Acoustic Mythologies of The Natyasastra: Text of Celestial Music

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5 word format

document in English

arts and art history

school essay

published 04/11/2007

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level : Advanced

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Summary

Concerning the use of musical rhythm as a sadhana, a path to liberation, one preliminary distinction to make is between the tantric means of rasa and the yogic means of bhakti; The mythological tradition inherited by Hindustani music distinguishes between gana (music for pleasure) and gandharva (music for devotional ritual). While the former does not accrue to the performer the spiritual merit (adrsta) of ritual offering, it does create the occasion for the rasa that is explained by the tantra of Abhinavagupta to be a means to the ‘taste of the divine’ (brahmasvada).

The Indian Aesthetic tradition was canonized by the Natyasastra, dating from the 7th century C.E.. Its author, Bharatamuni, begins this text with an interior myth to authenticate his writings:
In the Hindustani genealogy of celestial music, Lord Brahma himself is born from the Nada, primordial sound.
The musical traditions of India are noteworthy as inheritors of canonical texts that guide their theory, practice, and performance.
Gandharva-Sangeet is defined in the Natyasastra as 'the embodiment of tone, rhythmic cycle, and verbal structure.
The music of the tabla is construed in terms of language. In the Natyasastra, a chapter on Avanaddha instruments details the aksaras (syllables) and their corresponding hand positions (mudras).
The musical range of the tabla is due, as the Natyasastra describes, to the range of distinct pitches available and to the combination of the tones of the tabla's two drums.
The differentiation of time in Hindustani music progresses in a hierarchy from pulse, to count, to grouping, to tala, and then to a theka.
One symbolic relationship between cosmic time and musical tala is found in the Puranic cosmology of the world-ages, which describes 'cycles of manifestation that devolve through time.
The mythological leader of the Gandharvas is Tumburu, 'a great devotee of Siva.?