Essay name: Arts in the Puranas (study)
Author:
Meena Devadatta Jeste
Affiliation: Savitribai Phule Pune University / Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute Pune
This essay studies the Arts in the Puranas by reconstructing the theory of six major fine arts鈥擬usic, Dance, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, and Literature鈥攆rom the Major and Minor Puranas. This thesis shows how ancient sages studied these arts within the context of cultural traditions of ancient India.
Chapter 1 - Music in the Puranas
2 (of 72)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
Download the PDF file of the original publication
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
with instrumental music. In Indian music and dance, the concept of rhythm (tala) is manifested concretely. In the Visnudharmottara Purana, Markandeya told king Vajra that he must learn the art of dancing before he learnt the art of icon-making, and the art of music before he learnt dancing and that, he must master tala before he attempted to 6 learn music. Thus Markandeya has stated the fundamental
principle of the Indian Arts and the interrelationship of
these arts.
HISTORY OF MUSIC FROM THE VEDIC PERIOD.
Music has continuous history from the Vedic times.
In the vedic period music was associated with sacrificial
rituals. If we look at the hymns of the Rgveda, the most
ancient of the vedas, we find that there are three different
sounds used in reciting the Reas and they are named as
Udatta, Anudatta and Svarita. The higher is Udatta and the
lower is Amudatta. So the first stage of the usage of
musical sound is the 'Arcikagayana'? The second stage is
'Gathika' and the third stage is 'Samika'. The Samaveda
is the earliest song-book. The duty of the Samasingers was
to sing the Rks in the Rgveda. So the Samagas must have
been familiar with the Svaras盲stra or the theory of musical
notes. The RK in the Rgveda was the 'Yoni' of the Samans, becaus
the Samans
were the musical rendering of the RKs. Thus Samagayana is
a very ancient art. The Aitareya Brahmana gives the
anecdote of the wedding of RK and SAMA. When words were
united with musical notes, Sama was produced.
In other words
