Historical Development of Indian Music: A Critical Study c6: Chapter One: Historical Method in the Study of Music
Historical Development of Indian Music: A Critical Study c6
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Chapter One: Historical Method in the Study of Music
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Indian music dates from dim antiquity, and it is still on its march. It will not come to an end so long as it retains its creative force and artistic merit. A history is conceived as the narration or tale of memorable events that preserves the memory and propagates the knowledge of glorious culture and civilization of man and his society. Now, the term ‘history’ connotes the idea of progress. It does not stop for a moment, but marches onwards towards the eternity, weaving the networks of subjective thoughts and objective actions of the human society. K.A. Nilkāṇṭha Śāstrī, and H.S. Ramanna say : ‘History is such a wide subject that it knows no beginning and no end. Each act or historical episode is the effect of some previous episode and probably leads on to another’. Further they say : ‘History, then, is in part a science. It is also, and in a much greater degree, an art. It consists not only in collecting facts about the facts, but in thinking and feeling about them. * * We must have a proper conception of the facts, of the conditions, of the motives, and of the characters. * * The past cannot be constructed by men whose knowledge of life has been gained only from documents. Mere accumulation of facts is insufficient. Using our imagination and our judgment, we have to interpret them. No, facts do not always speak for themselves. They have to be weighed and measured. They must be placed in their proper setting. There must be intelligent reflection upon the significance of the facts. There must be that insight into reality without which the past can have no vital meaning for living men'.¹ Such is also the opinion of Bury. To Croce, the average historian is a mere chronicler, for facts only become history when they have passed through the crucible of an individual mind. No historian can forecast the future, and so Croce rejects determinism as decisively as Toynbee. Prof. Renier emphasises the social role of history. Toynbee, like Spengler, envisages history as a record of civilizations rather than of centuries and continents. Spengler is a quasibiological determinist 'who holds that all civilizations are fated to die, and that the future will be as the past'.
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¹ Vide *Historical Method in Relation to Indian Histories* (1956), p. 11.
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The history can be regarded as an art, and the history of music shall be known as 'art of arts' or a greater art, as it is not only the narrative accounts or chronicles of sensible material facts of music, but of the supersensible grace and beauty of the tones and tunes also.
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The mystic philosopher Schopenhauer was of the same opinion. He says regarding the celestial beauty of music that music is ‘the metaphysical to everything physical in the world, and the thing-in-itself to every phenomenon; it expresses in a perfectly universal language, in a homogeneous material, more tones, and with the greatest determinateness and truth, the inner nature, thing-in-itself of the world’. Plato and Aristotle call music an ‘emotional import’, which is no other than the imitation or the idealization of reality. Kant sums up in his *Critique of Judgment* that music is the highest of arts, as it plays with sensation, i.e. emotion. Hence the history of music constitutes an artistic language of the creative annals of music which is an emotional aspect of Nature. In short, both aesthetic and philosophic conceptions play important roles in the domain of the history of music, though its stuff is made of the detailed chronological order of realistic events and tales of music of different ages.
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The history of music is closely associated with human society, and so it does not ignore the imaginative and creative faculty of man. It has rather a deep regard for the human society. Therefore the sociological factors which are behind the creation of music, can neither be neglected nor ignored, as it is really a product of the intelligence and creative faculty of the human society. Theodore M. Finney is of opinion that music emerged into the historic era as a social art and consequently its history cannot be written without mentioning its social uses. ‘The types of music may vary immensely, but the forms of its use, the purposes, for which any culture retains music as a part of its social heritage, remain almost the same’.
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In truth, music is closely connected with human life from the very beginning of creation. Every nation or society made music their means to progress and prosperity, in social, political, cultural, religious and spiritual spheres of life. In the remote days, all rites and ceremonies were connected with the elements of music. T. C. Berkeley is of opinion that in primitive cultures, especially songs of religious or magical character, outnumber secular class of songs such as lullabies, work songs, love songs, game and drinking songs, etc., for not only must the gods be served and placated as a part of religious ritual, but there are hundreds of other beings whose impact on everyday life, on farming, hunting, marriage, burial, war, and travel, for instance, must also be dealt with. In ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Sumer, Ur, Chaldia, and other Near East and Western countries, and ancient and greater India, music formed an integral and indespensible part of the life of the people. In Bengal too, men and women adopted music in all aspects of their everyday life, from childhood to old age. In folk-entertainments and ceremonies, boys and girls perform everything to the accompaniment of music and dance. Their different domestic and religious functions are, in truth, saturated with different types of music. The popular ballads and folk-songs are like narrative accounts of the spontaneous enjoyment of existence and of domestic events of the peoples of East and West Bengal. The peasant songs of the paddy-fields, the seasonal songs of the children, the descriptive ‘pictorial’ songs of the expert *Patuās*, the mystic songs of the *Sahajiyās* and *Bāuls*, the river-songs (*bhātiyālis*) of the boatmen, the magic chants of the snake-charmers, the marriage and hunting tunes of the *Sāntāls*, are the vividly realistic expressions of dynamic life of Bengal. The different musical instruments of folk-music, like *ekatāra*, *dotāra*, *sārindā*, *gopīyantra*, *vansī* or bamboo flute, *tiprā*, *mādala*, *dholaka*, *khamaka*, *ānandalaharī*, *khanjani*, *karatāla*, etc. bear testimony to the fact of the cultural taste and outlook of the peoples of Bengal. Besides, every country of India and outside India produced music of their own, which prove undoubtedly the dynamic aspect of the human society.
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The history of Indian music should, therefore, be an authentic record of development of music of the Indian people. It has extended itself from the antique pre-historic age to the present time. It changed and evolved as inevitable for the shifting phases or changing circumstances of the human society. Regarding the evolutionary nature of the art of music, Cecil Gray says, in his *The History of Music*: ‘In no art, science, or other departments of human activity, has the doctrine of evolution been so enthusiastically welcomed, so eagerly adopted, and so whole-heartedly endorsed, as in music. Indeed, the whole history of the art has almost invariably been conceived and represented as a single, orderly, and undeviating line of progress from the simplest and most primitive beginnings upto the complexities of modern practice; and the account of this gradual process of development, which is generally to be met with in musical histories, reads exactly like the account given in scientific text-books of the origin and evolution of life from the amoeba’. The gradual evolutionary process of Indian music is really a key to the whole range of musical production that flowed from the imaginative conception of the Indian people. Many old treatises and stone carvings are extant to record and commemorate the great art of India. These should be studied in right perspective and spirit to gather the data on music: their different types and patterns, their presentation and appreciation in different ages. That will stir our emotional depths and uplift the level of consciousness. We are still at the spade-work stage, and so we shall have to carry on the research patiently and indefatigably.
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Now, it may be asked what is the utility of the study of the development of music and what is the importance of maintaining a historical outlook in the practical field of music. It is a fact that man has an aspiring and progressing soul, and he always marches towards the ultimate goal of success, keeping his eyes fixed on the golden ideals of India. He requires a guide—a faithful guide, to lead him on the path of investigation into the forgotten chapters of music, to collect and preserve the materials, strewn here and there, for acquiring knowledge and making use of them. But the authors of the history of music should be unbiased and truth-seeking in their outlook. They should record the facts of development of music which should be properly interpreted to unfold their real purpose and intrinsic significance. We fully agree with Prof. Ogden while he says that ‘in the history of art as much as in any other branch of historical research, facts are meaningless until interpreted, and the function of the musical historian is, or should be, as different from that of the period-specialist as the function of the philosopher is from that of the chemists, physicists, biologists, anthropologists, and other scientists who provide him with his material. His concern, in short, is not with the discovery of facts, but with their interpretation, and the revelation of their intrinsic value and significance’. In the introduction to his history of music, Cecil Gray subscribes also to the same view. He says: ‘But while it is unquestionably a study of the greatest interest and profit to the musician to trace the gradual development of his artistic language, seeing how each period and each composer have played their respective parts in shaping, modifying, extending, and perfecting the instrument at his disposal, rendering it more plastic and more readily responsive to every subtle inflection of his thought, it does not constitute the history of an expressive art such as music any more than a philological study of language could pass for a history of literature, or a description of a man’s physiological development for a biography’. Some are of opinion that the history of music being a collection of raw materials of music, has no value in the field of practice. To this it can be said that practice is only an active or applied form of theory, and practice is always preceded by theory. In music, a historical outlook is necessary to help the artists and lovers of music to get a clear vision of the entire field of music of all ages. It does not only furnish us with all the raw materials of music of our own, but well equips us with the knowledge of music of the other countries also.
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Human taste and temperament, along with his outlook, change in different ages. They change owing to different geographical boundaries, climatic conditions, traditions, special tastes and social temperament as also for other reasons, and that is why Indian music has become more or less different from the music of the Western countries. Maintaining this difference, Alfred Einstein says in his *A Short History of Music*: ‘The musical culture of the Near East is quite different from what may be called in a particular sense ‘Oriental’, that of India and Arabia and Persia. In India, the normal seven-note octave is the basis of all melody, but it becomes transformed and overgrown by a whole host of intervals employed for the sake of ornament. The Arabic-Persian system is even further removed from ours; it is built up of small units of third of a note originally seventeen and later twenty-four to the octave and shows the influence of Greek musical theory’. But it should be noticed that though music of different coutries differ in their systems, method of presentation, patterns and notations, yet amidst all the diversities there is a unity of a common fundamental psychic content. In the antique Vedic age, the chanters and common people were content with purely sacred hymnal type of the *sāmans* or *sāmagānas*, which were possessed of different numbers of notes, registers, metres and literary compositions (*sāhitya*). In the beginning of the classical period (600 B.C.), *sāmans* were replaced by the *gāndharva* type of music, which evolved in connection with drama. The gāndharva music was a kind of stage-song or nātya-dharmī-gīti, possessed of svara, tāla, and pada. Similar changes took place in the music of the ancient Greeks. The historian Theodore M. Fenny says that music was an integral part of the drama, which bulked so large in the life of the Greek city-state. Music was a part, along with dancing, of the Greek religious ceremonies. The epics of Homer or the Odes of Pindar were sung rather than recited.
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The dawn of the Christian era brought with it a new awakening in the field of Indian music. In the second century A.D. the form and system of music were more systematic with a scientific outlook in the hand of Muni Bharata of the Nātyaśāstra. The genuine type of rāga came into being, with ten determining characteristics (daśa-lakṣaṇa) and psychological value, with the new names of jātirāga and grāmarāga. There came again a new change in the third-seventh century A.D., when Kohala, Yāṣṭika, Durgāśakti, Mataṅga and others began to systematize the aboriginal and regional (deśī) types of tunes in the high-way classical music. This can be said to be an age of reformation, as the stereotyped puritanism was replaced by liberalism. The non-Aryan tunes gradually got into the Aryan stock and the result was that the volume and vital force of Indian music grew more deep and sensitive. Some of the foreign tunes were absorbed into the Aryan music. Hundreds and thousands of rāgas evolved with their new and novel names and forms. The ancient grāmas (scales) were gradually replaced by the mūrcchanās (series of upward and downward notes). Variations were found in the number of notes, as some 'displaced' (komala) notes appeared by the side of the sharp ones. This had also happened to the Western music, during the transition from Greek to Christian. The changes took place in the period of about six hundred years, from the time of Aristoxemus until Christianity became the Roman state religion early in the fourth century A.D. The Ptolemic system, having the Dorian scale as a model, was changed by divers elements from Palestine, Greece, Rome, and Alexandria. The Georgian chant, plain song, plain chant, psalm-singing, Ambrosian metrical hymns, etc. were gradually changed in the beginning of the age of polyphony in 850-1050 A.D. It may be known as a revolutionary action against the old type of music, in the domain of the Western music.
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From the historical accounts, placed by Curts Sachs in his *The Rise of Music in the Ancient World* we know that music underwent many changes even before the Christian era. He says that the oldest records of organized and systamatized music were Sumerian and Egyptian of 3000 B.C.² That musical life was also changed in the days of David Solomon in 1000 B.C. and many foreign instruments appeared all on a sudden, just as they had appeared in Egypt after 1500 B.C. and these were : harps, zithers, oboes, cymbals, sistra,³ etc. Again in the eighteenth century B.C. when Egypt had conquered the southwest of Asia, the subjugated kings had sent tributes of dancing and singing girls with their strange instruments and consequently Egyptian music underwent again some decisive change, and nearly all the ancient instruments were discarded. This shows that before the beginning of the age of polyphony in 850-1050 A.D. music of the Western world underwent several changes.
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² 'The oldest records of organized and systematized music are Sumerian and Egyptian. Sumerian texts,
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³ Ibid, p. 59.
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In the middle of the eighteenth century A.D. there came a radical change upon the forms and groupings of the notes (*vargīkaraṇa*), of the *rāgas* in Indian music. The total bases (*svarasthāna*), in relation to the microtones (*śruti*), were also altered for some unknown cause. The groupings of upward and downward notes or *mūrcchanās*, as generators or determining factors
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written in the third millenium B.C. frequently speak of ecclesiastic music ; in the great temple of Ningiru at Lagash, a special officer was responsible for the choir, and another for the training of several classes of singers and players, both male and female. The guilds of temple singers at least became a learned community***.'—vide *The Rise of Music in the Ancient World* (1944), pp. 58-59.
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of the rāgas, had already appeared with a new nomenclature of mela or thāta or melakartā, in the fifteenth-sixteenth century A.D. The visual pictures (rāgamūrti), with their poetical descriptions and contemplative compositions (dhyāna-mantra), were already introduced, for better appreciation and intuitive perception of the rāgas, from the fifteenth-sixteenth century. But gradually that psychological motive was changed, for want of aesthetic sense and proper historical outlook.
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There came also a renaissance, in the form of radical change during the period 1585-1610, in the domain of Western music. By the year 1600 A.D. the renaissance had reached and passed its high pitch. Theodore M. Finney reminds us : ‘The years between 1585 and 1610 saw the unfolding of one of the most important episodes in the whole of history of music, because it furnished modern musical art with materials and methods hereto lacking’.
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But that was not exactly the same case with Indian music. Because, though the Indian method of classification of the rāgas was changed from the rāga-rāginī-putra-vargīkaraṇa into janya-janaka or genus-species (cause-effect) method, and most of the rāgas appeared with their new tonal forms, yet their real motive and spirit-behind did not entirely change. Again, from the study of the history of India it is found that Indian music has a tradition behind it and that tradition is no other than the preservation of the genuine culture and method of practice (*gharānā*) of music, which are handed down from generation to generation or from the teacher to the student (*guru-śiṣya-sampradāya*).
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Many are of opinion that our present system of North Indian music is much indebted to the Muhammadan period, because it produced many creative exponents, like Baiju Bāoran, Nāyaka Gopāla, Āmir Khusrau, Rājāh Mān, Mīrā Bāi, Bābā Rāmdāsa, Surdāsa, Swāmī Haridāsa Goswāmī, Miān Tānsen, and his worthy predecessors. Captain Day is of opinion that the most flourishing age of Indian music was the period of the native princes, a little before the Muhammadan conquest. With the advent of the Muhammadans its decline commenced. Indeed it is wonderful that it survived at all. Such is also the decision of Capt. Willards, when he says that with the progress of the theory of music arrested, its decline was speedy, although the practice, which contributed to the entertainment of the princes and nobles, continued until the time of Mohammed Shāh of Delhi, after whose reign, history of music is pregnant with facts replete with dismal scenes. But all these opinions should be reviewed with care and justice.
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The Gwalior School, founded by Rājāh Mān Tunwār, really revived the culture of the *dhruvapada* type of *nibaddha prabandha* music, that was current even before the time of Śāraṅgadeva (early thirteenth century A.D.) of the *Saṅgīta-* Ratnākara. It reached its climax during the reign of Emperor Akbar (1542-1605 A.D.). The kāwāl and kheyāl types of music had already got their foothold in the soil of India. Many of the noted Muhammadan and Hindu Ustāds were patronized by the Nawābs and Hindu chiefs. But during the time of Shāh Ālam II (eighteenth century A.D.), the last titular Moghul Emperor of Delhi, the glorious musical tradition of the Delhi Sultanate came to an end, and all the Muslim and Hindu Ustāds of Delhi, Agra and adjacent places were dispersed all over Northern India. The noted musicians, who belonged mostly to the Tānsen school, began to seek refuge in different Durbārs of Muslim Nawābs and Hindu kings and Zemindars of Rajputana, Oudh, Betiya, Rewa, Gwalior, Bengal and other places. This incident was in a sense a blessing for India, as it helped the propagation of classical music outside the boundaries of Delhi and Agra. At present classical type of both Northern and Southern schools of music are cultured widely in their true perspectives in Indian and Muslim countries. The services of the All India Radio undoubtedly deserve credit for the culture of music. The folk and other regional music have already occupied unique positions and got appreciation in different countries of India and Pakistan. The future of Indian music is more brilliant and hopeful, and it will surely bring a permanent solace of peace and love not only to the people of India, but also to other nations of the world. The development and novel creations of the types and patterns of music are the signs of hope and life, and they will supply fresh materials for the new annals of history of Indian music.
Cites (2)
- Nāṭyaśāstra — Bharata, Sanskrit
- Sāmagāna — Sanskrit