\ SANGITA-RATNAKARA SARNGADEVA Sanskrit Tess ed English Translation with Comments and Notes gp” Vol. 1 TREATMENT OF SVARA f= AOU } ; ; English Translation by t Dr. R, K. SHRINGY, M.A,,-Ph.D. 1 i Under the Supervision of Dr. (Miss) PREM LATA SHARMA MOTILAL BANARSIDASS ‘ Delhi ot: Varanasi Dena.MOTILAL BANARSIDASS Yadolofical Publishers and Booksellers Hud Ofer: wav0n10¥ ROsD, awanAn HAA Brads 1 cuowe, vananat (02) AIWOE anjratuy rarmach, (otuan) Spotl by the Usioriy Grats Commision, Now Debt © + be Ravindra Kumar Siringy 2. Dr. Prem Lata Shanna First Edition : Varanasi, 1978 Price : Rs, 100 Pit in Tia AE TARA ruTNG WoRts, kaaAccA Vasa, ano ronunaD "MMGNONA FRALADNJnn, Yor OTIAL bavamoney tocnntoa petoe in naan; uaa Pur eee 10. i, GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Note on Translation Transliteration Code List of Abbreviations Introduction Table of Contents of Scarddlydya-Chapter-I Sanskrit + Introductory + The Genesis of the Human ‘Embodiment Nada, Sruti and Seara + Grama, Marcchond, Krama and Tana + Overlapping (Sadharaza) : Varpalaakava Jati-s (Melodic Types) 2 Gltbs Appendices Word-index cum-glossary of technical words Halfline Index to Sanskrit sloka-s Errata iw vix xxiv xii 1386 1.20 21-107 108-159 160-228 229-289 234-265 266-368 969-386 387-417 418-432 433-648 449-450PREFACE I was inspired to undertake the present project of translating Satgttaratnakara into English by two factors viz. the inadequacy of the available English translation of the Ist chapter by C. Kunhan Raja, and the education and training that I received from Dr. (Miss) Premlata Sharma, Head of the Department of Musicology, Banaras Hindu University, while I was her student for Diploma in Music Appreciation during 1967-69. Even though the textual study of Sangita- ratudkara was not, strictly speaking, a part of the curriculum, she was kind and generous enough to recognise the special position of some of the students, who were also the members of the staff of the department, and to extend to them the benefit of-her wide learning and research experience by way of Gtiating Shem into the art of interpreting original Sanskrit text fc with the help of available commentaries, and luckily I was one of them. So, even though Ihad been working as Research Assistant in the Department of Musico- logy and in the College of Music & Fine Arts prior to the formation of the department in 1966, for about ten years or so, Sanskrit texts on music could become meaningful to and enjoyable for me only after I could avail of this opportunity of learning the intricacies, the technicalities and the symbo- lism of the language of Saigtta-sastra from Dr. Sharma. Hence, the need for a music-oriented, topic-wise, tec] ly precise English translation of Sangita-ratnakara written ina flowing prose style unhindered by frequent Sanskrit inter jections and accompanied by an elaborate and lucid com- mentary, was fle by_me-not asa scholar of Sanskrit but as 2 student of Musicology. A detailed note on the method ant the manner of the translation has been written separately pointing out the peculiarities of the execution of the work. In 1970, the University Grants Commission introduced ascheme of writing university level books and monographs,(#) and I took the earliest opportunity of putting forth a proposal of writing an English translation of Sagtta-ratntkara in three parts related {o music (i.e. excluding the chapter on dancing) under the expert guidance and supervision of Dr. (Miss) ‘Prem Lata Sharma who readily agreed to sponsor the ‘proposal, And the U.G.C, too was kind and gracious enough to grant _mea Research Fellowship for three years to ndertake this project. ©! Tam happy to say that as the result of the combined efforts of the U.G.C., which provided me the material means * qo purnue my, researches and writing unhindered, the autho- tities of the Banaras Hindu University who granted me leave to work on the project, and Dr. Prem Lata Sharma who has very affectionately, very carefully and very meticulously nursed the whole product, and Messrs, Motilal Banarsidass, who readily agreed to publish this work, it has become possible for me to present this first volume comprising Chapter I related to the treatment of svara, in the service of the learned scholars and the learning students; and I hope it will be found to be of greater help in understanding Sariga- deva, whose work Safgtta-ratnakara is a landmark in the history of Sahgita-sastra. Though the translation was originally planned and written out with an-elaborate commentary and critical as well as literary annotations with a view to making it self- sufficient, it has been considered necessary, convenient and useful to give the Sanskrit text as well along with it. This was considered’ necessary firstly because the translation is presented in a topic-wise order dealing with homogeneous ideas and concepts in convenient paragraphs in order to make the reading more intelligible and easy to grasp, and secondly because it was found unavoidable to modify some of the readings of the text as published by the Adyar Library in view of the technical accuracy of the readings available in the Anandagrama edition or other comparable texts like ‘Goacttaraia of Rana Kumbha and soon. Thus, the Sanskrit ( ii) text has also been partly re-edited in so far as the arrange- ment of some of the verses has been modified to correspond with the paragraphs as arranged in the translation and also in so far as some modifications have also been made in the text here and there, though very sparingly. The present project envisages the translation of six out of the seven chapters of Saigtta-ratnakara divided as follows : Volume 1: Chapter I Volume II : Chapters II to IV Volume III : Chapters V & VI Iam happy to disclose that the Ms, of Vol. II is also almost ready. It will not be before long that it is presented for publication, while work on Volume IIf as well is in Progress. It is not for me to say that the task of translating Saigita-ratnakara (Vol. 1), that I had set to myself quite unwittingly in my enthusiasm for doing something worth. while, could hardly be accomplished by me single-handed, since it not only demands great proficiency in Sanskrit and English languages but also an insight into the musical con- cepts of Satgtta-iastra, and besit OF such a work naturally~involves co-operation of many able Iam, therefore, greatly indebted to my seniors and friends who have lovingly rendered every possible help in bringin the work upto the mark, though here I can make notable mention only of those few but for whose contribution this work could not have been published in its present form, 1 do not find any words indeed to adequatel ledge the contribution of Dr. (Miss) Premlata cna under whose expert advice and able supervision the whole work has been executed and who, out of her love for learning, volun- tarily offered to write an introduction to the translation. In fact, whagever I have been able to do is primarily because of her, since without her initiation and continued co-ope- ration, nothing could have been finally accomplished. I am(iw) also greatly thankful to Mr. N. Ramanathan, Research Scholar of the Deptt. of Musicology, B. H. U. and presently, Lecturer in Musicology, Indira Safgita Vishvavidyalaya, Khairagarh, who has been kind enough to go through my prest-copy including the index, and has offered many valuable comments and suggestions to improve the translation ints form and content. He has also been kind enough to go through the printed file and much of the credit for the preparation of errata goes to him. Since Sangita-rainakara incorporates a chapter on human embodiment (Pigdotpatti), which indeed is a unique feature of Saragadeva’s work, (and he could possibly attempt it because he was himself a medical man as stated by him), special care has been taken in preparing the translation and the commentary as well as the notes of this chapter; and I am extremely grateful to Prof. Priyavrata Sharma, Head of the Deptt. of Dravyaguna in the Instt. of Medical Sciences, B, H. U., who has been kind enough to go through the Ms. of the whole chapter and suggest some technical modifi- cations. I am also thankful to Dr. K. C, Gangrade, formerly Reader in Anatomy in the Institute of Medical Sciences and presently Reader in Sitar in the Department of Instrumental Music, B. H. U., who has also been kind enough to glance through this chapter and to offer some technical suggestions for the improvement of the draft translation. ‘My thanks are due to Shri Ritwik Sanyal, a research scholar of the Deptt. of Musicology, for assisting in the pre- paration of the Presscopy of the Ms. Many thanks are due to Shri Gopal Lal Bhatt and Pandit Maheshwar Jha, ‘Assistants of the Research Section of the Deptt. of Musico- logy for assisting in proof-reading and the preparation of the §loka-index respectively. Also I am thankful to Shri Kapildeo Giri for assisting in writing the Ms. of the Sanskrit text and Shri Chhannulal, Senior Clerk of the Deptt. for typing the ‘Ms. and the Press-copy of the work neatly. I am also thankful to Shmt. Vimla Musalgaonkar, the Sanskrit teacher (Cv) of the Deptt. of Musicology, for her constant moral support and encouragement in the accomplishment of the difficult task, Above all, I am grateful to the University Grants Commission for granting a Research Fellowship for this project and thus providing the initial impetus to this publication. Our thanks are also due to the publishers of this book, Motilal Banarsidass for readily accepting the work of publi- cation and for seeing it through the press expeditiously. Last but not the least, Iam thankful to Tara Printing Works, Varanasi, for providing every facility for printing the work in the desired manner and in a short period of time. Dated 17.11.1977 R. K, Shringy Deptt. of Musicology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi—221005A NOTE ON TRANSLATION The present English translation of Sangtta-ratnakara of Sarngadeva is based on the Adyar edition of the Sanskrit text published by the Adyar Library and Research Centre of the Theosophical Society, Madras in 1943. The text has almost entirely been adopted from that edition excepting a few places where the readings were not found to be techni- cally significant and relevant to the context, and where some- times the readings of the Anandashrama (Poona) edition (edited by Shri Maigesh Ramakrishna Telaiga) are found to be more meaningful; though, that edition has been refer red to only in very exceptional cases only and not as a gene- ral rule, Apart from these two editions of Saigita-ratnakara no other edition or Ms, has been consulted in preparing this translation, probably because it was not considered with in the scope of a translator's work to do so. When the project of translating this monumental work ‘of Sangita-éastra was taken up in 1972, there were quite a few translations available in English, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and s0 on, most of them fragmentary. However, even though they were available, none of them was noticed by the author till the first draft of the work was nearly completed so far as this volume is concerned. But by and by the follow- ing works were noticed. (i) Satgtta-ramakara (Part—I), Hindi translation by Shri inarayana Garg, Saigita-karyalaya Hathras, 1964 (consists of Chapter I only) (Hi) Telugu translation of the first chapter with that of Kallinatha’s commentary in an appendix, by Gandam Sri Ramamurti_ published by the Sangit Natak Akademi, Andhra Pradesh, Kala Bhawan, Hyderabad—4, in 1966, (ii) Kannada translation of the first three sections of Chapter—I with a commentary (also in Kannada) ( vi) called Nibéatka-hydaya by Prof, R. Sathyanarayana, published by Prasaranga, Mysore University, 1968. (iv) English translation of Chapter I by C. Kunhan Raja from Adyar Library, Madras, 1945. (v) English translation of Chapter VII on Dancing by K. Kunjunni Raja and Radha Burnier, first pub- lished in Vol. XXIII parts 3 & 4 of Adyar Library Bulletin, Brahma Vidya, 1959. This has been reprinted in 1976. Excepting C. Kunhan Raja’s English translation, no other work could possibly be consulted by the author (i. €. the present translator). It has been beneficial to consult this translation since some of the charts have been adopted from it with some modification. Another work published in 1975 was noticed as under. (vi) Marathi translation of chapters I to IV along with the translation of Kallinatha’s commentary by G.H. Tarlekar published by Maharastra Rajya Sahitya Sanskriti Mandal, Bombay—32 in 1975. ‘The author of this work plans to complete the Marathi translation of the entire Sangtta-ratnakara in his 2nd and 3rd Volumes on which he is presently working. Any other translations of this work, if available, have not yet been noticed, The present English translation is executed in quite a different manner. First of all, the translation does not follow the traditional #loka-wise order, rather it is presented in con- venient paragraphs that naturally comprehend a complete idea or expound it conceptually. ‘The #laka-wise translations may be suitable for literature but so far as technical works, as this, are concemed, they hardly make any clear and lucid presentation so that, more often than not, the subject( ) matter is either confused or distorted, Therefore, in order te make the translation more intelligible to the modern in- fellect, the entire work has been further classified into many subdivisions according to the different topics. Thus, it is probably for the first time that the Sanskrit text as well as its English translation are being presented in the modern lite- rary format, Accordingly the Sanskrit text has also been provided with suitable headings and sub-headings. ~ ‘The general order of presentation is such that the text in Sanskrit is immediately followed by translation which in its turn is followed by the comments, and the comments are followed by notes, all of which run concurrently as far as possible. The substance of the two Sanskrit commentaries of Kallinatha and Sihhabhipéla as printed in the Adyar edition of Sangita-ratndkara has generally been incorporated in comments as much as it has been found possible in conso- nance with the modern style of presentation, However, the purpose of writing the comments is not merely to represent all that is useful in the Sanskrit commentaries, but to make the translation and the subject matter of the text easily in- telligible and accessible to an average reader of a musicologi- cal text. The comments, in other words, actually constitute arunning commentary on the text, comprehending most of the developments in the field since the Sanskrit commentaries were written. The notes are written mostly on the English rendering of the text and are more of a literary nature, while the comments are generally more concerned with the techni- cal exposition of the subject matter. The Stoka-s of the text have been divided into four parts called a, b, c & d, roughly representing the four quar- tersof'a verse, and since the translation presented here follows a topic-wise arrangement, the paragraph and other topic headings are indicated in terms of Sloka numbers suffixed with a, b, cand d (as the case may be) to cover the entire range of the topic or the paragraph. ( x) While writing Sanskrit words in Roman script, inter- national diacritical marks are applied. These symbols are indicated here in a separate transliteration code. With regards to translating téchnical terms from Sans- krit to English, as a matter of principle, every effort has been made to translate or to give English equivalents whenever possible, but exception is made with respect to certain con- cepts that have no parallel in Western music e. g. grama, marcchana, tala and so on, that are retained in their original form. However, even in such cases, an approximate English equivalent has been provided into brackets, at least for the first time, if not every time the word is used, e. g. jati (melo- dic type). Sometimes the English equivalents are thought to be unconventional, and in such cases the original Sanskrit terms are similarly provided into parenthesis e. g. tone- pattern (sarga). ‘This policy has been executed as far as it has been possible to do so intelligently. The translation presented here is quite authentic, as near in interpretation to the original text asthe English idiom makes it possible. Even though a sloke-wise presenta~ tion is not made, every paragraph is truly represented by the verse Nos. indicated at the end of the paras, while the range of the topic is indicated by the verse Nos. at the end of the topic-headings. ‘The words that have been supplied due to gramatical necessity of the English expression have generally been put into brackets, so much so that expository or comple~ mentary phrases iinplied in the original text are also similarly indicated, However, every care has been taken not to make the translation too literal, at the cost of presentable diction, lucidity of expression, or technical meaning. Plurals made out of Skt, words are distinctly indicated by a hyphene. g. grama-s. So, in short an attempt has been made to present a faithful, authentic, liberal and a clear English translation of the original Sanskrit text couched in a language that can be easily understood by the students as well as the scholars of sahgtta-astra alike.(x) The translation is accompanied by three appendices for different specialists; and also a glossary-cum-index is provided wherin the vatious technical terms are very briefly elucidated. A half verse line index too is added to provide a guide to the text. It is hoped that this work will prove to be a useful aid to those scholars and students who are not so well conversant with Sanskrit as to approach the text directly. TRANSLITERATION CODE Devanagari script | Roman script 1. Vowels : (a) short—9 "3 & ai, ut, Ip (b) long a & = 41,0, (c) dipthongs—z & oh at ©, ai, 0, au (d) anusvara—* & visarga-:} mh & b 2. Consonants : (i) Gutturalb—q qq qe k, kh, g, gh, a (ii) Palasalb—a 9 % | & ch j, jh, a Gili) Linguals—z qq % th &@ dh op (iv) Dentals— 44441 th, d, db on (v) Labials— (944% p, ph, b, bh, m Semivowels— % 34% yn hv Sibilans— | Tq Gu h Tonal symbols : (i) laghu—I short Saja sa Madlyama ma (ii) guru —S- long Ryabha ri Paicama pa (iii) pluta—$ prolonged Gandhara ga Dhaivata dha or elongated Migada ni LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS+ Abh, Bh. Abhinava-bharatt, Abbinavagupta's commentary on N.S. Ad. ed. Adyar edition of Sengtta-ratnakara Bh, G. Bhagavodgits Brhadéelt of Mataiga Goraka saxnhita Chapter English English translation of N. 8. by Shri Manmohan Ghosh Gayakwad Oriental Series, Baroda Indian Music Journal Journal of Royal Asiatic Society Kallinatha Kashi (Chowkhambha) edition of N. S. Kaviraj Kunjala Bhishagratna, the English translator of Sudruta KR, Kunhan Raja, author of the Eng. translation of 8, R. Chapt. I published from Adyar, Madras, Lit, Literally. NS. Natyalastra of Bharata N,8,G,0.8. Naye-fastra, Gayakwad Oriental Series, Baroda ition PLS. ‘Dr. (Miss) Prem Lata Sharma Ry. Rgveda s Sirhhabhopals ‘Skt. ‘Sanskrit sR. Sangita-ratnakara of Sarigadeva 8, Raj Satgita-raje of Raga Kumbha Sulruta ——Sulruta Sainte . ‘Translation For the translation,