The Music of India/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCALE
The history of the Indian scale is really a series of close inferences; for the materials do not exist for definite and incontrovertible conclusions. This chapter aims at giving a general view of the development of the scale, based on scattered data gathered together in a fairly extensive reading of the various works which have appeared in India and elsewhere on the subject. It is not always possible to give references or to adduce the evidence for the conclusions arrived at, but the more curious reader should turn to one of the books mentioned in the Bibliography.
The principal data available for this study consist of brief references in ancient Indian literature, the tradition of the Saman chant, the theory of the Grama scales and the musical facts implied in the various ragas used in the past or current to-day.
The scale of the Aryan peoples is based on the tetrachord (chatuhsvara). The tetrachord is the fourth with its intervening notes. This may give the following tetrachords in the Indian scale : SRGM, SrGM, SrgM, and so on.1[1]
The process whereby the tetrachord was first produced depends upon certain universal musical facts. The musical ear in search of a note does two things. It creeps up or down, one step at a time; and it makes a bold plunge for the nearest consonant note (samvadi) from the note which has been sounded (vadi). The voice has a tendency to ascend by leaps and to descend by steps. Music recognizes the following consonant intervals : the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave. In making a leap to the next consonant note, the choice really lies between the third and the fourth, as the fifth is too far away. The fourth is the more audible and many nations have chosen this in preference to the third. The fourth then becomes the upward limit of the tetrachord. When it comes to creeping up or down by what may be called 'next-door' notes, the chosen interval may be one of many or quite undefined. Most commonly the major tone or the semitone were the intervals chosen, though intervals of less than a semitone were also taken in India, as we shall see from the Saman chant and from such a raga as Todi (northern).
Consonance is called Samvaditva in India. Bharata divides svaras into four kinds, and this has remained the accepted division ever since. First there is the vadi, or sounding note, or sonant. Then the samvadi, the note consonant with the vadi. Svaras between which there is an interval of nine or thirteen srutis are samvadl with each other. Svaras at an interval of two srutis from the vadi are called vivadi, or 'dissonant' in relation to it. The others are called anuvadi, or 'assonant', i.e. neutral in relation to the vadi.
The sruti or microtonal interval is a division of the semitone, but not necessarily an equal division. This division of the semitone is found also in ancient Greek music. It is an interesting fact that we find in Greek music the counterpart of many things in Indian music, and we have a good deal of information about the development of Greek music; so we may look to get help from that source in our study of Indian music. The ancient Greek scale divided the octave into twenty-four small intervals, while the traditional Indian practice is to recognize twenty-two in the octave. Rao Sahib Abraham Pandita, a south Indian musical scholar who has made a very close study of ancient Dravidian music, believes that the ancient Tamil books of the second and third century of our era support the view that in South India the octave was also divided into twenty-four equal intervals. Further investigation is being carried out in this matter, though, as has been already mentioned, a Tamil lexicon of the third or fourth century only gives twenty-two matras for the octave, i.e. twenty-two srutis. The sruti is really a kind of half-way house to the semitone. More than two srutis are not usually sung in succession, though there are of course people who will sing the whole twenty-two of them in succession. Still that is acoustics and not music. So also the tetrachord might theoretically consist of as many notes as there are srutis within the fourth, but practically it is difficult to sing or play more than four notes.
The Saman chant is the earliest example of the Indian tetrachord which has remained until our time. In this the tetrachord is conceived of as a downward series of notes from the highest. Most of the early Indian modes, called Murchhanas, were also conceived as extending downwards. The Greeks too thought of the tetrachord in the same way.
The Saman chant pivoted on two notes called the udatta — 'raised' — the higher one, and the anudatta — 'not raised', the lower one. In course of time the interval between these was established as a fourth. Then, later, the notes of this tetrachord received distinct names. The highest was prathama — 'first' — then dvitiya, tritiya, chaturtha, down the scale. These names are found first in the Rikpratisakhya (c. 400 B.C.). Later, a note called svarita is also mentioned, and this seems to be a graced udatta, thus indicating a note higher than the prathama. Later still we find this note definitely established and called krnshta — 'high' {Taittiriya-pratisakhya c. A.D. 400). About the same time two other notes lower than the chaturtha appear. These are called mandra — 'low', and atisvarya — 'extremity'. This last was an extra note and was usually sung only in the cadence of the Saman chant. So we find the whole series of the seven notes, or svaras as they were called, of the octave.
We must, however, remember that there is a South Indian tradition that the raga Abhogi (S R g M D) represents the ancient Saman chant. This is pentatonic, and there can be little doubt that the Saman scale was pentatonic before it became heptatonic. We find that the pentatonic was the more primitive scale among all peoples.
It is the custom of Saman singers to-day to call the higher tetrachord uchcha — 'high', and the lower nicha — 'low'; but it seems probable that, while these terms may have originally only referred to a difference of position, later they came to mean a different style of singing. Saman singers to-day seem to sing chromatically in the uchcha notes and diatonically in the nicha notes.
'The voice is prior to the instrument. This is prima facie so probable that it can hardly be said to need proof. It is implied in the statement of Aristoxenus, that the natural laws of harmony cannot be deduced from instruments.' At any rate it is true that songs precede scales. It is impossible to think that a mother waited to sing a lullaby until a scale had been worked out in which to sing it. When people sing simple songs, they often know nothing about the intervals used in them, but they sing them all the same. We cannot say how people began to find them out. In out-of-the-way places singers use very few notes. Children use fewer than adults, country people fewer than townspeople, and flat-land dwellers fewer than mountaineers. It was a long time before the fifth was used and longer still before the octave came into use. The songs of primitive people were made up of a few musical intervals. Then, as instruments were joined to the voice, they got accustomed to the third, the minor tone and the semitone. Then they began to sing diatonic series such as S R G M, or S r G M, and so on. Or they might proceed by a leap of two semitones, and then make the fourth, as in S r g M ; or else the leap might come after the first semitone, as in S r G M. Then they might find a third way by using intervals of less than a semitone, as in S r g M. So the interval of the fourth became filled up partly by experiment and partly by theory.
The typical ancient Indian instruments were the drum (dundubhi), the flute (murali), and the vina. The vina was used mainly in accompaniment, and the flute by itself, as when Krishna charmed the gopis of Brindaban. As all music was largely improvization, the accompaniment could not be a strict following of the singer, though it is wonderful to see the way singer and player will keep close to one another all the time, even though neither has any piece of written music before him. Then also the instrument helped to register the notes and to define them. It was through the instrument that the importance of the major third, which has been called the Magna Carta of music, was realized. Further, through the instrument, the musician began to base his melody on the lower notes, as they are the louder and clearer on the instrument; whereas, when there was no instrument, he started from the higher notes and came downwards. It was also noted that the third obtained from the voice is slightly sharper than the third obtained from an instrument., eight sriitis as against seven srutis. Bharata calls this difference of one sruti a pramana sruti, — 'indicative interval', because all the other intervals can be deduced from it, a fact which the Greeks also noted. So by the co-operation of voice and instrument the scale is worked out ; and in one sense the instrument may be called 'the originator of the scale,' because it determines it.
It must, however, be remembered that a song or piece played on an instrument is a live thing and does not submit to mathematical precision. There is, it is true, only one form for each scale, and every singer and musician tries to get it right, though no one invariably manages to do so. The very fact of putting passion [rasa) into music means that a particular note will be taken rather sharper at one time than at another. The law is there of course to be obeyed as perfectly as possible. In South India the use of the term sruti for such a possible sharpening or flattening of particular notes recognizes the truth of this variability. Music after all is an art and not a mere mechanism. Nobody can sing like a machine, even if he tries, any more than a man can walk in a perfectly straight line or breathe as the clock ticks.
The correlation of the notes of the Saman chant with the notes of the secular or instrumental scale is another step in the process of this interrelationship of voice and instrument. We find evidence of this correlation as early as the Ṛikprātiśākhya in the statement that 'the yama (liturgical scale) is the svara (instrumental).' As we have seen, the Sāman scale was conceived as a downward series and the instrumental scale as an upward series. The names used for the instrumental scale in the ancient books are those in use to-day all over India. The clue to the interrelation of the two scales is found in the identification of prathama and gāndhāra. With this we get the two scales as follows, each forming a saptaka or 'cluster of seven.'
Sāman. Secular.
Nishādha Dhaivata Pañchama Krushta ... ... ... Madhyama Prathama ... ... ... Gāndhāra Dvitīya ... ... ... Ṛishabha Tritīya ... ... ... Shaḍja Chaturtha ... ... ... (Nishādha) Mandra ... ... ... (Dhaivata) Atisvarya ... ... ... (Pañchama)
The external relations of India in the early centuries of the Christian era are too obscure at present for us to be able to say whether the musical systems of Greece, Arabia and Persia have any definite relationship with that of India. It is certain that there was considerable intercommunication and commercial intercourse between India and each of these countries; and recent researches have shown the extent of Persian influence in India during the Maurya Empire (c. 300 b.c.) The musical systems of these countries show so much resemblance in certain essential features that it seems clear there must have been some connexion between them. The likeness is much closer than it is with the music of Japan or China. It is well known that GāndhĹra (the district of Kandahār) was in those early days a centre of Greco-Indian culture, as the Gāndhāran sculptures testify, and Taxila (near Rawalpindi) was the seat of a very important Buddhist university. Though Buddhism has never been associated with a special development of Page:The Music of India.djvu/47 Page:The Music of India.djvu/48 Page:The Music of India.djvu/49 Page:The Music of India.djvu/50 Page:The Music of India.djvu/51 Page:The Music of India.djvu/52 Sa-grāma. It is very probable that the Ga-grāma was anterior to the Sa-grāma, though treatises make out the Sa-grāma to have been the original one. One is led to this idea because there is seen to be far closer correspondence between the Ga-grāma and the Sāman scale than between that and the Sa-grāma; and also because, if the Ga-grāma was really developed from the other two, it is difficult to understand why it should have perished and the other two remained. Then, further, southern music sticks closer to the ancient model than northern music, which has been largely modified by contact with that of Persia and Arabia. In view of this suggestion it may be of interest to place down the śruti values of these two śuddha scales, so that they may be compared with the two grāmas.
| Bilāval | ||||||||||||||
| Sa | Ri | Ga | Ma | Pa | Dha | Ni | Sa | |||||||
| 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 2 | ||||||||
| Kanakāngī | ||||||||||||||
| Sa | Ri | Ga | Ma | Pa | Dha | Ni | Sa | |||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ||||||||
It is easy to see how the latter could be developed from the Ga-grāma. The fourth of the Ga-grāma as given above has ten śrutis, which would naturally be reduced to nine so as to bring it into tune. Then the Pa must be kept in tune so as to be played on the open string of the vīṇā, and so it must be a fifth of thirteen śrutis from Sa. The other changes are very slight and do not alter the character of the scale. So it is possible that we see to-day the ancient grāmas in the two śuddha scales of India. Thus the scale in India is the result of a regular and scientific development of both vocal and instrumental music.
The scale as it exists to-day is one with great possibilities in regard to musical formations, and it has a very wide range in the microtonal variations included in it. The Indian musician is always trying to ornament his notes, because grace plays in the Indian system the part of harmony in the European. These ornaments are made by slight and indefinite variations, which may be quite different from what wo have called the śrutis, which are defined microtonal intervals used to bring notes into tune with one another. It may not be generally known that European singers and violin players aim at such definite microtonal differences under special circumstances, and whenever the accompanying harmonies do not preclude their doing so; but, unfortunately for them, these same harmonies have so limited their scope for indefinite grace notes, that their exuberance can find no better means for expressing itself than the tremolo; whereas, with no harmony to hamper his music, the Indian can reveal it in as many graces as he desires. The Indian scale, with all its śrutis and possibilities, resides in the bosom of the Indian musician, 'who is dear to the gods'; and it only comes out in his songs, the intonation of which changes from day to day and from mood to mood.
- ↑ 1 See table on p. 5 for explanation.