Evolution of the Indian Melody

To be able to appreciate the essence of Indian Music it is necessary to understand various aspects of the same apart from its History. It would be appreciated that we should understand :
1. How music was rendered through o few musical notes many years ago
2. How from these notes a scale was invented, and
3. From this scale how a raga system was perfected.

VEDIC PERIOD
During this period which dates about 2000 years B.C., the melody was expressed through four notes only. Maybe still earlier, only two notes were used and later the third note was introduced and still later the fourth note. It is interesting to note that these four notes during the Vedic times wore used in the descending order.

500 YEARS B.C. AND LATER
The Musical Scale as is used all over the world was invented in India during this period. It would be interesting to know how exactly the scale was discovered in India. As we have seen earlier, during the Vedic period, four notes were used in the descending order. As such, the present fourth note was the first note, the third note was known as the second, the second was known as the third and present day tonic or the first note was called the fourth.

Now, with this as a background, let us consider the fourth note which, in this sense, is the first note. People who are used to playing stringed instruments will agree with me that, when a very low pitched thick string is struck, an overtone in the form of the third note is heard. Similarly, a great sage named ‘Tumbru’, during the Vedic period, heard such an overtone from the first note (fourth of today). In other words, the sixth note of to-day’s scale was heard by him as an overtone. He called this note ‘Dhaiwat’. In Sanskrit, Dhaiwat means “that which can be, visualised or comprehended only by the intelligent”. One would agree that only the intelligent or musically initiated person can hear the overtones which the great sage heard about 2200 years from today. The sixth note was thus discovered, later the relationship of the second to the sixth was visualised and thus a new relationship of 1:5 was established. Still later, this relationship was applied to the basic tonic and the fifth note was discovered. Similarly, when this relationship was applied to the third note, the seventh was discovered. I would like to explain here that originally the third note of to-day’s scale was visualised as flat and hence the seventh newly discovered note, was also flat.

So now we have a scale of seven notes, with the third and the seventh as flat notes or half tonos and all others as normal of full tones. The first note was named as “Shadaj”. Shada means six and “ja” means something winch gives birth. In other words, it is the tonic which gives birth to six notes. So the tonic is the “Shadaj” which means that out of the tonic, these six notes are born, so to say and the entire scale evolved.

Now we have two tonal relationships. 1:4 which was used originally and 1:5 which was subsequently found out. The third relationship which was 1:3 was discovered by the great sage Tumbru as explained earlier and these relationships formed the basis of the discovery of scale. When this 1:3 relationship became more and more understood and what it was applied to the tonic, the third note as a fulltone was discovered. And when this relationship was applied to the fifth note, we found out the seventh note as the fulltone. In this way, we discovered the entire scale with nine note. But then, we have still to locate the flat second and the flat sixth. For this a scientific method called the ‘Sarna’ system was used in four distinct stages, which gave us not only the twelve notes usually used by the twenty two divisions of the scale as visualised by the Indian Musicians. Before we understand this system, it would be necessary to explain certain basic denominations. According to one basis of measure, the entire scale is divided into 301 savarts or points. Wo shall now consider the four stages of the Sarna system one by one:

When we tune the fifth note with the second note on the basis of 1:4 relationship, we are required to reduce very slightly the pitch of the fifth note. This reduction in the pitch is equivalent to 5 savarts or points and is known by the Indian Musicologists as “Praman” Shruti or “proof” of the fact that there is a difference of pitch between the relationship of 1:5 and 1:4. When we tune the entire scale reducing the pitch of each note by five points we get a now series of notes as compared to the original scale, all of which are five points lower in pitch.

In the next stage the sixth note may be visualised as the seventh flat and the entire scale to be tuned on this basis. The distance between the sixth note and the seventh flat is of 28 savarts or points. Thus we have in the second stage, a series of notes which are 26 savarts away on the lower side from the original scale.

Similarly, if we consider the fifth note to be the sixth and visualise the entire scale accordingly, we have a series of notes each of which are 46 savarts on the lower side from the original scale.

4) In the some way the fourth note could be visualised to be the fifth and when the whole scale is tuned accordingly, we will get a set of notes which are 51 savarts away from the original scale on the lower side.

In the above manner we will get in all 22 divisions from the tonic to the upper tonic. It would be noted that those divisions are not equidistant from each other but, have distances in fixed mathematical proportions. We have a term called “Shruti”. Those 22 divisions are called SHRUTIS. The 301 points or savarts are divided into three main, nomenclatures of Shrutis. The difference of 5 points is known as ‘Praman Shruti’. The difference of 18 points is known as ‘Up-Mahati Shruti’ and the combination of both viz.: 5 + 18 = 23 paints is known as Mahati Shruti’. In the first stage of the Sarna system the difference between the first and second series of noes was one praman Shruti (5 points). In the second stage it was one of Mahati Shruti (23 points) and one Praman Shruti is (5 points) i.e., 29 points. In the third stage the difference was one Praman Shruti (5 points), one Mahati Shruti (23 points) and one Up-Mahati Shruti (10 points) and one Praman Shruti i.e. 51 points.

The entire scale has been visualised as having 301 points or divisions. On the basis of the knowledge we have now of the different types of Shrutis we can surmise that in a scale there are :

7 Mahati Shrutis i.e. 7 x 23 = 161 points
5 Upmahati Shrutis i.e. 5 x 18 = 90 points
10 Praman Shrutis i.e. 10 x 5 = 50 points
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301 points
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This is the way in which the Indian scale with all its division was evolved.