Essay name: Musical Instruments in Sanskrit Literature
Author:
S. Karthick Raj KMoundinya
Affiliation: University of Madras / Department of Sanskrit
The essay studies the Musical Instruments in Sanskrit Literature and its relationship with the South Indian musical tradition. The study emphasizes the universal appeal of music and documents how it pervades various aspects of life, art, literature, painting, and sculpture.
Chapter 2 - Origin and evolution of Music and Musical instruments
5 (of 99)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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From early times India has been famous for her eminence in fine
arts. India has delighted the world art stage in various kinds of dances,
vocal music and instrumental music, which are characterized by a
graceful blend of style, aesthetics, and their polished exposition. This
beautiful land of fine arts verily is the place of Joy and refined cultural
heritage.
2.1 Evolution of Musical Instruments
The evolution of Musical instruments can be traced to the pre-
historic periods. Man wanted to represent his outbursts of joy or sorrow,
through sounds produced in a particular pattern. It may have started
from an ordinary hand-clap, a pat on the thigh, chest or legs or stone-
gongs dashed against one other. Slowly man developed rude wooded
castanets, leading to cymbals and gongs or frames.
Then he discovered the use of skin stretched over a simple circular
frame, and later skin stretched over a hollow body enclosing air inside
pot-drums or wooden conical drums. Then came into use, the skin
stretched over two faces of hollow cylindrical body. The next stage was
Double-faced tunable stretched drums. Then, by each one's mental
imagination and the character, many varieties of drums could have
come into being leading to different types of Musical instruments.
Folk songs were but the natural expression of man's emotions as
released by the affecting events of his life with all the charm of simple
and yet powerful rhythm. When man started infusing harmony into his
music, Classicism originated.
