For divine music lovers

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Paramahansa Yogananda on Indian Classical Music

Excerpt from Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 15

In India,

music as well as painting and the drama is considered a divine art. Brahma,

Vishnu, and Shiva-the Eternal Trinity-were the first musicians. The Divine

Dancer Shiva is scripturally represented as having worked out the infinite

modes of rhythm in His cosmic dance of universal creation, preservation, and

dissolution, while Brahma accentuated the time-beat with the clanging cymbals,

and Vishnu sounded the holy MRIDANGA or drum. Krishna,

an incarnation of Vishnu, is always shown in Hindu art with a flute, on which

he plays the enrapturing song that recalls to their true home the human souls

wandering in MAYA-delusion. Saraswati, goddess of wisdom, is symbolized as

performing on the VINA, mother of all stringed instruments. The SAMA VEDA of

India contains the world's earliest writings on musical science.

The foundation stone of Hindu music is the RAGAS or fixed melodic scales.

The six basic RAGAS branch out into 126 derivative RAGINIS (wives) and PUTRAS

(sons). Each RAGA has a minimum of five notes: a leading note (VADI or king), a

secondary note (SAMAVADI or prime minister), helping notes (ANUVADI,

attendants), and a dissonant note (VIVADI, the enemy).

Each one of the six basic RAGAS has a natural correspondence with a certain

hour of the day, season of the year, and a presiding deity who bestows a

particular potency. Thus, (1) the HINDOLE RAGA is heard only at dawn in the

spring, to evoke the mood of universal love; (2) DEEPAKA RAGA is played during

the evening in summer, to arouse compassion; (3) MEGHA RAGA is a melody for

midday in the rainy season, to summon courage; (4) BHAIRAVA RAGA is played in

the mornings of August, September, October, to achieve tranquillity; (5) SRI

RAGA is reserved for autumn twilights, to attain pure love; (6) MALKOUNSA RAGA

is heard at midnights in winter, for valor.

The ancient rishis discovered these laws of sound alliance between nature

and man. Because nature is an objectification of AUM, the Primal Sound or

Vibratory Word, man can obtain control over all natural manifestations through

the use of certain MANTRAS or chants. {FN15-7} Historical documents tell of the

remarkable powers possessed by Miyan Tan Sen, sixteenth century court musician

for Akbar the Great. Commanded by the Emperor to sing a night RAGA while the

sun was overhead, Tan Sen intoned a MANTRA which instantly caused the whole

palace precincts to become enveloped in darkness.

Indian music divides the octave into 22 SRUTIS or demi-semitones. These

microtonal intervals permit fine shades of musical expression unattainable by

the Western chromatic scale of 12 semitones. Each one of the seven basic notes

of the octave is associated in Hindu mythology with a color, and the natural

cry of a bird or beast-DO with green, and the peacock; RE with red, and the

skylark; MI with golden, and the goat; FA with yellowish white, and the heron;

SOL with black, and the nightingale; LA with yellow, and the horse; SI with a

combination of all colors, and the elephant.

Three scales-major, harmonic minor, melodic minor-are the only ones which

Occidental music employs, but Indian music outlines 72 THATAS or scales. The

musician has a creative scope for endless improvisation around the fixed traditional

melody or RAGA; he concentrates on the sentiment or definitive mood of the

structural theme and then embroiders it to the limits of his own originality.

The Hindu musician does not read set notes; he clothes anew at each playing the

bare skeleton of the RAGA, often confining himself to a single melodic

sequence, stressing by repetition all its subtle microtonal and rhythmic

variations. Bach, among Western composers, had an understanding of the charm

and power of repetitious sound slightly differentiated in a hundred complex

ways.

Ancient Sanskrit literature describes 120 TALAS or time-measures. The

traditional founder of Hindu music, Bharata, is said to have isolated 32 kinds

of TALA in the song of a lark. The origin of TALA or rhythm is rooted in human

movements-the double time of walking, and the triple time of respiration in

sleep, when inhalation is twice the length of exhalation. India has

always recognized the human voice as the most perfect instrument of sound.

Hindu music therefore largely confines itself to the voice range of three

octaves. For the same reason, melody (relation of successive notes) is

stressed, rather than harmony (relation of simultaneous notes).

The deeper aim of the early rishi-musicians was to blend the singer with the

Cosmic Song which can be heard through awakening of man's occult spinal

centers. Indian music is a subjective, spiritual, and individualistic art,

aiming not at symphonic brilliance but at personal harmony with the Oversoul.

The Sanskrit word for musician is BHAGAVATHAR, "he who sings the praises

of God." The SANKIRTANS or musical gatherings are an effective form of

yoga or spiritual discipline, necessitating deep concentration, intense

absorption in the seed thought and sound. Because man himself is an expression

of the Creative Word, sound has the most potent and immediate effect on him,

offering a way to remembrance of his divine origin.

Footnote:

{FN15-7} Folklore of all peoples contains references to

incantations with power over nature. The American Indians are well-known to

have developed sound rituals for rain and wind. Tan Sen, the great Hindu

musician, was able to quench fire by the power of his song. Charles Kellogg,

the California naturalist, gave a

demonstration of the effect of tonal vibration on fire in 1926 before a group

of New York

firemen. "Passing a bow, like an enlarged violin bow, swiftly across an

aluminum tuning fork, he produced a screech like intense radio static.

Instantly the yellow gas flame, two feet high, leaping inside a hollow glass

tube, subsided to a height of six inches and became a sputtering blue flare.

Another attempt with the bow, and another screech of vibration, extinguished

it."