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Bharata'S Experiment With The T W O Vfnas
Bharata'S Experiment With The T W O Vfnas
E VER since the West began to take an interest in the music of India, the
great affinity of the Indian system with that of Greece has been one of
the first characteristics to attract notice. As early as 1782 Sir IT7illiam Jones
remarked on it a t length in what is perhaps the first detailed article on the
subject written in any European language, entitled ' On the musical modes
of the Hindus '. Originally this was published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
but subsequently it was incorporated in a delightful collection published by
Sourendro Mohun Tagore called Hindu nausic ,from, various authors.1
It would take another century, however, before the actual Indian texts
on the theory of music became available and it mas only through Joany Grosset's
translation of the 28th chapter of the Bi~uratanE[yadEsfrain 1880 (in his Con-
tribution ci l ' d t d e de la musique indienne) that scholars became conversant
with the term pranaG?za-iruti as the name of the standard microtonal interval
from which the size of the different tonal intervals within the octave could be
derived. Indian music recognizes two, three, and four-iruti tones which roughly
correspond with our semi, minor, and major tones.
As it was quite clear, even after the first attempt to translate Bharata's
extremely concise text, that this pramEtza-druti was an interval equal to the
difference between a major and a minor tone, investigators accustomed to the
mathematical approach of the Greeks to their music, a t once applied Greek
standards to determine the measurement of the standard iruti (comma of
Didymus) and from those premises began detailed calculations as to the exact
measurement of the 22 s'rutis which find a place within the compass of the
Indian octave. According to their calculations the Indian k u t i s are unequal
and of three different kinds, which differ considerably from one another (e.g.
Fox Strangways : 22, 70, and 90 cents, p. 112).
When we turn to the hTfityad6stra itself, however, we see that there is no
attempt a t mathematical definition, but that the text takes the ear as its sole
judge. This leaves room for fluctuations which would be indefensible in a
mathematical approach. As a matter of fact, as we shall see, the only k u t i
which can be directly demonstrated is this ' standard ', the prarnE?~a-iruti.
The size of the others is aural guesswork.
In any other musical culture such a state of affairs would have been an
absurdity, but in India, where correct intonation and its theoretical analysis
had been perfected through the centuries in connexion with the liturgical use
of the voice, fluctuations of the intervals from one time to another may actually
Sourindro Mohun Tagore (comp.), Hindu music from various authors, Part I , Calcutta, Babu
Punchanun blukerjea, 18'75 (for private circulation only).
A. H. Fox Strangways, Music of Hindostun, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1914.
62 A . A . BAKE
have been much less considerable than would have been the case in a culture
where correct intonation was not supposed to uphold the order of the Universe
as in the Vedic sacrifices. (This does not refer to any established absolute
pitch but to the correctness of the different intervals in relation to any tone
chosen as a starting point.)
There is no evidence of the ancient Indian musicians arriving- a t the perfect
octave, fifth, or fourth by division of strings. Even nowadays one finds musicians
using their ears rather than their eyes, and we have an independent account
of one of Sir TtTilliamJones' collaborators, viz. Francis Fowke, ' On the vinii
or Indian lyre ' (reprinted in the same collection, pp. 193 ff.) in which he
reports that a famous Indian virjii player of his days, faced with the necessity
of fixing the frets on a new vina (they are stuck on with a beeswax compound)
did so by ear, not by measurement.
The author subsequently brings out a point which is closely connected with
this exclusively aural attitude, namely the ornamentation of each note. One
hits it above or below in a kind of appoggiatura, and finally lands on the
intended pitch which, with the low tension of the strings of the Indian instru-
ments, can be achieved by pulling or pushing them slightly sideways, if the
fret should prove not to have been put exactly in the right place. The voice
can and does follow the same method, but the ear tells unfailingly and accurately
whether the conclusion of the ornament is dead-right or not and woe to the
singer or player who then betrays the correct intonation. Actually, as the
system developed, these appoggiaturas and flourishes became rigorously
prescribed, but their origin may are11 have been the vagaries of the human
voice, however beautiful and effective their fully developed form.
There seems to have been n'o basic change in attitude in this respect during
the twenty centuries between Bharata's days (probably the second century
B.c.) when-as we shall see-the drutis were derived from the pranaana-kuti
by ear only, and the eighteenth century, or our own day (except where Western
or other foreign methods of tuning have got the upper hand).
Although Bharata's system is based on instruments and uses the ascending
scale with the fifth as its most prominent interval, he himself says that his
system derives from the Vedas, which implies a primarily vocal impulse with
a descending scale and the prominence of the fourth. Both the one-time
paramount position of the fourth and the descending scale are still quite
plainly discernible beneath the instrumental stratum, but the former is not
especially relevant in the present connexion. It is the latter which is important
here, with regard to the scales, as we find the astonishing state of affairs that
in an ascending scale the name of the note is placed on the last of its component
drutis. The initial tone of the scale, called sa, is a major tone, a four-druti
interval. These four irutis of sa, however, do not lie between sa and the next
higher tone, the ri, but between sa and the next lower one, the ni. The con-
sequence is that, if one tunes the first open string t o sa-as is the custom-one
is unable to demonstrate the fact that sa is a major tone until one has
completed the upward scale and has played the interval ni-sa. As one cannot
play a lower note on an open string, one has, when starting from the open
sa-string, to play the interval s a r i (a minor tone). The three kutis of ri lie
below the so-called nima-druti of that note, which is the seventh from the
initial iruti of sa. So it goes with ga, a two-iruti tone (semitone), the major
tone ma (four irutis), the major tone pa (four irutis) the minor tone dha
(three drutis), and the semitone ~ z (two
i irutis).
Schematically the Indian octave in its standard form thus looks as follows :
Froni the fact that this sa-griima is used as the standard scale, it follows that
other scales in use had to be expressed in terms of the sa-griieza as there were
no other recognized means of comparison. There are indications that many of
the later modal scales were in existence in an embryonic form at an early date,
but only one of them was chosen to occupy a position nearly as important as
that of the sa-grEma, a scale which, like the sa-griima, employed a major
tone leading to the ' tonic ' but stressed an initial major instead of a minor
third. Its siuti sequence is 4.3.4.2.4.3.2. When played like the sa-griinza
ascending from the open first string, it begins with a minor and a major tone
instead of with a minor and a semitone as was the case with the sa-griima.
When developed into a mode this basic scale with its major leading tone and its
major third comes very close to our G mode.
There is no reason to doubt that in practice all the embryonic modes of
those days were indeed played from the same note as ' tonic ', exactly as is
done nowadays when several riigas (fully perfected modal structures) are
played in succession. As in all true modal music it is the difference in internal
relationship, not the difference in pitch, which distinguishes one riiga from
another and which, in Bharata's days, marked the second griima off from
the first.
The name of that second griima, namely ma-grcrrm, was devised only when
the need was felt to express it in terms of the sa-grEma. The scale as such
must have had an independent existence long before this purely theoretical
name was devised. How it came to be called by that name is quite clear.
VThen one starts to measure the sequence 4.3.4.2.4.3.2. against the standard
4.3.2.4.4.3.2 (sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni), one finds that by putting its initial
major tone against the four irutis of the ma of the sa-griima, one needs only
a change of one s'ruti to make the two fit exactly, viz. the shift of the niima-
Sruti of pa from the seventeenth to the sixteenth huti thereby reducing pa
to the size of a minor tone, automatically increasing the size of dha to that
of a major tone.
The two griimas put against one another will thus look as follows :
Srutis: 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 1 9 2 0 2 1 22 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
sa-grtirna : m dh n s I g
ma-grinla : m P dP dh n g
Bharata continues : 'Doing exactly the same lowering again, the dha
and the ri of the second vin5 will coincide with the pa and the sa of the first
as that has a greater number of Brutis '.2
Srutis: 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1st v i n i : m P dh n s r 6 m
2nd v i n i : m P dh n s r 6 m
' By doing this same thing again the pa, the ma, and the sa of the second
vin5 now coincide with the ma, the ga, and the ni of the first, as that now has
four kutis more. Thus, by this method of s'ruti demonstration it can be per-
ceived how indeed the two grimas have 22 s'rutis each '.3