Mukund Lath
A STUDY OF DATTILAM
A Treatise on the Sacred Music of Ancient India
This study aims at being a wndow to ancient Indian music and musical lore with Dattilam as the frame. The Dattilam of Dattila, venerated by later generations as a sage (muni), is a small text on music which in its aphoristic, Sūtra-like, brevity compresses a remarkable amount of authoritative and valuable material. The text is about two millenia old-as the author of this book is at pains to show-and is one of the very few survivals in its field from that age. The greater part of the present study is arranged round the original text itself, which is given in a critically examined reading along with a lucid translation.
The Dattilam is a masterpiece of methodical exposition : it neatly divides its subject into well-analysed parts and unfolds the whole with a thoughtfully planned logic. This study imitates Dattila's plan in arranging its discussion in the form of a commentary which is comprehensively detailed, entering into matters both technical and general. It musters much from many texts on musicancient, medieval and modern-in order to study each topic comparatively and exhaustively. The purport of the discussion is to create a bridge that can help the reader reach across the centuries to an old and, in many respects, obtuse text. In the process it sheds new, welcome light on many topics which seem to carry with them a perpetual question-mark : topics such as Sruti, Svara, Grāma, Mūrchanā and Yati among others.
But before taking up the text proper, the study extensively explores a corpus of music termed gāndharva. For, the Dattilam is a work specifically on gāndharva. As a distinct body of music, gāndharva is a largely opaque
and uncharted area of study. It was à sacred form. Also, it was the central, the most revered and influential form of music for centuries. All other, later forms, many of which have come down to us in a transformed garb, were said to be born of gāndharva. Gāndharva was born of Sāma, the ancient Vedic form. A meaningful study of gāndharva, then, has to be made in a truly wide perspective, namely, the entire historical span of Indian music. This the present study attempts to do.
The study comes up with many new insights and often breaks new ground. It gives us a feel of the wealth, complexity and sophistication of ancient musical literature. Many legendary names, such as those of Nārada, Kohala, Viśākhila—the three mentioned by Dattila-as well as Kambala, Aśvatara, Nandi, Nandikeśvara among others, are picked out with careful research and placed within a living tradition humming with controversies.
The Nātyaśāstra of Bharata has been especially studied in depth. For, in its section on music we have a text which is largely parallel to the Dattilam. In interpreting the Nāțyaśāstra, the study takes the Abhinava Bhārati of Abhinava Gupta (Circa 950-1025 A.D.) as its guide. At the same time, it reviews exhaustively almost all authentic texts on Indian music, particularly the Bhraddeśī of Matanga (7th Century A.D.), Sangitaratnākara of Sārngadeva (13th Century A.D.) and Sangītarāja of Mahārāņā Kumbha (15th Century A.D.), wherever these texts touch on subjects relevant to the Dattilam.