[INDOLOGY] Query

[Thomas Kintaert]

Dear Patrick,


The *gītaka*s are indeed described in Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra, as well as in
Dattila’s Dattilam. A good place to start would be


Rowell, Lewis: Form in the ritual theatre music of ancient India. *Musica
Asiatica 5* (1988) 140-190.


which can be partly read here: https://goo.gl/PDPEkz.


It might be noted that the names of two and a half of these *gītaka*s (in
the order in which they are treated in the above works, where they are
called *madraka*, *aparāntaka* and *ullopyaka*, and together with other
terms related to music and dance) appear on a fragment of the Spitzer
manuscript, which has been edited by Prof. Eli Franco (
http://hw.oeaw.ac.at/3301-4) and dated by him to the 3rd cent. CE (Franco,
Eli: The Spitzer Manuscript. Report on Work in Progress. In: *Abhidharma
and Indian Thought.* Essays in Honor of Professor Doctor Junsho Kato on His
Sixtieth Birthday. Tokyo 2000, p. 559). Here is a picture of the fragment.
If you would need to know on which page it is published, I could let you
know by next week.


[image: Inline image 1]


Best,


Thomas

On Sun, Jun 28, 2015 at 4:12 PM, Patrick Olivelle <jpo at uts.cc.utexas.edu>
wrote:

> I turn to the paṇḍitapariṣad to educate me in what look like technical
> terms from the science of music. Curiously, in the Yājñavalkya Smṛti
> (3.112–116) there is a passage about how a person proficient in music and
> singing can attain the highest Brahman. Why this passage is there to begin
> with is obscure to me. But at verse 113 we have the mention of seven
> “gītikāni”:  Aparāntaka, Ullopya, Madraka, Prakarī, Auveṇaka, Sarobindu,
> and Uttara
>
> Then at 114 it says that these should be sung (probably some kinds of
> chants: Ṛg, Gāthā, (or Ṛggāthā) Pāṇikā, Dakṣavihitā, and Brahmagītikā.
>
> Viśvarūpa has this comment:  imāny aparāntakādīni . . . sapta gītikāni
> gānaśāstrād evāvaseyāni. A hint as to where these come from, but not
> helpful beyond that.
>
> Aparārka, a bit more helpfully: aparāntikādayo bhārataśāstroktā
> gītaprakāraviśeṣā brahmajñānābhyāsahetor geyāḥ.
>
> Thank you all for any leads or explanations on this.
>
>
> Patrick
>
>
>
>
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