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Music in the Thānamga Sutra
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Nāradiya Sıkşā which belongs to a period when gāndhāra-grāma was quitc obsoletc
We do not know when the gândhāra-grāma becamc obsolctc The earliest known texts were all written within a two-grāma system which had already become firmly established by the period of the Nafyasástra and must have been the ruling musical system for some centuries before
Still we must not forget that there certainly was a gāndhāra grāma once Musical tradition has never let the memory of it die Some latter-day theorists-he Nanyadeva in his Bharatabhāşya-even constructed a tonal structure for it in order to give it a greater somblance of reality
The Thanoniga account of music is a heterogencous juxtaposition of diverse material, perhaps in its divertity it also preserves scveral layers of niatcrial representing diverse periods of musical history The nucleus of the Thānamga, in all probability, gocs back to Mahāvīra's immediate disciplies It is likely that the record hcarkcns back to an age when the gândbāra-grāma was an actuality or at Icast still fresh in people's memory
Much of the Țhānamga, however, bears the stamp of a relatively later date It reflects the same milieu of musical culture as is pictureu in the Nāradiya Siksa and the Natyasāstra The Sıksā is believed to have been composed in the beginning of the Christian cra, the Natyasāstra may be a century or two later Both texts utilised carlier material
The present Thānamga Sutra mentions an event which occured six hundred years after the nirvāna of Mahāvīra This anga then was certainly retouched in the 1st-2nd Centuries A D Perhaps at this period new matter was also added to the work in order to enlarge its encyclopaedic scope, the section of music, too, evidently received its share of accretions The older nucleus --containing the enumeration of three grāmas and their mūrchanās must have been preserved-albeit with certain changes or alterationsmas part of a hallowed memory Nor was it thought necessary to point out that the three-grāma system no longer prevailed, for the purpose of the text was not to serve as a practical guide to music but only as a record of popular lore Often in popular descriptions of this sort entities which no longer hold sway in practice continue to figure as important, echoing the fact that these entities too, had had their day Thus we see even today that in many popular
