (who, besides being musicians, had to do with horses) and Centaurs (of whom Cheiron is said to have been a musician) is not impossible.

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² In the second book of the Rāmāyaṇa there are summoned to Bharadvāja’s feast the Gāndharvas, Hāhā, Huhū, and ‘the sweet’ Viśvāvasu, and the Apsarāsas Alambuṣā, Ghṛtāchī, Viśvāchī, Hemā, Bhīmā, and Nāgadantā, with Tumburu ‘to lead the strain’. Alambuṣā is the Apsarāsa chosen out of 25,000,000 handmaids to ‘make a breach in the virtue’ of a Brahman of Kāśi.

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³ Kim-nāra, ‘what sort of man?’

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But music in its highest, most emblematic form moves to the sound of Kṛṣṇa’s flute (muralī) and dances to the pulsations of Shiva’s drum (ḍamaru).⁴ With Shiva, who enters the celestial hierarchy in the Brāhmaṇas and wrests the supremacy from Indra and Brahmā, enters too the eternal becoming and ceasing to be of evolution, and to the woven rhythms of his dance the whole creation moves. And in the Rāmāyaṇa it is Kṛṣṇa sporting with his Gopīs ‘qui fait le monde à la ronde’.

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⁴ See Chap. IX, Udukkai.

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Detail from a picture of the Surrender of Kandahar in the collection of Sītārām Lāl of Benares. Seventeenth century.

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In Hindu legend other instruments can scarcely be heard for the din of the drum. It beats the night watches, heralds proclamations, and preludes the sentence of death. Porus (Purusha) posts the drummers with the infantry and archers behind the elephants, who are accustomed to the sound and not in the least alarmed by it¹; and Dionysos in his turn uses cymbals and drums instead of trumpets in making signals, in order to deceive the Indians.² A king of Kanauj progresses accompanied by several hundred men with golden drums, called ‘music-pace-drums’, beating one stroke to each step.³ Of another it is said ‘When king Devānāmpriya practises righteousness the call of his drum (bheri) has become a summons not to war but to righteousness.’⁴ There are many allusions to the ‘five great sounds’ (pañca mahā śabdā), an honour conferred by kings on the greatest of their servants, in which the drum (nāgara, tammaṭa, ḍamaruka) is associated with various forms of horn, gong, and cymbal. These were ‘sounded in front of a chariot which is occupied, but behind one which contains no occupant. The car went solemnly round the palace and up the kettledrum road. They sounded the hundreds of instruments—it was like the noise of the sea.’⁵ Brahmadatta finds a mountain hermit who is annoyed by elephants, and presents him with a drum: ‘if you beat upon this side your enemies will run away, if upon that they will become your firm friends.’⁶ The following remunerations are interesting :—‘One mattar for the sacrificial vessel, two to the horn-blower, four to each of the five courtesans of the temple, twelve to the skilful Pollama who built the temple, and fourteen to the drummer.’⁷

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¹ Quintus Curtius, 1st cent. A. D.

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² Polyainos, 2nd cent. A. D.

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³ Hiouen Tsang, A.D. 629.

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⁴ Aśokan inscription (circ. 250 B. C.), Western India.

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⁵ Mahājanaka Jātaka.

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⁶ Jātaka, bk. ii.

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⁷ Canarese inscription, A. D. 975.

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In the Tamil Pura-Nānnuru (first centuries A. D.) the drum, kept in every chieftain's palace, was treated almost as a lesser divinity.¹ It reposed on a luxurious couch, was constantly cleaned, rubbed with perfumed earth, and garlanded. When used as the prelude to one of the ruler's proclamations it was carried on an elephant. The poet, Nośikaranār, relates how one day he had wandered into the courtyard of the palace and saw the ornamented and cushioned couch on which the royal drums were usually placed. The drums had gone to be cleaned and anointed, and he threw himself on the unoccupied couch and fell fast asleep. The king came by with his courtiers who expected to see the intruder meet with condign punishment. But the king took up a fan and cooled the sleeper's forehead with it till he awoke; and the poet's comment is:

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¹ See also Macdonell, *Sanskrit Literature*, p. 200.

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Surely 'twas not to win applause from earthly bards
But that the deed might echo loud in higher worlds.

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With the drum (*dundubhi*) of the Vedas are mentioned the flute (*vāṇā*), which is heard in the abode of Yāma (death), the lute (*vīṇā*), often called 'seven-stringed' (*saptatantrī*),² which, in the Sūtras, is played at the sacrifice to the Manes, and the cymbals (*āghāṭa*, lit. something struck), to accompany the dance.

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² Cf. Pindar's *heptatonos phorminx*. The modern instrument also has seven, four on the fingerboard, three as the drone.

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In spite of the fame conferred upon it by Kṛṣṇa's performance among his Gopis, the flute seems to fade out of Indian music; at least there are few references to it, and it is seldom to be heard nowadays. Perhaps its mellow tone is not of the kind which appeals to Indian ears; at any rate the *shahnai* and *nagasāram* (both reeds) which have ousted it are stridently nasal; and the buzzing of the *tambura* strings, effected by the insertion of a piece of silk (*jivala*), the jingling of the fifth string of the *satār*, called *laraz*, and made, for this very purpose, of twisted brass, and most of all the nasal tone of voice which is deliberately cultivated for singing, seem to show that so mild a sound as that of the flute-tribe is not thought to be piquant enough.

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To the *vīṇā*, the national instrument, there are so many references, both direct and allusive, that it is difficult to choose. Perhaps one story, from the Jātakas, will be enough. A feeble musician, Mūsila of Ujjain, whose music on the *vīṇā* was 'like scratching on a mat', came to learn of Guttila of Banāras (the Bodhisatta in an earlier birth). Guttila’s parents when they heard him said, ‘Shoo! Shoo! The rats are gnawing the vīṇā to pieces.’ Guttila who, as Bodhisatta, was ‘skilled in discerning from the lineaments of the body’ said, ‘Go, my son, this art is not for you.’ But Mūsila got his way; and Guttila Bodhisatta, who ‘did not stint his knowledge’, at last pronounced his pupil perfect. Mūsila pressed to be taken into the king’s service. This was done; but the king awarded Guttila twice as much as his pupil. Mūsila protested, and forced matters to a contest, of which proclamation was made to tuck of drum. The Bodhisatta reflected that he was old, and that ‘if he beats me, death in the woods is better than the shame which will be my portion’. So to the woods he went; but ‘kept returning through fear of death, and going back to the wood for fear of shame’, so that ‘the grass died as he walked and his feet wore away a path’. In his trouble Sakka, the king of the gods, appeared. Guttila was to break, in the contest, one string after another, beginning at the ‘beestring’, and the music should be as good as before. ‘Then you shall go on playing with nothing but the body; and from the ends of the broken strings the sound shall go forth and fill all the land of Banāras for the space of twelve leagues.’ All happened as was foretold, and the scholar, beaten out of the field, was stoned and torn in pieces by the populace.

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Mughal drawing, seventeenth century, of a bīn-player, from an original in the collection of G. N. Tagore.

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The rest of the picture is filled with horns (śṛṅga), conchs (śaṅkha), gongs (jayaghaṇṭa, lit. bell of victory), cymbals (jallali), pipes (kuṛāl), and various other instruments not identified. We get a glimpse of the scale on which ecclesiastical music was planned from an inscription (A.D. 1051) on the Rājarājeśvara temple at Tanjore:

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‘Apart from the priests the following musicians and attendants are to have a daily allowance for the recitation of the Tiruppadiyam (a form of service) calculated in shares of 3 karuṇi of paddy, as follows:

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| Number employed. | Shares each. | Title. |
| | | ORCHESTRA. |
| 66 | ·5 | Men ‘engaged in drumming’. |
| 32 | ·75 | Musicians. |
| 1 | 1·0 | Large drum. |
| 1 | 1·0 | Small drum. |
| 2 | 1·0 | Large drums (koṭṭi mattaḷam). |
| 48 | 1·0 | Musicians. |
| 2 | 1·5 | Small drums (udukkaī). |
| 3 | 1·5 | Pipe players (vaṅgiyam). |
| 2 | 1·75 | Vīṇā players. |

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| Number employed. | Shares each. | Title. |
| | | CHOIR. |
| 4 | 1·0 | Singers (Tamil). |
| 3 | 1·5 | Singers (Sanskrit). |
| 5 | 1·5 | Singers (male). |
| | | OTHERS. |
| 10 | ·4 | Parasol holders. |
| 7 | ·5 | Lamplighters. |
| 8 | 1·0 | Clerks. |
| 5 | 1·0 | Heralds. |
| 400 | 1·0 | Dancing girls. |
| 6 | 1·5 | Dancing masters. |
| 2 | 2·0 | Female superintendents. |
| 4 | 2·0 | Accountants. |
| | | NOT ASCERTAINABLE. |
| 4 | 1·5 | ? |
| 2 | 1·5 | ? |
| 4 | 2·0 | ? |

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About music and dancing there are two views, the puritan and the utilitarian. In the *Anugītā*, among the ‘actions of the quality of passion’ and ranked with the sins prohibited in the Ten Commandments are ‘devotion to dancing, and instrumental or vocal music’. And in the laws of Manu,¹ ‘a student of the Veda must . . . avoid ointments, collyrium for the eyes, shoes, carrying an umbrella; lust, anger, and greed, dancing, and music’: and again, ‘the sound of the Sāmaveda, which is said to belong to the Manes,² is impure.’ In Cāṇakya’s *Arthaśāstra* (‘Politics’),³ on the other hand, ‘song, instrumental music, recitation, dancing, acting, writing, playing on the *vīṇā*, flute (*venu*), and drum (*mṛdanga*), knowing the mind of others, making scents, and garlands, shampooing, employing alluring words—those who know all these and can teach them to courtesans and actors should be provided with livelihood by the state.’

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¹ Circ. A.D. 200.

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² A strict Brahman purifies himself after seeing a dead body.

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³ Circ. 400 B.C.

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The power of song is a favourite theme; here is the story of the Indian Arion. The minstrel Sagga in search of Queen Sussondī came across certain merchants of Bhārukachha (Broach) who were setting sail for the golden land. He said, ‘I am a minstrel (*magadha*). If you will remit my passage money I will be your minstrel.’ They agreed. When the ship had set sail they called to him to make music for them. ‘I would make music,’ he said, ‘but the fish would be so excited that your vessel would be wrecked.’ ‘Fish’, they said, ‘will not be disturbed by what mortals do. Play on.’ Then tuning his lute and keeping perfect harmony between the words of his song and the accompaniment of the lute-string he made music for them. The fish were maddened, and a certain sea-monster leaping up upon the ship broke it in two.

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Dancing girl, South India.

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And again, purity of singing. A hunter of Banāras captured in the Himālaya a brace of fairies (kinnara). He presented them to the king, who said, ‘Hunter, what kind of creatures (kim-nāra) are these?’ ‘My lord, these can sing with a honey voice, they dance delightfully; no man can dance or sing as they can.’ The king bestowed great reward on the hunter and commanded the fairies to sing and dance. But they thought, ‘If we are not able to convey the full sense of our song, the song will be a failure, they will abuse and hurt us; and then, again, those who speak much, speak falsely.’ So for fear of some falsehood or other they neither sang nor danced. Then the king said, ‘Kill these creatures and cook them and serve them up to me, one for supper and the other for breakfast.’ Then the fairy dame thought within herself, ‘Now the king is angry, without doubt he will kill us. Now is the time to speak’; and she sang:

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A hundred thousand ditties sung all wrong
All are not worth a tithe of one good song.
To sing ill is a crime; and this is why
The seeming-foolish fairy would not try.

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Then the king commanded to let her go, but to have the other one cooked for to-morrow’s breakfast. But the other fairy thought, ‘If I hold my tongue surely the king will kill me; now is the time to speak’; and he recited a couple of stanzas to make it clear that they had been silent not from unwillingness to obey the king’s word, but because they saw that speaking would be a mistake. And the king said, ‘He speaks the truth; ’tis a sapient fairy.’ And he had the two fairies put in a golden cage, and sending for the huntsman made him set them free in the same place where he had caught them.¹

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¹ This and other stories from the Jātaka are taken from Prof. E. B. Cowell’s translations. Cambridge University Press, 1905.

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A fine appreciation of good singing is to be found in the Mṛcchakatika (sixth century). Two friends have just come from a concert; ‘Excellent, excellent indeed; Rebhila sang most excellently.

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Smooth and sweet were the tones, articulate, full of emotion, delicate and mind-pleasing. What do I say? Some girl seemed to be hidden in the sounds. I can hear him still; his notes are well-ordered,¹ his song is soft, and the sound of the strings of the vīṇā is in tune with the voice. The upper notes which are introduced into the middle of the rise and fall of the Aria have a soft close.² He sings it as easily as a child plays with a toy. Although the music is finished, I seem still to hear it as I move.’

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¹ Sankrama; calculated to display the Rāga.

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² He is speaking of the return from the Antara to the Astaï; see chapter on Form.

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And this scene is relieved by one in Kalidāsa’s Mālavikāgnimitra (fifth century) of a mediocre performance, where two musicians are rivals, and one brings forward a pupil who performs a great feat in singing—a piece in four-time (caturpada vastu) and Andante (madhya laya)—the ‘young lady of Rio’, in fact, fifteen centuries ago.

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Pedants are dealt with in the Pañcatantra (fifth century) in the story of the musical ass, who gets out at night into the cucumber fields and joins the jackal in hedge breaking and other delights. Waxing fat and kicking, his joy takes a vocal form, and he asks the jackal in what Rāg he shall sing. ‘Why sing at all?’ said the jackal; ‘people with coughs don’t steal. Besides, your voice is about as good as ——’. ‘What? I don’t know how to sing? Listen to the theory of it. There are seven notes (svara), three scales (grāma), twenty-one modes (mūrcchana), forty-nine melodic figures (tāna), three time units (mātrā), three tempi (laya), three voice registers (sthāna), six ways of singing (āsyāni, lit. mouths), nine emotions (rasa), thirty-six rāgs (varṣma), forty languages (bhāṣa). This sort of singing when well performed embraces all the 185 (?) parts of song.’ ‘My friend,’ said the jackal, ‘if you must have your way I will take up my position at the gate and look out for the farmer and his boy.’ They were not long in coming, and the musician learnt what it was to be an ass.

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The mass of legend relating to music, of which this is a mere handful, does not perhaps prove anything very definite about the state of the art in past times. But we get, in reading, an impression that wherever we look the attitude of the writers and the storytellers towards song and instrument, towards the purpose of music and the general practice of musicians, has for a long time past been much what it is now : and if datable documents were to come to light showing that music, in the form in which we read of it in *Bharata*, existed many centuries before his time we should not be at all surprised.

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راما خان کلاونت

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Portrait of Numa Khan Katawant, a musician of the court of Jahāngīr, from a picture in the collection of A. K. Coomaraswamy.

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