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89
Katherine Butler Brown
Evidence of Indo-Persian Musical Synthesis? The tanbur and rudra
vina in seventeenth-century Indo-Persian treatises It has long been
accepted wisdom that North Indian classical music as we know it
today developed as a synthesis of Indian and Persian influences,
largely under Mughal patronage between the sixteenth and eighteenth
centuries1. Whether celebrated as a brilliant symbol of North
Indias tolerant composite culture (Ratanjankar in Bhatkhande 1990
[1930]: iii), or criticised for its impurities in comparison with
its supposedly undiluted Southern counterpart (Tagore 1990 [1896]:
67), the hybrid nature of Hindustani music is usually taken for
granted. There can be no doubt that the Mughal emperors (1526-1858)
as well as their rivals, contemporaries and earlier Indo-Muslim
rulers were thoroughly ecumenical in their patronage of music,
employing performers of Hindustani, Karnatic, Persian, Central
Asian, Ottoman, and even European music at their courts. Evidence
for this eclecticity is found in a wide range of sources, from
Persian historical chronicles to miniature paintings to European
travel accounts2. Musicians and theorists too, from both sides of
the Indian/Persianate divide, demonstrated an interest in each
others music. The Sanskrit theorist Pundarika Vitthala for instance
noted the names of the Persian maqams in his sixteenth-century
treatise Ragamanjari (Sarmadee 1996: xxv), but by far the greater
interest came from the Indo-Persian theorists, who created an
enormous corpus of musicological texts in Persian exploring both
Sanskrit theory and contemporary Hindustani musical practice3. The
obvious descent of such quintessential modern Hindustani
instruments as the sitar and sarod from West and Central Asian
forebears is further living testament to the meeting of diverse
musical cultures facilitated by Mughal rule in North India4. 1 This
research was generously funded by a Postgraduate Award from the UK
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and a Small Research
Grant from the British Academy. 2 For the Mughal court see Brown
2003: 35-42 and Brown 2000; see also Faqirullah 1996: 95; Wright
1996a: 457; Wright 1996b: 680; Ahmad 1975: 101; Kamilkhani f. 135;
Wade 1998: pl. 7; Mir 1999: 46,72; Sarmadee 1996: xxxv, lii;
Lahawri 1867-8: vol ii 5-7; Woodfield 1990: 52; Das 1959: 211. 3
See Delvoye 1994 and Brown 2003: 27-81 for details. 4 See Miner
1993 for details.
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90 However, the idea that this eclecticity of patronage
translated into a synthesis of local and foreign musical systems or
styles is very difficult to demonstrate. The concept of synthesis
as applied to North Indian classical music is deeply problematic.
It is very hard to pin down exactly what is meant by this term in
Indian musicological discourse. There seems to be an unexamined and
unstated assumption that the term synthesis describes a
historically verifiable process whereby two separate musical
styles, Indian and Persian, were combined together to produce a
new, intermediate musical style called Hindustani music. However,
the term synthesis is customarily used in a very vague manner,
without ever defining precisely what that synthesis entailed on a
music-technical level, or how this confluence differed from simple
appropriation. The evidence often presented for synthesis5 may in
fact demonstrate only the most superficial levels of cross-cultural
encounter. Paintings, for example, of Indian and West or Central
Asian instruments being played side by side may simply be testament
to the very eclecticity of patronage already noted, or at best
suggest that instruments were borrowed from one system into
another. It is simply not possible to make any conclusive statement
about a merging of styles on the basis of such visual evidence
because it is not possible to tell just by looking at a picture -
or even at an instrument itself - what the music played on it
sounded like, or indeed whether that music was Indian, Persian,
something in between, or something entirely different. Similarly, a
few hints of foreign melodic graftings into the Hindustani modal
system seem to be betrayed by the names of a number of Hindustani
ragas (such as Rags Kafi and Hijaj), and mixed ragas that have
supposedly been created from maqams (e.g. Faqirullah 1996: 59-63).
But in the general absence of musical examples in the treatises to
confirm tangible melodic relationships leaving aside the
possibility that these relationships might in any case be
coincidental these names and associations remain merely suggestive.
This leads us to the question of what was identifiably and
specifically Persian about the non-Indian musical elements of this
supposed Indo-Persian synthesis. Except when the source leaves no
room for doubt, our modern choice of Persian to signify any and
every foreign grafting into Hindustani music seems to have been
made on the somewhat random basis that the Mughal treatises are
written in Persian and Mughal courtly culture often identified
itself with Persian norms (Richards 1993: 61; OHanlon 1999: 55,
84). But the ethnicity of a musical style is certainly not 5 For
example in Wade 1998: 27-32, 136-159; cf. 161, Brown 2001: 168 and
Brown 2003: 40-45.
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91 synonymous with the language in which its musicological
treatises were written, or even the language of its song texts. The
Mughals may have used Persian for official purposes and deferred to
Persian cultural etiquette, but they were not Persians; they came
from Central Asia, drew their pride and claims of sovereign
legitimacy from their Turkic and Mongol ancestry (Alam and
Subrahmanyam 1998: 17), and spoke a variant of Turkish, and later
Urdu, as their mother tongue. The foreign musical influences on
Hindustani music could just as often and as easily have been
Central Asian as Persian. We frequently cannot tell from the
available evidence, and I would suggest that Indo-Persian as a
descriptive term for whatever style resulted from the musical
encounter between India and its neighbours may be as much of a
misnomer as synthesis. More persuasive suggestions of foreign
graftings however - and specifically Persian and Arabic influences
in this case - have been made with respect to scale types and
instrumental tuning systems. This is important, because if any
stylistic synthesis occurred in the interaction between Indian and
other musical cultures, solid evidence for it must be found in the
material building blocks of the music itself - the notes of the
scale and the patterns they formed in raga and maqam, and the
rhythmic patterns of tala and usul. It has been noted for example
that ragas with augmented seconds only began to appear in North
India after the Muslim conquests in the late 12th century. Te
Nijenhuis has also noted the widespread popularity of Arabic
treatises on music in medieval North India, arguing that the scale
temperaments used by the Sanskrit theorists Pundarika Vitthala,
Somanatha, and possibly Ramamatya, were influenced by Pythagorean
systems for fretting stringed instruments in Arabic and Persian
musical traditions (1976: 4, 7). However, these well-educated
guesses still do not provide evidence that Persian styles were
mixed with Indian ones to create a new hybrid musical system. At
most they demonstrate the propensity of Hindustani musicians to
borrow novel melodic material, temperaments and methods of tuning
from Persian theory, perhaps opening up the possibility of playing
maqams on the rudra vina and ragas on the tanbur. Surely a true
synthesis should be more than just appropriation? One would never
claim that Puccinis opera Madame Butterfly is a synthesis of
Western and Japanese music just because he borrowed a few Japanese
folk tunes to add an authentic flavour to his score. It is too
early to present a coherent and fully elaborated theory on this,
but I am beginning to think that synthesis is neither an accurate
nor a helpful concept to use when analysing the interaction of
Indian and West and Central Asian musics in the development of
Hindustani music if only because such a radical mingling
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92 cannot be proven on the available evidence. Nor do I think
influence is a particularly useful concept to invoke, because it
suggests a lack of agency on the part of the influenced - the music
makers, both individual and collective. To be influenced even
smacks of a lack of choice in the matter, a forcible yet strangely
agent-less imposition of Persian styles on passive musicians
helpless to do anything about it. Instead, I want to discuss these
interactions in terms of appropriation, a deliberate borrowing of
interesting concepts, techniques and methods from another musical
system to enhance ones own craft and tradition. I am therefore
going to sidestep the issue of synthesis altogether, and consider
some concrete ways in which both ideational and music-technical
concepts taken originally from Persian music theory and
instrumental practice were applied by Mughal theorists and
musicians to the Hindustani musical system in the mid to late
seventeenth century. By sidestepping I mean that I am not going to
make any claims that the Hindustani style underwent any radical
movements in the direction of a so-called Persian style as a result
of these appropriations. However, I am going to demonstrate that
certain discrete aspects of the Hindustani system did change as a
result of active decisions made by individual musicians and
theorists in the encounter between Indian and other cultures, and
Persian musical culture in particular. Talking about specific
appropriations from Persian tradition, rather than a vaguely
generalised synthesis, makes it possible to avoid fruitless and
unanswerable questions about style, while at the same time making
it possible to talk in concrete terms about verifiable historical
interactions between two musical systems. The area I wish to
consider here is the convergence in mid seventeenth-century
Hindustani performance practice of fretting systems and scale
temperaments on the Indian rudra vina and West Asian tanbur. In
fact, I am going to argue that this was not so much a convergence
as a deliberate transferral of tanbur techniques and methods onto
the rudra vina for pragmatic and ideational reasons. This
convergence is revealed in a remarkable series of musical
treatises, primarily in Persian but also confirmed in Sanskrit
texts, and embraced by both theorists and some of the foremost
performing musicians of the Mughal era. By the end of the
seventeenth century, not only were the bin and tanbur fretted the
same way using the same scale temperament and the same series of
fretting patterns called thaths, but this was done according to a
technical and ideational
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93 system of Perso-Arabic origin6. This convergence made it
possible for Hindustani ragas and Persian maqams to be played on
both the bin and the tanbur - often by the same musicians - and for
experiments in combining the two instrumental techniques to be
undertaken. The thath systems and scale temperament set in place by
the late seventeenth century seem to have lasted until at least the
nineteenth century, and are still partly recognisable in V N
Bhatkhandes more theoretical elaboration of the system. More
interestingly, however, the appropriation of this Persianate system
for setting up the frets had a significant cultural impact on the
way in which Hindustani performers thought about the extra-musical
properties of the ragas. Contrary to conventional music
historiography, thath systems using their original definition -
that is to say, discrete series of fretting patterns for stringed
instruments into which the majority of ragas can be fitted (Gangoly
1935: 3; Widdess 1995: 31) - have a surprising longevity and
continuity in the Indo-Persian and later Urdu theoretical
traditions. The key texts in this tradition, written over nearly
three hundred years, are a series of practical manuals, or smaller
sections of more general texts, on instrumental construction and
playing technique. The earliest known text to describe the thaths,
the Chishtiyya-i Bihishtiyya (f. 261a), was written in 1655 by
Alauddin Barnawi, the son of the earliest known composer of khayal,
Shaikh Bahauddin Barnawi. (It is worth noting in passing that this
text contains four khayal bandishes, which to my knowledge are the
oldest khayal texts so far discovered7.) They extend via Mirza
Raushan Zamirs 1666 translation of Ahobalas famous Sangita Parijata
(e.g. f.49b), and Kamilkhanis two seminal 1668 treatises on thath
systems, to two early eighteenth-century musical treatises (the
anonymous Risala dar Rag (f.144b) and Risala-i Musiqi (f.23b)),
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century works on tanbur
technique (e.g. Risala dar navakhtan-i rag dar tanbur (f. 3a) and
Risala-i Musiqi-i Ghulam Muhammad (n.f.)), Captain Willards 1834
Treatise on the music of Hindoostan (1882: 64)), and several sitar
handbooks of the late nineteenth century (see Miner 1993: 45).
These texts nature as practical and not theoretical manuals is
important to note, because it indicates that before Bhatkhande,
thath systems were not conceived as a new way of classifying the
ragas designed to replace the all important aesthetic raga
classificatory system, the raga-ragini system. Instead, thaths
coexisted with and were subsidiary to the raga-ragini system,
acting simply as a practical shorthand
6 For details of the thath system in use at the
seventeenth-century Mughal court as a practical shorthand for use
in performance practice, see Brown 2003/4. 7 For details see Brown
forthcoming a.
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94 indicating to instrumentalists how to set up their frets for
particular ragas (Brown 2003/4: 8). Figure 1. Comparison of
Ahobalas and Kamilkhanis scales by string fractions
The first scale in both cases constitutes Ahobalas and
Kamilkhanis suddha scale; Kamilkhanis suddha scale, being produced
on a moveable-fret vina, consists of all swaras in their lowest
fret positions. There is no fret position for komal Dha in
Kamilkhanis thath system; for an explanation of this conundrum see
Brown 2003: 217-24 and 2003/4: 9. There are two principal areas in
which tanbur techniques and methods seem to have been deployed by
Hindustani musicians and theorists in the seventeenth century. The
first is scale temperament. Three treatises, Ahobalas Sangita
Parijata and Kamilkhanis treatises, give us the precise locations
of the 12 notes of the Hindustani scale along a single string of
the rudra vina worked out lengthwise according to Pythagorean
calculations (see Figure 1). Both treatises were clearly written
independently of each other, but the closeness of their final
calculations and the correspondence of several of their scales or
thaths testifies strongly to the basis of their tuning systems in
contemporary performance practice (see Figure 2).
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95 Figure 2. Comparison of kamilkhanis seventeen- thath system
with thath-s extrapolated from Ahobala/Mirza Rausham Zamir
Corresponding that-s are highlighted in bold.
The reason for the transferral of tanbur fretting systems and
temperaments onto the rudra vina seems to lie in a so far
unexplained change in the tuning of the rudra vina from the
mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century, from
Ramamatyas vina tuned mandra Sa, mandra Pa, madhya Sa, madhya Ma,
to Ahobala and Kamilkhanis vinas tuned mandra Pa, madhya Sa, madhya
Pa, tar Sa.
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96 Because of the tuning system he used, Ramamatya was able to
establish his frets very easily and swiftly using Pythagorean
relationships across the strings of the vina (see Figure 3).
It appears from Mirza Raushan Zamirs translation of Ahobala that
a crosswise method of fretting the new vina had also been used
originally (see Figure 4)8. However, because of the new tuning, it
was considerably more laborious and unsystematic than Ramamatyas
method. By the time Ahobala was writing, however, a much simpler
lengthwise method for fretting instruments by Pythagorean ratios
had been in existence in North India for some time: the Persian
system used to fret the tanbur. This system is described, for
example, in a Persian treatise widely available in
sixteenth-century India, the Kashf al-Autar by Qasim bin Dost Ali
Bukhari 9. The notes of the lower tetrachord of its basic scale are
fixed at identical ratios to Ahobalas (Qasim f. 244a; cf. Mirza
Raushan Zamir f. 43b-4a). Furthermore, as Ahobalas description of
the tanbur shows, the tanbur was extensively used in the
performance of Indian music at this time, employing identical
fretting patterns thaths in Mirza Raushan Zamirs translation as
Indian instruments (f. 93a). Mirza Raushan Zamir states explicitly
in his commentary on Ahobalas string ratios that the bin and tanbur
were fretted using the same method as does Alauddin Barnawi (f.
261a) and that both were instruments of equal prestige played by
the kalawants (Mirza Raushan Zamir f. 49b). In his tazkira of
musicians Faqirullah described at least one kalawant, Tarachand,
who specialised in tanbur and whose late ustad Shauqi
8 For details, see Brown 2003: 204-12. 9 In her study of
Somanathas Ragavibodha, te Nijenhuis also notes the popularity in
India of Safiuddins thirteenth-century Arab treatise, the Kitab
al-Adwar, and its possible influence on Indian methods of fretting
(1976: 4, 7). Two copies of this treatise in Persian (both
Shahjahanabad 1664) and one in Arabic (Shahjahanabad 1663) are in
the important connoisseur Diyanat Khans collection in the British
Library.
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97 had been equally an expert in Indian and Persian music (1996:
209). It therefore seems probable that Ahobala appropriated the
lengthwise Persian system of establishing the frets from the tanbur
for use on the rudra vina, for the entirely practical reason that
it simplified the fretting of an instrument tuned Pa-Sa-Pa-Sa.
Kamilkhanis string ratio system is if anything more clearly derived
from tanbur techniques. This further extension of Persianate
fretting systems onto the rudra vina was made possible by the one
significant difference between Kamilkhanis and Ahobalas
instruments: Kamilkhanis vina used moveable frets, covering two
octaves of a single string tuned to Sa, exactly like the tanbur
(Kamilkhani f.125a-7a)10. Because the frets were positioned only in
relationship with Sa, they were liberated from the need to be in
samvadi relationship with swaras in crosswise alignment with them,
making it possible for Kamilkhani to use the harmonic proportions
in tempering his scale11. The use of moveable frets also required
Kamilkhani to lay out a table of fretting patterns to explain where
to move the frets in order to play different ragas. Kamilkhanis
table is the first known Hindustani thath system, comprising first
seventeen, then eight different scales. The more radical nature of
Kamilkhanis system begs the question as to whether or not
Kamilkhani was describing a traditional rudra vina. The inclusion
in his first thath system of a scale clearly borrowed from Persian
music with a three-quarter-tone Re called ghazal thath is
suggestive. Indeed, the way he establishes his frets is strikingly
similar to the two later treatises on the fretting of the tanbur12.
It is possible that Kamilkhanis moveable frets, harmonic
proportions, and thath system represent a more radical transferral
of tanbur techniques onto the rudra vina, which may not have any
lasting impact on the fixed-fret rudra vina, but which may have
influenced subsequent developments on tanbur and ultimately sitar.
At any rate, this full convergence of rudra vina and tanbur
construction must have facilitated 10 For details see Brown 2003/4
and Brown 2003: 198-201, 212-6. 11 All the fractions Kamilkhani
uses to temper his scale correspond almost exactly to the
Pythagorean harmonic proportions, except that because he uses
geomancy divination from the geometric configuration of 16 dots to
establish his frets, all his denominators are required to divide
into the number 96, a multiple of 16 (f. 126a). Hence the strange
fraction, 19/48, for Kamilkhanis Dha fret, which is as close as he
can get to 2/5, the harmonic major 6th, under the geomantic
circumstances. Note also that his smallest interval is set at 1/16,
and his extended thath system in fact has 16, not 17, thaths. 12
For comparison see Risala dar navakhtan-i rag dar tanbur, f. 1b-8b,
and Risala-i Musiqi-i Ghulam Muhammad, section three.
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98 considerable possibilities of movement between different
styles and musical systems. It is quite clear from all the
treatises that once the frets had been established, on the bin or
on the tanbur, either instrument could be used to play Persian or
Hindustani music. Indeed, Alauddin Barnawi states that when the
thath was set up, any style of music could be played in it Persian,
Hindustani, Afghani, Kashmiri, and startlingly even European
(firangi) music (f.261b). And in theory he was quite right; the
European system still used Pythagorean tunings in the seventeenth
century. It is with respect to the moveable frets used in the thath
system that several treatises reveal the second area in which
tanbur terminology became indispensable to rudra vina performance
practice: in explaining how and why the frets were moved. The
moveable thath system is described in exactly the same way by
Alauddin Barnawi, Kamilkhani, and the treatises on tanbur, as well
as in an important 1698 treatise, the Shams al Aswat, by Ras Baras
Khan Kalawant, a direct descendant of Tansen, the chief musician of
the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb13, and the greatest performing
musician of his generation14. Each of the seven swaras on the rudra
vina was allocated to one of the seven celestial bodies. Because Sa
and Pa are fixed swaras, they were allocated to the two celestial
bodies with fixed orbits, the moon and the sun respectively,
whereas the swaras that move were allocated to the five planets
with vacillating orbits visible to the naked eye (Kamilkhani f.
126a-b). The fact that both Alauddin Barnawi (f. 261a) and Ras
Baras Khan (f. 16b-7a) endorse this terminology strongly indicates
that it had entered the ideational repertoire of practicing
musicians at the highest levels. More importantly though, it is Ras
Baras Khan who lets us in on the secret of its cultural meaning, a
meaning that is reiterated by Kamilkhani. It was the celestial
bodies that determined the times and seasons at which the ragas
should be sung. Each celestial body is dominated by one of the four
elements earth, air, fire and water which according to the
Indo-Islamic psycho-physiological theories of Unani medicine act
directly upon the four humours that animate the functions of the
human body (Ullmann 1978: 56-8).
13 Contrary to popular belief, Aurangzeb did not ban music.
Although he renounced it privately for personal religious reasons,
he knowingly acquiesced in its continuing patronage under his sons
and noblemen throughout his reign. See Brown forthcoming b for a
refutation of this myth. 14 Ras Baras Khan was certainly still
under the emperors patronage in 1698 (f. 11a-12a); his father,
Khushhal Khan, had been Aurangzebs chief musician before him.
Khushhal Khan was the son of Lal Khan, Shah Jahans chief musician,
the son-in-law and chief disciple of the great Bilas Khan,
Jahangirs chief musician, son of Tansen (for details see Brown
2003: 75-6; 108-9).
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99
The celestial bodies determine the elemental character of their
associated swara. Because the maintenance of humoral equilibrium is
of paramount importance in maintaining health in Unani physiology,
ragas that included fiery swaras should thus be sung in the cool of
the morning or the evening to balance out the cold with heat, and
similarly ragas with watery swaras
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100 should be sung in the heat of the day (Ras Baras Khan f.
16b-7a). Ras Baras Khan is therefore arguing that the time at which
each raga should be performed was determined in the Mughal period
by each swaras effect on the bodily humours15. It is clear from Ras
Baras Khans writings, which are based on his own hereditary
performance practices and oral theories, that he had no idea where
Indian knowledge ended and Persian knowledge began; it was all one
to him16. But by wholly embracing these Persianate concepts derived
from tanbur technique, and applying them to his understanding of
Hindustani raga aesthetics, Ras Baras Khan has supplied us with a
cogent physiological reason fully in accordance with his own hybrid
worldview why conformity to the time theory of ragas was so
necessary in Mughal musical culture. It is in the person of Ras
Baras Khan that we perhaps get closest to a true sense of what
Indo-Persian musical synthesis might have meant.
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Discussion JB - I would like to come to one of the statements
made in this paper questioning the credibility of the visual
aspect. I think it can become an
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103 extremely important source of evidence if used along with
relevant texts. This paper also raises a question whether there is
any visual source suggesting co-existence of bin and tambur. If
theoretically they were so close, were they close in practice as
well? How much of the theoretical system of tuning and fretting was
reflected in the practice? I havent come across any visual evidence
pointing to the co-existence of these instruments. There is a
dramatic shift between the instruments from the time of Akbar to
Shahjahan. We see Iranian instruments like ghichak, tambur, duff
and nai in the Moghul painitings, primarily up to the time of
Akbar. Even in the descriptions of thirty-six musicians of this
period, there isnt much about the practitioners of these Iranian
instruments. However, all this changed at the time of Shahjahan.
Therefore, I think that visual evidence combined with the literary
evidence is extremely useful. NJ - There is always a problem with
measurements on string, because it needs to be pressed down on the
fret, and as we go near the nut, on either side, the pressure
changes in proportion. As a result, it is not possible to obtain
Pythagorean or any other scale for that matter, from such
measurements. There would be deviations. Therefore, the whole idea
seems like a theoretic rationalization of the performance
practice.
1_titlepages.pdf2_JIMStexts.pdf3_Jims_madhu.pdf4_JIMS_ranade.pdf5_JIMS_PanelDiscussion.pdf5_JIMS_bookrev-names.pdf