BHARATA'S EXPERIMENT WITH THE T W O VfNAS

EVER 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 tde 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 TtTilliam Jones' 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 i t 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 to 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 i t 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 i(two irutis).

Schematically the Indian octave in its standard form thus looks as follows :

Actually, when he first enumerates the scale, Bharata himself indicates that the first note sounded in upward direction from the open sa-string is the ri, by saying : ' Three, two, four, four, three, two, and four is the distribution of irutis in the grima called saaja ' (Bharatanfityaifistra, XXVIII, 22, Kashi Sanskrit Series, 60, p. 318 I). It is only later, when he expounds the theoretical construction, not how i t actually sounds when played in an ascending scale, that he starts with the lower sa and gives the generally used iruti-sequence of 4.3.2.4.4.3.2. for this basic scale, the ~a-grtirna.~

No difficulty in understanding the fact that the four irutis of sa lie between that and the lower note is encountered when one reckons in a downward direction as was the custom in Vedic practice from which Bharata proudly boasts his descent (NGtyaiZstra, I, 17) .3 Although this originally prevailing descending scale is undoubtedly the explanation of the later, seemingly illogical, iruti-allocation, we must accept the unalterable fact that it is the sa-,qrZma as indicated above in its ascending form that serves as the basis of Bharata's system. It is a scale with a major tone as its leading tone (the four s'rutis -between ~ z iand sa) and an initial minor third, consisting of a minor and a semi- tone (ri and ga) a sequence which brings i t very close to the scale of our D mode.

The reason why this and not one of the many other possible scales is taken as the basis of the modern system lies very probably in the fact that its sa is a coi~tinuation and development of the centre of a tone-cluster of the Siima- vedic stratum where we find a powerful tradition of employing a minor third above and a major tone below that central tone which was-and is-the ' initial ', the ' reciting ', and the ' final ' note of each chant and consequently had all the requirements to serve as a starting point of a full scale in the final musical system.

tisro due catasrabca catasras tisra eta ca dae catasrakca sadjbkhye grdme Brutinidarkanam 22. Badjad catuhdrutir jileya r~abhas trihdrutih smrtah dvikrutik cdpi gdndhciro madhyamai ca catuhkrutih 23. catuhkrutih pailcamah sydt trihirutir dhaiodtas tathd dviirutis tu nigddah sydt sadjagrdme-24. jagrbha pdthyam rgaedbt sdmabhyo gitam eaa ca yajurveddd abhinaydn rasdn dtharvapdd api 17.

64 A. A. BAKE

Froni the fact that this sa-griima is used as the standard scale, i t 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 gdPma-grinla : m P dh n g

We see here pa on the sixteenth instead of on the seventeenth iruti. This is the emergence of the famous pramiirza-iruti and, as both the sequences of the sa- and of the ma-grEma were living musical notions in Bharata's days, it was possible to demonstrate this s'ruti ' ad auras ' by putting one existing scale against the other, starting the second on the ma of the first.

It is here that Bharata brings in his experiment with the two vinls in order first to let people hear what the pramiina-iruti really is, and secondly to show that the notes which were commonly supposed to have two, three,

and four irutis can be proved to consist of that number of irutis so that the two grcimas really add up to a total of 22 Brutis each.

I n the prose following the above-quoted verse 22 Bharata says : ' In the madhyavza-grlma the pa has to be lowered by one Bruti. The interval between the lowered and the normal iruti is called the standard-pramlna-iruti-as it can be shown by this process of slackening and tightening the string.

That we shall now demonstrate : Take two viniis identical in size, number of strings, appearance, and body and tune them both to the sa-grcinzn '.I

This means that the first two open strings of these viniis should be tuned to a perfect fifth (a distance of 13 Brutis, nos. 5-17, see Diagram 1). The experi- ment concerns itself with two strings only, and presupposes the logical way of playing the scale, namely sa on the first open string, ri, ga, and ma on the appropriate stops (or, as the case may be, frets) of that same string. The pa is then played on the second open string whereby the interval from the stopped ma to the open pa-string is equal to a major tone, the four irutis of the pa of the sa-grcima. I n the course of this experiment any eventual higher strings will not be used. All the notes frompa upwards will be played on the pa-string.

Bharata continues : ' Now we should tune the second vinii to the ma-grcima by lowering the pa-string by one iruti (after which one can restore it to the sn-grlma by tuning it up again, but leave it down for the moment) '.2

As the ma-grlma was just as living a conception as the sa-grEma the only thing one had to do was play the ma on its appropriate stop on the sa-string of the second vinii and then adjust the open pa-string in such a way that the interval ma-pa became the minor tone required a t the beginning of the ma-grcima.

The exact size of the pramcina-iruti could now be clearly demonstrated by sounding the two open pa-strings one after the other, the first being the original pure fifth of the sa-grcirna, the second the one tuned down to suit the ma-grcima scale. This shows that this is a purely theoretical experiment, because once the perfect fifth has been done away with, the instrument is no longer of any use for practical purposes (hence Bharata's saying, ' leave it down for the moment '), because the practical consequence of this lowering of the pa-string by one kut i is that all the subsequent notes played on it a t their proper stops will be one iruti out too. This is important for the sequel of this experiment, but with this first tuning down of the pa-string Bharata means only to give a practical means to determine the pramEva-iruti.

DIAGRAhl 3 Srutis : 10 11 12 13 14 15 10 17 IS 19 20 21 22 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 6 9 10 11 12 13

1st vin2 : m P dh n s r 6 m 2nd vi1G : m P dh n s r g nl

1 madhyamagrdme tu Bnctyapakrstah paricamah kdryah. paficanzasya Brutyutkargdpakargi- bhydm yad antaram mcirdavdyatatvdd vd &vat pramdnalrutth.

nidardanam ca samabhivycikhydsycimah. yathci due vine tulyapram?matantryupapddanda-marcchite ga(1jagrdmdBrzte kdrye.

tayor anyatariv madhyamagrdmikiv kurycit paricamasydpakarae Brutim kim eva paricamasya SrutyutkargavaBdt gadjagrdmikiv kurydt. evaw drutir apakrgki bhavati.

66 A. A. BAKE

Bharata continues : ' By a second identical lowering (of the pa-string) the ga and n i of the second vin5 will coincide with the ri and dha on the first as that has more s'rutis '.I

It is noteworthy that Bharata simply says ' lower the pa-string again exactly as much ', giving no other judge than the ear. Now the pa-string of the second visa is a semitone below that of the first visa and consequently all the notes played on it on their appropriate stops are a semitone out too. Thus it follows naturally that the two two-s'ruti tones, ga and ni, played on their usual stops, should now have the pitch of ri and dha on the first.

DIAGRAM 4 ru t i s :

1st vini : 2nd vini :

1 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1m m

4 1 5 1

P

6 1 7P

1 8 1

dh

9 2 0 2 1 2 2 dh n n

1 2

s

3 4 s

5

r

6 7 r 6

8 9 6

1 0 1 1 1

m

2 1 3 m

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 vini : m P dh n s r 6 m 2nd vini : 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

Sr~r t i s : 1 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1st vini : m P dh n s r 6 m 2nd vini : P dh n s I g m

Prom this demonstration as described by Bharata we should become conscious once again how extremely careful one has to be when applying methods from one system of music to another. Mathematics does not enter into this speculation a t all. The name pramina-s'ruti really has no reference to the mathematical size of that interval, contrary to what was accepted a priori by Pox Strangways and others. What the name is meant to indicate is that one has to take that s'ruti as the standard, because it is the only one actually demonstrable in practice by putting the ma-grima against the sa-griima as indicated. Whether or not it is identical with the comma of Didymus has nothing to do with what the Indians understood by it. As to the actual size of the other s'rutis, the ear was the only judge.

1 punar api tadewipakargit gdndhBranisddciv itarasyic~n dhaivatarsabhau pravidatab Brutya- dhikatvdt.

punas tadev&pakargdd dhaivatarsabhav itarasyam paricamasadjau pra~iBatah Brutyadhikatvcit. tadvat punar apakrstyaydm tasyam paiicamamadhyamasadjd itarasyam madhyamanigcidagcin-

dhdravantah praveiyanti catubBrutyadhikatvcid evam anena Brutidarianavidhcinena dvaigrdmikyo dvcivirnB8b brutayah pratyavagantavydb.

67 BHARATA'S EXPERIMENT WITH THE TWO V ~ N ~ S

Secondly, this experiment shows how wrong the often-encountered Western notion is, that the Indians divided their octave into 22 parts. The sum total of 22 irutis is arrived a t by addition, not by division. Because there happened to be three major (four-iruti), two minor (three-iruti), and two semi (two-iruti) tonal intervals within the compass of the octave the total number of Srutis happens to be 22.

Here again the vocal rather than the instrumental origin of the basic Indian scale comes to the fore. As indicated above the basis of the sa-grZma lies in the three-tone cluster of the Rigaeda, namely the aforesaid central note with a major tone below and a somewhat less well defined interval (larger than a semitone) above.

In some prominent Siimavedic schools, for example, the Kauthuma, we still find the same central note of that cluster with its two neighbours, but, added to it, an extension to a fourth below and a minor third above, with a tendency to a further widening of the compass by tentative ornamentation upwards. The extremities of this embryonic scale are not its important feature, which lies in the constant return to the centre, a fourth above the lowest note.

I n later Vedic stages and in the non-liturgical music of the system inaugurated by Bharata, the emergence of the consciousness of the octave as such shows the growing influence of the instrumental element. That came, however, after the individual tones within that compass had already been crystallized as major, minor, and semitones, which then happened to add up to a total of 22 as Bharata intends to show by his tuning experiment, accounting for each group in turn.

By approaching this system from the Greek point of view one misses both these points, the vocal origin and its accumulative rather than divisionary tendency. Thereby one obliterates the historical development of this unique and very important musical culture, so different, in spite of the many family resemblances, from its first cousin, the music of Greece.