THIS ARTICLE WAS POSTED TO RMIC BY SRINI PICHUMANI From: srini@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Srini Pichumani) Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.classical Subject: Vedic Recitation - I (was: Re: Need help, how to sing "Rucha"s) Date: 30 May 1996 15:19:00 GMT Organization: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Recently there have been a lot of postings on Vedic recitation. Although I would have liked to respond to everyone of them in detail, I couldn't... hope these assorted comments and references are useful... I also have included responses to bits and pieces taken from various posters' writings. Most of my knowledge in these matters is based upon what I have learnt over the years from the books and recordings quoted here... other sources are the Kanchi ParamAcAryA's writings (Deivattin Kural vol 2... ~ pages 400-450) where he refers to some evidence from ancient Tamil literature, and various recitations heard live and on cassette here and in India. I am posting this article in 4 parts. -Srini. ____________________________________________ In general, there is a great deal of variation in Vedic recitation and chanting across India, if you study it carefully. These are due to differences in the Vedic schools (as in Taittirya vs s'ukla YV, Kauthuma vs Ranayaniya vs Jaiminiya in SV, etc), changes in pronunciation, changes in the "original" Vedic accents, etc that have occured over the centuries. Some of these changes are very old and are attested in the ancillary Vedic literature like the various prAtis'Akhyas. Other changes are due to the effect of regional languages and regional pecularities in Sanskrit/Vedic pronunciation, like "pracOdayAl" instead of "pracOdayAt" (similarly tal-si instead of tat-si) in Nambudiri Vedic recitation. This tradition, incidentally, seems to be _the_ tradition of interest in recent decades and has been studied in exquisite detail and depth by many Western scholars such as Frits Staal, J.E.B.Gray, Wayne Howard, Asko Parpola, etc. It is all the more intriguing because of its virtual inaccessibility till recent times (the Nambudiri Vedic tradition is *completely* absent outside Kerala... contrast this with the Tamil RV/YV/SV tradition which is well known outside TN and has been transplanted many times to various places like Darbhanga in Bihar over the past 150 years, and has a historical presence in the crucial city, Varanasi), its preservation of various archaic of Vedic ritual and religion, and its elaborate s'rauta traditions of which the 12 days long Agnicayana ritual conducted in 1975 and again in 1990 is the classic example. The recitations and chants of this tradition also raise certain fundamental issues concerning the traditional equation of the Vedic/IE accent with musical pitches, and to some extent the related issue... i.e. that the Samaveda is the source or root of Indian music. At least one of the scholars mentioned above, J.E.B.Gray, concludes after a study of Maharashtra, Nambudiri, RV recitation that the "original" Rg Vedic accent was not a musical accent at all but merely a stress accent. This has of course been hotly contested. But in general, merely based on my hearing/reading, and somewhat independent of Gray's conclusions (since I have not read his original articles), I have a rule-of-thumb to propose... if at all any Vedic recitation gets overtly/obtrusively musical, it is not based on sound tradition. [Among non-traditional recitations, recordings of Vedic material that I have come across, I have found only Ilayaraja's, Balamurali's efforts commendable... they seem to have done their homework right, so to say... and don't let their musical genius intrude too much in their attempts... here, I am thinking of a cassette put out by Ilayaraja called Vedic chanting which has recitations and a few assorted stuff... and Balamurali's sAmagAna at the beginning and end of a concert in the Music Academy in the late 70s.] Somewhat as a confirmation, here is what Wayne Howard writes about the SV chant of two students of the Sanskrit College in Calcutta (from the year 1912 ! these recitations were "recorded" by a visiting meteorologist, Felix Exner, and later transribed by Erwin Felber in a book) "The recitals of the two students are suspect. They each employ a range of a major sixth -- an unusually wide interval for the North -- and the general style of their chant, with its wide leaps, triadic figurations, and occasional chromaticism, is unlike that of any Samavedin I have heard. However, Felber's transcriptions of four complete sAmans as interpreted by the Jodhpur priest reveal his chant to be very similar to that of the Kauthumas whom I recorded; he strictly adheres to the ambitus of a perfect fourth, and the four tones he uses bear the same intervallic relationships as those of my 1971 informants." Wayne Howard, Samavedic chant. Yale Univ Press 1977. _________________________________________ (contd) From: srini@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Srini Pichumani) Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.classical Subject: Vedic Recitation - II (was: Re: Need help, how to sing "Rucha"s) Date: 30 May 1996 15:32:16 GMT Organization: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA For a long while now, the primary regions of Vedic recitation and study have been Benares in the North, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and all of S.India. Till a few decades ago, it is the oral traditions of the Tamil region that were most accessible, and hence were carefully studied and recorded. And in particular, as far as the study of oral Samavedic traditions were concerned, and the resulting musical speculations, it was almost entirely based upon the Kauthuma school of Samaveda as practised in the Tanjavur region. Here is where, for example, the equation of the Samavedic scale with Kharaharapriya mEla or kAfi thAt or Dorian mode comes from... Burnell proposed a Samavedic mode as early as 1876... he drew his conclusions by studying the Naradiyas'IkSa and by listening to actual Samavedic recitation, most probably of the Kauthuma tradition, and checking it against a pitchpipe. Later Seshagiri Sastri in 1905 modified this to include the vakratva or transilience proposed by the Naradiyas'IkSa (M G R S D N P)... but he concluded that effectively the tones of SV chant (M G R S D) could be equated to the svaras of Abhogi, since the lowest tones were very rarely used. But as we will see in the following paragraphs, there is an amazing amount of variety even within Samaveda due to different schools in different regions, and furthermore, in the same region (TN). ___________________________________ John Napier wrote: >> I believe that there are several schools of Samvedic chanting: >> from the top of my insubstantial head the names are are Jaimeniya, >> Kauthuma, and Nambudiri. The schools of Samavedic chanting are - kauthuma, rANAyanIya, and jaiminIya. The first two are normally clubbed together as K-R in various studies, since they share by and large the same texts with very minor variations... but they also differ significantly in the notation of the sAmans. The Kauthuma tradition uses a numerical notation with the highest tone indicated by 1 (sometimes the highest tone kruSTa is indicated by 11), while the rANAyanIya notation uses syllables. The Jaiminiya notation is also syllabic but in a different way. Even within TN, there are various groups... the preponderant Tanjavur Kauthuma school (sometimes called the "new" school), the North Arcot/Mullantiram "old" school, and the Jaiminiyas. The Jaiminiya school was found by Staal/Howard/Parpola/Buitenen etc to be extant in a few TN and Kerala villages, and among the Nambudiris of Kerala who belong entirely to this school which is also known as talavakAra. In the rest of S.India, there are the Havik Ranayaniyas in north Karnataka, and 2 groups of Ranayaniyas in Andhra - one with ancestral roots in Tirunelveli (Tirunelveli style), and another group in Andhra who learnt sAmagAna from the Gujarat area a long while (GurjarapATa). Even in ancient Tamil literature such as the commentaries on the first grammar TolkAppiyam, the Vedic schools of the region are referred to as pauzhiyam, taittiriyam, and talavakAram... referring to the KauSItakins (pauzhiyam < pauSyam; pauSyam is a term indicative of the KauSitaki RV branch)... talavakAra refers to the Jaiminiya schoo as mentioned before. >> They are all outlined in great detail in Wayne Howard's >> "Samaveda Chant" Yale University Press 1977. >> Discussions of numbers of notes traditionally used are numerous. Yes, Wayne Howard's books are absolute treasures in this respect. His other books are "Veda recitation in Varanasi" (Motilal Banarsidass, 1986), and Matralaksanam> = Matralaksanam : text, translation, extracts from the commentary, and notes, including references to two oral traditions of south India / by Wayne Howard. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1988. Frits Staal's works are again classics... in particular the slim monograph "Nambudiri Veda Recitation", Mouton & Co, 1961. A note for readers of these books... these are amazingly detailed books... however, a lot of their writings make sense only when you hear/have heard attentively the various oral traiditions that they refer to. Even where they write out the chants, recitations in detailed staff notation, it is virtually impossible to reconstruct the chants since the pitches are not absolute, and since the intonations are not to any standard like the tempered scale. However, not to worry... interested people can find most of the books and LPs around the country in various Univ libraries, at least in the US. >> Their is a track on one of the old Unesco "Music of the World" >> series of LPs (I think it is on the first of the four Indian >> Indian LPs), that features Kauthuma Samveda (from memory) You are probably referring to Danielou's "A musical anthology of the Orient" LPs from the Unesco collection... yes, the volumes 6,7,18,21 deal with India... and the first one, vol 6, is entirely devoted to Vedic recitation recorded in Varanasi and the South... RV, KYV & SYV, and K-R SV recitations. It has no recordings of Nambudiri recitation. The other interesting LP set (done in the 60s) is The four Vedas. Asch Records AHM 4126. 2 discs. 33 1/3 rpm. 12 in. Introduction, transcriptions, and notes by J. F. Staal (20 p.) in container. Vedic recitations and chants, recorded in India, by John Levy and J. F. Staal. which has 1 full LP devoted to Nambudiri vedic recitation in svAdhyAya (learning) and the prayoga (use/ritual) modes. The other LP has Tamil RV/Taitt.YV/SV recitation, Tamil S'ukla YV recitation, and SV/AV recitation from the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. [Atharvaveda is completely absent in the South... although hymns from there, like the opening hymn, are recited in regular RV/YV style on occasion.] There are also assorted CDs like "Ritual Music and Theatre of Kerala" on the Le Chant Du Monde "Inde Du Sud" label (LDX 274 910) which feature Nambudiri RV/SV recitation. And for god knows what reason, other than cheap ethnification, one of the tracks on Peter Brooks' Mahabharata CD (I think it is the 7th or 8th one which says War) has a bit of Nambudiri RV recitation thrown in... after all the drums have sounded... ______________________________________________ (contd.) From: srini@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Srini Pichumani) Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.classical Subject: Vedic Recitation - III (was: Re: Need help, how to sing "Rucha"s) Date: 30 May 1996 16:15:44 GMT Organization: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA _____________ Vidya wrote: >> Actually, the traditional authorities on vedic recitation recognize >> only three - udAtta, anudAtta and svarita. This is from Panini's sutras and the ancillary Vedic literature. But even traditional/orthodox reciters use accents like sarvAnudatta when two consecutive anudattas occur. And Panini's descriptions of these accents, specifically with respect to udAtta being the raised accent (uccair udAtta:), is almost never realized exactly in practice... it is mostly recited at a middle pitch or level... the accentless syllables, pracaya, coincide with it tonally. Staal described in his 1961 book what he thought was one specific instance of Nambudiri RV recitation, referred to by the reciters as jaTamAtrA and transmitted only in a few select households or "manas", where this description of Panini fits. But Howard discusses this specific case in detail and points out that while the udAtta always rises to the highest pitch, so do all the others (the long udAtta, the long svarita, a specific case of pracaya, and even the anudAtta on a long vowel !!!). Howard questions if udAtta was ever a raised tone... since it is never encountered as such in standard RV recitation. He suggests interestingly that Panini's description of udAtta/anudAtta may have to do with the hand or body positions while learning Vedic recitation. As regards the svarita, the texts say that it is supposed to be a compound tone falling from the udAtta level downwards continuously to the pracaya (accentless syllables). But it is almost always recited at a pitch higher than the udAtta. And a long svarita is recited starting from a middle pitch and then a high pitch. >> However, the values that these three take varies according to >> geographical location. In south India i.e. in Tamil Nadu, Andhra >> Pradesh and Karnataka, the notes used can be mapped to kaiSiki >> (komal) nishAda, shaDja and Suddha (komal) rishabha. This only applies to Taittiriya YV recitation and RV recitation of this region. It is surmised that the preponderance of the former school has influenced the RV recitation also such that there is virtually no difference... even s'ukla YV recitation of this region is sometimes very similar because of such influence and homogenization. Parts of s'ukla YV are however recited very differently employing only 2 tones by the same reciters. >> There is an occasional use of the lower pancama as a fourth tone. This is the sarvAnudatta. Staal merely says that it is more than a second lower than the anudAtta... and that it is common among TaittiriyakAs of the Kanchipuram region. Howard says that these are recited below anudAtta level, that's all. I guess you could equate it to pancama... but once again, from the various recitations I have heard, I would consider such an identification somewhat facile... such lowering doesn't quite achieve a definite pitch or "svara" like quality (I am thinking here of Sarngadeva's description of svara as being resonant.) while the other 3 accents are reasonably "musical". >> One interesting feature is that there is a shifting of tonic to >> a fourth above in some places, especially in the prANAhuti towards >> the end of a vedic yajna. This sort of shifting again is nowhere as precise as one would like from a musical viewpoint. To begin with there is no absolute pitch in Vedic recitation... nor do the traditional reciters identify any tone in their recitation as a center... even Tanjavur Kauthuma reciters in their sAmagAna... as someone musically inclined may, by identifying the central tone as a tonic or S... this is probably quite startling... and important to bear in mind. Consequently, the shifts are never quite precise... for e.g. in ghana recitations that I have heard, the pitch is raised arbitrarily from the preceding recitations, of say other vikrtis. There seems to be a certain heightened tension/expectation as they start on the gana vikrti... and the pitch too rises. >> I have heard that the Namboodiris of Kerala use a completely different >> scheme. Vedic recitation in Maharashtra also seems to be very different. I have mentioned Gray's thesis above as far as RV accent goes. When I first heard Nambudiri RV recitation a few years ago, it struck me as very different (somewhat "eerie") for various reasons. Certainly, one cannot hear definite pitches anywhere as easily as you can in other recitations of the South. Staal observes that in general Nambudiri vedic recitation is more rhythmical than musical when compared with RV/YV recitation of TN. A great deal of attention is paid to the time units or mAtrA, and this is more so in their SV chant. And one of Howard's informants, a Nambudiri SamaVedin, told him that the term "svara" as understood by them was not the svara of the sapta-svaras... rather, it meant just the movement or vibration of sound... and that they use a Tamil/Malayalam word izhakkam to describe this. [It is quite fascinating to me, in a socio-historical sense, that the Nambudiris use various Tamil/Malayalam words, in addition to Sanskrit words, quite freely in their Vedic/ritual contexts... there is even the use of the "zh" in one specific context in SV recitation, in the stobha "izha" instead of "iDa"... this is also used by Tamil Jaiminiya Samavedins.] In the jaTA vikriti of Nambudiri RV recitation however, _very_large_ intervals are used. Staal numbers them as 1-2-3... with 1-2 being a second, and 2-3 being about a fifth !!! When I heard this vikrti on the Le Chant Du Monde CD, I heard phrases like S-D2, S-P etc... again, not what one would call "musical"... but the intervals were rather amazing... later I found that Staal's descriptions in his books and the Asch Mankind LPs in terms of seconds and fifths quite apt... come to think of it, most of the recent CD recordings seem to be bootlegged off the original tapes of these researchers, hence little wonder they match ;-) Their Samavedic chant is also very interesting... again, although it is not as "musical" as Tamil Kauthuma chant, it is, as Howard says, "melismatic to such a degree that new terminology is required." He notes that in one example there are at least 119 changes of pitch for 2 syllables of text... the breath control displayed in such recitations is quite astounding. Staal says that "It is difficult to describe the 'musical' quality adequately. As far as pitch goes the chant makes a montonous impression and does certainly comply with the view that the Jaiminiyas utilize fewer notes than the K-R. Upon a closer analysis the monotony is seen to be partly caused by the extreme extension of certain syllables over a long period of time within an interval of at the most a fourth. Within such an pitch interval, wavering or kampa is frequent." The total variation in pitch is at most a fourth as per the examples on Staal's recordings, while Howard found the maximum range to be a sixth in his recordings... most of the phrases or motives in his recordings used a central pitch, another a major second above, and some lower pitch below (which was variable depending on various factors such as the reciter, his age, his breath etc...) in rapid succession. Certainly, no kApi or tea here ;-) _____________________________ As regards other SV recitations, Howard found that the northern Kauthumas (remarkably uniform in Gujarat and UP... most of the Samavedins in the latter area had migrated from Gujarat) used a smaller range than the Tanjavur Kauthumas, mostly staying within a minor third and using a max of a perfect fourth. Havik Ranayaniyas of North Karnataka use 6 tones in their chanting with a range of a minor seventh, similar to Tanjavur Kauthumas, but with different tonal relationships. GurjarapATa Ranayaniyas of Andhra use a range and tones similar to Northern Kauthumas, but _essentially_ stick to 2 tones making it the smallest in terms of range of the K-R school. (contd.) From: srini@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Srini Pichumani) Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.classical Subject: Vedic Recitation - IV (was: Re: Need help, how to sing "Rucha"s) Date: 30 May 1996 16:29:23 GMT Organization: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA ______________________ Shiva wrote: >> In vedic texts (atleast in the south), or the `Grantham', >> I think they always use underscore(_) for udAtta, an >> apostrophe/prime(') or "chandiram"(half moon) for svarita >> and a double prime ('') for extended svarita. There is some confusion here... the underscore is for the anudAtta, not the udAtta. Also, Howard and others mention that the RV samhita does not mark udAtta or pracaya, but that in transliterations it is customary to indicate the udAtta with the ' sign since it indicates the primary accent. The svarita is always marked by a vertical stroke above. From what I have seen in modern printed texts in Devanagari, they seem to stick to just underscore for anudAtta, and vertical stroke for svarita. >> Also, is the notation in the texts used by Namboodiris, >> Maharashtrian Brahmins and the north Indian Brahmins different? >> Do they also have three/four notes? Is there any notation in the >> original Vedic scriptures? The notation of RV/YV accents is as given in my previous paragraph... but there are differences in between Vedic schools... specifically in Samaveda, and in Taittiriya/s'ukla YV... I have mentioned one above... i.e. the numerical notation of the Kauthuma SV texts and the syllabic notation of the Ranayaniya texts... and a different syllabic notation of the Tamil Jaiminiya texts... Nambudiri Samavedins are not acquainted with any notation... but (significantly, albeit inconclusively, as Howard puts it) their chant seems to match the notation of the Tamil Jaiminiya texts closely enough. [ I have encountered a beautiful, although in many ways quite limited, parallel to this from contemporary Carnatic music. Smt. Kalpagam Swaminathan's exquisite veena rendition of many Dikshitar kritis seems to match the notation in the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini closer than most other renditions... without her having learnt the music from the SSP notation formally. ] In s'ukla YV manuscripts/texts, the underscore does not represent the low anudAtta... but it has been interpreted as such among reciters of the Tamil region... due to Taittiriya influence. As for dates of Vedic manuscripts, a 11th century manuscript is the oldest one known to have existed once... certainly very young compared to the Vedic tradition itself. Later manuscripts from medieval times are the source for modern research and printed editions... these texts do/did have the notations. >> I think they make heavy use of `gamakAs' - comments? In all SV chants and even in RV recitation of Nambudiris there is a clear use of kampa or shaking... the term kampita as in kampita gamaka is derived from this. Vidya wrote: >>The two cases are quite different. An extended anudAtta is only a >>long pause on the anudAtta before touching the svarita. Here again, I think there is some confusion... what would precede a svarita normally would be an udAtta or an extended udAtta... not an anudAtta. The svarita accomplishes the transition from the main accented syllable udAtta to unaccented syllables called pracaya. Only in some cases where the udAtta accent is lost that the svarita is preceded by anudAtta. >> There was another question re: r.g and sAma veda. The two vedas are >> counted as different vedas, because their contents are different in the >> AraNyaka and brAhmaNa portions. However, the two vedas share the same >> corpus of hymns. The samhitA of the sAma veda consists only of hymns >> from the r.g veda (r.ks), with extensions of some syllables and addition >> of supposedly nonsense syllables like ha, hu, etc. When recited in the >> fashion of the r.g veda, the mantra is called r.k or ukta (spoken). When >> sung in the fashion of the sAma veda, the mantra is called sAman or >> udgIta (sung). This is not totally accurate... the Samaveda consists mainly of adaptations of the RV hymns but there is also a small amount of other material, set to melodies. Examples of these can be found in Staal's recordings such as the setusAman and the bhAruNDa sAman for which there are no underlying RV hymns. In one of Emmie Nijenhuis' books, "Indian music : history and structure", she mentions at the very outset while discussing the Samaveda collection that the total number of such non-RV hymns is 75. Shiva wrote: >> But now, esp. considering the sAmans, there comes to mind another >> variation, where there is an extended pause on some syllables >> (in particular, the `ha, hu' syllables in the sAmans). So far, >> the discussion lingered on relating notes used in Vedic recitation >> to notes used in Indian Classical Music(the `rAga` concept). But the >> pause mentioned above makes me wonder if there is a `tAla'(time or beat) >> concept to it too. Any ideas? Certainly... varNa, svara, mAtrA, balam, sAma, santAna are the six characteristics listed for Vedic recitation... from the Tait. passage that begins "s'IkSA vyakhyAsyAma:" Here mAtrA refers to the time intervals in recitation... not to cyclic measures... the ancillary texts such as mAtrAlakSaNam (translated by Howard) deal with this in detail although, again, the degree of correspondence between what is given there and actual recitation varies. __________________________ (concluded)