Indian Antiquary Vol 41

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 196

192
TIE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[AUGUST 1912.
To sum up, we have :
(1) The erroneous inference that the Hindus had the enharmonic genus, because they reckoned twenty-two brutis in the octave.
(2) The original error of Sir W. Jones in placing the various arutis (in the shadja-grama) after the notes, instead of before them, as required by all Sanskrit treatises on music.
(3) Sir W. Jones'groundless identification of this erroneous scale with the European Diatonic Scale of just intonation, with the exception of dha which was supposed to be a sruti sharper. Sir
W. Jones further thought, on mistaken grounds, that probably even this difference in the two scales did not exist in practice.
(4) As a result of these errors the two statements made by the writer (1) that a gruti was sometimes a quarter tone and sometimes a third of a tone, and (2) that the srutis were equal in practice, without perceiving the contradiction involved therein.
(5) Acceptance of all these erroneous statements by subsequent writers without examination. Only the suggestion that probably the sixth notes even were in practice identical in the two scales was neglected, and the supposed augmentation of dha in the shadja-gráma was so often re-iterated that it came to be believed in as though based on Sanskrit texts. Similarly, the equality of the śrutis in practice, vouched for by Sir W. Jones, was lost sight of and only his other statement, viz., that at times a sruti was a quarter tone and at others a third of # tono continued to bo repeated.
(6) Mr. Paterson's and Raja S. M. Tagore's mistaken notion that intervals in Srutis between two notes were proportional to the difference in the sounding lengths of the string producing the Dotes.
(7) Recognition by Mr. Bosanquet and Mr. A. J. Hipkins that the śrutis were intonded to be equal in a general sort of way.
Lastly, in this connection I may mention that quite rocently a Hindu writer has been seriously maintaining that a sruli is not a unit of measurement at all!
Amidst all this confusion let us see what Sanskrit treatises on music, beginning with the oldest, vis., the Bharatiya-ndlya-sdstra, say in the matter.
At the very outset it may be remarked that, as noticed by Mr. Bosanquet, eren with the information available in his time the brutis must be regarded as 'equal in a general sort of way, probably without any very great precision.' As shown above, it is as absord to speak of a kruts being sometimes a quarter-tone and at others a third of a tone as to say that an inch is sometimes
twelfth of a foot and sometimes a sixteenth. It is possible that quantities to be estimated may be such that they cannot be very accurately measured with the standard unit chosen, but the intention is clear that the standard unit is to be looked upon as invariable. Even Sir W. Jones, with whom originated the notion of the variability of a sruti, admitted that the arutis were considered as equal in practice.' It seems strange, therefore, that the writers who followed him should have accepted just the wrong notion and ignored the other one. But if anybody be still in doubt about the eruti being a unit of measurement and consequently possessed of a fixed value, it ought to be removed by the explicit statement to that effect in the Bh. After giving the constitution of the shadja-gráma as follows:
sa riga ma pa dha ni 80
31 26 45 4s 36 26 4s it adds" Bat in the madhyamagrdma the pañchama should be diminished by a sruti. The magnitude of a bruti is the interval due to the sharpening or flattening [produced] by the augmentation