birth of raagams

rameshviyer · Post by **rameshviyer** » 25 Jun 2007, 22:26

hi all,

was it only during the trinity existence was raagam formed or much before that. I came across one site which says the core carnatic music existed in 7th century onwards or much before...

how was music treated by dravidans and aryans what difference did these have or anything common in music.

rgds
ramesh

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 26 Jun 2007, 06:57

Paging arunk...

. Please respond immediately.

srinidhi · Post by **srinidhi** » 26 Jun 2007, 13:32

<<was it only during the trinity existence was raagam formed or much before that<<

Ramesh V,

Haven't you heard of somenting called PaNNs?

bhaktha · Post by **bhaktha** » 26 Jun 2007, 13:37

What about the sAmavEdA???
-bhaktha

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 26 Jun 2007, 19:39

The term rAga as used to represent a melodic entity (like today) I believe traces back to brhaddesi by mAtanga muni (6th-8th century). The core concepts like sruthi, swara etc. of course traces back to Bharata and Dattila (start of 1st millenium). And yes this is also traced back to sAma vEda. This early system is referred to as grama-mUrcana system, where original melodic entities were grouped by the term "jAtis". Ragas (from early grama-ragas to dEsi rAgas) were a by-product of this system.

pANNs are pretty old as they are mentioned in cilappatikAram (again start of 1st millenium). I think there are also some indirect references in sangam poetry. Note that the elaborate interpretations of the musical content of cilappatikAram comes from commentaries which are dated much much later. cilappatikAram itself is NOT a work on music (unlike nATyaSastra, dattilam etc.).

However, tEvAram of appar, sundarar and others was sung in paNNs and so they were melodic entities like the rAgas around the same time (middle of 1st millenium).

I think the scholarly opinion regarding pANN system vs grama-mUrcana system is that (a) paNN system was very old (b) it was independent from the grama-mUrchana system (b) It had some unknown influence on the rAga system.

Now my "theories":
It is interesting to note that the names of many paNNs assigned to many tEvAram songs seem to match ragas (at that time) AND seem to have non-tamil etymology. I posted on this a while ago. I believe by that time the systems had merged and that is if they were really very separate to begin with.

I believe that the argument that rAga system was influenced by paNNs (and some may even claim an outcome of paNN system), was based on tying the two i.e. usage in tEvArams to mention in cilappatikAram much earlier, and ties to supposed sangam periods earlier. But IMHO (and this is just my opinion), this is inconclusive and involves too much extrapolation and conjecture.

We do know that there seem some critical differences between the paNN system and the grama-mUrcana system (out of which rAgas came about). However there are some extremely fundamental concepts (22 basic atoms in an octave ) that are strikingly and perhaps suspiciously similar.

So it is possible that they are different versions of the same original system, but perhaps evolved separately (locally) for a while and merged again.

Arun

ramakriya · Post by **ramakriya** » 03 Jul 2007, 04:41

arunk wrote:However, tEvAram of appar, sundarar and others was sung in paNNs and so they were melodic entities like the rAgas around the same time (middle of 1st millenium).

Arun

Didn't Appar/Sundarar etc come much later ? (7th/8th centuries)? Pardon my ignorence.

-Ramakriya

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 03 Jul 2007, 05:27

Yes 7th and 8th.

Sorry but i was thinking in comparison with timeline of brhaddesi - around the same time.

But middle of first millenium is a wrong characteristization. Second half of the first millenium would be better

Arun