Aryan invasion debate

[Bharat Gupt]

C.R. (Selva) Selvakumar wrote:
 It is my understanding,     which I am willing to correct if substantive evidence is
> shown, that Tamils developed such scales and systems of high order
> before 'Arya' or for that matter any other people of the
> world.

The questions of "before" and "Arya" are not musical subjects but issues of dfferent
kind.

 Cilappathikaaram and still earlier works like tolkAkkiyam, the
> puRanAnURu talk about these and the commentaries talk about
>           purely musicology books in Tamil.

The musical scales or modes in the literary texts of Cilappathikaaram etc., are
mere names of scales. There is no way of knowing that these names are not regional
nomenclature of the grama-muurcchanaa scales.

The cardinal question is : What are the oldest musicological works in Tamil
detailng a musical system. If they have been translated into Hindi, Sanskrit, Gujarati
or English, I would want to read them  to enlargen my perspective of Indian musicology.
Does Tamil have a series of musicological texts such as the sanskrit series of Naardiya
Shiskha, NAtyasastra, Dattilam, Brhaddeshi, Sangeetranakara, and so on. ?


>           I would appreciate it  if you can show the evidence from
> cilappatikaaram and your Sanskrit sources for the
> Graama-murcchanaa classification.

I repeat that a literary reference of Cila. or Valmiki Ramayana does not explain musical
systems nor does it prove their distinctivenes.
For the detail study of Grama-murcchanaa, please refer to my word to word translation
into English of Natyasastra Chapter 28 the Svara Adhyaaya.

>           It is a fact that the concept of paN is known in Tamil
>           from at least as early as 300-500 B.C.E and
>           more than 9200 songs with paN are sung in the tEvAram and
>           thiruvAcakam (they are available even today)

I must confess that I have not heard or studied the PaN. So I cannot comment.
But perhaps I can be informed if the singers of paN, train in a musical grammar
different from that of "Karnataka music". Do they write a notation of these songs as
differnt from the karnatak music tradition.?  Do they say that these are not set to
"melas" but to  scales may be having same or similar names mentioned in the Cilappakm.
or other texts.  What i mean is, does a musical grammar also survive with these songs?


>          What I mentioned here is only   a subset of the musical
> traditions in Tamil.   Now can you please show me 100 songs  sung with Raaga in
> Sanskrit ?YES, but they are a subset too. And no less valuable being minority tradition.

Bharat Gupt