An interview with Pandit Sliiv Kumar Sharma

Transcription

1 APPENDICIES

2 An interview with Pandit Sliiv Kumar Sharma Annexure -1 MR. Shiv Kumarji, just recently, I came across a very interesting passage in a book that was published in the 1800's. SS: I see. MR: And it has something pertaining to the times that ragas are performed, which I have never heard before. Therefore, I wanted to ask you if this is something, you have heard of and agree with or perhaps have a different approach to. The passage says, "musicians declare that the times and seasons allotted to each"... ragas we are referring to... "Are those at which the divinities are at leisure to attend at the place where their favorite"...it says here "tune is sung"...we could substitute raga for that..."and to inspire the performer with due warmth in his execution." SS: You see this has been a tradition in our music, especially North Indian classical music. In addition, to follow the time theory, we call it, and this is related with the sunrise to sunset, and from again the circle of sunset to sunrise. And the theory is, the whole idea is that the human body and mind reacts to changes in nature. This is a very Indian thought that this human body is made up of five elements, that is earth, fire, water, air and space. And whatever happens with the nature, nature consists of all these elements and that reacts on our body and mind. For example, when we see a rising sun the kind of feelings that we experience while watching a rising sun, or before that when its getting...the colors are changing and the darkness is going away, the kind of feeling that it evokes in you is totally different from the moonlight or at noon time. MR: Are these feelings more intense in the country than in the city? SS: It depends on the environment also because earlier music was not performed in the auditoriums. In the Indian classical music tradition, music started from Vedic age more than three-thousand years ago, 231

3 more than that, and it was outdoor, and especially music was used as a source of meditation, not as an entertainment. MR: For both the performer and the listener. SS: Yes. It became a performing art later on, but originally it was very spiritual. It was used for meditation. It was used for taking a person inward. To calm down, to relax. To be centered at one focal point. So that was the origin of this music. It started with the singing of Vedic hymns and all that. So coming back to this time theory, this is an established fact, that in twenty-four hour cycle of day and night you go through different emotions. If it is warm and its different, if it is raining you will feel different, so what has been done in our music, musicologists combine such phrases of notes which go along with the time cycle. Which in answer, what is there in the nature, because the music was performed outdoors so you can FEEL the change. MR: I see. Now recently I was listening to Rag Marwa... SS:Uhhuh... MR:...different performances, unfortunately I do not have your recording of that right now, I plan to get it, and I had the feeling that somehow the melodies of this rag had a feeling of falling, of something fading, and I thought, "Oh my God, could this possibly be the sunset?" SS: Yes. MR: Is that... SS: Yes. And there are ragas of this type before sunset and after sunset. We call them twilight melodies. And there is a difference in morning twilight and evening twilight. When the sxin is about to 232

4 come its a different kind of feeling. When if it is gone, the day is over, its a different kind of feeling. MR: So what you're saying here is that its something that's very close to the cycles of nature... SS: Yes. MR:...but not specifically Gods as is implied here (the passage) where they are talking about "divinities"... SS:Uhhuh... MR:...or am I misinterpreting the passage? SS: In that sense when we talk about divinity this music is connected. Music is connected with that but I am...what I am talking is... that is nature in this. MR: Of course nature comes from god. SS: Yes. Its connected, its interrelated. MR: I see. One of my favorite recordings of yours is your recording of morning ragas, Gunkali, Basant Mukhari. SS: Yes. MR: Now one thing I noticed immediately with Gunkali is a very beautiful tanpura pattern. Is this something you composed yourself, is this something you learned, I've never heard this pattern before, maybe its my lack of experience in this rag. SS: The rag Gunkali? 233

5 MR: It goes Ma, Pa, Dha, Sa and back (down an octave) to Sa, a very beautiful... SS: The way the tanpura is tuned. MR: Yes. A very beautiful, a very effective tanpura pattern for this raga. SS: Normally the tanpura is tuned in the tonic, three strings, two strings in the same octave and one played low. And the other string is tuned depending on the rag to the fifth note, fourth note or the seventh note. But I have experimented in this rag. Sometime if you tune the tanpura according to the most prominent phrase of that raga, so as soon as the tanpura is played you get into that mood of that rag. MR: Yes. It's breathtaking. Its so appropriate. So this is your invention. Its fantastic, very effective. To talk in general terms about Gunkali and Basant Mukhari, my overall sensation as to the rasa (mood) for Gunkali is one of love either for god or for a human being and Basant Mukhari sounds to me like a journey or an adventure, like you're traveling somewhere. Would you like to say a few words about how you approach each of these rags or contrast them? SS: It is a very interesting aspect of our music. Each...a particular rag could have different kind of emotions in different persons depending on their frame of mind at that particular moment when they are listening to that music, the place where they are listening to that music, the kind of concentration they are having at that time and the temperament of that person. I'll give you an example. Once I was playing in a radio station for the live broadcast. It was in Jammu, my native place, and there were two ladies who were sitting there in the studio, and I was playing Rag Gujri Todi, the rag has got pathos, the feel of the rag is pathos. And there were two different kinds of reactions from two different individuals at the same time. There was one lady, she was a musician, she herself was a singer, and she was 234

6 sitting there because she was going to perform next. And there was another lady, she did not know music at all, but she had that FEEL for music. So the reaction was, the lady who was a performer, she was nodding her head and she was appreciating and she was gesticulating, "Oh, its wonderful," like that, of course silently, you cannot talk when this is live broadcast, and the other lady was not reacting in any way but there were tears in her eyes. So, the rag is same, melody is same. Two different individuals are reacting differently. And this is a very interesting aspect of our music. And I think this needs a very interesting research could be done on this aspect. What type of music appeals to what type of people. And what type of music one individual likes. From that you can find out what is the temperament of that person. MR: So the raga reads the person. *** 235

7 Annexure - II Raga-Time Association One of the unique characteristics of Indian music is the assignment of definite times of the day and night for performing Raga melodies. It is believed that only in this period the Raga appears to be at the height of its melodic beauty and majestic splendor. There are some Ragas, which are very attractive in the early hours of the mornings; others, which appeal in the evenings, yet others, which spread their fragrance only near the midnight hour. This connection of time of the day or night, with the Raga or Raginis is based on daily cycle of changes that occur in our own body and mind which are constantly undergoing subtle changes in that different moments of the day arouse and stimulate different moods and emotions. Each Raga or Ragini is associated with a definite mood or sentiment that nature arouses in human beings. The ancient musicologists were particularly interested in the effects of musical notes, how it effected and enhanced human behaviour. Music had the power to cure, to make you feel happy, sad, disgusted and so on. Extensive research was carried out to find out these effects. This formed the basis of time theory as we know it today. It is believed that the human body is dominated by the three Doshas - Kaph, Pitta and Vata. These elements work in a cyclic order of rise and fall during the 24-hour period. Also, the reaction of these three elements differ with the seasons. Hence, it is said that performing or listening to a raga at the proper allotted time can affect the health of human beings. 236

8 Raga and Day Time The following schedule will summarize the specific time periods. The 24-hour period is divided into 8 beats(prahar) each three hours long, as follows: 1. 7 a.m. -10 a.m. first beat of the day. Daybreak; Early Morning; Morning; 2.10 a.m. -1 p.m. 2nd beat of the day. Late Morning; Noon; Early Afternoon; 3.1 p.m. - 4 p.m. 3rd beat of the day. Afternoon; Late Afternoon; 4. 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. 4th beat of the day. Evening Twilight; Dusk (sunset); 5. 7 p.m. -10 p.m. first beat of the night. Evening; Late Evening; 6.10 p.m. -1 a.m. 2nd beat of the night. Night; Midnight; 7.1 a.m. - 4 a.m. 3rd beat of the night. Late Night 8. 4 a.m. - 7 a.m. 4th beat of the night. Early Dawn; Dawn (before sunrise); Similarly Everyday two cycles of change pass through our body, each bringing a Vata, Pitta, or Kapha predominance. 237

9 The approximate times of these cycles are as follows: First cycle: 6 A.M. to 10 A.M. Kapha 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. Pitta 2 P.M. to 6 P.M. Vata Second cycle: 6 P.M. to 10 P.M. Kapha 10 P.M. to 2 P.M. Pitta 2 A.M to 6 P.M. Vata Raga and Ritu (Seasons) There are Ragas associated with the rainy season,varsha (Raga Megha and Raga Malhar), the autumn season, Basant (Raga Basant) and the spring season (Raga Bahar). Seasonal Ragas can be sung and played any time of the day and night during the season allotted to them. The obligation of time in case of such melodies is relaxed. Vasanta Ritu (Spring Season) In this season, increased kapha is liquefied by the heat of sun which causes diminished agni (digestive activity) causing diseases. Grishma Ritu (Summer Season) In this season, Sunrays become powerful. Kapha decreases vata increases day by day. 238

10 Sharat Ritu (Autumn Season) Sudden exposed to sunlight after cold season aggravates pita. Dosha Accumulation Visiation Diminution Kapha Pitta Vata Shishir Vasant Grishma Grishma Varsha Sharad Varsha Sharad Hemant Raga and Ritu(Seasons) Association Raga Bhairav Hindol Deepak Megh Malkans Shree Ritu Shishir Vasant Grishma Varsha Sharad Hemant Various Ragas and there Performance Timings: Raga Thaat Performance Time Piloo Kafi Any Time Kafi Kafi Any Time Mand Bilawal Any Time Dhani Kafi Any Time Bhairavi Bhairavi Any Time 239

11 Gaud Malhar Kafi Monsoon Miyan Malhar Kafi Monsoon Deshkar Bilawal Morning Gunkri Bhairav Morning Ahir Bhairav Bhairav Morning Asavari Asawari Morning Bhankar Bhairav Morning Bairagi Bhairav Bhairav Morning Basant Mukhari Morning Basant Poorvi Morning Bhoopali Todi Bhairavi Morning Bhatiyar Bhairav Morning Bilawal Bilawal Morning Bilaskhani Todi Bhairavi Morning Bhairav Bhairav Morning Desi Asavari Morning Sohni Marwa Morning Gurjari Todi Todi Morning Nat Bhairav Bhairav Morning Kalingada Bhairav Morning Lalit Poorvi 240 Morning

12 Jogiya Bhairav Morning Jaunpuri Asavari Morning Hindol Kalyan Morning Todi Todi Morning Vibhas Bhairav Morning Vrindavani Sarang Kafi Afternoon Shuddh Sarang Kalyan Afternoon Poorvi Poorvi Afternoon Patdeep Madhyamad Sarang Kafi Afternoon Afternoon Madhuvanti Todi Afternoon Bhimpalasi Kafi Afternoon Gaud Saarang Kalyan Afternoon Multani Todi Afternoon Bhoopali Kalyan Evening Kamod Kalyan Evening Desh Khamaj Evening Yaman Kalyan Kalyan Evening Hansdhwani Bilawal Evening Khama) Khamaj Evening Sham Kalyan Kalyan 241 Evening

13 Yaman Kalyan Evening Tilang Khamaj Evening Shuddh Kalyan Kalyan Evening Shankara Bilawal Evening Maru Bihag Kalyan Evening Puriya Dhanashri Poorvi Evening Puriya Marwa Evening Pahadi Bilawal Evening Jana Sammohini Evening Marwa Marwa Evening Shree Poorvi Evening Bahar Kafi Night Tilak Kamod BChamaj Night Bageshri Kafi Night Charukeshi Night Malhar Kafi Night Raageshri Khamaj Night Nand Kalyan Night Malkauns Pancham Bhairavi Night Malkauns Bhairavi Night Bhinna Shadja Khamaj 242 Night

14 Shivranjani Kafi Night Malgunji Kafi Night Jhinjhoti Khamaj Night Kirwani Night Chandani Kedar Kalyan Night Chandrakauns Night Kedar Kalyan Night Chhayanat Kalyan Night Darbari Asavari Night Kalavati Khamaj Night Adana Asavari Night Durga Bilawal Night Jaijaiwanti Khamaj Night Gorakh Kalyan Khamaj Night Hamir Kalyan Night Bihag Kalyan Night *** 243

15 Annexure - III Hindu Conception of IVIusic By Ragini Devi IVIusic Appropriate to the Different Hours Indian daily life, being permeated with a sense of sacramental values and joy in Nature, is divided into auspicious periods of: worship and mediation, repose and merriment. The early hours before dawn are always associated with meditation and prayer. The afternoon is for peaceful repose; the twilight hours for reverie and prayer. Evening is for merriment and the hours after midnight for seriousness and solemnity. Each Raga has its appropriate hour. Such an arrangement may seem purely imaginative, but to the Hindu mind, the time theory appears to be the definite design of Master- Minds of the past. An analysis of the distinguishing features of many Ragas shows that the whole arrangement of the melodies is in keeping with the theory of their emotional appropriateness according to the hour. The periods of sunrise and sunset when there is a junction between night and day evoke certain responses in the Hindu mind. These periods of twilight and dawn are called Sandhi Prakash, and Ragas sung during these hours are called Sandhi Prakash Ragas. Midnight and noon are also transition points when the merry and mellow evening tunes gradually change to the dreamy and plaintive tunes of morning and vice-versa. Ragas sung before dawn are slow, dignified and full of pathos. Thus, the Rag Jogia meaning 'a mystic' very appropriately belongs to that period before sunrise when ascetics in India are given to religious meditation. The Rag Bhairav is devoted to the morning praise of Shiva, the Lord of Creation. Then comes Asavari, sweetly devotional and pleading. Again, from noontime on to four o'clock the tunes suggest coolness and repose in the tropic heat of the afternoon. Sarang, sung 244

16 at midday, is reminiscent of Megh Rag of the rainy season, and has a gliding style which is refreshing and soothing. The melody called Talang sung at about three in the afternoon is dreamily smooth, light-hearted and lyrical in character. There is again a touch of pathos in the tunes of the twilight hour suggestive of evening prayers or longing for the absent loved one. Then follow evening melodies, sparkling and romantic. After midnight come melodies impressive, proud and sorrowful. There is Malkaus, slow in style and majestic in sorrow. It throbs with grief and its theme is usually a form of elegy or lovelament. Durbari Kanhara too is wrapped in melancholy dignity. Its haunting plaintive sweetness has a mystic quality. Thus, the time-theory of Hindu music represents a beautiful and clearly intelligible system of harmonizing melody with emotion, and shows an ingenious comprehension of the spiritual responses of the human heart to the wonders of God's creation. Indian singers and instrumentalists study years to perfect the intricate technique of developing the Ragas, which are merely outlines of the melody. It is the aim of the artist to display the beautiful and delicate coloring of each Raga in elaborate patterns of his own creation, according to his skill and the emotional response which the tune evokes within him. His marvelous improvisations of melody seem to transcend the categories of time and place and raw his listeners with him to the Source of Life and Light beyond. *** 245

17 Annexure - IV Testing the Time Theory Indian music assigns each raga to a period of the day, but where lies the origin of this discipline? By Anthony Peter Westbrook, Maryland If there is one aspect of the classical music of India that sets it apart from other traditions, it is the theory that establishes a specific period of day for performing each melody form, or raga. "Orthodox musicians in India never play a raga at any other than its proper time," according to the late French musicologist Alain Danielou, "for at the wrong hour it could never be developed so perfectly nor could it so greatly move an audience." As Walter Kauffman tells us, this is much more than just an aesthetic consideration; it is considered to have an effect on the environment. He writes, "The older generation of Indian musicians in particular still believes that disaster will be invoked if, for instance, an evening raga is performed in the morning or vice versa." Today this attitude prevails mainly in north Indian, or Hindustani, music. The South Indian, or Carnatic, tradition contains a highly developed theory of ragas and their performance times. "However, in Carnatic music today," writes P. Sambamoorthy, "there is no questioning the fact that the ragas sung during their allotted times sound best, but the time theory of ragas may be said to be only advisory and not mandatory." While this more liberal approach is quite alien to Hindustani music, it points to a lack of any theoretical basis for the time theory, as no ancient or medieval writer on the subject has left us any rational explanation for it. It was left to the late Pandit V.N. Bhatkhande ( ) to systematize the rules generally observed by Indian musicians. To determine the performance times of each raga, Bhatkhande divided the day into eight praharas or watches, then assigned each raga to a specific prahara according to its underlying tonal characteristics. Each note in a raga has a certain level of importance 246

18 vis-a-vis the other notes, and these relationships change subtly during the different times of the day. Each musician learns the various aspects of each raga, including its correct performance time and its rasa, or mood, from his guru. Thus, there are literally thousands of subtleties which are learned but not formulated into a single body of theory. And in spite of some differences of opinion, there is a high degree of agreement regarding the correct performance time for most ragas. This is remarkable considering the number of ragas currently in use in north India, as well as the existence of different schools of music, or gharanas. It suggests that at some time in the past some common theoretical framework may have existed as the basis for the time theory. Today, however, there is little clear indication as to the origin of these practices. Scholars, such as Kaufmann, Bonnie Wade, Harold Powers and Emmie Nijenhuis, have suggested origins in the musical aspect of the classic Sanskrit drama, or the ritual chant of the Vedas. Mukhund Lath of the University of Rajasthan points out that while Bhatkhande's generalizations found great acceptance, no one has ever tried to display and work out the psychophysiological basis for the raga-time connection. Lacking such an empirical or theoretical basis, this unique aspect of Hindustani music is in danger of being compromised. Although the older generation of performers still regard the time theory as a critical aspect of their tradition, others, under the pressure of contemporary concert and recording schedules, are relaxing performance strictures. But if the traditional musicological literature provides no basis for the theory, where else should we look? Of all the aspects of Vedic literature which deal with cycles of time, ayurveda, the Vedic system of medicine, is one of the most significant, and there appears to be considerable evidence linking it with musical performance in ancient times. Danielou wrote to me in 1992, "There exists a relation between various scales and the humours of the body. Any one expert in the music therapy of Ayurveda should be able to find out." He quotes Sangeeta Makaranda : "One who sings knowing the proper time 247

19 remains happy. By singing ragas at the wrong time, one ill treats them. Listening to them, one becomes impoverished and sees the length of one's life reduced." The reference to the length of one's life provides another link to ayurveda, which can be rendered as "the science of longevity". Indeed, it does appear possible to correlate the diurnal cycle of the three ayurvedic doshas, vata, pitta and kapha, with the performance times of the ragas. This and other evidence would suggest the existence of an ancient view in which, in the area of health, music has a definite role to play. *** 248

20 Annexure - V Hindustani Classical Time Theory Pandit K G Ginde, Musicologist and Principal of Shree Vallabh Sangeetalaya. This principle is not strictly adhered to. If a particular performer sing a raga Outside its traditional time-slot, the choice of the next performer would depend on how effectively the first singer has performed. If the singer before him performed a raga whose wadi (predominant note) is ga (gandhar), then he should sing a raga whose wadi note is the next higher in scale, 'in order to make an effective impact. The raga-samay, association has served us well through centuries and should continue to be observed. With the advent of radio and television as also audio and video cassettes, the relationship between ragas and time has, to a large extent, been influenced by religion, and has traditionally played a very important role in poojas at different times of the (day and right. Initially the Camatic system also followed the Time Theory, but over the years, the number of adherents has declined mainly because the Sabhas mostly hold Camatic concerts in the evening. The result: Singers are obliged to present ragas irrespective of the time element. However, this became possible in Camatic music as the duration of the krits is comparatively very short and, unlike Hindustani, the element of mood orientation is less. Although, there is a trend among exponents to move away from the Time Theory, I do not think the Hindustani raga sangeet will go the way of Carnatic music in the foreseeable future. If and when a performer does sing a raga, not relevant to the assigned time slot, then the performer following him should sing the next raga in chronological order. Dr Ashok Ranade, Director, National Centre for Performing Arts, Bombay. 249

21 Ragas are associated with definite time slots, which in turn are related to conditions such as the environment, the prevailing atmosphere, the climatic and seasonal factors, not so much as the clocks or the watches of the performers. Thus, in a darkened auditorium where the performer and his audience are isolate from all natural and environmental conditions, with relevance to time, and performs under simulated conditions, it does not matter if the raga samay Dr Sushilabai Pohankar, Musicologist Cassettes as well as tapes and discs, music reaches a larger audience, many of whom play music of their choice according to their convenience, without paying heed to the relevance in terms of Time Theory. With the timings of radio transmission being what they are, one is gradually getting accustomed to hearing Lalat or Bhatiyar (which actually belong to a time slot before Bhairav) after Bhairav, and the Todis as late as mid-day and so on. All the same, I believe that classification as per the Time Theory ought to be borne in mind by performing artistes. Ragas have been arranged in a chronological system as per the samay-swara sequence since time immemorial. However, with the assimilation of ragas from Carat music and the creation of abundant new ragas, jod (combination) ragas and so on, the situation vis-a-vis the Time Theory has changed. For instance, jod ragas like, say, Yamani-bilawal are placed in two different time slots, so what does one do? I have a practical suggestion for this. If sung in the midmoming the Bilawal ang should be given more prominence, while if it is sung producing great energy and power, leading to great inventions, we should not hesitate to believe that sound also must be having some inherent power and energy that exercises great magical effects on man, nature and the atmosphere around, and this bring us to the time theory in our classical music For the past several centuries, our a classical 'music has been presented and based on the timebound theory and it is adhered to and practiced scrupulously by performing artistes. There is no scientific explanation available for 250

22 ascribing certain definite hours of the day and night, for the exposition of ragas. Ragas are spread over the 24 hours of the day. There are early morning ragas, mid-morning and mid-day melodies, followed by afternoon, evening and night melodies and then midnight and postmidnight ragas to complete the cycle again v^ith the early morning melodies. It is a matter of undisputed experience that a raga sung or played out of its scheduled hour does not have the same effect as when it is rendered at the hour and time appointed by tradition and convention. This allocation of definite hours of the day or night does not appear this problem was discussed in detail. The theory advanced by Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was considered by all present to be quite feasible and acceptable. According to him, ragas are initially split into two - sections, of 12 hours each: the first from 12 noon to 12 midnight and the second from midnight to the following,mid-day. The first section called 'Purva Ragas' and the second 'Uttar Ragas.' A saptak (octave) is also similarly divided into two parts. The first comprises the first four notes - Sa-Re-Ga-Ma - and the other the remaining four notes Pa Dha-Ni-Sa. The Purva Ragas have the 'wadi' or prime note from the first four notes, while those in the Uttar Ragas have the 'wadi' or prime note from the latter four, notes (Pa-Dha-Ni- Sa). The ragas in the first section are known as 'Purvang wadi' ragas and those in the second section are known as 'Uttarang wadi' ragas. The Purvang wadi ragas have been ascribed hours between mid-day and midnight and the Uttarang wadi ragas from midnight to the following mid-day. Similarly, the 24 hours of the day are divided into six divisions: 1.4 AM to 7 AM 2. 7 AM to 10 AM 251

23 3. loam to 4PM 4. 4 PM to 7 PM 5. 7 PM to 10 PM 6. lopm to 4AM These six divisions are further split into three sub-sections as follows: A 4 AM to 7 AM and 4 PM to 7 PM B. 7 AM to 10 PM and 7 PM to 10 PM C. 10 AM to 4 PM and lo PM to 4 AM This is an age of sensational scientific discoveries and great advance are being made in technical knowledge through new devices and aids such as super computers. It should now be possible for those scientists who are lovers of classical music to take up the investigation and throw light on this hitherto unexplained theory and practice, in the realm of classical music. A further scrutiny reveals the following: Sub-section A: All ragas having the second note Rishaba and the sixth note Dhaivata as komal (flat) come under this sub-section. These ragas are also known as Twilight ragas or Sandhiprakash ragas, because the hours allotted immediately precede or succeed daybreak and sunset. Another noticeable feature of this sub-section is the use of the fourth note Ma (Madhyam) in the twilight ragas. In the twilight ragas of daybreak (morning), the fourth note is shuddha (natural), whereas in the twilight ragas the fourth note is sharp. Thus, during the transition of the twilight ragas in the morning and those in the evening, there is a subtle change in the use of the fourth note. In sub- 252

24 section B, it will be noticed that in most ragas the second note Re and the sixth note Dha are Shuddha. In the ragas under sub-section Q the third note Gandhar and the seventh note Nishad are komal (flat). *** 253

25 Annexure - VI Indian Melody : Ustad Bade Ghulam Ail Khan A seminar was once arranged under the auspices of the Sur Singar Samsad. In Hindustani classical music, ragas are ascribed particular hours of the day or night for their exposition. The point under discussion at the seminar was whether there was any scientific reason for this convention or whether it was just a result of custom and tradition. Bade Gulam AH gave his opinion with practical demonstrations. According to him, ragas are divided into two types. A raga of the first type may be played between 12 noon and 12 midnight. Ragas of the second type may be played at any time from midnight to 12 noon. The ragas in the first section are known as 'Purva ragas' and those of the second section as 'Uttar ragas. A saptak is also divided into two parts or 'tetrachords'. The first contains Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, and the second the other four notes. Pa, Dha, Ni, Sa. In the purva ragas the vadi swara (the prime or 'life' note of the raga) is taken from the first tetrachord and therefore these ragas are known as purvangavadi ragas. In the same way, the vadi swara in the uttar ragas is usually taken from the second tetrachord, i.e.. Pa, Dha, Ni, Sa, and these ragas are called uttarangavadi ragas. When the vadi swara is either 'Sa' or 'Pa', there is no time restriction for the performance of that raga. He also propounded another theory explaining why a particular raga should be sung at a particular time and why, if it is rendered accordingly, it is more effective and appreciated by the listeners. The 24 hours of the day are divided as follows: 4 in the morning to 7 in the morning. 7 in the morning to 10 in the morning. 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon. 254

26 4 in the afternoon to 7 in the evening. 7 in the evening to 10 at night. 10 at night to 4 in the morning. It will be observed that in the ragas of the first and fourth divisions the 2nd note rishabh and 6th note dhaivat are komal swaras. These ragas are also known as Sandhiprakash ragas. Bhairava of the morning variety and Purvi of the evening, having these notes, are Sandhiprakash ragas. Khan Saheb explained how just a slight change of half a note in the structure of the octave changes the raga from a morning to an evening one. In Raga Bhairava the 4th note, madhyam, is shudha, while in Purvi the 4th note is half a note higher that is tivra madhyama. He also demonstrated and explained the difference between the morning raga Todi and the afternoon raga Multani. Although both have identically the same notes in the octave, they differ from one another owing to different vadi samvadi notes and different chalan. In the same way, ragas in the 2nd and 5th parts have the 2nd note rishabh and the 6th note dhaivat as shudha notes. The ragas of the 3rd and 6th parts have the 3rd note gandhara and the 7th note nishad komal. Khan Saheb however added that this theory was based on his observations of general practices. He was of the firm opinion that the theory of division of ragas according to time has some scientific basis and that physicists should be able to arrive at some final explanation after experiments. Ragas are also seasonal melodies. For example, Raga Malhar is associated with the rainy season and Raga Vasant with spring. One evening during the monsoon I had the good fortune to find Bade Gulam Ali in a very exuberant mood. From the balcony of his flat on Malabar Hill one could see the turbulent sea with its rising mountains of waves. This exhibition of nature's strength always inspired IChan 255

27 Saheb and that day he gave vocal expression to his feelings, in a number of variations of Raga Malhar. He reeled out gamak taans when there was a clap of thunder. He would be inspired by a flash of lightning to indulge in a brilliant 'Phirat', and when it poured cats and dogs, the result would be a torrent of powerful taans ranging over two to three octaves. It sounded as if a jugalbandi programme was in progress between Nature and this great man. *** 256

28 Annexure - VII Time of Play One of the unique characteristics of Indian music is the assignment of definite times of the day and night for performing Raga melodies. It is believed that only in this period the Raga appears to be at the height of its melodic beauty and majestic splendor. There are some Ragas which are very attractive in the early hours of the mornings; others which appeal in the evenings, yet others which spread their fragrance only near the midnight hour. There are Ragas associated with the rainy season (Raga Megha and Raga Malhar), the autumn season (Raga Basant) and the spring season (Raga Bahar). Seasonal Ragas can be sung and played any time of the day and night during the season allotted to them. The obligation of time in case of such melodies is relaxed. This connection of time of the day or night, with the Raga or Raginis is based on daily cycle of changes that occur in our own moods and emotions which are constantly undergoing subtle changes in that different moments of the day arouse and stimulate different moods and emotions. The mental and emotional responses in the autumn or winter or during the rainy season are different from the spring. Scheduling playing times of Ragas has a variety of advantages. It fits the mood of the Raga with our own mood, thus forming a fusion of body and soul. It also creates a definite space of time hence making it possible for various Ragas to get a turn at performance. Each Raga or Ragini is associated with a definite mood or sentiment that nature arouses in human beings. The ancient musicologists were particularly interested in the effects of musical notes, how it effected and enhanced human behavior. Music had the power to cure, to make you feel happy, sad, disgusted and so on. Extensive research was carried out to find out these effects. This formed the basis of time theory, as we know it today. 257

29 Aligned with the emotional and psychological effect of music on the human mind, the semitones or Shrutis of the octave were named according to subtle shades of different sentiments, feelings and emotions. The Ragas and Raginis emerge as the suggestive sound images of these sentiments, emotions and passions. In the begirming, music was confined to rituals, worship and prayers. As specified seasons and hours of day and night were fixed for different religious rites, music relating to them came to be associated with such time and later on, these times were crystallized into rigid rules. In time, music ceased to be confined to religion, and with the patronage of kings, it took its home in the royal courts. From here, the original rules of time were slackened and revised by the order of those kings. Ragas and Raginis could be performed on the stage by the order of the monarch, without violating the rule. It is believed that the human body is dominated by the three elements Kaph (rheum). Pitta (bile) and Vata (wind). These elements work in a cyclic order of rise and fall during the 24-hour period. Also, the reaction of these three elements differ with the seasons. Even the respiration changes with time and season. Hence, the nocturnal effects of music, and the belief that failure to perform or listen to a raga at the proper allotted time ca affect the health of human beings. As mentioned earlier, Ragas having their Vadi note in the Poorvang region (Sa Pa) are usually played during evening and Ragas having their Vadi note in the Uttarang region (Pa - Sa) are usually performed during morning. As an example, Raga Bhairava is an Uttarang Raga. Its Vadi note is Komal Dhaivata (flat 6th), therefore its performing time is during the morning hours. Ragas to be performed during the hours of twilight and dusk, when neither the day, nor the night dominate, are called Sandhi Prakash Ragas. The approximate allotted time of such melodies is between 4 and 7 in the morning or evening. In both cases, the notes Rishbha (2nd) and Dhaivata (6th) are usually flat and the Gandhar (3rd) is natural. 258

30 In the mid-morning Ragas there is frequent use of the natural fourth (Shudha Madhyama), while in the mid-evening Ragas the sharp fourth (Tivar Madhyama) note is frequently employed. The sharp fourth is often described as the guiding note. A description of this note in one of the ancient music books goes like this, " Just as by a drop of curd a jar of sweet milk is converted to a quality of yogurt, so by the introduction of the sharp fourth, all noon melodies are turned into afternoon melodies". The following schedule will summarize the specific time periods. The 24-hour period is divided into 8 beats each three hours long, as follows: 1. 7 a.m. -10 a.m. first beat of the day. Daybreak; Early Morning; Morning; a.m. -1 p.m. 2nd beat of the day. Late Morning; Noon; Early Afternoon; 3. 1 p.m. - 4 p.m. 3rd beat of the day. Afternoon; Late Afternoon; 4. 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. 4th beat of the day. Evening Twilight; Dusk (sunset); Early Evening; 5. 7 p.m. -10 p.m. first beat of the night. Evening; Late Evening; p.m. -1 a.m. 2nd beat of the night. Night; Midnight; 259

31 7. 1 a.m. - 4 a.m. 3rd beat of the night. Late Night 8. 4 a.m. - 7 a.m. 4th beat of the night. Early Dawn; Dawn (before sunrise); Morning Twilight; As far as seasons go, there are three in particular that have various Ragas allotted: Rainy season called Varsha, Autumn season called Basant, and Spring season called Bahar. It is my sincere wish that you make good use of this theory and find it to your benefit. Learn to use it wisely. As you progress, you will discover its secrets. To make this system more precise the Ragas and Raginis have been further subdivided into group patterns containing major or minor notes. This subject is comprehensively discussed and explained in another treatise Rasik Raga Lakshan Manjari. Dear Joe and friends of Musikeion, You have raised interesting questions, which I would like to have some more time to think and comment. Thus, I will be returning to this thread again soon. For now, I'd like to say that when I addressed the question of gunas in relation to rasas as signified in Hindustani contemporary music, I was less concerned with philosophical aspects of the guna theory, than with the idea - expressed by Prof. Prem Lata Sharma, a great Indian scholar and musician, who died last year - that the three gunas could substitute the nine rasas, in conceptualizing Indian music aesthetics. That seems to me unacceptable, for the three gunas (qualities) mentioned by Sharma, madhurya (sweetness), ojas (vigorous, emphatic expression) and prasada (brightness, clearness of style), cannot describe properly the nine rasas (erotic, comic, pathetic, 260

32 furious, heroic, terrible, odious, wondrous and tranquility), not at least as Sharma proposed. The rasas are truly qualities to be experienced by the expectator's mind and not categories of qualities to be used philosophically. Besides, I notice in Sharma proposition a tentative, somehow puritanic, of dealing with sringara, the erotic rasa, and other rasas in terms of rather "cleaner" philosophical terms, disregarding (this is not at all a typically Indian approach) 20 centuries of aesthetic tradition in India concerned with the rasa theory and its application to the arts. Not that she was trying to refute the rasa theory, but simply saying that it was useless in regard to musical purposes. Now, I have exactly been working on the philosophical foundations of the rasa theory in my post-doctoral research, which I intend to link with Peircean semiotics, and, as you mentioned a possible relation of the gunas with Plato, possibly linkable with Peirce's categories. 261

33 Annexure - VIII Sanskrit Criticism Rasa: The Key Concept of Classical Indian Aesthetics Indian classical drama is organized according to rasa as much as according to plot. Imagine that you are watching a monster movie or a slasher film. You are definitely scared. However, is the fear you are feeling the same as if you were really in that situation? Most people would say, "no." The same could be said of the erotic feeling you get when watching a romantic comedy ~ it is not quite the same as when you are alone together with your boyfriend or girlfriend. These fictionalized emotions which we experience through poetry and art are called rasa Aristotle was getting at this idea when he talked about the emotions of pity and fear as essential to tragedy. The Indian theoretician Bharata, however, went much further, positing eight "stable" rasas and 33 "transient" ones: Eros The comic Grief Rage Heroism Fear Disgust Wonder (Amazement) We will not worry about the transient emotions. Rasa roughly translated: "emotive aesthetics"~is the most important concept in classical Indian aesthetics, having pervasive influence in theories of painting, sculpture, dance, poetry, and drama. The rasa theory seeks its principle of definition of literature, not in 262

34 any peculiarity of the linguistic medium, or in any special semantics of poetry, but in the kind of meaning that literature purports to communicate. It argues that the presentation of emotions is the proper object and domain of poetic discourse.. The emotions presented are not to be equated. Rasa is thus the ultimate criterion of literariness. Literature is not, in the ultimate analysis, a type of language use but a type of meaning-emotive meaning. The most valuable contribution of the rasa theory to literary criticism is its emphasis on the context of meaning being the determinant of style. Rasa cuts across generic boundaries. Rasa = "aesthetic relish" Rasa is the relishable quality inherent in an artistic work its emotive content. Every work is supposed to treat an emotive theme and to communicate a distinct emotional flavor or mood (tragic, comic, erotic, etc.) Rasa= the art of emotion, contemplative enjoyment of "universalized" emotion. Rasa as used by Chari most generally signifies "the poetic emotion" a supramundane experience, quite distinct from ordinary modes of knowledge. Emotions have their logic: (Bharata - sixth century) 1) Emotions are manifested in poetry by a combination of situational factors. In drama, this can include event, character, language, lighting, costume, gesture, music, etc. 2) There is a specific number of emotions. 3) Some emotions are permanent, irreducible mental states, while other are fugitive and dependent. 4) A poetic composition is an organization of various feeling tones, but it invariably subordinates the weaker tones to a dominant expression. 5) Feeling tones are brought together in a poem, not indiscriminately, but according to a logic of congruity and propriety. 263

35 Emotions are caused by their objects, manifested by their expressions, and nourished by other ancillary feelings. The rasa theory implies that there are a number of specific emotions, each with its distinct tone or flavor. Poetic works treat a specific number of emotions as their subject matter. Psychic states, attitudes, and reactions are the stuff of poetry, their representational content. There are nine basic (primary, durable) emotional states (41 altogether): erotic love; comic laughter; grief; fury; heroic spirit; fear; wonder; revulsion or disgust; and quietude or serenity. Only these basic emotions can be developed into distinct aesthetic moods. Rasa is concerned with the effect which poetry and theater produce on the reader/spectator. The Sanskrit critics speak of art as an object of enjoyment rather than as a medium for transmitting inspired visions of ultimate reality. Aesthetic experience is simply the apprehension of the created work as delight, and the pleasure principle cannot be separated from aesthetic contemplation. This delight is regarded as its own end and as having no immediate relation to the practical concerns of the world or to the pragmatic aims of moral improvement or spiritual salvation. The language of feelings is not a private language; it is more a system of symbols, a language game that is understood by those who have learned its conventions and usages. Emotions treated in a poem are neither the projections of the reader's own mental states nor the private feelings of the poet; rather, they are the objective situations abiding in the poem as its cognitive content. Rasa is understood as residing in the situational factors presented in an appropriate language. A poet chooses a theme because he sees a certain promise for developing its emotional possibilities and exploits it by dramatizing its details. The representational emotion, or rasa, is the meaning of the poetic sentence. 264

36 The rasa experience brings its own validity and does not demand any external proof by other means of knowledge. The sensitive reader who apprehends the emotive situation does not do so in a neutral frame of mind but is drawn into it owing to the power of sympathy. We experience the mood as a vibration of the heart. It is not enough that emotions are inferred in others or that emotive meanings are understood from words of the poem in the way that factual statements are understood; they must also be found delectable. Otherwise, there would be little incentive to contemplate a work of art, much less to seek a repetition of that experience. Poetic apprehension is a form of feeling response because it induces a repeated contemplation of the object. When an emotion is rendered delectable through a representation of its appropriate conditions in poetry, it attains rasahood. Rasa theory would be opposed to a purely cognitive view that argues that poetry is a mode of knowledge and contemplated as a pattern of knowledge and that valid cognitive knowledge rather than emotional thrills is the proper aim and mode of existence of poetry. For rasa, poetry mirrors the psychic states that are already known to us and dramatizes them or presents them as something experienced a type of recognitive knowledge, because it most generally presents what we have already known before but would like to experience again. Rasa theorists see no harm in admitting that poetic presentations, being emotive statements, can and do also arouse feeling responses in the readers and that these responses are felt as a vibration in the consciousness. The poet, text, and reader are all bound together in a common matrix. This assumption is vital to any conception of emotive aesthetics-affective reference. The values a poem communicates are emotive not cognitive. What is the relevance of "affective reference" to critical discourse? It is easier to define the nature and type of a discourse by its context than by its linguistic form. It is in these terms that the rasa theory conceives of the nature of literature, the purpose of literary 265

37 discourse is neither the statement of universal truths nor the prompting of men to action, but "evocation." In poetry, both words and meanings directly contribute to the aim of rasa evocation are subordinated to that activity. No poetic meaning subsists without rasa. Since the evocative function is thus a necessary condition of all language that deserves the designation of poetry, it follows that all elements found in poetry, such as ideas, images, figures, and structural features are subservient to this function. Figure, meter, rhyme, and plot do not rest in themselves since they can be understood only through rasa, which is the final resting point of all poetic discourse. The delineation of emotions depends not on any special linguistic operation or structuring but on there being an emotive situation. In literature, the presented emotions are generalized and freed from all particularities of time, place, and person so that the reader will view them in a detached frame of mind. *** 266

38 Annexure - IX Scheduling playing times of Raga This connection of time of the day or night, with the Raga or Raginis is based on daily cycle of changes that occur in our own moods and emotions because they are constantly undergoing subtle changes in that different moments of the day arouse and stimulate different moods and emotions. The mental and emotional responses in the autumn or winter or during the rainy season are different from the spring. Scheduling playing times of Ragas has a variety of advantages. It fits the mood of the ragas with our own mood, thus forming a fusion of body and soul. It also creates a definite space of time hence making it possible for various Ragas to get a turn at performance. Each raga or ragini is associated with a definite mood or sentiment that nature arouses in human beings. The ancient musicologists were particularly interested in the effects of musical notes, how it effected and enhanced human behavior. Music had the power to cure, to make you feel happy, sad, disgusted and so on. Extensive research was carried out to find out these effects. This formed the basis of time theory as we know it today. Aligned with the emotional and psychological effect of music on the human mind, the semitones or Shrutis of the octave were named according to subtle shades of different sentiments, feelings and emotions. The Ragas and raginis emerge as the suggestive sound images of these sentiments, emotions and passions. In the beginning, music was confined to rituals, worship and prayers. As specified seasons and hours of day and night were fixed for different religious rites, music relating to them came to be associated with such time and later on, these times were crystallized 267

39 into rigid rules. In time, music ceased to be confined to religion, and with the patronage of kings, it took its home in the royal courts. From here, the original rules of time were slackened and revised by the order of those kings. Ragas and Raginis could be performed on the stage by the order of the monarch, without violating the rule. It is believed that the human body is dominated by the three elements Kaph (rheum). Pitta (bile) and Vata (wind). These elements work in a cyclic order of rise and fall during the 24-hour period. Also, the reaction of these three elements differ with the seasons. Even the respiration changes with time and season. Hence, the nocturnal effects of music, and the belief that failure to perform or listen to a raga at the proper allotted time could affect the health of human beings. As mentioned earlier, Ragas having their Vadi note in the Poorvang region (Sa - Pa) are usually played during evening and Ragas having their Vadi note in the Uttarang region (Pa - Sa) are usually performed during morning. As an example, ragas Bhairav is an Uttarang Raga. Its Vadi note is Komal Dhaivat (flat 6th), therefore its performing time is during the morning hours. Ragas to be performed during the hours of twilight and dusk, when neither the day, nor the night dominate, are called Sandhi Prakash Ragas. The approximate allotted time of such melodies is between 4 and 7 in the morning or evening. In both cases, the notes Rishabh (2nd) and Dhaivat (6th) are usually flat and the Gandhar (3rd) is natural. In the mid-morning Ragas there is frequent use of the natural fourth (Shudha Madhyama), while in the mid-evening Ragas the 268

40 sharp fourth (Teevra Madhyama) i\ote is frequently employed. The sharp fourth is often described as the guiding note. A description of this note in one of the ancient music books goes like this," Just as by a drop of curd a jar of sweet milk is converted to a quality of yogurt, so by the introduction of the sharp fourth, all noon melodies are turned into afternoon melodies". The following schedule will summarize the specific time periods. The 24-hour period is divided into 8 beats each three hours long, as follows: 1. 7 a.m. -10 a.m. first beat of the day. Daybreak; Early Morning; Morning; 2.10 a.m. -1 p.m. 2nd beat of the day. Late Morning; Noon; Early Afternoon; 3.1p.m. - 4 p.m. 3rd beat of the day. Afternoon; Late Afternoon; 4. 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. 4th beat of the day. Evening Twilight; Dusk (sunset); Early Evening; 5. 7 p.m. -10 p.m. first beat of the night. Evening; Late Evening; p.m. -1 a.m. 2nd beat of the night. Night; Midnight; 7. 1 a.m. - 4 a.m. 3rd beat of the night. Late Night 269

41 8. 4 a.m. - 7 a.m. 4th beat of the night. Early Dawn; Dawn (before sunrise) As far as seasons go there are three, in particular that have various Ragas allotted: Rainy season called Varsha, Autumn season called Basant, and Spring season called Bahar 270

42 Annexure - X Pt. Ravi Shankar Critics have accused Ravi Shankar of having sold out to the West. The recent award of a Grammy to the maestro cannot be equated to the Booker or a million-dollar advance, but the fact remains that Indian writing in English has yet to produce its Ravi Shankar, says PARTHO DATTA. Pandit Ravi Shankar... helping the East meet the West. BEING at Home in the World at Delhi post-neemrana, and all the carping and soul-searching about Indian Writing in English (IWE) may exemplify the peculiar love-hate relationship that Indians have with the West. For music lovers, the debates in the press had a sense of dejavu. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ravi Shankar's success in the art houses of Europe and America, followed by his brief flirtation with the Beatles, his appearance at Monterey Festival (which led to one of the most outstanding recordings of the raga Bhimpalasi) and his subsequent enterprise at organising a charity concert for Bangladesh with western pop musicians (notably his disciple George Harrison) has a familiar ring to some of the careers of Indian writers in English today. For even then critics were accusing Ravi Shankar of having sold out to the West. The recent award of a Grammy to the maestro cannot be equated to the Booker or a million-dollar advance, but the fact remains that so far Indian writing in English has yet to produce its Ravi Shankar. Many years ago, in a fine essay, the music critic Chetan Kamani commented that of all Indian musicians Shankar alone had managed to resolve the tension between the West and the East in creative ways. In his autobiography My Music My Life, published in English 271

43 in the 1960s, he had spoken of liberating ragas from the limitations of time theory, enthusiastically espoused the interpretation of different rasas unfamiliar to the traditional ragas and envisioned a different format for concerts. Perhaps more than any other musician, he presciently sensed the changing nature of patronage. Having straddled two worlds in his long performing career; the declining world of the feudal gentry, and the impatient one of urban middle class audiences in post-independence India and the West; his music tried to address all that was modem and new in contemporary times. Shankar's ustad the great Allaudin Khan had once to leave his patron's court in hurt anger because he had been asked to play a sleep-inducing raga for his master! Shankar himself broke away from the stranglehold of feudal culture where the patron's command was total. Even though he has often had to admonish the pot-smoking fringe at large gatherings, his own innovation at presenting a raga in a wholesome manner without making the recital long and meandering certainly helped build a dynamic new community of listeners. Interestingly, some of these modem values Shankar had imbibed from the West, when as a child he toured Europe in the 1930s with his elder brother Uday Shankar's dance troupe. Here he heard great Westem masters like Chaliapin, Toscanini, Casals, Kriesler, Hiefitz and the young Menuhin. From these instrumentalists he learnt the importance of tone. The sound of Shankar's sitar is uniquely his own. It is perhaps for this reason that instrumental music has reached such incredible heights today, competing with the human voice, which in classical theory has supreme status. Similarly, Shankar's experiments with orchestration spring directly from his interaction with Westem harmonic forms. He has himself spoken of adding weight and volume to Indian sounds and of liberating Indian melodic forms from the closed world of the chamber to the freedom of the large concert hall. 272

44 Paradoxically in his endeavours to make classical music modem, Shankar has drawn on his rigorous training in the gurushishya parampara. He has always insisted that the roots of classical music in India are to be found in Indian religion and spiritualism. His resonant use of the bass string to render the notes of a raga in the lower octave has lent gravity and depth to his recitals. Drawing on ancient dhrupad he has invented a tradition of presenting the alap the graduated and structured form of which has now come to stand in for - ironically enough - what is seen as timeless in Indian music. *** 273

45 Annexure - XI Understanding Musical Time Sense by Philip Tagg Originally published in Tvarspel - 31 artiklar om musik. Festskrift till Jan Ling (1984); Introduction The question posed here is: how does music convey the sense of time? I will provide no exhaustive answer to this question but hope that the examples offered will provide some insight into how various attitudes towards and different aspects of experiencing time are conveyed in a number of specific cultural situations. I also hope that some of the interpretations presented below will lead to a discussion of the vital role which musicology should be playing in our society today. Definitions Before discussing particular examples of time sense in music, we need to establish some working definitions of concepts used in this article.'music' I have previously tried to delimit the meaning of the word 'music' as: that form of interhuman communication in which experienceable affective states and processes are conceived and transmitted as humanly organised, nonverbal sound structures from those producing these sounds to either themselves or to others who have acquired the chiefly intuitive cultural skill of decoding the 'meaning' of these sounds in the form of a adequate response' (Tagg, 1981:7). It is necessary to add here that what is meant by 'music' whether the culture under discussion conceptualises it in the same way or not should, together with dance, be regarded as a symbolic system particularly suited to the immediate affective expression of social identity or cultural collectivity. This is because the act of making music entails the organisation of different sounds most frequently as different voices or instruments producing either the same or different musical events in a certain order and because 274

46 such activity is dependent on socially determined rules of aesthetics and cooperation for the music to exist in the first place. Moreover, it is clear that different sociomusical rules are in operation across the world, rules determining not only the ordering of musical materials in different ways but also which (sets of) sounds may be considered as musical in the first place or appropriate for use in different contexts. Such varying sets of rules governing musical structuration in different cultures and subcultures contribute strongly to the construction of ideology by establishing different symbolic universes of affective, gestural and corporeal attitudes or behaviour. As Berger and Luckman (1967) originally stated and as scholars such as Blacking (1976) and Feld (1990) have demonstrated, symbolic universes in music can act either inclusively or exclusively. To put it simply, you either belong to those using musical structuration rules of type a to express messages of type b in relation to phenomena of type c in social context d, under which circumstances and in response to which you exhibit responses of type x (inclusion) or you do not (exclusion). In this article, we are concerned with varying rules of musical structuration relating to the phenomenon of time. This requires that we first attempt to provide working definitions of terms relating music to time ('tempo', 'pulse' etc.) and then of concepts related more exclusively to time. Tempo Tempo is of course Italian or Portuguese for 'time'. When applied to music, however, 'tempo' is the underlying 'pace' or 'speed' at which music is performed, this being one determinant of the time taken to realise a particular sequence of musical sounds. 'Speed' in this context refers to the relative position (implicit or explicit) of the music's 'pulse' (i.e. rate of beats per unit of time) on a sliding, finite, bipolar scale ranging from slow to fast. Musical pulse is directly relatable to the pulse of the human heart, ranging from a minimum slow of forty beats per minute (40 bpm) to a maximum fast at just 275

47 over two hundred (200 bpm). The poles of this scale correspond almost exactly with those of the European metronome, which measures tempo from a larghissimo low/slow of 40 bpm to a prestissimo high/fast of 208 bpm. Mean tempo on the metronome is therefore around 91 bpm, i.e. just over twice the minimum and just under half the maximum rate on the scale (40 x 2.3 = 91 and 91 x 2.3 = 208). This tempo (91 bpm) also corresponds to the (heart) pulse rate of an average male adult walking at an easy pace. Any theoretical tempo exceeding or falling short of this mean pulse by a factor greater than two will thus automatically tend to be divided or multiplied by two in order to bring the tempo into the vicinity of a 1:1 relationship with the beat of the human heart. We should therefore expect tempo in music to be an important parameter in determining the human/biological aspect of an affective relationship to time. Linear time By linear time' is meant the widely accepted abstraction of 'absolute' passing time, symbolisable as a unidirectional, unidimensional axis from past into future, i.e. as an utterly straight line along which no point (in time) can recur. A dialectical materialist view of linear time posits the intrinsic irreversibility of time as inextricably related to the demonstrable irreversibility of material processes, whereas idealistic philosophies of linear time tend to dissociate time from the spatial and material processes upon which the notional viability of linear time ultimately depends. The idealist view of linear time (e.g. Kant) underpins the metaphysical fallacy of culturally and historically specific phenomena being imagined as capable of transcending both time and matter. We shall therefore, unless otherwise stated, be using the term Tinear time' in its dialectical materialist, not idealist, sense. Linear time models are used extensively in the graphic and scribal representation of musical processes. For example, notation starts top left of the first page and, with the exception of repeat 276

48 marks, ends bottom right of the last page, while the abstraction of musical 'form' (in the sense of order of events) is expressed in such terms such as 'AABA'. Similar principles of linear temporality apply to the storage of sound on tape, vinyl, CD and computer disks. However, as we shall see, a lot of music (which by definition occupies a certain duration of linear time) is heard as cyclical rather than linear. This problem is related to contradictions between other concurrent notions or representations of time in our society. Although we regard returning to the same place as perfectly natural, despite the fact that that place will have inevitably changed in many materially verifiable ways not to mention the fact that we will have changed and that such a change will bring about differences in our relation to that place, we tend nevertheless to consider returning to the same (place in) time as either philosophically absurd or as an imaginative exercise in science fiction narrative. Now, if, as we have proposed, the irreversible march of time is dependent on the irreversibility of material processes, then returning to the same place ought to be as illogical as returning to the same time. However, 'we'll meet again, same time, same place' has been a perfectly acceptable statement in our culture for some time. It demonstrates the existence of non-linear notions of time and place, notions inferring that points in both time and place can in fact be revisited. Such notions are of course inter-subjectively verifiable and therefore culturally specific. The contradiction between linear and non-linear notions pervades even our measurement of time. Whereas we find it quite natural to use circular clocks and to talk about fifteen seconds past every minute, twenty minutes past every hour, noon every day, Tuesday every week, the first week in every month, Christmas every year etc., we do not admit the recurrence of years. In other words, while the Chinese can refer to years in either linear or cyclical terms, the year 1968, unlike the year of the monkey, can only exist once. This means that although we seem perfectly prepared to accept the cultural recurrence of time on a small scale, we are somehow unable to do so if the duration in question (in this case years) is equal to or 277

49 greater than that by which we measure the duration of human life. All this implies in its turn that any cyclical process, social or natural, whose periodicity exceeds an average lifetime will be far more difficult for us to conceptualise than those experienceable as cyclical by one and the same individual rather than by a stable community spanning several generations or centuries. Since, unlike hours or days, years and centuries span far beyond the subjectively tangible cycles of our own lives, these longer measurements of duration have, in our culture, acquired an aura of greater objectivity, imagined (erroneously, as we shall see) to be related to historical and material processes beyond our control. It is therefore hardly surprising to discover that the hegemony of the linear view of time is generally associated with the rise of mercantile capitalism, with its need for industrial and social precision brought about by an increasing specialisation of labour and the consequent need for plarmed management and synchronisation of production processes, the correct timing of the exchange of goods and services to produce maximum profit and to increase rates of turnover etc. Nor should it come as any surprise to discover that the rationale of linear time is based on Newtonian physics, which uses the term 'absolute time' to denote the concept. The whole of this process in the social understanding of time in Europe is described in detail by Cipolla in his Clocks and Society (1978). Cyclical time By 'cyclical time' is meant the view of time which enables humans to experience equidistant points along the unidirectional axis of linear time as regular recurrences of the 'same time', e.g. sunrises, sunsets, weekends, tides, seasons, annual festivals, etc., according to socially, culturally and materially determined factors. As we have already mentioned, and as Young (1988) repeatedly observes, our rational tradition of scribally disseminated knowledge, clearly related to the rise and hegemony of capitalism, seems to accord greater credence to linear than to cyclical time. Young 278

50 criticizes not only the human suffering but also the ergonomic and social inefficiency resulting from this one-sided notion of time, illustrating his argument with copious evidence of natural rhythms affecting human behaviour. Of course, the most notable paradox is that very little public notice seems to be taken of the menstrual cycle experienced by over half the adult population, even though feminine hygiene is one of today's most profitable areas of industrial exploitation. There are, however, other important human cycles that are even more neglected, for example: Cycle Duration bioelectric nervous wave 0:00:00.1 heartbeat complex 0:00:01 ventilation (4") 0:00:04 blood circuit flow 0:00:10 blood flow oscillations 0:00:30 metabolic oscillations 0:01:40 vasomotor oscillations 0:06:40 fast endocrine oscillations 0:10:00 (5-16 mins) gas exchange oscillations 0:33:00 metabolic fuel oscillations 1:23:00 heat balance oscillations 3:00:00 circadian rhythms 1 day (24 hrs) water cycles 3 days longer-range endocrine rhythms 1 month Some of these cycles may be of direct relevance to the understanding of time sense in music and will be discussed later. 279

51 Present time One advantage of thinking in terms of cyclical time in connection with music is that it constitutes a perceptual, rather than conceptual, system of durations. Whereas linear time cannot logically admit the existence of the present, except in terms of a theoretical point of zero duration as the immediate future slips into the immediate past, cyclical time on the other hand, as a phenomenon of shared perception, allows such a moment to be understood as 'present time' which may be extended or recur, 'more like a dash than a dot'. This notion of the present is, as we shall see, of cardinal importance in the discussion of time in music and has its material basis in the fact that very short-term memory (spanning present time in the sense of the truly immediate past) and long-term memory involve different neurological processes. Moreover, if, as Young (1988:11) points out, 'the stretched simultaneity of the present is what makes possible the sense of movement', then concepts of cyclical time and of the present as 'more of a dash than a dot' become essential to the understanding of time and movement in music. Since concepts like 'pulse', 'tempo', 'speed', 'rhythm', 'bar', 'metre', 'phrase', 'period', 'passage', 'section', 'movement' etc. are all connected with movement in both space and time, the linear time model is obviously unsuitable when discussing music, in which 'times' as sets of musical events containable within an extended present time can occur many 'times'. The hierarchy of durations Between microcosms and macrocosms of linear time durations, i.e. between 'moments' of present timels and eternity, our culture has established a conceptual hierarchy, expressed in terms of units ('lengths') of linear time, ranging from milliseconds to millennia. Concepts of duration in musical structures range, in ascending order of length (note once again the linguistic confusion of concepts of time and space), from the 'tone beat' and museme (Seeger, 1960: 76; Tagg, 1979: 70-73), through musical phrases, periods, sections, movements 280

52 and pieces to 'works' (opuses) as long as a Wagner opera, a complete concert, a complete performance or festival, in other words from less than a second to several days. The basis for all such conceptual units of musical duration is recurrence, either as repetition or reprise (the latter implying that there are changes which mark the recurrence), i.e. the measure and manner in which the same or similar musical structure can be regarded by a given musical-cultural community as establishing a pattern of occurrence (Middleton, 1983). This rule applies not only to the recurrence of everything from the pulse of the music and tone beats or riffs (microcosm) to the start of another 'work' or a new fifteen-minute batch of Muzak, but also to recurrences of the same musical structures over far greater durations, e.g. every Christmas, every birthday, every death or wedding. The types of such recurrence and change at various levels of the musical hierarchy of durations will obviously vary from culture to culture in both time and space, according to the social practices and ideology (in the broadest sense of the term) of the culture or subculture concerned. We should therefore expect different cultures to exhibit different musicalstructural traits which will embody a variety of affective relationships as regards time (a) between individuals and their social and natural environments, (b) between two or more socially determinable groups (of individuals). This discussion raises some tricky questions. Since any study of time in music would have to be culturally comparative, what generally acceptable criteria could be used for qualifying our durations in terms of Tength' or frequency of recurrence? Would we need to resort to the Newtonian 'absolute' time scale? Could we use bio-acoustic and bio-haptic universals, such as heartbeats (pulse), breathing rates or any of the other sonic, corporeal and haptic time patterns created during such universally practised human acts as jumping, fighting, sleeping, making love, chewing, not to mention the paces (= size or tempo of footsteps confusion of time and space again!) determined by strolling, walking, running, etc.? How could 281

53 such humanly universal time patterns be related satisfactorily to social time patterns of work, ceremony, entertainment and their periodic recurrences? How could the social meanings of these relations be convincingly interpreted? How do individuals socialise their time sense through music in different cultural contexts? How does music communicate socially acceptable/unacceptable types of affective relationship between the different levels in the durational hierarchy of linear or cyclical time? This paper answers none of these questions. However, perhaps a little light can be shed on the matter if we briefly consider at a slightly less abstract level of discourse some of the phenomena mentioned thus far by discussing a few examples of time sense in a number of musical cultures. Historical and anthropological excursion Agrarian communities Amongst most hunters and collectors, as well as in many rural peasant communities, there is neither 'clock time', nor does 'music' exist as a concept (Keil, 1977; Tagg, 1993). 'Pieces' of music neither start nor finish in the clear-cut way we are used to though the permanent flow of sounds on pop radio stations with their fade-ins and fade-outs are currently changing this pattern since (as with the pop DJ) they are more integrally woven into the totality of everyday life where real, though not necessarily conceptualised, delimitations between the social and individual, the private and public, work and leisure, the rational and emotional are less well-defined than we generally admit them to be in our own society. Yet although the passing of linear time may not necessarily be emphasised by fixed durations between the stopping, starting and changing of 'pieces' of music, music in these societies nevertheless associates with time at a microcosmic level in a broader sense. Music can, for example, express the collective attitude to be assumed at certain times of day for certain activities (e.g. before the hunt, as a work song) or at certain times of the year (e.g. harvest rites) or at certain stages in the life cycle (e.g. initiation rites, birth and 282

54 death). In this way, music can be seen as ritualising recurrent events in the social life of members of a community. Music also expresses time at a microcosmic level, as can be seen in differences between tempo or rhythmic intensity if one compares a collective song in which members of a given community prepare themselves for an elephant hunt or sing lullabies. Obviously, the pace required in conjunction with a hunt intensity of heartbeat, speed of eye, of hands, arms, feet and breathing will be far greater than that needed for singing a child to sleep. Time must therefore be expressed and communicated differently in these two situations. In the case of the hunt, quick, sudden movements enacted with the precision of split seconds are vital ingredients of the activity, but they would be detrimental when trying to send a child to sleep. India We should expect to see special differences in the musical structuring of time sense if we compare the music of two classes living in the same society. Unfortunately, there is little or no source material for studying 'folk' music from the early Indus culture but, judging from the state of music in India a few decades ago, some observations can be made about the matter in hand. The most obvious time difference between 'folk' and 'high' art in Indian music (a dubious pair of opposites, this implying either that 'folk' are 'low' or that 'high' art has nothing to do with real people) seems to lie in differences of duration. Whereas Indian folk music seems mainly to consist of musical entities ('pieces'?) lasting between two and five minutes each and cast in the mould of typically popular forms, such as love songs, dances, work songs, comic songs, etc., the classical raga music of Northern India consists of performances lasting for several hours and is connected to a whole sphere of intricately codified aesthetic relationships between philosophy, poetry, sensuality, colour, precise affective meanings, exact fields of paramusical connotation etc. It should be clear that the mere differences in absolute musical duration reflect different positions in 283

55 class society and vast differences between the time budgets of the two classes concerned. Putting the matter as a rhetorical question, where would a hard-working Indian peasant find time to hear a two-hour performance of Raga Ashaveri which, anyhow, should be played in the morning when he is out in the fields with all its associations to the maidens of Krishna with their cheeks as soft, round and as succulent as ripe pomegranates? Another time aspect of Indian classical music which might make it irrelevant for the peasant or worker is what might be called its aspect of 'meditative eternity'. Although both folk and classical music of the Indian continent share in common a clear dualism between melody and a drone accompaniment, the drone of Indian classical music, both Hindu and Camatic, exhibits certain idiosyncratic aesthetic traits. 'The tampura' [string drone instrument] 'is not supposed to be 'interesting' like the piano accompaniment to a modem song but is the medium in which the melody lives, moves and has its being... it is heard before, during and after the melody: it is the ageless and complete which was in the begirming, is now and ever shall be. The melody itself, however, is the changeable character of Nature which comes from the Source to which it returns'... 'Harmony is for us an impossibility, for by breaking the solid ground on which the processes of Nature rest, we would be creating another melody, another universe and thereby disturb the peace on which it rests' (Coomaraswamy, 1957: 77-80). Here 'Nature' and the expression of the soloist latch direct on to eternity (the 'Source'), the tampura's tones being perceived and reenacted as a sort of metrically indeterminate sonic backcloth for melodic embroidery. This 'eternal' quality of the drone in Indian classical music is not only symbolised by its being 'one tone' sounded before, after and during the performance, but also by the fact that the four strings making up the sonic backcloth pa sa; sa; sa ( ) should be plucked without sounding as any determinable rhythmic 284

56 pattern. This quasi-recitativo, non tempo giusto, long-note musical notion of eternity or of space and time so large in relation to human size and human bodily rhythms is similar to the European and North American musical concepts of 'Wide Open Spaces' and 'Eternity' found in the stereotypes of library music, tone poems and film music (Tagg, 1991:16-19). Now, melody can be roughly described as the most easily perceptible and identifiable 'horizontal' line in any music. It may be regarded as the voice or part most easily memorised or reproduced by members of a given music culture. A melody is generally a singable line (cantando), i.e. contained within a singable pitch range, stretching over durations lasting no longer than one breath and consisting of tone beats sounded at a humanly reproducible rate. Melody can be seen as the line of individual expression in music, as the music's 'ego', so to speak. That which 'surrounds' the melody sonically, e.g. the accompaniment in Western European music (suonando), can in turn be interpreted as the individual's affective environment (Marothy, 1974: 22, Mayer, 1980: 263-4, Tagg, 1979:123-4). In Hindu raga music, as in Western European music, the individual expression carried in the melody's changing patterns of affective relationship to the drone or accompaniment is the central dynamic of the discourse. In the raga tradition, the soloist should start the performance by weaving melodic statements into the drone backcloth, using a meditative mood with no explicit pulse. This initial section (alap) has a non-strophic, non-tempo-giusto recitatival character and slowly states the tones, tuning, mode(s) and complex of potential moods to be found in the raga, without any apparent consideration to microcosmic levels of passing time. The alap, occupying nearly half of the 'absolute' (linear time) duration of the performance (unless it be an aochar) is regarded by initiated members of the music culture as a sort of preamble (alap = conversation) to the performance proper which starts when musical pulse becomes explicitly externalised in the tabla part. 285

57 Drones in most Indian folk music seem to lack the meditative and 'eternal' quality of the tampura. If not sounded as a continuous 'bagpipe' note behind mainly strophic melodies, the Indian folk drone tends to be present in the form of rhythmic strums or other rhythmic-motoric ostinato patterns (cf. blues riffs). Moreover, parlando recitative performances are rarer and shorter in the folk music than in the classical music of India. From the discussion above we might conclude that Indian folk music concerns itself more with affective socialisation of relationships to shorter, more immediate and rhythmically regular durations or patterns of time, i.e. to activities directly associated with regular movements made by the human body, while Indian classical music has a greater tendency to socialise and structure affective relationships towards longer and more abstract durations. Bibliography Askin, I F (1969). O problema do tempo - A sua interpretagao filosofica (Rio de Janeiro). Berger, P L and Luckman, T (1967). The Social Construction of Reality (London). Blacking, J (1976). How Musical is Man (London). Cipolla, C M (1967). Clocks and Culture (New York). Coomaraswamy, A C (1957) The Dance of Shiva (New York). Danielou, A (1968) The Ragas of Northern India (London). Eliot, T S (n.d.). Four Quartets (London). Feld, S (1982). Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping and Poetics in Kaluli Expression (Philadelphia). 286

58 Denisoff, R S and Peterson, R A (eds. 1972) 1 Change, (Chicago). Gillett, C (1971) The Sound of the City (London). Golovinsky, G (1980) 'Molodezh i muzyka s funkcii isskusstva yego izlatel'stvo (Moscow). Hamm, C (1982) 'Some thoughts on the measure music'. Popular Music Perspectives: 3-15, ed. (Goteborg and Exeter). Haralambos, M (1974) Right On! From Blues to J (London). Karshner, R (1972) The Music Machine (Los Ang Keil, C (1977) Tiv Song (Chicago). Ling, J (1983) Europas musikhistoria (Upp Malm, W (1967) Music Cultures of the Pacific, tl (Englewood Cliffs,). Marothy, J (1974) Music and the Bourgeois, Mus (Budapest).

59 - (1969) The Story of the Blues (London 1969) Rothenbuhler, E W (1987). 'Commercial radio and popular music: processes of selection and factors of influence'. Popular Music and Communication: 78-95, ed. J Lull (Newbury Park). Rowe, M (1973) Chicago Breakdown (London). Russell, B (1959) The ABC of Relativity (London). Schafer. R M (1974) The New SoundScape (Vierma). - (1977) The Tuning of the World (Bancroft, Ontario). Seeger, C (1960) 'On the moods of a musical logic'. Journal of the American Musicological Society, XXII, Reprinted in Studies in Musicology : (Berkeley, 1977). Shepherd, J (1977) Whose Music? A Sociology of musical Languages (London). Tagg, P (1979) Kojak - 50 Seconds of Television Music (Goteborg). - (1980, ed.) Film Music, Mood Music and Popular Music Research. Stencilled Papers from the Goteborg University Musicology Department, (1981) On the Specificity of Musical Communication. Stencilled Papers from the Gothenburg University Musicology Department, (1990) 'An anthropology of television music?' Svensk tidskrift for musikforskning, (1991) Fernando the Flute (Liverpool). (1993) '"Universal" music and the case of death'. Critical Quarterly, 35/2:

60 (1994a) From refrain to rave: the decline of figure and the rise of ground. Popular Music, 13/2: (1994b) 'Subjectivity and soundscape, motorbikes and music'. Soundscapes. Essays on Vroom and Moo: 48-66, ed. H Jarviluoma (Tampere). Wellek, A (1963) Musikpsychologie und Musikasthetik (Frankfurtam-Main). Young, M (1988). The Metronomic Society (London). Endnotes 1. This paper is a radically revised and expanded version of the homonymous article published in 1984 in Jan Ling's fiftieth birthday Festschrift Tvarspel (Goteborg, Skrifter fran musikvetenskapliga institutionen, nr 9), pp That article was in its turn based on a short paper prepared for Riksutstallningar (Swedish National Exhibitions) and their 1980 exhibition on 'time', an exhibition which to my knowledge never saw the light of day. o 2. Thanks to Ake Park, my neighbour in Goteborg ( ), and his Bra Bockers Lakarlexikon, vol. 5: (Hoganas, 1982). According to this 'Home Doctor Encyclopedia' work, a highly trained athlete's pulse rate can, if measured during rest, be as low as 40 bpm. The pulse of a small child expounding much energy in a state of excitement can occasionally exceed Askin (1969:84), discussing contradictions between philosophies underlying methods of dating stages in the earth's geological development ('relative' and 'absolute geological time'), concludes: 'the definition of time according to the categories of duration and succession proves inadequate in defining the essence of time' (p. 84)... 'The theory of relativity sees time as an 289

61 indissoluble unit of matter in movement, according to whose state the properties of time itself also change' (p. 214) (author's translations). The first chapter of Askin (1967:21-37) is devoted to a critique of Kant's basically idealist notion of time, mostly as set forth in later philosophers' discussion of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Logic. 4. Obviously, neither minidisks nor computer disks necessarily store musical events in contiguous clusters corresponding to their occurrence in real time. However, digital storage of music always includes the linear temporal ordering of relevant disk clusters among the music's file attribute details. 5. It is perhaps important to consider that a nun who spends sixty years in a Carmelite enclosure, if she is in the chapel choir for Mass and Readings at 8 am and 8 pm every day, is in the same place at the same time exactly 42,800 times during those years'. Drid Williams 'The Brides of Christ', in Perceiving Women, ed. S Ardener (London, Dent, 1975:115), cited by Young (1988:288). 'Similarly, continues Young (loc.cit.), 'a Benedictine monk who lasted as long could have heard the same bells calling him to prayer' [in the same place at the same times] 'not far from two hundred thousand times'. 6. The modem view seems to be that the cyclical may have been perfectly acceptable in some ancient societies in which the wheel and the mandala were appropriate symbols for time, but not for us. We can read, but only as if from a great distance, that in India an elaborate system of longer cycles was added to the natural recurrences of the days, months, and years, with 360 ordinary years making a divine year and 12,000 divine years forming another repeating cycle' (Young 1988:5, citing Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton, 1954), pp ). 7. The hegemony of linear time is, of course, also associated with the rise of the bourgeois notion of the individual, with the monorhythmisation and strophisation of European music, discussed under section 3.3, and with the relation of those 290

62 processes to the emergence of the figure/ground dualism within European visual arts and of the melody/accompaniment dualism within European music. 8. This does not mean to say that Newton's notion of time was basically non-materialist or non-dialectic. He saw time and space as 'existing in mutual interdependence' and as 'a sort of receptacle of themselves and of all existing things' (Askin 1969:30, quoting Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). However, without access to the theory of relativity, according to which properties of time vary in relation to the varying properties of matter, it must have been hard to avoid such metaphysical mystification as the possibility that space and time could exist free from all matter which fills them because 'matter is not necessarily everywhere' and because space is 'the imlimited sensory medium of God' (ibid. p. 31, quoting Newton's Optics). 9. The most notable loss of cyclical time measurement in urban society is that determined by the moon, replaced by constant artificial lighting in the city but an essential cyclical feature of life for those dependent on tides or on light by which to harvest crops at night. 10. This whole area is fraught with taboo and inconsistency. The amount of British TV advertising for female hygiene products is enormous (currently Tampax, Bodyform and Lillets) and enormously expensive. Absorption properties must be shown with clear blue liquids, never red, while premenstrual changes of mood are never mentioned. Similarly, the successful career woman can now purchase menstrual planning sheets to include in her Filofax, even if the company she works for makes no allowance for her monthly ordeal or for her state of mind the week before. 11. Table adapted from Young (1988:36). 'm' = minutes, 'h' = hours. A Ventilation' is one complete cycle of breathing in and out. 12. Young 1988:

63 13. 'I am grateful to Professor Maynard Smith for pointing out to me that 'short-term' and 'long-term' memory are presumably different processes. One can lose the latter without losing the former, and the opposite process happens in some old people' (Young 1988:85-86 and 277, footnote 18). See also Russell 1959, Eliot n.d:13-20, Tagg 1979: For more on present time in music, see. Wellek 1963:109, Shepherd 1977:18-68, Tagg 1979: For further discussion on tone beats, musemes, present time, cyclical time, etc. in music, see Tagg (1979): 70-73, , Note the original meaning of words for 'moment' (= a movement), such as ogonblick, Augenblick (= blinking of an eye), 'minute' (= tiny), 'instant' (implying time standing still). Also interesting are expressions like 'a heartbeat away' or 'War, children, it is just a shot away' and 'Love, sister, it's just a kiss away' (Rolling Stones: 'Gimme Shelter' on LP Let it Bleed (1968), DeccaSKL5025). 16. There is not much stringency used in distinguishing between the terms 'repetition', 'recurrence' and 'reprise'. If discussed at all by musicologists, 'recurrence' (the large set including repetitions and reprises), is usually regarded as a totally intrageneric/intramodal phenomenon without socially symbolic meaning. Middleton's (1983) article is a notable exception to this trend and marks an important step in the understanding of musical recurrence. It is also worth noting that such common musical terms as 'tremolando', 'ostinato', 'riff, 'turnaround', 'recapitulation', 'return', 're-entry', 'refrain', 'verse', 'rondo', 'variations' and 'chorus' all define different ways of structuring recurrence in music. 17. 'Socialise' is used here in the sense of acquiring social skills, i.e. sozialisieren as understood by the Habermas school of sociocultural theorists. Subsequent change of meaning in this article, e.g. to the Marxian sense of vergesellschaften, this will be duly indicated. 292

64 18. During a visit to the Department of Musicology at Goteborg in November, 1983, Klevor Abo, from the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, explained that his people, the Ewe of South-Eastem Ghana, use the English term 'music' to denote musical situations and structures imported by British colonialism and Anglo-American neo-colonialism. In the traditional peasant society of the Ewe, however, the nearest equivalent to 'music' seems to be vu ha. Vii really means 'drum' and ha song. Vii ha denotes the complete performance of music, singing, drumming, dancing, drama, etc. (see Tagg, 1984). 19. The permanent stream of music through loudspeakers in modem capitalism, its ritualising function in weaving the individual's affective experience into the ideologies, norms of behaviour and attitudes of the dominant societal force, is a large and important field for musicological research, even if it has thus far been largely neglected. 20. See for example Music of the Ba-Benzele (Barenreiter Musicaphon BM 30 L2303). 21. Of course, most of these observations apply to comparable phenomena in our own society too, but since there seems to be a tacit agreement amongst (ethno-)musicologists that going on academic safari is better than trying to penetrate our own sociocultural jungle (Tagg 1990), I will start by following the same rules of the game. With the initial series of examples taken 'a long way from home', I hope Western European musicologists will be lulled into feeling that we all share the same sort of 'group' identity which includes 'us' by virtue of our pointing at (studying) 'them' and by not pointing at (not studying) ourselves. Unfortunately, when we all finally return home after the initial intellectual safari, we discover that we do not all belong to the same group, some musicologists preferring to apply two separate sets of norms, one for studying 'them' (anthropological, social, etc.), another for studying 'us' ('let's keep to the music itself and nothing else!'). 293

65 22. The main sources here are Danielou (1968) ai\d Malm (1967), as well as the various sleeve notes from recordings mentioned in later footnotes. 23. Here we are mainly drawing on material from the recordings Musik fran Bengalen (Caprice RIKS LPX 7, 1974) and Musique Indienne du Rajastan (Caprice RIKS LPX 1, n.d.). 24. For further information on Raga Ashaveri, see Danielou (1968) and LP Music of India - III Dhrupads (Barenreiter Musicaphon, n.d.). 25. This quote is unfortunately inexact because it is retranslated from a Swedish interpretation I made in 1972 from the English original, before I lost the book. The bibliographical reference should, however, be correct (noted in the Swedish teaching material for music teacher trainees in Goteborg, 1972). For similar information on the raga drone, see some of the useful quick introductions by Ravi Shankar, e.g. on LP The Sounds of India (CBS CS 9296). Even when the backing drone is played by wind instruments accompanying the shenai, for example, no bagpipes are used in the classical tradition; instead, several alternating shenai players are used to make the 'one continuous tone' (e.g. Vilayat & Bismilla Khan: Duets. Music from India Series -1. HMV ASD 2295,1967). 26. The cantando/suonando conceptual pair is Goldschmidt's (see Mayer, 1980); the 'ego' idea is adapted from Marothy (1974). 27. For discussion of the 'decline of figure and the rise of ground' with reference to the music of the rave scene, see Tagg 1994a. 28. Ling (1983): The regular 8 or 12 bar blues patterns can of course be extended to 16,24 or to other similarly quaternary lengths. 30. See, for example, explicitly urban blues such as Joe L Carter's Please Me Foreman ('won't you slow down the 294

66 assembly line some'...) This track, recorded from Swedish radio in 1973, is on the Classic label. 31. This process became particularly clear to me when, faced with having to explain the impact and popularity of rock and roll to psychologists convening (1981) in the modem Goteborg suburb of Frolunda, I asked them to step outside into the urban soundscape and to position themselves at 10 metre intervals from each other behind the tower blocks by the bus station. This, I claimed to them, would help explain the genre's relation to the individual and his soimdscape. Once outside, they agreed that the experiment would not be necessary and that they would have to shout over the traffic noise to make themselves heard. 32. For prehistorical musical equivalents of this visual magic, see Ling (1983): This I was able to observe by asking students not previously instructed to do so to assess the duration of pieces heard during analysis classes. I regret not having recorded the results of these somewhat spontaneous experiments, but assure the reader of their viability. 34. This point is highly generalised and merely points to a few imaginable tendencies. For some types of disco (e.g. funky) and rock (e.g. symphonic synthesised rock), the traits described here may well be inapplicable. Some of the ideas presented here initiated from a conversation I had with Dick Bradley (see Tagg 1980). 35. A good example of this phenomenon is Mick Jagger's rendition of Paint It Black (Decca ,1966) in which he is consistently one quaver before the beat during the first 8 bars of every reprise. 36. I have never attended a professional disco recording, but Bob Lander, professional sound engineer (Goteborg) and member of the Spotnicks, assured me in 1976 that disco backing tracks were often recorded on metronome. (Predates sequencing and quantisation!). 295

67 37. By 'Muzak' is meant not only the New York company of the same name, but any music specially recorded for the non-entertainment purposes of increasing productivity in places of work and consumption in shops, etc., i.e. the sort of lowprofile, low-volume wallpaper of sound generally referred to as 'functional music' (as if no other music had functions!), 'environmental background music', etc. and produced by such firms as Muzak, 3M, Philips, etc. 38. This column displays the factor by which you have to multiply the duration shown immediately to the left in the current row in order to arrive at the duration shown in the column diagonally below and to the left. For example, there are approximately l.b bioelectric nervous waves for every heartbeat complex, 3 heartbeat complexes per blood circuit flow, etc. 39. osc. = oscillation. Rates in this column are taken from Young (1988:36). 40. For example, it is interesting to note that support for Liverpool FC and Everton FC seems to have increased in tandem with the proportion of players imported from areas that must be qualified as anything but local (e.g. Scandinavia, Croatia, Italy, Brazil). 41. Public broadcasting companies either must not or do not have to make a profit. However, commercial broadcasters have shareholders who, without lifting a finger, want to see their annual dividends increase. Commercial broadcasters are therefore obliged to make a profit. This profit (the difference between payouts to shareholders in commercial broadcasting and breaking even after reinvestment in public broadcasting) has to be paid for, and so do the expenses incurred by companies choosing to advertise in the broadcast media. Advertising time and advertising agencies are not cheap. Who pays? We, the public, pay more for goods and services from companies advertising in the broadcast media because profits must be made for shareholders of companies who advertise on broadcast media as well as for shareholders of media companies who derive income from 296

68 advertising: there are many parasites to feed. Another ethical problem concerns democracy and the commercial broadcast media. 42. While we have, at least in theory, the right to influence public broadcasting policy what should be broadcast, how it should be financed, etc. by means of public debate, there is no way in which we can influence manufacturers of cars, cola, detergent or tampons to stop advertising and to reduce their prices to the public by the 10-20% that marketing costs occupy. Nor can we counteract commercial broadcasting's crass adherence to media demographics, target groups and the division of society into constructed communities of consumer taste rather than into group identities relating to real cultural and economic class interests. For more on the myths of 'free' radio and 'we play the music people want to hear', see Karshner 1972: and Rothenbuhler The advent of format radio in the USA is described by Denisoff and Peterson (1972:5) in the following terms. Concerned by the Nazi and Stalinist use of radio and movies for state propaganda in the 1930s, a number of scholars turned to look at the impact of the mass media on society. Krenek, Blumer, Adomo and Lasswell' [ ] 'were soon joined at Columbia University by Merton and Lazarsfeld who founded the Office of Radio Research which became the Bureau of Applied Social Research. They, with their students, did a whole set of studies on the media industries, their program content, and effects on their audiences' [c ]... Ironically, what began in the 1930s as a concern with totalitarian political propaganda became, by the 1950s, the intellectual fountainhead of "motivation research" the prime tool of Madison Avenue advertisers.' 44. See Karshner 1972:91-126, Rothenbuhler I tried to illustrate this point in a series of six fastmoving twenty-minute music education programmes for Dutch 297

69 national radio (Muziek maakt alles mooier, AVRO, 1988, for pupils in the age range). I included the recurrent spot 'This Week's Silence' during which children from one school asked the audience to think about topics ranging from someone's dog dying to why so many children in the world are starving. Each announcement was followed by silence. Initially, the traditional 'one minute's silence' seemed the best option but Gerard Kempers, my friend the producer, quite reasonably felt that broadcasting silence for one minute out of twenty was excessive. We cut the broadcast silence down to thirty seconds, only to discover that a control room alarm would go off if silence were transmitted for more than ten seconds. We cut the broadcast silence accordingly. Even then, we had to put large stickers on the broadcast tapes, to warn the engineers that the ten seconds of silence contained in each programme was intentional. So great, it seems, is the taboo of silence in radio that we were not allowed to broadcast more than 10 seconds of it, not even for educational purposes in programmes created with the explicit purpose of increasing public awareness of the functions of sound, music and silence. 46. I first wrote this sentence aged 39. Aged 53, I still agree. I still agree (aged 56). 47. See [sections about Dordogne cave bison hunter and about (para, starting 'In this case'...) and about 're-controlled affective time' in rock rhythm. *»* 298

70 Annexure - XII Ayur Veda, Samkhya, and the Time Theory of Performance in Hindustani Classical Music This article first appeared in the Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion, Vol. Ill, October 1998, and is reproduced with kind permission of the publishers. If there is one aspect of the classical music of India that, more than any other, sets it apart from other traditions, it is the theory that establishes a specific time for the performance of each melody form, or raga. "Orthodox musicians in India never play a raga at any other than its proper time," according to the late French musicologist Alain Danielou (1968:95):for at the wrong hour it could never be developed so perfectly nor could it so greatly move an audience... the Indian musician who plays a morning mode in the evening, disregarding the surroundings and the mood of his listeners, appears utterly lacking in sensibility. Today this attitude prevails mainly in north Indian, or Hindustani, music. The south Indian, or Camatic, tradition contains a highly developed theory of ragas and their performance times. "However, in Camatak music today," writes P. Sambamoorthy (1958: 245), "there is no questioning the fact that the ragas sung during their allotted times sound best, but the time-theory of ragas, generally speaking, may be said to be... only advisory and not mandatory." Such a sentiment is quite alien to members of the Hindustani tradition, however. As Walter Kauffman tells us (1968:13), it is much more than just an aesthetic consideration. It is considered to have an effect on the environment: The older generation of Indian musicians in particular still believes that disaster will be invoked if, for instance, an evening-raga is performed in the morning or vice versa. The belief that there exists a reciprocal effect between the raga and the forces of the universe is widely accepted and has prevailed throughout the centuries. 299

71 Danielou (1968: 95) quotes Sangta-makaranda I, as follows: One who sings knowing the proper time remains happy. By singing ragas at the wrong time, one ill-treats them. Listening to them, one becomes impoverished and sees the length of one's life reduced. In spite of statements such as this, however, a review of Sanskrit musicological literature does not reveal the origin of such a time theory, or, indeed, its systematic formulation. According to O. Gosvami (1957: 90):It must be confessed that no ancient or medieval writer on the subject has given any rational explanation for prescribing a specific time for singing a specific melody. It was left to the late Pandit Bhatkhande to explain the rules generally observed by Indian musicians and throw light on this interesting subject. The System of Pandit Bhatkhande Gosvami is referring to the musicologist V. N. Bhatkhande ( ). In the early years of this century, Bhatkhande developed a method of classifying ragas based on his observations of performance practices by hundreds of artists over many years. His system, while not without its critics, has become standard in north India, particularly in the area of pedagogy. "The major novelty in Bhatkhande's system was his classification of ragas," Harold Powers explains (1992:12). "Bhatkhande wanted to replace the traditional and musically meaningless classification schemes current among 19thcentury musicians with something rational and objective." Bhatkhande's approach was to classify the ragas themselves into groups arranged according to ten "parent" scales, known as thaats (frameworks) or melas (assemblages), based on the arrangement of the seven basic notes, Sa -Re -Ga -Ma -Pa- Dha- Ni-Sa. Powers (1992: 15) sets forth the fundamentals of Bhatkhande's approach: 300

72 Bhatkhande's theory of raga turns on three basic constructs, all linked to the diurnal cycle: one is intervallic content, the that itself; the second is the importance of certain degrees in the scale; the third is the register in which those degrees are found. According to Bhatkhande's celebrated 'time theory', the time at which a raga was traditionally supposed to be sung was usually predictable ~ and predictable soon came to mean 'determined' ~ according to two intersecting criteria: the abstract scale type of the raga; and the registral location of its most prominent scale degree. To determine the performance times of each raga, Bhatkhande divided the day into eight praharas or watches, each of three hours' duration, using 4 a.m. as his starting point. He then assigned each raga to a specific prahara according to its underlying tonal characteristics. A simple way of categorizing ragas is to divide them into three categories: a) Those containing Re and Dha flat b) Those containing Re, Ga and Dha unmodified c) Those containing Ga and Ni flat These categories are associated with the praharas in the following ways: Prahara Time a b 4 am- /am 7 am- 10 am 10 am -1 pm 1 pm- 4 pm 4 pm- 7 pm 7 pm- 10 pm 301

73 c c 10 pm -1 am 1 am - 4 am Group In order to further classify the ragas, it is necessary to consider two other factors. The first concerns the placement of the note that, apart from the actual tonic, is considered to be the most prominent. It is called vadi. When this note is located in the upper tetrachord, or section, of a that, from Pa to Sa, the raga is known as uttaranga. Conversely, when the vadi is found in the lower tetrachord, Sa to Ma, it is known as purvanga raga. This also has an effect on the performance time of a raga as purvanga ragas are found mostly in the late afternoon or early evening, while the uttaranga ragas are sung in the later part of the night. The other consideration has to do with the use of the fourth scale tone, or Ma. According to the theory of Hindustani music, this tone can be sharpened but not flatted. As a general rule, this note remains suddha or unmodified during the morning, but for evening and night melodies, it is made tivra or sharp. Not only this, but the tivra Ma is a very prominent note at these times. Its use in this way allows us to clearly differentiate between each group in its morning use and its repetition later in the day. Both of these considerations are important in the transition periods of the daily cycle (Deva, 1992:11)\ Of great significance in all this is teevra madhyama... The introduction of this note again indicates the passing of twilight ragas into the later ones. As Venkatamakhi, an author of the 17th century remarks, "Just by a drop of curd, a jar of sweet milk is changed into curd; so by the addition of Ma, a poorva(l) raga is changed into an uttara raga." Within the framework of this general structure, there are many details regarding performance practices during different praharas. Each note in a raga has a certain level of importance vis-a-vis the other notes, and these relationships change subtly during the different times of the day. For example, in the ragas which are to be played at dawn, Re flat and Dha flat are most prominent, with Ma 302

74 and Pa next in importance and Ga and Ni playing a minor role. During the next watch, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., Ga and Dha are important and all the rest, except Ni, occupy a secondary rule. As O. Gosvami describes it (1957: 93), there are many more subtle considerations: Next in order comes the raga group sung in the third watch of the day. Their period is from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.(2) In this group Ga and Ni are flats. In the first part of the after-noon, we notice a gradual emergence of the note Ga to a predominant position, forming a kind of alliance with Ni which is flat. In this group of ragas, the notes Ma and Pa predominate over the whole structure of the Ragas, subordinating the powerful note Re... to a considerable extent. This a sign of the advent of evening. There are many points of this nature that would have to be brought out in order to arrive at a complete description of timerelated performance practices. This is beyond the scope of the present paper, but the following points taken from Gosvami (1957: 94-95) provide a good overall summary of the time theory. 1. Ragas with the notes Re and Dha flat coupled with sharp Ga and Ni are meant for the twilight time. 2. The unmodified Re, Ga and Dha find a place in the melodies of the first part of a day or night. 3. Ga and Ni flat play a significant role in the midday and midnight melodies. 4. The presence of sharp Ma is a feature of an evening or night melody. 5. Purvanga Pradhana Ragas, i.e. ragas strong in the first tetrachord, are for afternoon or early part of the night. 6. An Uttaranga Pradhana Raga, i.e. a melody strong in the second tetrachord, is for the latter part of the night. 7. The importance and preponderance of the unmodified Re in a melody suggests noontime or midnight. 303

75 8. Sa, Ma and Pa are the important notes of a raga meant for the last part of the day. 9. The absence of Re and Dha in the ascendant of a raga is the feature of an afternoon melody. 10.The subordination of Dha and Ga is invariably found in a noontime melody. This is something of an oversimplification, and Gosvami would not suggest that these rules are passed on in this exact form to musicians in North India. Rather, each musician learns the various aspects of each raga, including its correct performance time and its rasa, or mood, from his guru, or teacher. Thus, there are literally thousands of subtleties which are learned but not formulated into a single body of theory (in contrast to the situation in south India, where such a body of theory exists but is generally not followed). Under the circumstances, we should not be surprised to find some disagreement over the performance of certain ragas. For example, Walter Kaufmann (1968: ) finds some disagreement regarding Raga Hindol: North Indian musicians have differing views about the vadis of this raga. Some hold that the vadi is Dha and the samvadi [second most prominent note] is Ga and that the highly placed vadi serves as an indicator of the performance time, the morning. Others, however, insist that the vadi is Ga and that the sam vadi is Dha, which transforms Hindol into an evening raga. Nevertheless, the general view is that Hindol is to be performed in the morning. If the raga is correctly performed, its rasa represents quiet, dignified joy. In spite of this and similar examples, there is, in general, a high degree of agreement regarding the correct performance time for most ragas. This is quite remarkable, especially when we consider the number of different ragas currently in use in north India, as well as the existence of different schools of music or gharanas. It suggests that, at some time in the past, some common theoretical framework may have existed as the basis for the time theory. 304

76 Possible Origins of the Time Theory Whether or not such a framework did ever exist in the past, today there is little clear indication as to the origin of the practices we have been describing. Some writers such as Bonnie Wade (1979: 76) feel that "it may have originated with the practice in early centuries of associating particular music with successive formal stages of the classic Sanskrit drama." See quotes Harold Powers (1970:11): The idea of assigning melody-types to the successive junctures of the play is easily transferred to the assigning of melody-types to the successive seasons of the year, or the successive hours of the day and night; and the association of a musical entity or musical type with the circumstances and emotional state of a character at a particular moment in a play is not too far from that association of a particular raga with a particular human or divine personality in a specific physical and emotional state. It is true that the earliest surviving written record of Indian music occurs in a section of the Natya Sastra, a work on dramaturgy, which contains a general theory of rasa, or aesthetic, affective qualities. A number of theorists draw links between the rasa theory and the time theory by showing connections between various times of the day or year and underlying moods associated with them. "Mood and time of day are... felt to be interrelated." Writes Bonnie Wade (1979: 75). "Thus performing a raga in keeping with its mood extends to performing it at the appropriate time of day." This is one angle on the performance time issue. Kaufmann has a different suggestion. In his view (1968:13), "There is little doubt that the source of the concept of proper performance times reaches back to the ritual chant of the Vedas," This seems to be logical because much of the Vedic literature, especially the Yajur Veda, deals with prescriptions for the performance of Yagyas, or religious ceremonies, and these have very definite rules regarding the time and manner of their performance. Gosvami agrees (1957: 89): 305

77 In the beginning music was confined to rituals, worship and prayers; and as specific seasons and hours of day and night were fixed for the different religious rights and ceremonies the music relating to these rites came to be associated with such times. Later this association came to be crystallized into rigid rules. Emmie Nijenhuis is of the same opinion (1974: 36): Indian music has always figured during religious ceremonies, festivals and on all-important occasions in human life, such as birth, marriage, etc. As these ceremonies are bound to specific, auspicious times, it is quite understandable that also the times for performing such music were restricted. It is safe to assume that certain ragas were reserved for special occasions and that their performance was confined to set times. The field of Vedic knowledge associated with setting times for ritual performance is called Jyotish, often translated as astrology. Again, this could be part of the puzzle, but there is a problem in connecting contemporary Indian music with its Shastric roots. Nijenhuis (1974: 38) points out that "some ragas, the historical development of which can be traced in musical treatises, have preserved their ancient times of performance up to the present day." In spite of this, however, Pandit Bhatkhande (1934:4) himself was the first to acknowledge that his theories carmot derive authority from any specific sutras: We are constantly told that our music has had for its source the great Sama Veda, a work some three or four thousand years old. However, no scholar ancient or modem seems to have yet successfully established an intelligible and satisfactory connection between Sama music and that of succeeding writers. Barring the Natya Shastra of Bharata, we are very poorly equipped in the matter of reliable records for a faithful history of the early Hindu period. One researcher who has examined the link 306

78 between ancient texts and contemporary practice is Mukhund Lath of the University of Rajasthan (1978:ix): In form and spirit, our music remains true to the seeds sown in a very remote age. Witness, for example, the significant fact that the melodic features and formal principles (called the ten jaticharacteristics) which governed the early musical forms still govern our own ragas in their salient features. A similar link with the past is to be found not only in music but also in other art forms with a living tradition. At the same time, dynamic transformations, or rather transitions have been as much a part of Indian musical history as its essential living continuity. This is bound to be so in any living tradition which has not become stagnant. Old forms in music which held sway for centuries, have given place to new. The ancient doctrinal scheme of interpreting musical structures has been transformed in many basic ways. Elsewhere, however (1987: 115), Professor Lath points out the shortcomings of Bhatkhande's formulation of a time theory of performance:... it was only in modem times, with Bhatkhande, that an attempt was made to discover certain structural denominators common to ragas placed in the same time-bracket. Bhatkhande succeeded in making a few generalizations which found great acceptance. Modem Hindustani musical theory as well as practice have been greatly influenced by his views and teachings in other ways too. Yet people have found fault with his generalizations and pointed out notable exceptions. And in any case,...no one has ever tried to display and work out in proper empirical detail the psychophysiological basis which he believed was the ground for the ragatime connection [emphasis mine]. It is one thing to find common features in ragas that have been placed in a single time-bracket but quite another to show that this points at a deeper psychophysiological basis for the occurrence. Lacking such an empirical or theoretical basis, the Hindustani music tradition is in danger of losing this unique aspect. Although 307

79 the older generation of performers still regard the time theory as one of the most critically important aspects of their tradition, others, under the pressure of contemporary concert and recording schedules, are relaxing or abandoning performance strictures. Further, some major articles on Indian classical music in Western publications fail to mention what is the essence of this music for many of its practitioners.(3) But if the traditional literature does not provide us with a basis for the theory, where else should we look? The Vedic Context I will argue for a more comprehensive approach to the problem, by placing Indian music theory into a Vedic context. In its earliest manifestation in India, music theory was a part of the Vedas. As Alain Danielou notes (1968:3):A general Sanskritic theory of music, termed Gandharva Veda, was elaborated at a very early date. From such summaries as have survived, it seems that the Gandharva Veda studied every use of musical sound, not only in different musical forms and systems but also in physics, medicine and magic. The view of Vedic thought that has emerged over the last two hundred years is of a wide-ranging, fragmented, body of literature. Certain aspects were seen as different, sometimes contradictory, philosophical "systems." Other scholars such as Rene Guenon (1958:14) have disputed this view: The diverse metaphysical and cosmological conceptions of India are not, strictly speaking, different doctrines, but only developments of a single doctrine according to different points of view and in various, but by no means incompatible, directions. Besides, the Sanskrit word darshana, which is attached to each of these conceptions, properly signifies "view" or "point of view," for the verbal root drish, whence it is derived, has as its primary meaning that of "seeing": it cannot in any way denote "system," and if orientalists translate it thus, that is merely the result of Western habits of thought which lead them into false assimilations at every step. 308

80 Such a view is supported by current research at Maharishi Vedic University which suggests that studying sections of Vedic literature in isolation does not reveal their full meaning. The Vedas need to be understood as a whole structure. In the case of music, for example, we might arrive at a fuller comprehension if we look at it in the context of a complete Vedic cosmology. This would result in an understanding of music parallel in many ways to the tradition of musical cosmology which existed for centuries at the core of Western culture.(4) In one of the best known examples of this tradition, formulated by the sixth-century Roman philosopher Boethius, music was divided into three categories, musica mundana, the mathematical harmony of the cosmos, musica humana, the harmony of the human soul and body, and musica instrumentalis, the music that can be heard by mere mortals. It was also seen as a central subject of mathematical and cosmological study along with arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. The symbolism in which Vedic thought is couched tends to be linguistic rather than mathematical. In fact, realigning Indian music with Vedic cosmology would place it alongside a comprehensive theory of speech, language and sound. Furthermore, it would place music in a context in which time and the cycles of time are studied from a variety of perspectives. This is indeed a large undertaking but we can approach such a study through the main Sanskrit works on musicology and the traditional iconography of sound. Sangita Ratnakara and the Theory of Sound The great thirteenth-century treatise Sangita Ratnakara of Samgadeva deals with music. It is not, strictly speaking, a part of Vedic literature. Nevertheless, it reflects Vedic thought and can serve as a signpost directing us to the relevant aspects of Vedic literature. At chapter two, verse 2, Samgadeva introduces the concept of Nada, or sound, in its two levels of manifestation. 309

81 His sutra is typically terse: "Nada is said to be twofold, viz., produced [ahata] arid uirproduced [anahata]." The editor's comir\entary reads (Shringy, 1991: 23): Ahata of the text literally means 'struck' and anahata literally means 'unstruck.' The idea is that Nada has two forms, viz., the created and the uncreated, the former being an object of sense perception and the latter a matter of mystic experience of Yoga in which sound and light are fused together and there is direct perception. Danielou expands on this description (1968:21): In Indian musical theory, it is said that there are two kinds of sound, one a vibration of ether [akasha], the other a vibration of air. The vibration of ether, which cannot be perceived in the physical sense, is considered the principle of all manifestation, the basis of all substance. It corresponds to what the Neo-Pythagoreans called the 'Music of the Spheres'. It forms permanent numerical patterns which are the basis of the world's existence. This kind of vibration is not caused by a physical shock, as are audible sounds. It is therefore called 'anahata', "unstruck". The other kind of sound is an impermanent vibration of air, an image of the ether vibration. It is therefore called 'ahata' or "struck". According to Danielou, (1968: 22) the relationship between these two levels of sound is used to define music in the Indian tradition: The sounds used in music are those whose mutual relationships form an image of the basic laws of the universe as represented by the unstruck sounds. Thus, musical sounds have it in their power to reproduce the first creation of the Primordial Intellect. An understanding of sound is central to the Vedic picture of the world, as sound is the key element in such a picture (de Nicolas, 1976: 50): 310

82 It is the greatest understatement to say that the Rig Vedic methodology draws its main clue to interiorizing all perception, the whole sensorium, from sound. Rig Vedic man was enveloped by sound; surrounded and excited by sound; made aware of presences by sound; looked for centers of experience in the experience of sound; found the model of complete, absolute instantaneity and communication in sound. Ethnomusicologist David Reck (1977: 7) supports this view: In India, it is said, the universe hangs on sound. Not ordinary sound, but a cosmic vibration so massive and subtle and all encompassing that everything seen and unseen (including man) is filled with it. The ancient rishis, the seers, practiced yoga and austerities to tune themselves to this cosmic sound, to make it vibrate in their spinal columns, hearts, and brains. From this sound, the great god Shiva created music and dance and taught it to his wife, the goddess Sri. The art of music passed on to other heavenly beings, to the celestial entertainers, the gandharas and kinnaras, to the goddess of learning and language, Saraswati, to the monkey god Hanuman, to the immortal sage Narada. Saraswati, Agni and the Mechanics of Creation The reference to Saraswati is of central interest in this context. If we subscribe to Anne Hunt Overzee's view (1992: 18) that "Most world views, consciously held or otherwise, have certain rootmetaphors which act as keys to the total perspective," then this goddess serves as a metaphor for the understanding of the Vedic world view through the medium of sound, and "comprehending such a root-metaphor can lead to an understanding of the world view as a whole." In this case, in the words of Sri Aurobindo,(1971: 86) "the symbolism of the Veda betrays itself with the greatest clearness in the figure of the goddess Saraswati." In traditional iconography, Saraswati is frequently depicted with four arms. One holds a book, one a rosary, while with the other 311

83 two she plays the Vina, an ancient stringed instrument. It is these symbols which link her with learning, language, sound and music. However, the deeper meaning of Saraswati, as in all Vedic literature, can be derived from the actual sound of her name, from the meaning of the roots that make up the Sanskrit word Saraswati (Vyas, 1987: 64): The word Sarasvati is derived from the root Sr = to move. Like a flowing river, speech too is characterized by incessant motion from pure consciousness, intentional consciousness, thought and finally speech. Sarasvati, therefore, stands for the dynamic aspect of consciousness implicated in speech. We find a similar view from Alain Danielou (1964: 260): The name Sarasvati is of rather obscure origin. It is sometimes thought to refer to the pool of knowledge. The name is that of a sacred river, called the Sarsuti; although now dried up, it is mentioned in the Rig Veda as "She who goes pure from the mountains as far as the sea."... Saras, which means fluid, refers to anything that flows and as such applies to speech and thought as well as water. Both of these scholars agree that the symbolism contained in the word hinges on the interpretation of the ideas of movement, or flow, and the idea of a river, pool or other body of water. In his parsing of this word, however, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduces a second element. To the first root sr indicating motion or flow, Maharishi adds sva which refers to the Self. (5) From this perspective, therefore, Saraswati represents the dynamic flow of the Self and it is this Selfreferral value that places Saraswati at the heart of Vedic knowledge. To appreciate why requires an examination of the Vedic view of the mechanics of creation and evolution. Maharishi (1983: ) explains it in terms of Vedanta: From a cosmic standpoint, Vedanta explains the relationship of the unmanifested absolute Reality (Brahman) with the manifested 312

84 relative aspect of life by introducing the principle of maya. The word maya means literally that which is not, that which does not exist. This brings to light the character of maya: it is not anything substantial. Its presence is inferred from the effects that it produces. The influence of maya may be understood by the example of the sap appearing as a tree. Every fibre of the tree is nothing but the sap. Sap, while remaining sap, appears as the tree. Likewise, through the influence of maya. Brahman, remaining Brahman, appears as the manifested world. On the individual level, Vedanta explains the relationship of the absolute Self (atman) and the relative aspect of individual life by the principle of avidya. Avidya, or ignorance, is nothing but maya in a coarser form. If maya can be likened to clear water, then muddy water is avidya. Under the influence of maya. Brahman appears as Ishvara, the personal God, who exists on the celestial level of life in the subtlest field of creation. In a similar way, under the influence of avidya, Atman appears as jiva, or individual soul. The relationship between Atman and jiva is given by Samgadeva in Sangita Ratnakara 2B(v) (Shringy, 1991: 30-31): These individual beings are not different from the Atman, neither is the world different from it; for, creating by its own power, it is non-different (from its creation), just as gold is non-different from (its products such as) earring etc.; according to others, however, it creates through nescience as the rope gives rise to the snake. The nature of Saraswati is revealed in the mechanics of the process whereby Atman becomes jiva, or Brahman becomes the world, or the sap becomes the tree. This process is recounted, in different symbolic forms and from different perspectives, over and over again throughout Vedic literature. To go to the beginning of this literature we turn to Rig Veda. "It is the purpose of all ciphers to invest a few signs with much meaning," Carlo Suares tells us (1992: 72). This is certainly the case 313

85 with the Rig Veda. According to the analysis by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, AGNI, the first word of the first verse of this text, tells the whole story, not only of Rig Veda itself but also of the entire body of Vedic literature. And what is described is these same mechanics of creation. In this case, when the first letter. A, is pronounced, it represents the fullness of the unmanifest. Brahman. The unmanifest begins to manifest through the introduction of the first boundary, represented by the letter G. When articulated, the closure of G imposes itself on the full openness of the sound A. A full stop is created as non-existence imposes itself on the full value of Being. From the imposition of this boundary, the full stream of manifestation emerges and continues as represented by the syllable NI. The details of the process and the content of manifestation and evolution are unfolded through the rest of the verses of Rig Veda and commented upon by the rest of Vedic literature. But what is this first boundary? Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has explained it in above, in terms of maya. He also explains it in terms of consciousness. In its unmanifest state. Brahman is alone without a second. Then, the first boundary occurs in the unbounded value of Brahman by virtue of the act of awareness. The Self, which is pure intelligence, becomes aware of its own existence. "The primordial activity of this most fundamental level of intellect is the discrimination of three distinct values within the unified state of transcendental consciousness. These three values are called rishi, devata and chhandas" (Weinless, 1987: 143). Maharishi explains these terms (1994: 59): In its 'self-referral' or transcendental state, consciousness knows itself alone; as such, it is the knower of itself. By being the knower of itself, it is also the object of knowledge and the process of knowing. Thus in its self-referral state, consciousness is the unified state of knower, knowing and known. In the Vedic language this 'three-inone' structure of consciousness is called Samhita of Rishi, Devata, Chhandas Samhita (unity) or Rishi (knower), Devata (dynamism of the process of knowing, and Chhandas (the known).(6) 314

86 The emergence of consciousness creates the first boundary; the unity of Brahman, known as the samhita or wholeness value, becomes the trinity of rishi, devata and chhandas. A moves onto G; Nada brahman becomes anahata Nada; the Self (sva) begins to flow (sr) within itself, giving rise to the essence of Saraswati. Apart from describing the process of perception, these terms, rishi, devata and chhandas, give a structure to the body of Vedic literature, and, through this, to a framework for the consideration of music theory. Research at Maharishi Vedic University has suggested a series of relationships between the various sections of the Veda by demonstrating that each book, or section, deals mainly with one of these three categories, either rishi, devata or chhandas. (Maharishi Vedic University, 1995) Thus, for example, the Rig Veda is seen as representing the value of the whole, the samhita value, as is the practical application to health found in Ayur Veda. Other books are seen as dealing with more specific values. The whole system looks as follows: Samhita Rishi Devata ChhandaVeda Rig Sama Yajur AtharvaVedanga Vyakarana Jyotish 315

87 Kalpa Chhand Shiksha NiruktaUpanga Samkhya Vedanta Vaisheshika Mimansa Nyaya Yoga Brahmana Upanishad Aranyika BrahmanaUpaveda Ayur Veda Gandharva Veda Dhanur Veda Sthapathya Veda It will be noted here that music, in its manifestation as Sama Veda and its Upaveda, or subsidiary, Gandharva Veda, is seen as relating to rishi, the value of the Self. It would seem worthwhile, therefore, to explore this category of Vedic literature, that pertains to 316

88 the rishi value, in order to gain insight into the theory of music. By contrast, it is worth noting that Sthapatya Veda, which deals with architecture and the structuring of the external environment, is classified under chhandas, i.e. relating to the objects of perception. While there have been times, for example in Renaissance Europe, when architecture, or the most external application of artistic expression, was regarded as the "Queen of the Arts," in India the highest value has always been given to the most internal art form, vocal music. The origin of this idea can be found in a famous story which is recounted in the second chapter of the Vishnudharmottara Purana. It takes the form of a conversation between the sage Markendeya and King Vajra (Deva, 1992:1): Once upon a time, a king, desirous of learning sculpture, went to a learned sage and asked to be taught the art. But the teacher said, "How can you know the laws of sculpture, if you do not know painting?" "Teach me the art of painting. Master", said the disciple. "But how will you understand painting, without the knowledge of dance?" "Instruct me in the techniques of dance, O Wise One", requested the royal student. The teacher continued, "But you cannot dance without knowing instrumental music". "Let me learn the laws of instruments", prayed the king. The guru replied, "Instrumental music can be learnt only if you study deeply the art of singing". "If singing is the fountainhead of all arts, I beg you, O Master, to reveal to me the secrets of vocal music". This prime place given to the voice in ancient times still abides, and many of the qualities of Indian music derive their characteristics from this fact. The Theory of Music It is perhaps the goal of Sarngadeva to "reveal the secrets of vocal music" in the very beginning of section 2 of the Sangita Ratnakara: "Nada is the very essence of vocal music," he tells us at 2(i), just before expounding upon the twofold nature of Nada as ahata and anahata, described above. The effect is to invoke the essence of Saraswati, for the concept of "unstruck" sound refers to the same 317

89 transcendental level within the Self where the flow of consciousness takes place. This connection is explored by a writer on Tantra (Rao,1990: 68) Anahata, 'unstruck', is the centre where sound arises without being struck, giving rise to air; this is the lotus with twelve petals. This is the lotus of consciousness (samvidkamala), for it is there that the fire of consciousness bums, and the glorious goddess whose form is pure consciousness rests. From the lotus of consciousness emerges sound, and from sound emerges music and speech. The sciences dealing with music and speech are found in the rishi aspect of Vedic Literature. Thus, to study language we can look to the field of Vyakarana, or grammar. Music is dealt with in Gandharva Veda and its relationship to Sama Veda. To understand its cosmological context, however, involves the consideration of Jyotish, Vedanta and Samkhya. We have already drawn on Vedanta in defining rishi, devata and chhandas. Samkhya goes more deeply into the processes of evolution which will lead eventually to a consideration of time. For a view of Samkhya, we can turn to two musicologists. In a letter to the author in 1992, Alain Danielou relates Samkhya to the theory of Nada. "The relation between Anahata and Ahata Nada," he writes, "is part of the Samkhya theory which considers that all aspects of the world are based on abstract numerical codes. Hence the relationship between music, colours, esthetics, architecture, planets, etc." The second musicologist is Samgadeva. If we turn again to the Sangita Ratnakara, we find him expounding on Samkhya immediately after his reference to Vedanta (Shringy, 1991: 32): "From Atman emanated ether, first of all, followed by air, fire, water and earth in their respective order. These are the great elements, and they constitute the body of Brahman, then called viraj." It is important here to quote the commentary to this verse, because it clarifies the meaning of these terms. After explaining that this verse describes the 318

90 order of physical emanation and the manifestation of nature, Shringy continues (1991: 32): In Indian philosophy, the manifest phenomenon as perceived through the five senses is classified into the five basic elements, called mahabhutas, which term is translated here as 'great elements'. These elements are not necessarily the equivalents of the English words ether etc. used here; but since there is roughly a similar tradition in Greek philosophy, these terms have tentatively been considered acceptable. He goes on to explain that akasha means that objective reality, which is the substratum of sound perceived by the ear; while vayu, anala (also called agni or tejas), jala and prthivi denote the elements through which we gain the perception of touch, colour, taste and odour. In this scheme, akasa describes the level of creation where anahata nada is said to reside. The other mahabuhtas progress from subtler to grosser levels of creation in the systematic unfolding of Brahman into the physical universe. This process is detailed extensively in both Samkhya and Vedanta, and is beyond the scope of the present discussion. Samgadeva himself moves into a different sphere of discussion. There is evidence that Samgadeva was involved with the practice of Ayur Veda, or medicine. Indeed, he makes reference to another treatise of his on that subject, Adhyatmaviveka, now lost. In Sangita Ratnakara, he follows his exposition of Samkhya with a lengthy discussion of human anatomy as the basis for an understanding of musical sound production. This is but one of many pieces of evidence of connections between music and medicine in ancient times. We can explore this via a more direct connection between Samkhya and Ayur Veda, and this will bring us into contact with another theory of the cycles of time. 319

91 Ayurveda, and the Doshas While Ayur Veda is understood as medicine, the word is also rendered as the science of longevity. According to the scheme we have been following, it is one of the two aspects of Vedic literature that is based on the value of wholeness, the samhita value of rishi, devata and chhandas. According to one of the main texts of Ayur Veda (Sharma, 1981, v): Ayurveda (the science of life) is one of the branches of the Vedas. It is regarded as upaveda of Rigveda or Atharva-veda. But, really speaking, it is a stream of the knowledge coming down from generation to generation since eternity parallel to the Vedic literature. That is why its emergence has been said to be from Creator (Brahama) Himself prior to the creation. It is taken as eternal because nobody knows when it was not there. All this shows its long tradition and deep attachment to Indian culture. According to a modem exponent (Lad, 1984: 15), "All Ayurvedic literature is based on the Samkhya philosophy of creation." This is seen in the concept of the doshas, or humors, upon which all Ayurvedic diagnosis and treatment are based. Kenneth Zysk explains (1985:1): Most diseases are defined in terms of a humoral theory. The Indian physicians understood there to be three 'humors' (dosas): wind (vata, vayu), bile (pitta) and phlegm (kapha, shlesman), which, on analogy with the humors of the Hippocratic and Galenic systems, were vitiating forces in the body. When something called a nidana, 'primary cause,' which could be of climatic, organic, or less commonly, demonic origin, acted upon the humors, an imbalance occurred, bringing about the manifestation of disease. The principal aim of the physician was to recognize which humor or humors were out of balance and to reestablish the equilibrium through allopathic treatments, which usually included drugs with opposite qualities. 320

92 diet, and daily regimen, although surgery was also sometimes recommended. The relationship between the doshas and the elements of Samkhya are given by Vasant Lad (1984: 26): Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth, the five basic elements, manifest in the human body as three basic principles, or humors, known as the tridosha. From the Ether and Air elements, the bodily air principle called vata is manifested. (In Sanskrit terminology, this principle is called vata dosha.) The Fire and Water elements manifest together in the body as the fire principle called pitta. The Earth and Water elements manifest as the bodily water humor known as kapha. These three elements ~ vatta - pitta - kapha ~ govern all the biological, psychological and physiopathological functions of the body, mind and consciousness. While difficult to translate exactly, we can say that vata governs transport and communication within the physiology, while pitta governs functions of metabolism and kapha is responsible for basic structures of the body. The Doshas and the Cycles of Time It is of great significance for our study of music that Ayurveda also has its own theory of time. We can refer to the Charaka Samhita (Sharma,1981: 384): Time is the year as well as the status of the patient. The year is divided into two, three, six, twelve or even more parts according to the nature of action (to be taken). Now, dividing it into six, the action will be said. Hemanta (early winter), grisma (summer) and varsa (rainy season) these are the three seasons characterized by cold, heat and rains. In between them there are other three seasons having common characters such as-pravrt (early rains), sarad (autumn) and vasanta (spring). 321

93 The text goes on to relate these time values to the treatment of patients (Sharma, 1981: ): The status of the patient is also called as timely or untimely in relation to the act being performed or not such as, in a certain condition one drug is untimely, and the other one is timely.... The therapy being administered after or before the (opportune) time is not effective because time determines the sufficiency of the administration of therapy. On the basis of this principle, Ayur Veda recognizes multiple cycles of time and distinguishes the specific balance between the doshas existing in each segment of each cycle. These factors are taken into account in diagnosis and treatment as well as the recommendations or preventing disease. During the diurnal cycle, each dosha is found to predominate twice. The sequence is approximately thus:(7) 6-10 a.m.- kapha 10-2 p.m. - pitta 2-6 p.m. - vata 6-10 p.m. - kapha 10-2 a.m. - pitta 2-6 a.m. - vata It does not end there, however. A tridosha balance is specified for every kind of cycle, days of the week, months of the year, the main stages of life, the steps of digestion, the seasons, the nakshatras or cycles of the moon etc. Of considerable importance in this scheme are the seasons. This is not only because seasonal imbalances are an important feature of Ayur Veda theory, but also because, according to 322

94 an ancient text, the diurnal cycle is, at least in part, based on the seasonal one (Bhishagratna,1981:51):... the features which specifically mark the different seasons of the year are observed to characterize the different parts of a complete day and night, [or in other words] traits peculiar to spring time exhibit themselves in the morning; the noon is marked by all the characteristics of summer; the evening by those of the rainy season; the midnight by those of autumn; and the hours before dawn by those of Hemanta. And similarly, like the seasons of the year, the different parts of the day and night are marked by variations of heat, cold, etc, [or in other words] the deranged bodily humours such as wind, bile. etc. naturally and spontaneously accumulate, aggravate, or subside during the different parts of the day as they do in the different seasons of the year [represented by those parts of the day and night as stated above]. This relationship between the seasons and the diurnal cycle is mirrored in the area of music. Ancient music theories recognized six basic ragas and the six seasons. O.C. Gangoly suggests (1989: 80) that "It is quite possible that the assignation of ragas to particular seasons may be older than the Sangta-makaranda," that is, prior to its earliest discussion in terms of the diurnal cycle. He goes on to suggest that these seasonal associations originated from the customs surrounding certain seasonal festivals, a notion that parallels the ideas of Gosvami and Nijenhuis quoted earlier. Of great significance to the present study is that the historical development of the diurnal cycle concept from the seasonal one is similar both Ayur Veda and in music. The link between diurnal and seasonal cycles is only one piece of evidence for the connection between Ayur Veda and Gandharva Veda. Prof. P.V. Sharma of Benares Hindu University and editor of the Charaka Samhita cites Samgadeva's involvement in Ayur Veda and the inclusion of musicians in the list of hospital staff members in ancient Ayurvedic texts. He also addresses the connection between the time theory and rasa aspects of raga performance by citing the connection between the doshas of Ayur Veda and the gunas, or 323

95 primary constituents of nature, of Samkhya philosophy. The following is from a discussion I had with Professor Sharma during a research visit to India in 1994: Q) So, do you see any relationship between doshas and swaras (notes)? A) Certainly. The approach is psychosomatic - a mind/body approach. The doshas the physiological humors interact with the psychological ones, sattva, rajas, tamas. We can correlate sattva with pitta, tamas with kapha and rajas with vata. They are both unstable. Q) So it would come as no surprise to you that the time aspect of music is related to Ayur Veda? (A) Certainly, because it affects the physiological humors. So a morning raga will sooth kapha in the body because it eliminates tamas in the mind. Music is concerned with the mind. But the mind is in the body. Until you know the physiology of the body how can you know the effect of music? It is not possible. Professor Sharma also supports the idea that the effect of music on the physiology can be learned through experimental methods built around Ayurvedic pulse diagnosis, a highly sophisticated methodology used by Ayurvedic doctors to assess the balance of the doshas within the physiology. Some small pilot studies which have been conducted at Maharishi Vedic University show that such effects can be clearly demonstrated. It has been noted, for example, that the doshas are often brought sharply into balance when an individual listens to Sama Veda and other kinds of Vedic recitation. The effect of music is more complex, however, and requires more sophisticated study for which funds have not, thus far, been available. One goal of such research would be to show whether vata, pitta or kapha responses occur during vata, pitta or kapha periods of the 324

96 day. It must be evident, however, that there is a discrepancy between such periods and the eight praharas of current music theory. These can be reconciled by considering the broad interpretation of Pandit Bhatkhande's raga classification vis-a-vis time of performance and scale forms as set forth by Harold Powers. In a recent article (1992: 9-51), Harold Powers divides the day into six, rather than eight, segments and relates them to the thaats as follows: Before noon (suddha MA) or midnight (tivra MA) for kalyan, bilaval and khamaj thaats. Around dawn (suddha MA) or dusk (tivra MA) for bhairav, purvi and marva thaats. After noon (suddha DHA) or midnight (komal DHA) for kafi, asavari and bhairavi thaats. While it may appear that this scheme does not exactly overlap the divisions of the day from Ayur Veda, it is important to note that a major concern in Ayur Veda is helping the physiology to make transitions smoothly from one period to another. Difficulty in doing this results in symptoms and disease and Ayurvedic practitioners routinely prescribe changes in routine, diet and medications during different seasons, for example, in order to prevent this. From this viewpoint, music's influence can be seen as a form of therapy in assisting such transitions. It is, in fact, used as a treatment modality in exactly this way at Maharishi Ayur Veda medical centers. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1991:12) explains as follows: Every level of creation is a frequency. One frequency melts in to the other and this is how the process of evolution takes place. The night comes to an end and the dawn begins. At dawn, when the darkness and dullness of the night is over, some inspiring freshness comes and there is a different frequency in the whole atmosphere. At midday there is another big change in frequency; at evening, a different frequency; at midnight a different. This cycle of change is 325

97 perpetual, and because everything is a frequency there is sound at every stage. From morning to morning the melody of nature is changing, changing. Gandharva music goes with the time, setting its melodies according to the changing nature. It sets forth those very natural melodies which match with the process of evolution. It provides a powerful harmonizing influence in the whole atmosphere to balance imbalances in nature. Thus, for example, the period defined as "before noon" comprises a transition from kapha to pitta time. Dawn involves the transition from vata to kapha, as does the spring period, and so on. Music therapy designed for such periods influences the physiology in such a way as to facilitate these transitions. To understand this process would require knowledge of the effects of different note patterns and rhythms on the physiology. Some scholars believe that such knowledge exists. Writing as long ago as 1935, Gangoly, (1989: 83), reported that "...some music scholars have recently discovered some physiological basis in the structure of the ragas which seem to offer some rational explanation for assigning particular melodies to particular hours." Similarly, Alain Danielou wrote to me in "There exists a relation between various scales and the humours of the body. Any one expert in the music therapy of the Ayur Veda should be able to find out." Whether or not such expertise exists in India is the subject of ongoing enquiry. In the interim, a research study utilizing pulse diagnosis can test many of the hypotheses which emerge out of the theoretical constructs outlined above and could prove to be a valuable first step in understanding the phenomenon of time in musical performance. If we take the view that the theory of Gandharva Veda, or music, can only emerge from the full value of Vedic thought, we have to consider all the aspects of Vedic literature which deal with cycles of time. Of these, however, Ayur Veda is one of the most significant, and there appears to be considerable evidence linking it with musical performance in ancient times. The reader will 326

98 recall the verse from the Sangeeta-makaranda, quoted at the beginning of this paper. One who sings knowing the proper time remains happy. By singing ragas at the wrong time one ill-treats them. Listening to them, one becomes impoverished and sees the length of one's life reduced. The reference to the length of one's life provides another link to Ayur Veda which, as stated earlier, can be rendered as the science of longevity. This, and other evidence, would suggest the existence of an ancient view in which, in the area of health, music has a definite role to play. Notes 1. Throughout this article, quotations will be reproduced as they appear in the original in spite of inconsistencies in the spelling of Sanskrit and other foreign terms. 2. Gosvami counts the first period of the day as the dawn and the second period as the first real "watch" of the day. Hence the discrepancy between his numbering system and the one we have used. 3. As an example, Harold Powers's article "India" in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, while excellent in every other regard, makes no mention whatsoever of the time theory of performance. 4. See Godwin 1993, Haar 1960, James 1993, Kayser 1950, McClain 1978 and Westbrook 1997 and There are various ways to divide this word into its component roots. Dividing it as Sarasvati gives us the root sr, meaning fluid, going, moving, etc. while vati means to be full, or possessed of. Thus Saraswati means "full of motion." Alternatively, dividing the word Sarasvati still gives sr but also sva meaning own, one's own, or Self. Thus Saraswati would mean "flow of the Self." 327

99 6. For those familiar with a different terminology, Maharishi here equates rishi with adhyatmika, devata with adhidaivika and chhandas with adhibhautika. 7. Given that these classifications of the day predate the invention of clocks by many centuries, such formulations can only be approximate. The original formulations must have been based on the position of the sun, moon and other bodies during the course of each daily, monthly and annual cycle. The accuracy of such observations can be guessed by the treatises on Jyotish, the jyotisa-sutras and, more recently, by the Vedic observatories which still stand in various parts of India. References Bhatkhande, Pandit Visnu Narayana.(1934). A Short History of the Music of Upper India. Bombay. Bhishagratna, Kaviraj Kunjalal, ed. (1981). The Susshruta Samhita. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series. Danielou, Alain (1968). Northern Indian Music. New York: Frederick A. Praeger., (1964). Hindu Polytheism. BoUingen Series LXXIII, New York: Pantheon Books. de Nicolas, Antonio T. (1976). Four Dimensional Man: Meditations Through the Rig Veda. Stony Brook, N.Y.: Nicolas Hays Ltd. Deva, B. Chaitanya.(1992). An Introduction to Indian Music. New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India Gangoly, O.C. (1989). Ragas & Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes based on Original Sources. New Delhi: 328

100 Munshiram Manoharlal Ghose, Aurobindo. (1971). The Secret of the Veda. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Godwin, Joscelyn. (1993). The Harmony of the Spheres: A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International. Gosvami, O. (1957). The Story of Indian Music: Its Growth and Synthesis. Bombay, Calcutta, New Delhi: Asia Publishing House. Guenon, Rene. (1958). Man and His Becoming according to Vedanta. Richard C. Nicholson, trans. New York: The Noonday Press. Haar, James. (1960). Musica Mundana. PhD Dissertation, Harvard University. James, Jamie. (1993), The Music of the Spheres. New York: Grove Press. Kaufmann, Walter. (1968) The Ragas of North India. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Lad, Vasant. (1984). Ayurveda: The Science of Self-Healing. Wilmot, WLLotus Press. Lath, Mukund. (1978). A Study of Dattilam: A Treatise on the Sacred Music of Ancient India. New Delhi: Impex India. (1987). "An Enquiry into the Raga-Time Association." Aspects of Indian Music. Sumati Mutatkar, ed. New Delhi: Sangeet Natak Akademi. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. (1983). On the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary, Chapters 1-6. London and New York: Penguin Books. 329

101 . Maharishi Gandharva-Ved. (1991). Vishwa Vidya Peeth, Maharishi Nagar, India & Livingston Manor, NY: Age of Enlightenment Press.. Vedic Knowledge for Everyone. (1994). Vlodrop, Netherlands: Maharishi Vedic University Press. Maharishi Vedic University. (1995). Course on Maharishi Ayur Veda Self-Pulse Diagnosis. Vlodrop, Netherlands. McClain, Ernest G. (1978) The Pythagorean Plato: Prelude to The Song Itself. New York: Nicolas Hays. Nijenhuis, Emmie Te. (1974), Indian Music: History and Structure. Leiden/Koln: E.J. Brill. Overzee, Anne Hunt. (1992). The Body Divine: The Symbol of the Body in the Works of Teilhard de Chardin and Ramanuja. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Powers, Harold S. (1970). An Historical and Comparative Approach to the Classification of Ragas. Los Angeles: University of California Press., (1980). "India". Entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol 9. London: Macmillan, pp , (1992). "Reinterpretations of Tradition in Hindustani Music: Omkamath Thakur contra Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande". The Traditional Indian Theory and Practice of Music and Dance. Panels of the Vllth World Sanskrit Conference, Johannes Bronkhorst, ed. Kern Institute, Leiden: August 23-29,1987. Leiden, New York: E.J. Brill, pp Rao, S.K. Ramachandra. (1990) The Tantrik Practices in Sri-Vidya (With Sri Sarada-Chatussati). Bangalore: Kalpatharu Research Academy. 330

102 Reck, David. (1977) Music of the Whole Earth. New York: Charles Scribner's & Sons. Sambamoorthy, P. ( ). South Indian Music, 3rd ed. Vol IV. Madras: Indian Music Publishing House. Sharma, P.V., ed. Caraka Samhita.(1981). Varanasi, Delhi: Chaukhambha Orientalia. Shringy, R.K. & Prem Lata Sharma.(1991). Sangita Ratnakara of Samgadeva. Vol I. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Suares, Carlo. (1992). The Cipher of Genesis. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc. Vyas, R.T. (1987). "Sarasvati: A Study in Symbolism, with Special Reference to the Motif of Vina". Journal of the Indian Musicological Society. Vol. 18 No. 2. December Wade, Bonnie C.(1979). Music in India: The Classical Traditions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Weinless, Michael. (1987). "The Samhita of Sets: Maharishi's Vedic Science and the Foundations of Mathematics." Modem Science and Vedic Science. Vol. 1. No. 2. pp Westbrook, A.Peter. (1997). "Universal Elements in Musical Cosmology." Cosmos. Vol. 13. No. 1. pp , & John Strohmeier.(1999). Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras. Berkeley, CA. Berkeley Hills Books. Zysk, Kenneth G. (1985). Religious Healing in the Veda. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. 331

103 Annexure - XIII Ragas and Their Time Prof. B.C. Deva IT IS QUITE AN OLD TRADITION that most ragas are usually associated with certain watches of the day (prahara) and seasons of the year. It is necessary to enquire whether there is any cogent basis for such associations; if such a basis exists, then, what are its characteristics? What are the psychophysical and psychophysiological aspects of the problem that can lend themselves to experimentation? The difficulties in thinking clearly about this problem are mainly the unreliability of traditional lore' and the variegated synchronic and diachronic rules that govern such tradition. We have, therefore, to disentangle ourselves from such traditional beliefs to see if there is any basis for them, neither ignoring them as mere prejudices nor accepting them as sanctified verities. The idea of the association of raga with season and time of day does not seem to be as old as the raga system itself. Whereas the raga system begins to have definite form at about the time of Matanga (c. 5th cent.), it is only by the 8th century (of Narada's Sangita Makaranda) that such temporal rules are developed. Even after this date, the associations are not strict; neither do they apply to all ragas. Above all, a most important system of our music like the South Indian system has almost no such rules, where as the present day North Indian musical system is full of such restrictions. The rules regarding the relation of a raga and the time of day in North Indian music are only more or less strict. When it comes to mixed ragas, it is not only unreliable but even incongruous; observe the curious combination of Bhairav (a morning raga) and Bahar (a night raga). Also, with the coming of the radio broadcasting and its technical necessities, such rules are becoming lax. 332

104 Now, in searching for the principles behind the relation of lagas to time, it is necessary to study the ethnopsychological and psychoacoustical laws and movements that govern musical creation. In the study of seasonal associations of ragas, the historical processes in the dynamics of art form are important. But history should not mean a descriptive catalogue of incidents; it should reveal the dynamics of human mind and its creations in space and time. For the movements of cultural forms and patterns are but the outward manifestations of the minds of men. Take for instance the seasonal associations of ragas, which obviously, are grosser than diurnal relations. The immediate clue to this relation is the seasonal festivals of the advent of spring, of the coming of rains, of sowing and reaping. These are the most important occasions in human life-the time when new life is being recreated, older life is being discarded and powers of nature reveal themselves with sudden changes. Hence, human beings meet and behave appropriately and a festival is created. The speech song is bom. And, if you will notice, the simplest songs and their musical scales are usually the oldest and the most effective. It would require a very intensive psychoanalytical study to reveal the roots of these tunes, which are but the origins of ragas; they are the tonal archetypes, if I may be permitted to coin such a usage following Jung. Of the various seasons, the most striking are spring and rain with their sudden onset and their deep biological associations with procreation. Every individual then partakes of the powers of the Creator himself: death and life are immediate. Naturally, they inspire the music of the finest order, the songs of Basant and Savan. The biological associations with the music of these seasons are obvious, though we cannot determine, them till we actually carry out experiments on the psychological implications of these ragas. 333

105 I may here, however, point out a very glaring and common example of the psychological association of raga, with emotion and season. I refer to. The raga Hindol of the North. This is a raga invariably associated with the Spring. Spring is the season of creation. Naturally, the erotic element is at its highest in all acts of men. Now the swing is one of the most ancient sexual auxilliaries arid symbols. It has always been recognized as an exciter of erotic desire; it is also often a substitute for the real.2 To relate the festival of swings with the Spring is not far fetched; the music sung with the swing (dol) was quite naturally named Hindol. Hence.'the traditional association of raga Hindol with the spring. Note 'also that in raga iconography, Hindol is always symbolized by the swing. Another association is noteworthy: a prominent festival of swings also comes during the festival of snakes (nagpanchami) which is in Sravan, the month of rains. The raga Hindol is also associated with the Jhulana festival of Radha-Krishna cult,.famous for its erotic symbolism in religiop.3 Indeed no better set of symbols of procreation could be imagined spring, rain, snake and swing. Though we have thus established the grosser basis of raga 'season relation in terms of deeper psychological experiences of the human race, it is not easy to find immediate relations for each particular raga let alone each tone or groups of tones-with a particular season. It may be noted that only Spring and Rains have such associations. There are no such prominent associations for other seasons. Can we experimentally define the relations of ragas with seasons? Why, for instance, is Basant associated with and named after Spring? Why is there a similar association for Bahar? Why should Mallhar be sung in the rains? (infra p.l45). It is my conviction that experimental methods for such study can be developed. We must, however, be prepared for setbacks due to the fact that our mind is highly conceptual and not dynamoenic (i.e.. producing bodily responses) ; also, the results 'of our experiments may not be the same as the traditionally accepted associations. I have already indicated what our scientific approach :lllight 334

106 be-that of ethnopsychology : this would consist of the study of the music of various peoples, their festivals and their life habits in.general. We may here note that many a raga and even musical notes bear ethnic and place _names; for example the notes (;}lllzdhara, Nz'shttdo, Dhaivata (from dhivara) and ragas like Bangala, Hejjaji, Turushka Todi, Kambhoji: Chenchu Kambhoji, Yeru kola Kambhoji, etc. The other methods to study the immediate responses, of subjects 10 music-psychologically and psychoanalytically. The responses of the subjects can be studied in terms of psychological responses, psychological associations, depth psychological motives, etc. A very useful adjunct to such methods is the iconography of Ragas. We have a very rich, material, though not always reliable; in the raga mala pictures and raga descriptions (dhyan murtis). A psychoan?lytical and occultic study would be indeed very fruitful. I have already suggested some useful approaches with regard to Hindol. There is the invariable snake in Asavari, the deer in Todi, etc. (In the private collection of the Raja of Aundh, Maharashtra State, I have noticed the frog motif in all the series of yoga mala pictures which seem to belong to Sikh school). The association of ragas with diurnal variations is more definite than the associations with seasons. There is more order in the diurnal association and we have to explore the possibilities of discovering the order. Before we try to examine the possible experimental procedures, we have to be certain about the empirical postulates involved. These are: l.the psychological dynamics of melodic integration and progression. 2. The nature of emotional expression by tones and tonal movements. 335

107 raga. 3. The existing conventions regarding the time association of 1. In understanding the psychological dynamics of melodic integration, the first necessity is the recognition of the fact that it is the 'emotional' excitement that is the cause of music-the necessity to communicate with fellow beings, the necessity to relieve deep psychophysiological tensions. This at first appears as an 'obvious platitude.. But postulational methods cannot afford to bypass the obvious; such an explicit statement of the empirical postulate would lead us to examine the fundamental processes anew, thus leading to a really creative understanding of the problem at hand. The immediate psychological process that motivates musical creation is the emotional tension of the musician (and of course the listener). The musical creation is at once the result of and the relief from such tensions. The tensions at conscious levels are themselves the results or manifestations of deeper infraconscious drives. Such a psychological state is reflected in the neurophysiological tensions of contractions and relaxations. The acoustical conditions of music, therefore, are the manifestations of such psychophysiological tensions and the desire for consequent adjustments of the organism. The state of an organism at rest but ready for action is known as the tonus; this is the normal, unexcited state of the neuromuscular system of the organism. Now, a prolonged existence in a tense state is harmful for any organism which ever tries to return to the condition of tonus as soon as the cause of tension is removed. Otherwise, the organism would become neurotic. This basic process of organismic behaviour is immediately applicable to musical states of the human organism. Since musical production is an emotional state, it is necessarily a state of tension. The organism, therefore, always tries to return to a state of tonus 336

108 from excitation and the resolution of tension to tonus is a very basic process in the neurophysiology of music. The importance of this has been discussed repeatedly in its various aspects, diachronic and synchronic.4 The significance of this mechanism of melodic integration in the time theory of ragas is discussed below. We have also suggested that the cortical activity may also be defined in terms of this tonus. The alpha rhythm in the electroencephalogram is the usual condition of the brain, which is disturbed by certain neuromuscular activities. This is a fundamental scanning mechanism, which, perhaps, is a part of the process of melodic integration or tonal gestalt. 2. In the light of the above we may now examine the way (rather, one of the ways) by which tones are said to have emotional content: for, be it remembered that tones have no emotional value apart from the perceiver. First, the pleasantness-unpleasantness of tones: this is also referred to as the consonance-dissonance value. In spite of the long history behind the study of this question, there is as yet no acceptable knowledge, which can give us an insight into the nature of the pleasantness of tones. To explain consonance-dissonance, Helmholtz put forward the idea of beats. Sturilp thought that consonance could be explained by the phenomenon, of tonal fusion; Seashore and Halmberg show that at least four factors which they call as smoothness, purity, blending and fusion are necessary for the judgement of pleasantness. Revesz discusses this problem with thoroughness and insight in the light of his own two-component theory and the gestalt theory. He also points out to the necessity of distinguishing consonance and concordance.6 Recently Ehrenzweig has put forward a very interesting theory of unconscious perception. He has shown how infraconscious forces influence our perception of tones, especially what we call tone colour or tone-quality; this is a very fruitful approach, which has to be 337

109 experimented with systematically.7 Even taking all this into account, we are yet not well in possession of all facts to :understand the mechanism of consonance. What Seashore said thirty years ago is still true: "This is a central problem which the psychology of music now faces and on which an inceptive attack has been made."8 Whatever the mechanism of consonance be, the final process is the resolution of tension due to dissonance into tonus. The mood of the raga is partly determined by this factor, particularly with' reference to the tonal background due to the drone. Tonal quality or degree of dissonance is, in a sense, static. In our music especially this is perhaps less important than tonal movement. This latter process is even more complicated than tone quality, for it involves tone-quality as well as tonal movement. Here again the resolution of tension into tonus plays a determining role. The neurophysiology of this resolution has been discussed by me elsewhere. Essentially it is this: the departure from the tonic creates a tension, which physiologically means the departure from the tonus. The organism will always tend to return to the tonus: the music will, therefore, tend towards pleasant tonal qualities or tonic equivalents (apanyasa). The emotional qualities creatable by such movements are infinite, almost literally so. articularly the Junction of leading tones is important as they create the maximum tension (and desire for rest Ifor, the tonic (tonus) is strongly suggested and called up by them. The most obvious tones of this type are tivra madhyama and suddha nishada in the ascent and komal rishabh and komal dhaivat in the descent. Later it will be shown that these tones play an important part in the time theory. 3. The actual musical characteristics that determine the time of a raga have not been satisfactorily examined, though Bhatkhande has done much in this subject and has shown the existence of some 338

110 important empirical rules. At present, the little that we know of this aspect is due to his analysis. Earlier musicologists most often only mention that such and such a Raga is to be sung or played at such and such a time of the day or season. But no one has given us the empirical rules or analysis, which can determine such an association. The following, as summarized from Bhatkhande's works, are merely empirical facts, which need to be studied under controlled experimental conditions :10 The tonal characteristics of a raga, which determine its watch of the day, are: I. Tonal quality. 1. Tonal level Tonal movement. I. Under the head of tonal quality we may include the nature of the tone in one octave: whether it is suddha, komal or tivra (natural, flat, sharp). Bhatkhande has suggested the following groups: 1. ri, Ga, dha, Ni group of ragas. These are the sandhi prakasa ragas sung when day and night pass into each other, 2. Ri, Ga, Dha, Ni group of Ragas. These are sung in the first two watches of the day or night. 3. ga and ni group of ragas. These are sung between the other two groups. The above rules are not rigid but are mere guides for determining the watch of the day for a raga. II By tonal level we mean whether the tones of the Toga are characteristically high pitched or otherwise. Since the vadi (dominant) is one of the important definitive elements of a raga, ragas are again divided into purvanga (lower tetrachord) and uttaranga {upper tetrachord) Ragas depending upon' the position of the vadi. It is to be noted that Sa, Ma and P may be included in both the angas (tetrachords). 339

111 The accepted convention is that purvanga Ragas are to be sung/played in the first watch of the day or night, following the sandhiprakasa Ragas ; the uttaranga Ragas are to be sung or played after midday or midnight. III. Whereas the nature of a tone is 'static' and the tonal position is the indicator and initiator of the direction of tonal movement, the actual movement of the tones is the dynamic aspect which is the essential quality in: melodic music. The movements of tones with their suggestions of tensions and relaxations create almost unlimited number of moods; the study of this is prohibitively difficult and ahilbst no beginning has been made in this direction in our musicology. There is another element, which is equally important but which. till now has not been studied; and that is the relation of time to the number of notes in a Raga. I think that this is a very important characteristic, considering the fact that the earliest scales and modes We know of are mostly pentatonic (auduva). As a preliminary suggestion I may note here that most sandhi prakasa Ragas are pentatonic or hexatonic and rarely heptatonic in their progressions. Again most of the Ragas classified as bhupalis and vibhasas are pentatonic and are to be sung in the sandhi (twilight).11 Incidentally, I would point out that the modem method, from Vidyaranya and Venkatamakhi culminating in Bhatkhande and Achrekar of calling the scales with greater number of notes as janaka (parent) and those with less as janya (derived) is both historically and.musically unacceptable. First, it is questionable whether we should accept any concept of genesis at all; secondly, we should adopt a more dynamic approach of musical patterns than a mere arithmetical one. * Having thus stated our empirical postulates and data. We are now in a position to examine the relations between the conventional rules of time theory and our knowledge of psychophysics and psychophysiology of music. The discussion that follows will centre mainly round the sandhi prakasa Ragas, as they most suitably and 340

112 immediately lend themselves to such an analysis. What is being applied to such ragas can be employed, with suitable insight and care, to other ragas. As one of the guiding principles we may take the fact al ready mentioned, viz., music follows the path of tension creating to tension resolving. Tones that are 'consonant' with one another or the tonic are 'pleasant' and 'restful' ; similarly, tones that move towards the tonic create greater desire for rest and hence create maximum tension; again, vakra gati (tortuous movement) creates greater tension and 'confusion' than samla gati (linear movement). What relations have the tones of a raga and their movements to the watch of the day? The most common and commonplace explanation is that a raga reflects the mood of the subject (musician and audience) as the day progresses: the subject is fresh in the morning and gets weary as the day grows and so on. The nature of the tones is said to reflect this change in mood. Though this may be partly true, there is an obvious contradiction. Obviously, according to such an idea, the moods of dawn and dusk are entirely different; similarly the mood of the day is different from that of the night. Yet we find that there is almost a mirror reflection of morning and evening, day and night ragas. (See figure). This contradiction is a serious objection to the usual concepts of time theory. The problem gets a more acceptable answer if we examine the ragas of sandhya (twilight). The meeting of day and night has held a mystery to living beings: trees, animals and men. This is the time when the mode of life changes drastically and suddenly. Trees change their mode of transpiration and respiration. Animals change from action to rest or vice versa. But the most important change for a human being is in his state of mind: as day passes into night, consciousness quietens and other forces take over. The infra- and supra-conscious forces are now given their chance to project themselves into the individual mind. Archetypes are given their chance to roam about in the psychic matrix of the individual. Indeed this is the time when a new life is 341

113 almost created. Surely a great moment "pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, the work of fancy or Some happy tone of meditation slipping in between the beauty coming and the beautiful. The sandhya is, then, a most crucial time; hence it is that the artist is then 'inspired' and the yogi sits for his meditation. The diurnal cycle of ragas. Notice the diagonal symmetry of the ragas. The cycle is not of a day but it is one bifurcated and the repetition of patterns is by half a day. The cycle starts from the dawn (left) and the pattern repeats itself from the evening (right). The eight watches of the day are indicated by small lines on the circumference. The switch over of modes of existence occurs twice at the junctions of day and night. Now for the extraconscious forces to act, it is necessary that the conscious itself be quiet or disturbed and less capable of censorship; in the words of Ehrenzweig it should be 'confused' and its pretensions to constancy and reality be destroyed. To achieve this, the music must be such that it introduces tension. The tensions, which disturb and confuse the conscious are created by the use of 'dissonant' tones, by the employment of tortuous movements and by the avoidance of resting places. It will be observed that all the sandhi-prakasa ragas employ notes like ri and dha. Being 'near' Sa and Pa, they are highly dissonant and suggestive of the tonic. They are characteristic of descent. Similarly in the ascent. ma and M are prominent, suggesting the tonic and desire for rest. Not all of that in most of these ragas the characteristic movements are: M- ri, Ni-ri-Sa, ri-ni, ri-ni-sa and the counterparts in the other tetrachord, ma-dha, ma-dha-pa, dha-ma, dha-ma-pa, etc. The tonic or consonant is mostly avoided, yet suggested. Thus with the employment of dissonant tones and movements, tensions which confuse the conscious are created, yielding it to the forces that are extraconscious. Again the most important characteristic employment of ma is noteworthy. This tritone is one of the most conspicuous notes in the octave: 'it is the drop of curd in milk.' The tritone has always been 342

114 considered different from the rest. It is said to have magical properties. For instance, the Gregorian chants are said to avoid it, for it was considered to be pagan and diabolical.l2 Notice also that it is one of the most important notes that generate a new order in the cycle of fifths. No wonder, then, that ma has peculiar psychoacoustic properties, which make it suitable for dissonant combinations. Also, the tonal level seems to show significant trends. The purvanga Ragas have their main movements in the lower tetrachords; that is, ill these Ragas the departure from the tonic is emphasized. Tensions,are created by moving away. With the implications of the tonic in the sandhi-prakash ragas, it is clear that after the tonic is made prominent (by jumping it) in the sandhya, the departure from it is brought to focus in the next part of the day. As time goes on raga movements go further and further from the tonic. The music now has to descend' towards the tonic. This is exactly what happens. In the later watches of the day and night; as the sandhya is approached-ragas with movements in the upper tetrachord (uttaranga) are sung, suggesting descent and approach to the tonic. Lastly, the sandhi prakasa ragas are mostly penta- or hexatonic. By the avoidance of linear movements and using jumps such simple scales, create tension and also can up archaic mental states. It is thus possible to analyse the association of ragas with time. But to get such a hypothesis on firmer ground' and verify it, it is necessary to 'devise carefully controlled experiments. The_ first obvious experiment is the association of raga and its mood on the one hand and the time of the day and mental state on the other. The two factors, raga-mood and time-mood, may be studied independently and then correlated; or both may be worked out together as associations. Associations with tones; tonal movements and psychological states should be studied carefully in the laboratory; employing methods of physiological psychology, psychology and depth psychology. The theory of numbers and its occultic implications should be taken 343

115 seriously and worked out. As some revealing examples of such associations, I shall cite the -following from my preliminary notes: 1. Raga : Mallhar. Subject: B.C.D. Musician: Kesarbai Kerkar, The musician was singing Mallhar in a concert. On that day she was excelling herself. The following imagery came up to the subject: Forest. Lonely cottage. Rain pouring heavily. Can almost feel the shower on him. Young woman waiting near the door of the hut. Subject approaching the hut. Here there is no doubt about the association of this raga with rain. But the most important point was that the subject had no training then in 'classical' music; much less did he know what the raga was. 2. Raga : Malkaus. Subject: C.S.S. Musician: B.C.D "There are moments when I feel that you are just a dream and no reality and the thick cigar smoke gives you a figure and you only exist in voice and you are like rock black and the water when it passes over a rock in the voice of yours with liquid sounds lilting and dancing colourful drops and sparkling 8; and you don't move but move others around you " (Emphasis mine). Musician: Dwaram Venkataswami Naidu (Violin) Raga : Kalyani. Subject: C.S.S. "My book on the clock. Here I hear the EMBRACE arid the mad rhythm and the slow. Why is it the picture of Water and rocks always comes when I listen to Music " (Emphasis mine). 344

116 (Reports 2 and 3 are 'copied directly from the scribblings by the subject after listening to music). Note in both the cases of C.S.S the very strong imagery of water and rocks. Also the rains in B.C.D.'s report. There is no doubt that both the subjects deeply 'descended' into their infraconscious and touched the eternal Father and Mother. The longing to be absorbed into the Mother and Father-the source of all life and creation is strong in both. These are but a few preliminary suggestions towards understanding the psychology of our music. Much unexplored material awaits our psychologists and psychoanalysts. Notes and References Anton EHRENZWEIG, Psychoanalysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing (Routledge Kegan Paul, 1953). B. CHAITANYA DEVA, Emergence of the Drone in Indian Music, /. Mus. Acad., Madras, 23, p. 128 (1952). B. CHAITANYA DEVA, Psychology of the Drone in Melodic Music, Bull. Decc. Coll. Res. Inst. (1950). Emergence of the Drone in Indian Music (See f. n. 4). C. R. SANKARAN and B. CHAITANYA DEVA, Studies in Musical Scales. I. Vedic Chants. A. Rigveda, Bull. Decc. Call. Res. Inst., Poona, 18, pp.192, (1957). P. C. GANESHSUNDARAM, The Process- Existence Concept and the Structure of Speech, op. cit., p. 205 ff. Carl E. SEASHORE, op. cit., p Carl E. SEASHORE, Psychology of Music, pp (McGraw-Hill, 1938). G. REVESZ, Introduction to the Psychology of Music, pp (Longmans. 1953). Also my review of this book in the Bull, Decc. Res. Inst., 14, pp. 154 ff. (1953). 345

117 Carl JUNG, The Integration of Personality" pp. 67, ff. (Kogan Paul, 1941). Cecil GRAY, The History of Music, p. 13 (Kogan Paul, Trench, Turbner, 1945). H. J. STOOKE and K. KHANDALAVALA, The Land Ragamala Miniatures, p. 36 {Cassirer. 1953). Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex, 1-1, 174; 1-2, 154 (Random House, 1936). O. C GANGOLY, Ragas and Raginis, pp , particularly p. 80 (Nalanda, 1948). The class of pentatonic scales with Sa Ri Ga. Pa. Dha (both suddha and komal) seem to have been grouped as bhupalis and vibhasas (in South is the raga Bhupalam). Cf. G. H. RANADE, Bhupali Songs, Sangit Kala Vihar, 10, pp.119 ff. (1957). Vishnu Narain BHATKHANDE, Bhatkhande Sangit Sastra (Hindi), 1, pp. 49, 73 (Sangit Karyalaya, 1956). 346

118 Annexure - XIV Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (August 10, September 19, 1936) was an Indian classical musician widely acclaimed to have brought in a renaissance in Indian music. He reorganized the Ragas in Hindustani music into the currently used Thaat scale from the previous classifications of Raag (male), Ragini (female) and Putra (children) ragas. Early life Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande was bom in 1860 on the day of Janmashtami, a holy day for Hindus. He was bom into a Marathi family in Balukeshwar, Mumbai. In his childhood he was known as Gajanan. He was educated at the Elphinston College in Mumbai and Deccan College in Pune. He graduated with a degree in Law in 1885 and joined legal profession in 1887 and later also served a short stint as a lawyer in the High Court in Karachi. He began learning the sitar from Shri Vallabhdas during his college days. He later learnt vocal music from Raojiba, a Dhrupad singer. He also trained in other aspects of classical music from other teachers like Belbagkar, Ali Husain Khan, Vilayat Hussain Khan and others. He also joined the Gayan Uttejak Mandali a musical circle in Mumbai. Research in music Bhatkhande traveled widely throughout India, researching music and meeting with ustads and pandits. He began the study of well-known ancient texts such as the Bharat Natya Shastra and Sangeet Ratnakar. After the death of his wife and his daughter, Bhatkhande abandoned his legal practice and devoted the rest of his life to systematizing the prevailing forms of Hindustani music and to building on that system a coordinated theory and practice of music. He was concerned about the disappearing patronage by princes of musicians. During his travels around India, he spent some time at 347

119 Baroda, Gwalior and Rampur and collected some precious works of Tansen. Ustads like Mohammad Ali Khan, Asgar Ali Khan and Ahmed Ali Khan of Jaipur gave him more than 300 precious compositions of the Manarang Gharana thereby helping him immensely. After this research he started publishing the results of his findings. His first work, Swar Mallika, was a small booklet, which contained detailed descriptions of all Ragas prevalent during that time. In 1909 he published the Shri Mallakshaya Sangeetam and then published his first book, Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati in four volumes. Even today these volumes are the only standard treatises on Hindustani music. All his works were published under the pseudonyms Vishnu Sharma or Chaturpandit. Institutions Bhatkhande started music schools and colleges with the purpose of the systematic teaching of music in India. In 1916 he reorganised the Baroda state music school and later, with the help of the Maharaja of Gwalior, established the Madhav Music College at Gwalior. In 1926 Maris College of Music was established in Lucknow by Rai Umanath Bali and his nephew Dr Rai Rajeshwar Bali, education minister of United Provinces. Dr Bhankhande on the invitation of Rai Umanath Bali travelled to Lucknow and prepared the course material. The college is presently named after Dr Bhatkhande and called Bhatkhande College of Hindustani Music. This was one of the landmark achievements of Dr Bhankhande since before the preparation of the course material the knowledge of the music was passed by Gurus and Ustads verbally. He prepared the Hindustani Sangeet Kramik Pustak Mallika as a series of standard textbooks. He also started the tradition of the All India Music Conferences to provide a common platform for discussion between Hindustani and Camatic classical musicians. 348

120 Death and legacy Bhatkhande became bedridden due to paralysis and a thigh fracture. He died on Ganesh Chaturthi, another auspicious day for Hindus, in Every year during Ganesh Chaturti week musicians from all over the country pay homage to Bhatkhande. The Posts and Telegraph Department of India also paid homage to Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande by releasing, on September 1, 1961, a commemorative stamp portraying Bhatkhande. That particular date was chosen as it was Janmashtami on that day. Bibliography Shri Mal-Lakshya Sangeetam - A treatise, in Sanskrit, on the theory of music in slokas and describing the important ragas. Lakshan Geet Sangrah in three parts. Compositions descriptive of the Ragas, giving their characteristics in songs composed by Pandit Bhatkhande. Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati in 4 parts - A commentary on the Lakshya Sangeetam in Marathi. It is a detailed study and discussion of the theory of music and explanation of 150 Ragas of Hindustani music. This important work has been translated into Hindi. Kramik Pustak Malika - This book was published in six parts. It is a detailed textbook of Hindustani music, describing all the important Ragas, their theory and illustrated with well-known compositions in notations. It contains about 1,200 such compositions. Swara Malika (in Gujarati characters) Notation of Ragas in swara and tala. A comparative Study of the Music Systems of the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries (in English). Historical Survey of the Music of India. 349

121 Geet Malika - which was originally published in 23 monthly issues, each containing 25 to 30 classical compositions of Hindustani Sangeet in notation. Abhinav Raga Manjari - A treatise on the Ragas of Hindustani music, each being described briefly in one sloka in Sanskrit. Abhinav Tala Manjari - A textbook in Sanskrit on the Talas Manuscripts edited by Bhatkhande Swara Mela Kalanidhi by Ramamatya Chaturdandi Prakashika by Venkatmakhi Raga Lakshanam Raga Tarangini by Lochan Raga Tatva Vibodh by Shriniwas Sadraga Chandrodaya by Pundarik Vithal Raga Manjari by Pundarik Vithal Raga Mala" by Pundarik Vithal Nartan Niranaya by Kashinath Shashtri Appa Tulsi Sangeet Sudhakar by Kashinath Shashtri Appa Tulsi Sangeet Kalp Drumankur by Kashinath Shashtri Appa Tulsi Raga Chandrika by Kashinath Shashtri Appa Tulsi Raga Chandrika Sar (Hindi) *** 350

122 Annexure - XV Effect of Variations in Sunrise and Sunset Timings of the Raga Time Circle Prof. Keshav Sharma and Dr. Mritunjay Sharma Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla. Time theory of ragas has been under fire since long a time. Lack of empirical evidence as to the optional effect of a raga sung at a particulars time of day of day a night has compound the problem. Whether the time theory was nurtured by court musician in medieval times for earning their livelihood, or whether it trace its origin to some obscure temple traditions of devotional music sung of various hours of day, it still remain to be tested empirically if the contemporary time theory of ragas has any scientific and psychological basis. When one analyses the allocation of ragas to various time-slots, one comes across many exceptions, which are quite difficult to explain. Subtle differences in various raga forms or emphasis on different notes of similar ragas have been responsible for assigning different places in time raga circle to them. Little effort has been made by musicologists and other experts in the area of music to determine the validity of time theory. Many arguments have been put forward criticizing some of the assumptions of time theory of ragas. However, apart from suggestions for its validation through experimentation, no significant evidence has been presented to support their inferences. The investigator does not wish to repeat the criticism that has been leveled against time theory by other learned scholars but he has tired to judge it form an entirely different angle. According to the raga time circle day add night have been divided into eight watches, each one of three hours duration (See Table 1). Each raga has been placed in one of the watches. It is almost a taboo to render to a particular raga in some watch other than its 351

123 parent one. Thus, a comparatively rigid time circle is followed by the musicians. If this raga time circle is analysed in the light of longitude of place (say in India), one comes a cross many contradictions. It is well known fact that timings of sunrise and sunset vary acceding to the variations in longitude of a place and month of a year. Thus, an over simplified raga time circle will not hold good for all the places or zones, if any, and months in a year. The investigator prepared a list of sunrise and sunset timings at various places in India situated at different longitudes. Four cities namely, Dwarika in the far west, Chandigarh/Delhi, Sonhar (Indian standard time criterion location) and Dibrugrah in the Far East were selected for further analysis. Table 2 shows sunrise ands sunset timings of twelve months at these places. Some interesting points emerge which are tabulated in Table 3. Table 3 shows the differences between local time at various cities. Thus, due to differences in local times of various cities, the time interval of various watches will also show a shift in any given month. If sunrise and sunset timings are taken as median points of morning twilight and evening twilight watches and if the twilight interval is of three hours duration, them the time intervals of the other watches of day and night can be fixed up easily. Table 1.4 shows these time intervals at Dwarika, Dibrugarh and Sonhar for the months of June and December. Such tables for various places and months can be prepared. Table 4 shows that there are large differences in time-intervals of various watches at Dwarika, Sonhar and Dibrugrah Highly significant differences in time intervals in June and December months can be perceived form the table. Now if morning and evening twilight hours are taken as our starting point, then after fixing these intervals far a particular month the rest six watches show variable time intervals. For example, in June at Dwarika the morning and evening twilight time intervals are form 4.15 A.M. to 352

124 7.15 A.M. and P.M. to 9.15 P.M. respectively. Thus for the remaining three night watches only sever hours are left. Each watch is of 2 hours 20 minutes duration only. Similar variations in time intervals of watches for different places ands during different months can be easily computed. This clearly shows that there is a lot of difference between standard time circle having watches with uniform duration and timings and actual watches having variable duration and timings. This is the first major draw back of present day Raga-time circle. Another important point is the in congruency arising due to rigid allocation of time slots for various ragas and a shift in actuarial timings and duration of various watches. In fact east, the twilight hours in June, are form 2.45 a.m. to 5.45 a.m. approximately. Thus as per the contemporary Raga time circle, some ragas which are sung in the last watch of night will have to be incorporated in morning twilight hours. Thus the ragas included in a particulars watch of existing raga time circle will be partly shared by that particular watch and the subsequent watch of the traditional raga form first watch of night like Yaman will fall within the evening twilight hours and twilight ragas of existing time circle will be sung in the third watch of the day. Similar contradictions may be easily identified. Thus we may conclude that existing raga time circle is faulty and an over simplification of actual time circle observed in nature. Thus, time circle has hardly any validity as it contradicts its own assumptions. How far musicians have been able to take notes of this important flaw, is not fully known, but the fact remains that still follow this Raga time circle in to and go on indoctrinating our students as well. Our, resistance to examine time theory of raga, is more due to our conditioning to it than to another single factor. A student of music is always informed that a particular raga is to be sung at this particular time. How many students dare ask their teachers the logic and evidence behind this allocation? Hardly any. Hence, this kind of 353