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Music in the Thanamga Sitra
Different women and their inherent qualities as singers
Which women sing sweetly and which sing with a rough harshness? which sing shulfully? which sing at an (unduly) slow tempo ? which at a (misplaced) fast one and which stray out of a lune ?
Young and pretty women (syānā)"? sing sweetly, dark oncs sing with a rough harshness, fair women are skilfull in song, one-cycd women sing with an undue slowness and blind women with undue speed Brunettes18 sing out of tune
Well-synchronused song
(Songs sung with) the seven svaras (ought to be) well-synchronised with the accompanying instruments, the tāla, the prosodic measure (pāla), he tempo (laya) the graha,19 and the melodic movement, (it should bc) well regulated in breathing in and out
The sraramandala
The seven notes, the three grāmas, the twenty-one mūrchanās, the forty-nine tānas these constitute the svara-mandala
III
We observe that the delincation is fragmentary, cclectic and disjointed Only a few stray topics of the ancient musical system are treated and these, too, are merely noticed The account tells us little of the forms and techniques of ancient music, but seems rather to be a randomly collected popular digest of musical lore Puranic accounts of music are similar in character and were, evidently, collected with a similar populistic aim20
The theoretical framework within which ancient musical forms and structures were interpreted and morphologically analysed had developed quite early into an organised discipline Already in the
The Isibhāsiya has 45 chapters, cach a biography of one 45 of the 'pratyekabuddhas' like Närada, Angarisi, Valkalaciri and others Many chapters are in verse and may have been set to music 17 Literally syāmā means 'a girl with a darkısh complexion', it also denotes a 'young and pretty girl' Kalidasa uses it in this sense in the Meghadita, when describing the Yakşıņi as 'fanyi-fyāmā 18 The term is 'pimgala' It perhaps also signified women with hazel-brown eyes, or pigmented brownish skids A pimgalā was, obviously, not admired 19 Graha was the initial svara in a melodic pattern 20 For a collection of Purānic records on music see "Textes des Purānas Sur La Theorie Musicale'-Alain Danielou and N R Bhatt, Pondicherry 1959 The records in different Purānas are not all of the same length and scope, but they all share a populistic tendency The Purānas were, after all, 'popular' works
