The early Tamil literature makes much mention of music. The Paripāḍal (c. A.D. 100-200) gives the names of some of the svaras and mentions the fact of there being seven Pālai (ancient Dravidian modes). The yāḷ is the peculiar instrument of the ancient Tamil land.2 No specimen of it exists today. It was evidently something like the vīṇā but not the same instrument, as the poet Māṇikkavāchakar (c. A.D. 500-700) mentions both in such a way as to indicate two different instruments. Some of its varieties are said to have had over 1,000 strings. The Silappaḍigāram (A.D. 300), a Buddhist drama, mentions the drummer, the flute player, and the vīṇā as well as the yāḷ and also has specimens of early Tamil songs. This book contains some of the earliest expositions of the Indian musical scale, giving the seven notes of the gamut and also a number of the modes and rāgas in use at that time. The names given to the notes are not those current in the present day and are with one exception pure Tamil words. Tivākaram, a Jain lexicon of the same period, gives quite a lot of information about early Dravidian music. It mentions two kinds of rāgas; complete or heptatonic, and transilient or hexatonic' and pentatonic, which were called respectively Paṇ and Tiram; it gives the twenty-two srutis, which it calls mātra; the Tamil names of the seven svaras with the equivalent Sanskrit sol-fa initials (Sa, Ri, Ga, etc.); the seven Dravidian modes called Pālai; four kinds of Yāḷ and the names of 29 Paṇs, some of which are still found among the primary rāgas of southern India. All this as Well as frequent references to the science of music and to musical performances, both vocal and instrumental, in the Tamil books of this and succeeding periods makes it clear that musical culture had reached a high level among the Dravidian peoples of South India in the early centuries of our era. The later centuries of the Buddhist period (A.D. 300-500) Were more fertile in architecture, sculpture and painting than in music. The dramas of Kālidāsa (c. A.D. 400) make frequent references to music and evidently the rajahs of that time had regular musicians attached .to their courts. In the Mālavikāgnimitra a song in four-time is mentioned as a great feat performed at a contest between two musicians. The development of the drama after Kālidāsa meant the development of music as well, as all Indian drama is operatic. "The temple and the stage were the great schools of Indian music'. This was the time when in Europe Pope Sylvester (A.D, 330) and St. Ambrose (A.D. 374-379) began to elaborate western musical theory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2 See p. 108. |