A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s5: The Sāmveda-Saṃhitā
A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s5
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The Sāmveda-Saṃhitā
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Of the many Saṃhitās of the Sāmaveda which are said to have existed once—the Purāṇas even speak of a thousand Saṃhitās—,² only three have come down to us.³ The best known of these, the Sāmaveda-Saṃhitā of the Kauthumas,⁴ consists of two parts, the Ārcika or the "verse-collection" and the Uttarārcika, the "second verse-collection." Both parts consist of verses, which nearly all recur in the Ṛgveda. Of the 1810—or, if we subtract the repetitions, 1549—verses, which are contained in the two parts together, all but 75 are also found in the Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā and, mostly in Books VIII and IX of the latter. Most of these verses are composed in Gāyatrī metre or in Pragātha stanzas which are made up of Gāyatrī and Jagatī lines, and doubtless the stanzas and songs composed in these metres were from the beginning intended for singing.¹ The seventy-five verses which do not occur in the Ṛgveda, are partly found in other Saṃhitās, partly in various works on ritual; some may be taken from a recension unknown to us, but some are only pieced together out of sundry verses of the Ṛgveda without any proper meaning. Some of the verses of the Ṛgveda met with in the Sāmaveda offer divergent readings, and it has been believed that a more ancient text might be recognized in them. But Theodor Aufrecht,² has already shown that the divergent readings of the Sāmaveda are due only to arbitrary, intentional or accidental alterations—alterations such as also occur elsewhere where words are prepared for music. For in the Sāmaveda, in the Ārcika as well as in the Uttarārcika, the text is only a means to an end. The essential element is always the melody, and the purpose of *both* parts is that of teaching the melodies. The scholar, who wished to be trained as an udgātar-priest in the schools of the Sāmaveda, had first to learn the melodies: this was done with the aid of the Ārcika; then only could he memorize the stotras as they were sung at the sacrifice, for which purpose the Uttarārcika served.
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² Later authors also speak of a thousand schools of the Sāmaveda. Cf. R. *Simon*, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der vedischen Schulen (Kiel 1889), pp. 27, 30 f.
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³ The Saṃhitā of the Rāṇāyanīyas has been edited and translated by J. *Stevenson*, London, 1842; that of the Kauthumas by Th. *Benfey*, Leipzig, 1848, and by Satya-vrata Sāmaśramin, Bibl. Ind., 1871 ff. The Jaiminīya-Saṃhitā has been edited by W. *Caland* (Indische Forschungen, 2, Breslau 1907).
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⁴ About this and the other two Saṃhitās see Caland, l.c., Introduction. See also *Oldenberg*, GGA, 1908, 711 ff.
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¹ This is proved by the very names "Gāyatrī" and "Pragātha," which are derived from the verb "*gā*" (resp. *pragā*) "to sing." See H. Oldenberg, ZDMG, 38, 1884, 439 ff., 464 ff.
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² In the preface to his edition of the hymns of the Ṛgveda (2nd ed., Bonn 1877) II, pp. xxxviii ff. See also J. Brune, Zur Textkritik der dem Samaveda mit dem achten Maṇḍala des Ṛgveda gemeinsamen Stellen, Diss, Kiel, 1909, who comes to the same conclusion as Aufrecht, l.c.. and Oldenberg, Hymnen des Rigveda I, pp. 289 f.
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The first part of our Sāmaveda-Saṃhitā, the Ārcika, consists of five hundred and eighty-five single stanzas (ṛc) to which the various melodies (sāman) belong, which were used at the sacrifice. The word *sāman*, although frequently used for the designation of the text which had been either made or destined for singing, means originally only "tune" or "melody." As we say that a verse is sung "to a certain tune," thus the Indians say the reverse: This or that melody (sāman) is "sung upon a particular stanza." The Vedic theologians, however, conceive the relationship of melody and stanza in such a way that they say, the melody has *originated* out of the stanza. The stanza (ṛc) is therefore called the Yoni, *i.e.* "the womb," out of which the melody came forth. And although naturally a stanza can be sung to various melodies, and one melody can be used for different stanzas, yet there are certain stanzas, which as a rule, may be considered as the texts—the "yonis," as the Indian technical term goes—for certain melodies. The Ārcika, then, is nothing but a collection of five hundred and eighty-five "yonis" or single stanzas, which are sung to about double the number of different tunes.¹ It may be compared to a song-book, in which only the text of the *first stanza* of each song is given as an aid to the recollection of the tune.
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¹ See Oldenberg, GGA, 1908, 712 ff.
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The Uttarārcika, the second part of the Sāmaveda-Saṃhitā, consists of four hundred chants, mostly of three stanzas each,² out of which the stotras which are sung at the chief sacrifices are formed. While in the Ārcika the stanzas are arranged partly according to the metre, partly according to the gods to which they are addressed (in the sequence: Agni, Indra, Soma), the chants in the Uttarārcika are arranged according to the order of the principal sacrifices.¹ A stotra then, consists of several, usually three stanzas, which are all sung to the same tune, namely to one of the tunes which the Ārcika teaches. We may compare the Uttarārcika to a song-book in which the complete text of the songs is given, while it is presumed that the melodies are already known. It is usually assumed that the Uttarārcika is of later origin than the Ārcika.² In favour of this assumption is the fact that the Ārcika contains many "yonis," therefore also many melodies, which do not occur at all in the chants of the Uttarārcika, and that the Uttarārcika also contains some songs for which the Ārcika teaches no melody. On the other hand, however, the Uttarārcika is an essential completion of the Ārcika: the latter is as it were, the first, the former the second course in the instruction of the udgātar.
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² 287 songs consist of 3 verses each, 66 of 2 each, 13 of one verse, 10 of 6 each, 9 of four each, 4 of 5 each, 3 of 9 each, the same number of 10 each, 2 of 7 each, and the same number of 12 each, and one song consists of 8 verses.
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¹ On the stotras of the Sāmaveda and their use at the sacrifice, see A. *Hillebrandt*, Rituallitteratur, "Grundriss," III, 2, pp. 99 ff.
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² *Caland* (De wording van den Sāmaveda, Amsterdam (Akad.), 1907; Die Jaiminīya-Saṃhitā, pp. 4 f. and WZKM, 22, 1908, 436 ff.) endeavours to prove that the Uttarārcika is older. *Oldenberg*, GGA, 1908, 713, 722, disputes this on good grounds. For the question of the origin of the Sāmaveda, see *Caland*, Eene unbekende Recencie van den Sāmaveda, Amsterdam (Akad.), 1905.
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Both parts of the Saṃhitā give us only the texts as they are *spoken*. The *melodies* themselves, in any case in the earliest times, were taught by oral, and probably also instrumental rendering. Of later origin are the so-called Gānas or "song-books" proper (from gā "to sing"), which designate the melodies by means of musical notes, and in which the texts are drawn up in the form which they take in singing, *i.e.* with all the extensions of syllables, repetitions and interpolations of syllables and even of whole words—the so-called "stobhas," as hoyi, hūva, hōi, and so on, which are partly not unlike our huzzas and other shouts of joy. The oldest notation is probably that by means of syllables, as ta, co, ṇa, etc. More frequent, however, is the designation of the seven notes by means of the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, with which the F, E, D, C, B, A, G, of our scale correspond. When singing, the priests emphasize these various notes by means of movements of the hands and the fingers.¹ There are, attached to the Ārcika, a Grāmageyagāna ("book of songs to be sung in the village" and an Araṇyagāna ("book of forest songs"). In the latter those melodies were collected, which were considered as dangerous (taboo), and therefore had to be learnt in the forest, not in the village.² There are also two other books of songs, the Ūhagāna and the Ūhyagāna. These were composed for the purpose of giving the Sāmans in the order in which they were employed at the ritual, the Ūhagāna being connected with the Grāmageyagāna, the Ūhyagāna with the Āraṇyagāna.³
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¹ More details about this the most ancient music of the Indians can be found in A. C. Burnell, The Ārsheya Brāhmaṇa ...... of the Sāma Veda (Mangalore 1876), Introd., pp. xxviii, xli-xlviii.
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² See W. Caland, Die Jaiminīya-Saṁhitā, p. 10; H. Oldenberg, GGA, 1908, pp. 722 f.
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³ See Caland, Die Jaiminīya-Saṁhitā, pp. 2 ff
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The number of known melodies must have been a very large one,⁴ and already at a very early period every melody had a special name. Not only are they often mentioned by these names in the ritual-books, but various symbolical meanings are also ascribed to them, and they play no insignificant part in the symbolism and mysticism of the Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas and Upaniṣads, especially a few of them, such as the two melodies "Bṛhat" and "Rathantara," which already appear in the Ṛgveda. The priests and theologians certainly did not invent all these melodies themselves. The oldest of them were presumably popular melodies, to which in very early times semi-religious songs were sung at solstice celebrations and other national festivals, and yet others may date back as far as that noisy music with which pre-brahmanical wizard-priests not unlike the magicians, shamans and medicine-men of the primitive peoples—accompanied their wild songs and rites.¹ Traces of this popular origin of the sāman-melodies are seen already in the above-mentioned stobhas or shouts of joy, and especially in the fact that the melodies of the Sāmaveda were looked upon as possessing magic power even as late as in brahmanical times.² There is a ritual-book belonging to the Sāmaveda, called Sāmavidhāna-Brāhmaṇa, the second part of which is a regular handbook of magic, in which the employment of various Sāmans for magic purposes is taught. We may also see a survival of the connection of the Sāman-melodies with the pre-brahmanical popular belief and magic, in the fact that the brahmanical law-books teach that the recitation of the Ṛgveda and the Yajurveda must be interrupted as soon as the sound of a sāman is heard. Especially distinct is the rule in Āpastamba's law book,³ where the barking of dogs, the braying of donkeys, the howling of wolves and jackals, the hooting of the owl, the sound of musical instruments, weeping, *and the tone of sāmans* are enumerated as sounds at which the Veda-study must be interrupted.
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⁴ A later author gives the number of Sāmans as 8,000! (R. Simon, *loc. cit.*, p. 31.)
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¹ See A. *Hillebrandt*, Die Sonnwendfeste in Alt-Indien (Sep. aus der Festschrift für Konrad Hofmann), Erlangen 1889, pp. 22 ff. 34 ff., M. *Bloomfield*, The god Indra and the Sāma-veda, in *WZKM*, 17, 1903, pp. 156 ff.
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² The primary meaning of Sāman is probably "propitiatory song," "a means for appeasing gods and demons." The word sāman also occurs in the sense of "mildness, soothing words." In the older literature, when the Sāmaveda is quoted, it is usually with the words; "The Chandogas say." Chandoga means "Chandas-singer," and *chandas* combines in itself the meanings "magic song," "sacred text" and "metre." The fundamental meaning of the word must be something like "rhythmical speech"; it might be connected with the root *chand* "to please, to satisfy, or to cause to please," (*cf.* chanda, "pleasing, alluring, inviting").
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³ 1, 3, 10, 19.
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Thus, then, the Sāmaveda-Saṃhitā is not without value for the history of Indian sacrifice and magic, and the gānas attached to it are certainly very important for the history of Indian music,¹ even though as yet in no way exploited for this purpose. As a literary production, however, this Saṃhitā is practically worthless for us.
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¹ *Oldenberg* concludes his investigations of the Sāmaveda (GGA, 1908, 734) with the remark that these literary investigations "after all only touch upon the problems lying on the surface of the Sāmaveda"; for, in order to penetrate to greater depths, the philologist would have to be a student of the history of music as well. Since then we have gained an idea of the present-day mode of reciting the Sāmans in E. *Felber* (Die indische Musik der vedischen und der klassischen Zeit, mit Texten und Uebersetzungen von B. Geiger, SWA, 1912), based on the records of the Phonogramm-Archiv of the Vienna Academy. It is still doubtful, however, whether this necessarily teaches us how the ancient Udgātars sang 3,000 years ago. See also R. *Simon*, Die Notationen der vedischen Lieder-bücher (WZKM, 27, 1913, 305 ff.).
Linked texts (1)
- Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit