The Music of Hindostan c9.s2.36

c9.s2.36

We found a hint in the Gurkha and Garhwālī songs that these transilient scales had their home in the east of India. Although they are to be found everywhere, they seem to be especial favourites in Bengal; and the Bengālī system especially insists on heptatonic (*sampūrṇa*), hexatonic (*ṣāḍava*), and pentatonic (*oḍava*) as a primary division of *Rāga*, whereas the other systems, while recognizing these, draw no special attention to them. Of these names there is something to be said about *oḍava*. It is always understood to mean ‘a set of five’; but the word is neither Sanskrit nor Prakrit. What the connexion is, if any, with *Auḍavī* (an unlocated placename) or the *Oḍras* (who inhabited Orissa = *Oḍra-desha*) or with *oḍrapushpa* (the Chinese rose) must be left to others to determine. No Indian language owns *oḍava*, and, if the name is foreign, the scale may have been imported. That it is foreign is further suggested by the form *ṣāḍava*, ‘a set of six,’ formed on analogy, for which the proper Sanskrit would have been *shashtaka*.