The Music of Hindostan c9.s1.48

c9.s1.48

The scheme as a whole is much earlier than Bharata. The theory of consonance (*samvāditva*), or at least the terminology which that theory uses (*samvādī, anuvādī, vivādī*), is alluded to in the *Mahābhārata* (14, 14, 19). The date of the *Mahābhārata* is generally considered to be 400 B. C.–200 A. D., and the fourteenth is a late book. The author gives as the ‘ten elements of sound’ the seven notes of the scale (Sa, Ri, Ga, &c.), and three others, *iṣṭa*, *aniṣṭa*, and *saṃhata* (lit. ‘agreeable’, ‘disagreeable’, and ‘struck together’). These last are described as ‘classificatory’ (*pravibhāgavān*); and it is tempting, therefore, to see in them the terms ‘assonant’, ‘dissonant’, and ‘consonant’ with which we are familiar.