Thomas Marcotty

TheWay-Music
How to conjure
1
with sounds

Rudra Veena:
The Theory and
Technique
of Tantric Music

with a C-90
musicassette ·
The}Yay-Music

~~~

To the rickshaw
and the taxi wallahs of
Calcutta, without their
helpfulness and familiar-
it y with all places this
book could never have
been completed.
Thomas Marcotty
TheWay-Music

How to Conjure with Sounds?

l)flj
D ECISIO-EDITRICE
Rudra Veena:
Th<" theory and technique of Tanh;c musi('
Author:
Marcotty, Thomas

Title :
"The Way-Music"

Subtitle:
" How to conjure with
sounds-Rudra Veena: The
Theory and Technique of
Tantric music"

ISBN 88-900002-0-1

Publisher :
Decisio Editricc S.A.
Via alla Campagna 2 A
CH-Lugano C567,
Switzerland

Sole Agents for India:

Munshiram Manoharlal
Oriental Publishers
54, Rani Jhansi Road
New Delhi 55, I ndia

Copyright 1980:
Thomas Marcotty

All rights reserved. No part

of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any
means, elcclro nic or me-
chanical, including photo-
copy, recording, or any in-
formation storage and re-
trieval system, wi thout per-
mission in writing from the
publisher.
 Contents

1. F oreword by Arvind Parikh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2. Invocation . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. The Method .. . ........ . . . ... .. . . ... . .... 11
4. The Respondents .. ........ ... ... ... .. . ... 13
5. On Occult Teachings . .................... . 15
6. Styles of Thinking . . . . ... . . ........... . ... 17
7. On Asian Arts .. . .. . .. . . .. . .. . .. ......... 20
8. Rites as Measuring Tools .. . . . .. . .......... 26
9. The City of Kali . . ............ . . . . . . .. ... 33
10. Tantra .. . . ..... . ... . .. .. ..... . . . . .... ... 36
11. The Light-Wave-Formation ... . . .... . .. . .. 42
12. Instruments .. ...... . ... . . . ... .. . .... . ... 47
13. The Sound-Wave-Formation . . . . .... .. . .. . . 56
14. The Magic Whirlwind ...... . .. ..... .. ... .. 63
15. Searching for t he Card iac Tone ............. 71
16. T he Times of Sacrificing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
17. Obscure Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
18. Bending the Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
19. The End . .... . ............ .. . .. ...... . . 104
20. Instructions on the Cassette ...... . . ...... 108
21. Notes . .......... . ..... . . . . .... . . . ... . .. 111
22 . Bibliography . .. . .. . ... .. ............... 129
 ,.. '• .. :
. '
, ..
.. ..
. ...
.......
-~~- .. ..i:.

. . ··. •

Rnw 11nala p11i11ti11p,. Wl'sl/'rn

st yli', {!,OIUll'" " (}II papPr, dl'-
pirti11g 1/11' so11 11rl-1t·ai·l'-for- 7
,.,,"'inn Rt11{fl To1l i.
 1. Foreword

I first met Thomas l\larcotty in 1971. He came to m y office q uite unex-

pectedly and enquired whether I could help him in h aYing deeper insight into
the realm of Indian m usic . His first visit was followed by many more and I can
still visualise Thomas with h is U her ta pe r ecorder and a Minolta camera and his
quaint smile from which seemed insep ara ble. It was not u n usu al for Thomas to
return to Europe often carrying huge plywood boxes containing priced mu ical
in truments obtained by hi m through persuasion and constant follow up of
v isi ts.
Unlike many of our friends visit ing India to get a glimpse of Indian music-
so me to study the sitar, Thom as l\Iarcotty could be called an exception a he
took the unusu al step at the very ou tset in concentrating on the technical side
of Indian music and musica l instruments. Often one would find him sitting in
the small shops of instrument makers d iscussing many tech nical p oints such as
the diameter of the strings, different qualities of woods, strength of glues u ed
t o make instruments and so on.
Initially, Thomas was interested m the technical aspect of instrument
making a nd he made n o apparent effort to play an Indian instrument himself.
He prefcred t o wander arou nd in the musical by lines of North India wit h files,
pincers, so me end of wire, a gauge meter and seYeral other gadgets used by
inst rument makers. Tt was there fore no s11rprise to me to read his widely accepted
puulication 011th e 111ai11t enance of Indian stringed instruments entit led "DjoYari-
Giving Life to the Sitar" a s a natural outcome of his musical zest. It would be
no exaggera t io11 to s a~· that ueh a writt en a11d ela borate des eript inn of the
7 Jawari and it:< tcchnic:-; nn the basi;; of srientifir re~ca;ch was attempted pcrhap~
for the first time in relation to Indian music. (The Jawari is the process of filing
the bridge of the Indian stringed instruments in order to enrich its sound with
overtones).
It is not unusual to find many of our foreign friends who study Indian 2
music and have initial keenness but lose interest after sometime- maybe becau se
they find Indian music too different from the systems they are used to, or the
conditions in the country not palateable. But, Thomas Marcotty never relented.
No sooner he found himself challenged by the intellectual a nd technical riddles
of our music, he probed deeper and, in fact, started playing one of our more
difficult instruments-the Rudra-Veena. In other words, he doubled his efforts
on both directions i.e. instrument making and instrument playing and this cer-
tainly is not the usual traditional manner in which students of Indian music
proceed. As a journalist by profession he preferred to apply literary and demos-
copic t echniques to discover Indian music- not an easy task considering that
our traditions find their roots into distant history thousands of y ears a way .
The scientific approach-interviewing knowledgeable experts systemati-
cally naturally led to an unusual but useful r esult: a book on Indian music at-
tempting to translate tradition into printed study depicting the subject in the
light of an objective and perhaps different reality. The product of Thomas Mar-
cotty's efforts was not resulting from an academic study of books or teachings
of mast ers, but was a projection of practical experience of the life st yles of con-
temporary Indian people and crystalising their opinions relating to the impact
of Indian music on the Society as a whole. Therefore, his book " Way Music"
is not just another standard book on Indian music but one which covers a fairl y
large spectrum of Indian life and Indian thinking. The useful hook would cer-
t ainly serve as an intellectual guidebook especially for non-Indians who are
interest ed in different aspects of Indian Culture including Music.

Arvind Parikh, Bombay G

w
m
e
r
0
t
b
s
8
2. Invocation He with His lovely ears
who is called Ganapati,
Lord of wisdom,
He with the elephant's head
about Him I meditate
before I commence:
dhadhinta dhiranaga tirakita
He with His rounded belly
and His (single) tusk
dha, tirakita,
He with His rounded belly
and His (single) tusk,
dha, tirakita,
He with His rounded belly
and His (single) tusk. Dha

Ga n rslw i111·ocation mixed

with sy llnbles fro m tire drnm-
mrrs' la11f!,l1Uf!,P ndressi11g tir e
eleplran t-hracfrd f!.Od of suc-
r.rss, 11or111ally p ortray rd with
011 /y 011e tu sk. Th f• f1 ict11rr is
ta lil.'11 frn m a11 old lfof!.amala -
book madr of palm lc•ares ;
ser note 69.
A prince TC:ith his i:eena;
drairing by an unknown
Indian artist; 18th century.

II
iii
ii:
 3. The Method

What is it actually all about with magic? What d oes a magician do ?

\Vhich are t he p rerequisites h e operates with ? W ha t arc the t heories he uses as a
basis ? This b ook d escribes a magic syst em . It is intended to explain to the reader
wh ich m od es of thinking t o t rain and to employ in order to un der st a nd magic
practices. These practices- more about t hem l ater- usually stand for sa crifice
or invocation rituals ; unless you possess an exact k nowledge of them you will
b e lost as a m agician. The invocation in t urn in va riably serves t his purpose : t o
assure the magician of the assist ance of extraterres trial powers in orde r t o elim -
inat e tem porarily or within certain li mits the effects of our terrestrial laws of
nat u re. This m ay amount t o, for inst an ce : produce rain in order to avert the
d anger of a drought. Or: neutralize the l aws of chance at gambling to on e's own ......
b enefit. Or : win the love of a beau ti~ul a nd rich girl in spite of t he fact that you L

are yourself a poor a nd _\lgly fellow.

It migh t as well b e p ointed out at this junct ure that magic is ne vertheless
n o playgro und for St one Age p eople or illiter ates. Magic practices rather t end
to get transformed into visible system s, whenever people, societies, or even
individuals had t o live in the face of great risks, hence under t he impression of
im minent d anger . Ch ildren as well adolescents very often have t o cope \dth t his
kind of exaggera ted risk in fear of what is t o com e. The sam e, h owever , applies
to gam blers of all t yp es, such as politician s, entrepreneurs, and the addict s of
roulette. But ab ove all it is the people of the t ropics who, m ore t h an anyone
else, have t o coexist with imponderable fo rces such as famine, disease, or n atural
d isaster a nd who will then resort to m agic p ract ices t o give Fate a t urn in t heir
fa vour a nd to r educe their a dditional risks of life. \Vhere t h ere is fear t here usu alh ·
is a lso ma gic.
The t y pe of m a gic d escribed in this book has its origin in India. I t ra nks
among t he h ighest developed magic syst em ::; which ex ist at all. Yet t his syst em
11 is not based upon the comm on form of sacrificing- best known in th e form of
 ----. --.--~-------------- ·

the slaughtering ( crucification) of a human being or of a white _coc.k~rel:-but

inst~ad in the way of sound s, of music. At the same time itTs- ~~t a -~~t.ter of
purposeless m usical art the way you hear it in the radio or performed in a concert
hall, but it is applied music, sign al music, a 'way music', a 'music of the path' (1)
of a kind hardly known in the West.
But how to collect reliable information on a subject n ot at a ll edgy?
After a number of attempts a regular s urvey by interviewing t h e experts still
living in India h as proved to be a feasable way of goin g about it. The object of
this survey extending over a period of n early five years is a secre t t eaching,
namely the theory and technique of playing the rudra-veena (2). The rudra-
veena or in short the veena is an Indian musical instrument which until recent
times was used for playing the 'way music', the 'mu sic of the path', hen ce for
magic purposes, for magic by sound. The survey served a double purpose. First
of all it was intended to suppl y a documentation on this t y pe of occult sc ience
which is to-day about to fade into oblivion, thus recording it for the first time Veena play er as depicted in
the Ajanta caves around 600
and thereby preserving it. On the other hand this report is meant to explain also
A.D.
to non-experts down to the ver y detail how this secret teaching is constituted,
e.g. how to practice sound magic and in which system of coordinates the veena-
players u sed to live, feel, per ceive, and think.
Let us start with an explanation as regards the point of departure : veenas
have been quite frequently mentioned in Indian literature, approx imately sin ce
the 2nd century A.D. P robably the earliest if som ewhat vague picture (3) of a
veena goes back to about the year 600 A.D. In t h e ideas of present day Indian s the
rudra-veena has still retained its fixed position b ecause t his instrument appears
in t he graphic arts of t he Mogul era (4) , in the Shiva cult, and as a n attr ibute
of t he goddess Sharasvati (5) which indicates t h at it is a bou t as familiar to people
as is the harp in t he Occident: everybody knows what a harp is, yet hardly anyone
is closely acquainted with it. T here rem a ins something of the old awe: r iding
propped up high on a rickshaw, with a veena sh ouldered , d own Chit pur Road,
Calcutta's F ifth A venue, yo u will b e followed b y a thousa nd startled eyes.
T here is actually no lack of sources s upply ing informatio n on veena·
play ing. B ut the wat er coming from these sources is stra ngely clouded. The
mini ature painters (6) of the Mogul times wh o are other wise devot ed to truth
to nature, when it comes to depicting veenas, however, did wit hout exception
paint indistinctly or even so wrongly that t hese painters, if at all, mu st h ave
known these im;tcuments by hearsay at hest. I n t he literature on music the word
veena first appears around Zero A.C. in a handbook for the directors of roving
theatre companies. T he author of it, a m a n by the name of Bharata (7) , describes
in such detail how to play t he veena that the reader of his hook soon realizes :
what he delineates here is -a change in words ?- a how harp, but not the rudrn-
veena which belongs to the fa mil y of stick zithers. 12
 --- :C.::: - - ~ --_

Bharata's literar y epigones down t o the 20th century limited themselv es

to spreading naive legends (8) ab~t the divin e origin of the veena and the mirac-
ulous effects of the sound it produces. Or t h ey indulge in suspicious eulogies,
praising the 'Indian lyre' (9), without bothering t o give reasons, as t he qu een of
string instruments, the symbol of wisdom and cognition , thus again arousing t he
uncomfo r table feeling that h ere somethin g essen t ial is being deliberately kept
secret or even t h at the authors are wilfully t r ying to lead the reader astray .

4. The Respondent,s

In v iew of these facts the situation was asking fo r brightening up th at

peculiar t wilight about the veena by way of interviewing exper t s on t he su bject.
In d oing so, the fo rem ost questio n ar ises h ow t o trace them provided t here s till
a re any exp erts. The rudra veena u sed to be played only in the Nor t h of India.
This mean s the t riangle marked b y B om bay , Kashmir, ~~d-C~l~~tta, thus essen-
tially the Ganges region or indeed the v ery area were H induism, Islam, and the
dia m ond v ehicle Buddhis m of Tibet have merged.
Within this still vast area-for hours on end the t raveller will sec nothing
but paddy fields, children, and water buffalos-there are only a few promising
places for this kind of sur vey , namely the cities of Bombay, Delhi, and Varauasi,
but ab ove all Calcutta. Calcu tta with its alleged eigh t million inhabitants plays
in India a similar role a s do New York for the United Staates, Amst erd am in
Holland, and for Germany l\fon.ich: if you are in search of wh at is rare, particular,
absurd, and obscure t1!!,n you m ight find it in Calcu tta rather than elsewhere.
So the n earest thing to do was t o start in Calcutta and look for t he experts
t here. This was done b y way of placing advertisements in the big_local n ewspapers
like the 'Juga ntar' or 'Anni t a Bazar Patr ik a ' . These classified advertisement s,
shyly placed sand wiched bet ween the marriage market- 'Young Brahmin girl
desiring ... '-and the Government of \V est-Bengal invitations t o t en der, scored
any thing up to 30 replies each. H owever, only a small fra ction of the resp on dents
were suitable to h e u sed as suppliers of information. Either t hey had not sufficient
13 knowledge and could t hus h ardly cont ribute any t hing to t he subject: or t hey
could only express themselves properly in minority languages like Urdu or Ory a,
or there were other reasons-illness, advanced age, lack of a common basis of
understanding-practically excluding them from hcing interviewed.
In the course of time-the act ual survey (10) could, mainly for climatic
reasons, only be conducted always in the month of DcccmLcr- a group was
forming which consisted of three professional musicia ns, a dhrupad (11) s inger,
two musical-instrument makers, one dethroned prince, a professor of music, a
lawyer, one archaeologist, a non-medical practitioner, an export trader , a drum -
mer, an indologist , plus one artist who could, all of them, properly express t hem-
selves in English, who had some precise kno,dcdgc of one or the other section
of veena.-play ing, and who were las t but not leas t also to furni sh in for mation.
The question is, can occult teachings be the object of a survey by inter-
views at all? Is it not rather their characteristic to be kept secre t and thus no t
he passed on? However, this question-it prac ticall y ne ver arose in the course
of the survey, b y the way-should be put differentl y : occult teachings used lo
be and still are almost invariably the property of secret societies. S uch secret
societies-otherwise sanctimonious communities-are association;; of minorities
aiming at protecting each other against the threat of some governmental power.
Among thi s type in Europe one would coun l religious sects such a s the ~!_os tics
and the Cathars who, as a safety precaution, h ad to keep their conv ictions con-
cealed. Q;" they are guilds or similar guild-like associations who for reasons of
amassing money or power withhold some special knowledge. To this second

Thi s dra1ci11g of a rudra

reena player and the fol-
fo1ri11 g pictures of th e same
sty le are takr>n from a so-
calfed Rag amala-booli. Th e
book i s in fact a palmleaf
man11script r>ntitlr>d " Raga -
Citru" . It was discorr>red in
Oriss a and r>d ited bv Kabi-
rhandra Kaliclraran . Pat nail.·
( Cuttarh, 1966) and it 11•as
complr>tr>cl " on the 33rcl An-
/;ra of the reig n of Maharaja
Diry a singha D l'rn on the
sr> l'l'nth day of thl' Nerv
Mo on on tlr r third clay of t!rl'
11wk" (i n 171 3 A./).). As
W I' shalf e:xplain later thrsr
pirt11res arr s aid to br r i s11al
form s of 11111sical m oo ds.
 group of secret societies belong the masons, the Greek m yst ery leagues, the alche-
mist s, the Italian mafia, the Theosophical Society of Madras, the Ku-Klux-Klan,
and in the old days apparently also t h e veena play ers' guild who u sed to be or gan-
ized in so-called gharanas (12) .

5. On Occult Teachings

All secret societies-although t h e protec tive and the profit making aims
may converge of course-look very much alike. Who wishes to become a m ember
must undergo an initiation ritual. As far as t he veena-players a re concerned-
morc about this furt her d own- the init iation is partly identical with learnin g
how to play the veena. In addi tion to this, t he secret socie ties are generally run
in a rather authoritarian way mea ning that obedience, includin g unreasonable
obedience, is one of t h e characteristics of the members of secre t societies. And
thirdly they use a more or less occult language b y which they will r ecogn ize
cach~ther. Y et lastly they h ave at their disp osal some secret kno,,·ledge con-
/
sisting of informa tion they will hesitate to pass on to outsiders.
T his actually secret knowledge comprises to a certain ex ten t procedures
of craftsmanship su ch as the problem of how to produce a cer tain sh ade of ox -
blood red when glazing a nd baking pottery . Along with this will then go magic
agreemen ts, comm on cust om s, an d cosm ologies. And t his also applies t o the
veena-players. Their secret scien ce is t o a lesser d egree based upon craftsm a n ship,
thu s for inst a nce dealing with problems of instrument-making, with t echniques
of touch, with the selection of the strings and t he preparation of the vecnas in
order that t he instrument s shall produce t he d esired spectra of sounds. By far
the larger portion of t he secret science should best b e imagined to be something
like a puzzle i.e. like a multit ude of elements, a concoction of astrology, theory
of music, m ath ematics, palin genesis d octrine, a mot her cult, yoga t eachings,
a wave theory, animisu0 .e. the belief in a n ature t o all of whose p he n om ena
liv ing is attributed, a t heory of art s, a mythology, but above all a multitude of
magic practices.
This secret teaching no longer b elong:< to the sphere of the non-eom-
15 mu n icable. On t h e one ha nd t'l'<'Trn-playcrs are not "uh jceted to goYcrnmen t al
------ - -- - -- - -- -

.-. .· . ./.I First photograph of a t'eena

player sho1cing Sufi Bande

., ;.·z
, .·..;
·'
:-~ Ali Kh an with his in stm-
,; ~- ment arouncl 1890.

__ ,...

-·
16
 repression. As far as is known they h ad never b een persecut ed , not even b y the
islamic rulers and t heir mullahs. On t he other hand-as opposed t o fo rmer times-
playing the veena t o-day is no longer a mean s of making money and gainin g
power . In short, the basis for secrecy has become void.
But t here is yet another reason why secrecy has become p ointless: all
secret t eachings-paradoxical as it may appear at first sight-are mostly not at
all secret in the proper sense of the word. They just d o not contain any informa-
t ion that you could not find in the Ecyclopaedia Britannica or Germany's 'Grosser
Brockhaus' or buy for ten rupees in Calcutta's Central Avenue. To put it in other
words, this secret teaching does not consist of its contents, su ch as astr ol ogical,
mathematical, or magic k nowled ge. The actual secret abou t it is the way in
which this part ial information is combined, the syst em b ehind it. W hat is con-
cciled is not the teaching, it is t he key which is hidden, the ties, the context.

6. S~yles of Thinking

T he rccogmt1011 of the context or t he understanding-making this point

yet m ore precise-follows in t he first place the st yle of p ercep tion and thinking.
I n this connexion it is firstly a matter of a n umber of basic premises which one
can easily keep in mind, even if one does not subscribe to them. To start .2f_ with,
there is the presumption that there k exist certain transcendental beings and on
dilfercnt levels of a bstract ion at that, beginnin g with person ified natural forces
like rain, light nings, and drought. Then t here arc demons not unlike angels or
catholic Saints to whom specified tasks are often assigned. And eventu ally ther e
arc highly abstract world p rinciples materialized into id eas, philosophical con-
cepts on the verge of namelessness, e.g. the idea of atman, the breath of this world.
Associated with these basic principles, however, are peculiar modes of
thinking which are at times hard t o reproduce because either they arc con t rary
t o t he occidental rules of logic or they are more or less tabooed lest th ey m ight
weaken m an in his struggle fo r survival. One o f t hese unu sual or inad m issablc
modes of thinking without which one just cannot do when playing the veena is,
for example, an ahist orical, circular con ception of time (13) . A second fig ure is
17 substantive thinking and perceivi ng, and t hirdly t here is this operating with
vast, unlimited concept s. To give a clear idea of these figures of thought which
are essential for the understanding of the doctrine a number of little exercises
might he interposed at this point.
Initially a very simple exercise aiming at grasping ahistorical thinking:
according to an obviously widespread legend in India the rudra-veena was invented
by god Shiva. Shiva, they say-and this is what the respondents told too-woke
up one morning to find Parvati, his companion, st ill fast asleep. Apparently
Parvati was lying naked on her back with her forearm, adorned with bracelets,
folded across her bosom. This sight, i.e. the slender forearm embellished with
ornamental bands upon the seemingly enormous breast s, delighted Shiva to su ch
an extent that he decided to create a musical instrument after this image and
parable.
When hearing this little story the average W esterner will be lead to assume
that the invention of the veena was going hack to ancient history, in other words
should he dated about 2.000 B.C. or even earlier. Since, as yo u will immediately
presume, a story as vague as this one could if at all only have occurred prior to
the beginning of historical research. Working on an assumption of plausibility
like this you would at once commit several errors and bar yourself the entrance
to the secr et teaching. On the one hand you more or less tacitly presuppose that
to-day Shiva is dead, implying that he may at best have had the idea of the
veena while he was alive. It would he more correct and beneficial to understanding,
however, t o imagine that Shiva is still alive, not having thought out the rudra-
ve~n~ once upon a time hut continuing to invent it again and again as long as
this mstrument keeps being built-something that has become fairly rare in our
day anyway.
The second error would be the assumption, mostly a matter of course
with occidental people, that history is stratiform, hence a sequence of events
which- to vary the picture once more-are threaded like pearls on a string
whose one end is hidden in the remote past the other disappearing in an unknown
future. Such a historical thread-shaped notion of time ma y be of use to p sychol-
ogical h ygiene because it enables you to file away and to dig out easily all events
like the coronation of Charlemagne or the invention of the veena and it puts you
in the position to draw a neat distinction between the past , th e prescn t, and
what is to come.
This thread-shaped one dimensional notion of time is unsuitable for the
understanding of the secret t eaching, in spite of its practical advantages. The
doctrine presupposes at all events a spacious, two dimensional, and mostly circula r
notion of time, a pattern without beginning nor end, where events reoccur void
of uniqueness somethi ng comparable to the fi xed st ar Sirius : Shiva creates a nd
recreates the Vl'Nlll over and over again . Yet lie docs not- this is a matter of 18
farreaching cnn scqucn ces-crea lc n ew veenas.
 And here is an exercise with regard to substantive thinking (14): let us
suppose you have a friend. He plays the veena, his height is 172 centimetres, he
smokes 'Charminar', an Indian cigarette brand, and has-rare enough for Cal-
cutta- blue eyes. According to Western modes of thinking you will register these
characteristics partly as adjectives and as attributive rather than essential. The
blue eyes you will consider to be incidental. Playing the veena and smoking
'Charminar' will also appear to you as a mere label. In this way you will perceive
your friend in the shape of a hunch of qualities in which is envelopped his real
self, his substance, hardly ever visible. Your attributive type of thinking now
becomes evident should your friend eventually pass away one day. He ' was' a
Charminar smoker and a veena-player you would then say. But he is five foot
eight. All because you look upon his smoking and veena playing as being attributes
now come off. Yet his height and presumably also his blue eyes you would ascribe
to his substance.
Now, such a quite indiscriminate kind of attribution would not lead to
the real insight either. You might as well-and let us recommend this to you for
a moment- regard that cigarette smoking as essential, as something substantial
and not attributive and this even if your friend, years ago, might have happened
to smoke one packet of 'Charminar'. Neither could you regard his veena playing
as a losable quality but, instead,-why not actually ?-as forming part of his
substance. In this way you will in pursuing this principle arrive at a substantive
view, at a non-analytical but essential perception.
After ahistorical thinking and substantive perceiving now comes an
exer cise with regard to essential conception : you are sitting in the Mahajati
Sadan, Calcutta's traditional concert-hall. There is a veena-player p erforming on

R agamala paintings are nor-

mally accompanied by eulo-
gies. But the pictures and
the words of praise do not
always match . The damsel
on this pr:cture for example
(sound-wave-formation Raga
Dhanasee) evidently looks at
herself in a mirror. Never-
theless the accompany ing eri-
logy explains: " Dlranasee's
captivating bea uty is light
green in complexio n . S he is
artful and i s busy writing on
a tablet to her lmsbarrd and a
torrcrrt of tears gushr:ng from
lr er Py<>s wa.~ h <>s lt <>r bu st".
 the stage. At the same time your neighbour to your right is cracking p eanuts,
and-simultaneously again-your left neighbour is chatting with his next man;
as far as that sort of thing is concerned Indian concert-goers hardly know any
scruples. With your narrow conceptions you will now draw a sharp dividing line
between the sounds on the stage-meaning music-, the noise-i.e. cracking
peanuts- , and thirdly the conversation of your neighbour. This sort of mincing
differentiation-a r esult of your education-may make you fit for survival but
it does not in so far serve for ·cognition. Here again you might try it in another
way and maybe remove the partition wall between music and speech: perhaps
the veena player is telling a story? Is he narrating_!y. his instrument? Does h e
possibly articulate syllables and sentences ? Or does he produce sounds r elated
to the cracking of peanuts ? Can you succeed in perceiving as one unit the music,
the cracking of peanuts, and the conversation and r eeducate your multi- channel
ear to complex listening?
Let u s sum up: playing the veena is a secret science. This secret teaching
consists to a lesser extent of regularly secret knowledge, i.e. withheld information.
It much more and preponderantly consists of familiar and in parts trivial subject-
matter. The secret teaching, however, becomes transparent once you group
these contents according to certain rules and rearrange them in a way unusual
to everyday thinking. These rules are all based upon the principle of dissolving
taught relationships and putting the contents together to form differently s haped
figures, i.e. to think and to perceive differently. Part of these rules is that ahis-
torical, not stratiform conception of time with neither before nor after, that
unqualified substantive perception, a nd thirdly operating with limitless notions .

7. On Asian Ans

After all that yo u may t end to suppose that learning to play the veena
must b e something of a rather ~antastic na t ure. But this is not so. Looking at
it purely from the outside veena lessons to-day do not extremel y differ from
private music lessons in the West. This means, the teacher and his pupil arc
sitting op posite eac1othcr in a room .whitewashed in green colour-ii~ India
most rooms are painted green . The teacher play s to the student and h e m turn 20
 As we read in old books the
Way M ttsic was first re-
vealed by the Self-existing-
One to Nara da, a mttsic-
saint. On this picture N arada
for his part hands dorvn th e
pri 11cipies of th e way music
to ( the sou 11 d-wa ue-Jorma-
tio11 ) Salalrn , represented by
a veena-play er being "oJ
dark complexion" and
" Brahm in by birth".

repeats. Th e only discussion will generally . . Center around . questions of practical . .

r
penormance o f m odal music (1 5) ' m tlus case mostl y
· micro-tone problems '\ luch
will b e d ealt with later.
Yet veena lessons could hardly be compared to violin instruction the
way t I11s · m1g · }1t b e d one in Zurich or . Los Angeles. . . Hidden. behind
. the picture
. .
. Il is
W h lC · t O · day
• very much alike arc different trad1t10ns: .111 Zurich the tradition
of middle-class domestic music of the 19th century, but m Calcutta the age-old
. ·
trad 1t1on o f Asian arts · It might as well be mentioned b efore for the sak e. of
better unll ers t a ndi.ng tha t to these bclon<>b Japanese archery,. sword fcncmg, .
fI owcr arra1lgl' 11 b' rr and the tea ceremony, the Chinese arts. of calligraphy . . and Tai-
C/11·, a d octrmc · o f movements derived from rules of . firrhtm
b b" a nd similar
. to d a n ce,
.
the I n d ian o y ga sch ools , and finall)' veena-plannrr.
. .o All these. Asian arts-and
tlus. is· a n unpor
· tant
' fJOint- do not represen t a rts m the occHlcntal
. sen. se of the
.
word . Th cy are l lrnch rather a m atter of svstem , s of teachmg a nd learnmg which
vary f ro1n wrestcrn
" ty11es of instruc tion in the following manner:

the opus and its production arc in the back ground. I n olher words, the
aim is not to produce a n oil painting nor the capability to play fluently
and flawlessly a sonata from the music-sheet on a Yiolin. ·w hat matters
is much more t he intention t o ch a nge the p e rsonality of the student -

Asian art, as opposed t o the approach in the Occident, i :; not primarily

performed with the inten.t t o cn_tertain or to edify . an a udien ce. ~y it :;
very nature it is not public but, 1f you wan t to put it t h at way , a ludden
21 or private art -
 .. o_

Doctor Prakash Chandra

Sen, Calcutta, playing t.he
rudra veena.

22
 Asian arts are copying. This means that the student may for years if not
fo r ever be busy copying exactly and imitating cer tain examples - 2

l:;J.. this in turn means, Asian art is opposed to innovation. The pupil should
orient himself by the old ahistoric examples but not at all cr e ate something
novel, by no means should he endeavour to find an ' expression of his
own time', unlike Western artists who would often attach so much im-
portance to this -

Asian arts are based on the principle of tradition by word of mouth (16). \
Thus, there just is no 'Introduction into the art of play ing the veena' on
sale for example. Likewise the veena music has never b een recorded until
recent times but it was learnt by heart and then passed on from one gener-
ation to the other -

~ judging by occidental standards the period of apprenticeship is r ather

long. The only pr emium for the great effort-one n eed only consider the
loss of earnings involved-the pupil obtains is the promise of a never
quite precisely outlined elevated mode of existence or an advantageo u s
rebirth -

~ trustees of the or al tra dition are invariably the master p ersonalities who-
d iffercnt from professors of fine arts and m usic teach ers in Europe, Au -
tralia , or America- will embod y this qualita tively improved mode of
existence and arc hence called upon to m eet a moral challenge (17) -

~ Asia n arl goes back t o the feudal era. Liberty, equality, and frater nity in
t he master-pupil relationship are as good as non-existant cYcn if m aster
a nd pupil-a Lhing which happens occasionally-belong to th e sam e
generation -

J:;;!.. the economic circums tan ces of the m aste rs-more ab oul this in a m oment -
a re in many cases problematical and inYite criticis m because the pricc-
performance ratio (18) of t heir offers escape a ny eYen appro ximate control.

These nine elem ents characterize the A:::ian arts-on thi s all re::'ponclcnts
were agr eed. They do n ot experience thi;;, under \\'estern a spects possibly queer,
kind or t eachi ng and learning as c:<sentiall y differ ent , oppo.-cd or contrary to t he
\Vcstcrn understanding of arts and they notice in so far- d c::'pitc oc-ca::'ionally
good kn owledge of \Vcstcrn conditions-actually onl y small cli,.;tinet ion::'. Thi,.;.
23 howcYcr, d ocs nllt imply that the rc,.;p omlcnb accept the system wi t h out crit ici,.;m
 of any sort. Leaving aside for a moment all marginal objections, this criticism is
directed against the masters-called gurus in India.
The fourteen respondents of the central group, among them eight part-
t ime or full-time gurus, expressed in sometimes harsh words their disapproval
of their frequent lack of spirituality-or ' lack of transcendental values'-as well
as the naked greed of the masters . This is, b y the way, a favourite t opic in the
Indian press because the guru nuisance in India-far worse than in the United
States even- is giving rise to t he queerest practices: embezzlement , swindling,
and now and then more serious crimes t oo. The Government in New Delhi has
done something with a view to checking this national menace at least in the
field of music; something in this contex t would be the es tablishment of a network
of music schools (19) run by the Government. However, the order which would
be desirable will yet take som e time to come because on the one hand the g uru
business is deeply rooted in Indian everyday life and on the other hand it just
cannot be dispensed with in the field of Asian arts.
Why could one not do without the gu ru s? Because Asian art-this was
not even disputed b y the informants-is based upon oral tradition and could
therefore not do without the gu rus, being the bearers of the unwritten traditions.
This was not, they uttered, a matter merely of a discipline like any other su ch as
e.g. business management but of a way which the student could and should not
go alone. Naturally now and again- ' sometimes'-one or the other item ought
to be written down. But the suggestion to produce a cassette course fo r learning
t o play th e veena was either rejected without giving a reason ode.r. with the argu-
ment that a cassette recorder was unsuited t o perform the indispensable task of
\
t he initiation.
' And how will it go on? The pess1m1st s amo ng the respondents presume
that Asian arts, hence also veena playing would n ot survive-being relics of feu-
dalism-in democratic societies (20) . Or they might degenerate like Yoga which
is said to have been commercialized by people like Maharishi Mahesh and his
' transcendental meditation' and thus deteriorated. T he optimist s, however, think
it possible for Asia n arts t o regain ground and power once India witnesses an
economic boom. For t hat event they expect a renaissance of the genuine guru.
That is ·an originally well-to-do hence morally untempted gentleman philosopher
teaching free of charge, accepting from his pupils gifts only and maybe, at a later
stage, daxina, that is a pension by sporadic payments in those cases where his
disciples themselves in future at tain a certain modest prosperity.
Attached to this book you will find a cassette containing veena music.
Possibly you h ave alread y played off tha t music and- may be-gained the impres-
sion that this is a m atter of a somewhat thinl y strung sequence of sounds which
for volume could hardl y m atch with Bach or the Rolling Stones. This is true.
But the veena dues serve another purpose. As for its fun ction it is more like the 24
Veena player Ustad Z ia Mo-
hiuddin Dagar, Bombay .
Photograph : K en Woodruff,
Santa Rosa, California.
pilot tone with directional radio or the test picture by the aid of which the tele-
vision mechanics adjust the TV reception aerials t o the transmitter. In other
words, veena music is in the first place not m eant to entertain nor to edify. It is,
odd as this may sound, foremost serving m easuring purposes . And what is it that
is being measured? It is measured to which extent and in which direction the
change in personality is progressing, which is, as mentioned above, the aim of
Asian art.

8. Rites as Measuring Instruments

For better understanding here is at first a simile: when you ar c going

to see the doctor he may be able to estimate yo ur body temperature roughl y b~t
h e c annot ascertain it exactly by the looks of you . That is wh yd the doctor . h
is
using a measuring instrument, a thermometer, whic~ exactly e termmcs t e
otherwise hardly ascertainable temperature by the aid of a mercury eolu~n
meanmg · ·t measures
1 ·
the distance from the actual to the target
.
v. alue. The design
•
of t he thermometer, i.e. the aesthetic quality of the measuring mstrum en.t , is of
no major importance in this contex t. However, th e instrument mus t be calibrat~d
according to a fixed standard , in this case : degr ees Celsius, i~ ~rd er to fu~fill its
measuring function. It is similar with veena playing. Here it 1s the pup~l who
takes on the role of t he patient the mast er being the doctor. The veerw, the mstru-
ment, serv ing as measuring equipment. For a s tandard y ardstick, a scale i~ taken ,
a set of acoustic archet yp es from India's classical music tradi tion b y wl11ch y ou
may not be able to measure the body temperature ye t the existential condition
of t he student.
In practice this measuring operation invariably takes on the form of a
ritual. One ou ght not to imagine anything especially profound or occult by all
th is. A ritual is first of all a sequence of actions. This process will, however , only
become a workable rite provided it mee ts at least two requirem ents. Firstly it
must he marked by a certain duration . With J apanese archery e.g. t o le t fly two
arrows-and one always shoots two of them- takes, everything included , ten
full minutes. J apanesc tea ceremonies take about 45 minutes. Veen a -playing-at
least in in its highly developed form s-is a matter of one t o three hours.
Secondly the effective ri te sh ould be arranged in a com plicated way with
rich detail. As a rule t he pupil will perform a multitude of movements, preferably
su ch-think of th e aswws, i.e. t h e ph ysic a l exer c ise of Hatha Yoga-w hi ch rarely 26
Tir e so1111d-warn-formation
Raga Drabidi plays " a game
of dice" with her lorer. " H er
lips arr coral-red and she is
dressed injine silk".

occur in daily life. The pupil will link up and intertwine these movements borne
by an often elaborate breathing technique in such a way tha t they appear, though
unnatural in t heir sequence, natural all the same, matter-of-fact. In playin g the
veena they somehow go their own way, the veena-players indeed sway ing t o and
fro a bit. Yet their body movements hardly indicate anything. However , the
sounds take their place, the sequences of tones and the tonality which make the
immediate existence of the player, his situation, and his dis tance between the
actual and the target values, audible instead of visible.
If the ritual meet s these two requirements-duration and complexity-
then it will be quite easy to manage: even the untrained onlooker at a t ea cere-
mony, the novice on a J apanese archery range will notice after a few minutes
already what turns out well and correctly and what produces an inadequate and
awkward impression, although the observer may not be capable for lack of ex-
peri en ce to give det ailed reasons for his judgement. A connoisseur in t he matter ,
the g uru, will also be able to substantiate his judgement however. His tra ined
cars and eyes will notice t rifles which a n ovice could n ot possibly be aware of.
H e will see-staying for another moment with archery-when the two feet of

The sound-wave-formation
R aga Padhamanjari is a
sad princess entertained b)'
her servant.

27
an archer are not placed at the proper angle. H e will notice when the feather of
the arrow does not before shooting off cut the earlobe of his pupil and he will
hear when the jute string after letting fl y does not hit agains t the reed of the
bow. In short, the intimate knowledge of the fixed ritual process ought to enable
the guru to notice the smallest deviation and to form by the sum of these obser-
vations a picture of the situation of the student as well as to det ermine the dist-
ance between actual and target values.
With veena playing this is not essentially different. The guru is checking
to which extent the archetype and the image are corresponding ; t his he does
of course not with his eyes but by his ears. H e hears where and when the student
is bungling, what he is playing not properly and superficially, how he is try ing
to cheat himself, if he is trying shady tricks in order to get a cross difficult pass-
ages unobtrusively. I s he sincere? Which areas of his cha racter are underdeveloped
and childish ? Where should he be encouraged and coached? When docs he go
too far overestimating himself ? Does he practice enough? Does he reall y desire
to make progress ? Or is he simply vane?
The g uru can naturally gather such insight only provided the ritual has
been unshakably fixed, i.e. the distance between actual and target values m ay
be determined with sufficient precision. This answers now the qu estion put once
before, why Asian art is opposed to innovation and is ahistorical not tolerating
the 'zeitgeist' and what is new: nobody is allowed to assail the target, the meas-
ure, the archetype, the ritual lest its diagnostic quality gets lost and the entire
system begins to shake.
You may now ask perhaps what the g um might be doing with the picture
of the s tate of affairs s o acquired ? Docs he draw any noticeable inferences from
it? He will in general not indulge in any quasi therapcutical activity. Why should
he be restraining the course of des tin y? Why twist the inalterable will of the
Gods? N o, as a rule he will stick to his job. This means he will be sitting with his
legs crossed on a linen sheet. H e is playing to his disciple, his fingertips oily
black ish and notched by the pressure of t he steel strings. The pupil will be faith-
full y repea ting. Maybe they will permit themselves the luxury of a cup of luke-
warm fl avo ured lea with milk. Outside in the mist before the window-the s mell
of vege tables and exhau st fum es- the rick shaw wallahs are b eating their bells
agains t the drawhars. Taxis are blowing their horns. Both t eacher a nd student
for better hearin g put their ears to the pumpkinshells of th e instrument, flooded
h y t he underlying roar of Calcutta. What they talk about is v ibrations, t echniques
of touch , micro-to nes, and not question s of ex is tence and riddles of the universe.
' By ten to-morrow again ?' In taking leave the pupil is touching the horn y foot
of his master.
I 11 which manner does a g nrn differ from a customary music teacher of
t he Western t ype? T here was no unanimous reply of the res pondents to this. 28
Veena player Ustad Asad Ali
Khan, New Delhi. Photo-
graph : Manfred M. Junius,
Adelaide, A ustralia.

29
 -~------------- -- ---- .e,

The three l\Iuslims among the group of respondents felt this question to b e r ather
unimportant. They believe the guru to be simply a kind of father without any
transcendental qualities. This view, however, should n ot be regarded as a result
of I slam but might rather be ascribed to coincid ence: th e Muslims all came from
families of musicians, have crawled among instruments when they were still
infants, had been instructed by their fathers, and hence hardly see not much of
a difference between father and guru.
The Hindus for their part though have a tendency towards speculative
explanations. The g uru , they say, takes on a lifelong responsibility for the personal
welfare of his pupil. This somewhat general s tatement they would specify upon
request like this : the ideal gurn will charge himself with his disciple's karma. He
will guarantee the transcendental fate of his pupil by his own rebirth. He is
pledging his own existence after death. This special mas ter-disciple relationship
occasionally still to-day finds its expression in an initiation ceremony : the guru
will strip a bracele t crocheted of dyed wool over his disciple's wrist as a token
of everlasting bondage.
Yet one may do without t his transcendental as pect of the gu rn-disciple
relationship-described b y one respondent a s 'old humbug'-when thinking
about it because a power independent of the master is being ascribed to the rite
anyway. T he quality of this power may be explained b y th e the aid of substantive
thinking: he who makes the effort , who exercises the ritual, plays the rudra-
veena and in so doing sticks to the rules will here and now improve his own ub-
stance and may therefore count upon a progress in redemption and a profita ble
rebirth. In this connexion the guru appears m erely as an adminis trator of the
So11 11d-11:a1·r-for111atinn Raga
Kamodi r<'pr<'se11trd by a
sain t with a S hira sign
painted on hisfor<'head.

30
 --- - - --------- .

Rag a Lalita, a sou11d-wave-

formatio11 to be played at
su11 risl', is 11 ormally repre-
scntNl by a male p erson
lean" 11g h is bed or Iris house.
By reason s hard t o explain
Lolita is n 1coma n on this
picture.

rite, a guardia n of traditions and of the int egrit~· of the t onal archetypes which
are going to be decribed in more detail la ter, though not as a n active creator.
According to a third, rather psychologically oriented, explanation the
ritual- as seen from the angle of the disciple-should and can condition him,
t he veena player, hence enable him to promote the desired change in personality
by the aid of an echo effect: the pupil begins with ritual actions which are exactly
controllable like playing the veena. According to the principle, the ritual will in
the way of an echo bring about a, if only little, harmonisation of his otherwise
h ardly manageable state of existence. The elevated state of existence of the
player in t urn will improve the external process, i.e. the musical ritual, and so
forth until the pupil arrives at a meditative experience of bliss through t h i
process of a buildup between the externally profane and the inner world. This
echo quality is probably not inborn in m an . But within t he strict limits of the
ritual it may nevertheless be trained. After innumerable repititions of the complex
process a mutual influence ";II develop through growing a ccustoming of quality
of ac tion and of existence which, if carefully used, will effect a cha nge of personal-
ity though this change may fade away after a while.
It should not be assumed, however, that the Asian arts, the rites, would
au tomatically turn t heir adherents into be tter people. Certainly the rites possess
converting power 110 matter how one tries Lo explain these forces. B ut in which
direction does this cha nge work ? In all probability the di$ciple will thereby
get into Yarious kinds of critical phases, like t he sem:;a tion of a Yane selection
or, on t he other hand, physical illness in consequence of h y pochondriac self-
consciousness which might Le- who knows in advance- just a transition, but
perhaps also the final point of' a development . Iu ad(lition to th ese normal risks
grave and lastin g injuries may Le eYoke1l : the rite!', indudin;.,: 1·r1•1rn -pla yi11 ~ too.
31 present themseh ·es more or less openly a!': the moral po:'ilion finding of the stude nt.
 Moglwl drawing, 17th cen·
tury.

.. . ....

"

·.

·'
. ,,· ..
..... f ~

\
\
\
'\., . '·

,
... . .
I •
.
I '
I •

,,•
_, .,

\ \

\
..
32
 as a moral examination correspondingly accompanied b y nagging examination
fears and experiences of failure which may here and there trigger schizophrenic
attacks or end up in other inj uries.
In brief: practicing Asian arts does not necessarily lead to pious sub·
mission to the fatherl y God. E specially veena-playing-it is said in India-is
also apt to bring forth demoniac people, black-eyed magicians who at their own
discretion will bewitch and curse soil and cattle lest the peasant fills them their
bowl promptly and abundantly.

9. The City of Kali

I n the early seventies politicians used to promise their electorate often

more ' quality of life' in order to secure their vote. This somewh at indistinct I
notion which for some time became a slogan in the USA and in Western Europe,
has encouraged inquisitive social scientists to specify the idea of 'quality of life',
i.e. to ascertain what the people imagine this to be. This type of study was in
many cases initiated by local authorities expecting thereby to get an answer to
the question whether they e.g. should spend their budgetary means for the con·
struction of paved zones, of an indoor swimming-pool, for a park, or the setting
up of an old people's home.
These surveys produced as a rule the following result : the ' quali ty of
life' of a town is in the opinion of its citizens mainly characterized by the fact to
which extent the township has the atmosphere of a market place; t his could
mean an agglomeration of perpetually opened shops, restaurants which are
illuminated also at night, public entertainment such as cinemas, open-air dance
on the pia:;:;a, and play ing chess b y the light of street-lamps : life, living in com -
mon, but not that kind of peace of the grave of Western cities enforced b y Closing
Time Acts, closing-hours of the pubs, and entertainment taxation.
If you go by t hese survey results-Western Local Counsellors have fre-
quently been induced b y them to construct paved zones and shop centres-
Calcutta (21), the capital of the Indian state of West -Ilengal, is towering high
above all other big cities of the world with regard to 'quality of life'. Leaving
aside the naturally somewha t dull millionaire quarters such as Alipore in the
33 South of Calcutta, t he city resembles a bazar with no day of rest enlivened by
 allegedl y eight million people. The shops and workshops-not so much the Eng-
lish influenced banks and big business-are of course open on Sundays too.
Should you require new batteries for your recorder at half pas t two o'clock in
the morning-Calcutta's mains supply is not very reliable-it will be a matter
of utmost ten minutes to get hold of them. At three a. m. the streets will suddenl y
be blocked with tightl y packed lorries painted in gay colours-pictures of deities
in the driver's cabin, rice bags and vegetables on the floor-because three goods-
trains have arrived at Howrah station all at the same time.
In the Mahajati Sadan, Calcutta's Royal Albert Hall, the drums will still
be droning and the sitars be whining. Peanut and tea vendors have placed their
carts, lit by carbide lamps, before the portal. At about five o'clock the first pave-
ment dwellers will slip out of their sheets died brown by vegetable fumes and
exhaust gas to cook a leek soup on their happil y blazing cow-dung fires. And
then: a round-up, m achine-guns mounted on lorries, policemen with lead filled
bamboo truncheons and with English military stockings. Nobody knows why.
From seven a.m. onwards the sun, hot and white like a flam e cutter, will be
drawing her weld across the mud coloured skies. On the hanks of the Hoogly
they are lighting the fires for the dead. Trams painted in a war-like grey- the
fenders fitted with iron thorns like b arbed-wire to scare off fare-dodgers-are
creeping like huge caterpillars along the housewalls, covered with posters from
top to bottom: "Let Calcutta be the pride of heaven one da y", reads one enorm-
ous placard on a bank.
Calcutta's highly strung atmosphere-strangers often misinterpret it as
a permanent state of emergency-stems mainly from an architectural pecu-
liarity. Different from old originally Indian towns like Delhi oder Varanasi which
have been b uilt up with two-, three-, or at best four-storey houses Calcutta, being
India's most recent hig cit y, had been constructed under the influence of British
architects who knew to construct buildings with six to eight store ys. In con-
sequence of this type of above-ground con struction it is about thirty percent
more densely populated than Varanasi for example. According to a reliable
census 120,000 are liv ing on one square mile in Calcutta. In Varanasi this figure
amounts only to 80,000, and in Los Angeles, for comparison's sake, no more
than about 9,000 people per squaremile.
This surprising density of population, enri ch ed with saddhus, street the-
atres, and political demonstrations, produ ces this sometimes macabre 'quality
of life' . The people t here including the poor seem permanently in high spirits,
with a thin smile and always rea dy for a sa r castic joke, especia ll y with respect
to their boorish government in faraway Delhi, to the municipal ' D ead Body
Carrying Serv ice', to the Saint en vogue and his mostly old tricks to take
tl1e money out of the people. Naturally this kind of dens ity of population has its
drawbacks too: pedest rian taillJacks d uring t he rush-hour, breakdowns of the 34
 INDIA' S GREATEST ASTROLOGER PALMIST. TANTRIK & YOGI
. OF INTERNATIONAL FAME
Jyotish-Samrat Pa ndit RAMESH CHANDRA BHATTACHARYYA Jyotisha rnav M.R.A.S. (Lond.)
Pun\e1nent Prtshknt & Achhtr of tht ~rid ren.i...mr:I THE All WONDERFUL lA"ITR-IK BLESS lptCS TESTE D BY
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sewerage system, failures of the mains and water supply , a nd the immediate
spreading of infectious diseases. This does not only mean influenza, malaria, and
ch olera-t he smallpox have meanwhile virtually disappeared-but also in tellect-
ual diseases, quasi religious fashions, rumors of all kinds, and political d octrines.
Occasionally visiting correspondents and poets-from Rudy ard Kiplin g
to Allen Ginsberg and Gunter Grass-usually only notice with a frown offences
against middle-class standards of pr opriety like the 'bu sties', hut settlements
of P akistani refugees scattered all over the city, lepers, crippled beggar s. Or t hat
un reasonably Christian woman l\fother T eresa who by nursing pavement dwellers
doomed to death is trying to denaturalize the eternal alternation of dep arture
and rebirth. The actual city of Calcutta, India's economic metropolis, the literary
and musical centre as well as t he joy of life of Bengal, the chroniclers and the
t ravellers h ardly ever came to know. Even in a leaflet of the Indian Departm ent
of Tourism you will find that classical sentence "Calcutta assaults t he senses
like few other cities."
Among the less v isible qualities of Calcutta are a spiritual current, a
sense of life whose manifold expressions generally range un der the name of tantra
(22). What is tantra? Tantra, omnipresent in Calcutta, is an incomparably Indian
thing, comparable, if at all, to the mcditerranean gnosis. This means that tantra
is no religion demanding from it s followers certain b eha~ Neither is tantra
a philosophy, hence no system of thinking, the axioms of which are serving the
self-explanation and the interpretation of the universe. The question for its con-
tents-this may be d isappoint ing to you for a moment-cannot admittedly be
answered logically at all, though the ad heren ts migh t be of different opinion .
Now, the core of t he doctrine-and tantra stands for doctrine-indeed escapes
analytical gras p. Yet this docs not imply t hat tantra-it s most eminent instrume nt
being the rudra-t•eena- is placed bey ond anythi ng conceptual. At least to a certai n
35 degree t h e tantra doctrine may be described b y the aid of a number of accompany -
r- ing characteristics which, though never really touching the unutterable core,
however do permit, taken as a whole, an inference with regard to this tantric
sense of life.

10. Tantra

The adherents of tantra-which is striking to the observe r at the outsct-

do not think very highly of asceticism . They do eat e.g. carrots and potatoes (23).
A real ascetic would never allow himself su ch food: for might not, upon pulling
such root out of the ground, a worm or an ant get killed ? The tantra p eople,
looking at it this way, make themselves yet more guilty b y quite freely d evouring
fi sh and often even chicken. Tantric licentiousn ess becomes, so they say, p ar t icul-
arly apparent, though, in the form of a positive original relationship to sexuality .
On this subj ect i.e. the alleged t endency to indulge in promiscuity and the corres-
ponding hair-raising ways of performing sexual intercourse, much h as alread y
been written . Who knows what of it is true (24)? But one may say with certainty :
the adherents of tantra- perpetually on the sea rch for the universal- in so far

awi n" describ-

R a aam a Ia- dr I:>
. o I mood of the R aga
rng t 1e r.
Malabo sou nd-wal'e-J orma-
tion .

36
 Sou nd- wai·e-for m ation R aga
B ibhasa.

a ttribute symbolic character to coha bitation a nd arc particularly prepared to

inter pret t he p artial loss of consciousness upon orgasm as a t otal amalgamation
and a t ra nscendental association.
W ithin the limits of tantra- this being ye t an other peculiarit y- th e
social par t itions otherwise still strictly observed, tha t is t he regulations of the
caste system , arc being lift ed to a d istinct th ough h ardly determ inable degree.
Especially in t~1c field of mus.ic you 'r ill fi nd Hin dus as ~1-e~ l as ~Iusl ims'. otherwise
n ot r eally gc~tm~ on well with eacyothcr, peacefully sitt mg side by side. As far
as veena -play mg is concerned there exist s bet ween them c\·en a kind of division
of labour un iting t h em on the b asis : playing techniques and teaching arc the
- resp onsibility of t he Muslim s, h ence t h eirs is the man ner, wh ereas the Hin dus
a
are responsible fo r the matter, the con tent s, the spectrum of effects, an d the
-
preservat ion of t h e t ranscen dental con nexions. In sh ort, at least to som e extent
tantra is a m ovemen t bey ond t h e b orders of d enomin ations a nd not a reser\'c for
Hind us , not to speak of a p articular caste. It must be mentioned in t he sense
of a restriction that t h e rudra-Peena-bcing t he musical instrument of th e followers
of ta11 trn-was only allowed to be played-as fa r a s t h e legend will go-by the
Kshatry as, the H indu caste of the warriors. I n the course of the interviews,
however, t he responden ts refused to con firm this (25) and among the actiYc
VN'lla -pla ycrs still alive- a nd t h<'y arc n ot m a ny-t here S<'cms t o be no t a single
Ksh atry a.
T he t h ird acco mp anyin ~ charar t<'ristic of tantra is the d i!'tin r tlv matri-
37 arr hal sy gtcm , ,.c fo ul there . \Vomen (26) who haYc grown up u nder the ra(liation
of tantra- to s tart with a simple thing as this one-appear to the observer to
be of higher eduction, better fed, unmolested by r ole-playing conflicts, and the
emancipatory problem s of their occidental sisters, being more self-assured and
obviously capable of taking charge of managerial tasks, hence to become Prime
Minister. At least the Hindus among the tantra adherents moreover worship a
mother goddess, namely Kali, bearing the cognomen of Durga because she had
once defeat ed and killed a m ythical bull , Durga .
The centre of the Kali cult is an area in the South of Calcutta of about
one hundred to one hundred metres, surrounded by s mall shops selling devotional
articles and by tearooms r
. The temple, tiled with b athroom tiles, con sist s of a
patio where ]!!_ahmins~of a lower standing d ecapitate the sacrificial goats b y a
crescent moon shaped axe, an open pillared h all for the believer s to say their
prayers, and separate from the h all a small dark chamber containing the id ol
of t h e goddess . This is actually a pole-sh aped black s tone, possibly a meteorite a bout
t he size of a man, wrapped in cloths and with a three-eyed visage painted on it.
The temple, run in t he form of a private and obviously profitable enterprise,
is p artly financed through gifts partly b y cattle-dealing, i.e. t h e purchase and
sale of sacrificial goats, and through leasing by leaving to sm all t r aders corners
a nd recesses who will there gu ard the believers' shoes-the temple may be entered
b arefoot ed only-or sell flowers. The Brahmins officiating in t h e temple will
also have to pay a kind of licence fee for being permitted to collect alms on the
temple premises. In addition they may keep the heads of the sacrificed goats, the
car casses however m ay be taken hom e a nd eaten by the believer s.
The Kali cult is serving one single and rather narrowl y defined purpose,
namely gaining power by sacrificial blood. Originally, that is until ab out the
time when Christian-minded Englishmen intervened by the m iddle of th e 19th
cen tury, hu man beings were sacrificed in the area of influence of the Kali cult ;
t his was done under the idea that t h e strength of t he victim, concentrated in his
blood, wou ld pass into t he sacrificcr. This idea- the l ast m an has been sacrificed
in Calcutta's Kali temple at approximatel y 1870- is still virulent to-da y . Accord-
ing to an information by the Calcutta Chief of Police his constables yet continue
to fi nd an average of 18 t o 20 dead every year, gagged a nd with five to seven
cuts in t heir neck artery proving them to be Kali v ictims. Their blood is u sed
for ritual purposes and in most cases evidently drunk.
Officially of course nowadays it is goats only which arc all owed for sa-
crificing. On n ormal d ays there will be ten to fifteen of t he m but on s pecial oc-
casions, e.g. during the Indian-Pakis ta ni war over Bangladesh, an ything u p t o
hu ndreds of goats to the accompaniment of the roll of drums wo ul d be offered
to the goddess. Such a goat cos ts a lot of money m ayh e fifty rupees or ah out
eight dollars. T h at is w hy a Kali worshipper ca n only on ver y specia l occasions
afford sacrifi cing a goat. As a rule, all he docs is to hu y a h a n1lfull of yell ow hlos- 38
 1<11/i shri111' in Calrntta ; a.
worshi pprr paying rrl'erl'ltce
to the 1t'Oodn1 fork used for
th r decapitatio11 of sacrifici al
go urds.
soms which he will then throw at the goddess accompanied by the sound of a bell.
A Brahmin will pour water with a s poonlike little can unto his palms held a s if
they were a bowl and t he b eliever will thereupon drink some of it sprinkling the
rest over his head and his brow.
Now, at least the Hindus among tantra a dh erent s are altogether Kali
worshippers. Yet in the real tantra literature one will hardly find any hint in this
direction. This literature, con sisting partly of thousands of manuscripts written
on palm leaves, h as but to a small extent b een translated into European lan guages.
Therefore, a final judgem ent would be premature. Provided what is accessible
of it up to now corresponds to its entirety, a nd t his might a s well b e a ssumed,
one could however venture to make the following statement: the tantra litera ture
m ostly consist s of loose and disconnected bits and pieces of messages which in
themselves do not p ermit definite answers . This evident lack of concrete con-
t ents- an unstructured mix ture of praise, d enominations, legends, and charms
expressed in a disguised tongue- sh ould not n ecessarily be construed a s a wea k-
ness of that litera ture. As one respondent was sa y ing, these books h ad n o t been
written for their news v alue i.e. for what they contain. Their purpose is rather
to condition the read er p sychologicall y, to get him off the t ra ck of linear analy tical
thinking and to motion him inst ead towards a n ew and better level of thinking
and perceiv ing.
After all one will find that this type of litera ture is marked b y a certain
rep ertory of notion s which is in so far also clearl y r ep eat ed in the imagination
of the respondents. This is the idea that v isu al formations like buildings or pic-
tures, i.e. light-wave-fo rmations, will ensue acoustic p erceptions or even simul-
taneously indeed are acoustic perceptions, thus b eing of sound-wave-for mation
(27). On t h e other hand sound-wave-formations, especiall y th ose produced b y
veena-players, would bring forth light-wa ve-formations for the ir part, t hat is
v isual picturelike perceptions. Or, to c ut a lon g story sh or t, a well tra ined vee na-
player will b e cap able of inv oking apparition s at his own discre tion . W e must at
this juncture leave it at tha t a nd refra in from discussing the ques tion as to where
these p ictures ori ginate: outside in the extraterrestrial world ? Or wit hin the
inner world, in the imagination of the audience or in the imagination of the
player ? For the sake of anticipat ing we ma y b e allowed to sa y: all of t his is correct.
This much for the accom panying characteris tics . American social scientist s,
however, ha ve found yet another way t o a pproach that t yp e of complex phe -
nomenon su ccessfull y and how t o clari fy it. T his is don e b y putt ing the q uestion
a s to the 'life-sty le'. In doing so t h e a ctual problem- what tantra really stands
for- is left as ide and in st ead one t ur ns to the issu e how t he members of s uch a
social group live and in which respect their life-st yle differs from t hat of oth er
people. H ere is a n exa mple: t he doctrines of Protestantism and Cath olicism d o
nut differ s uhst a ntiall y (28). Yet one can quite clearl y di stin guis h people li v ing
Kali trmple: Asking th <' g od-
drss for strr11gth.
f

m areas of Prot est a nt culture from t h ose of Catholi c cult ural areas: t h e Prot·
est a nts, irrespective of the fact if t h ey a re church goers or not , ear n m ore, eat
less well, a nd are afraid of dirt and the devil. Cath olics, h owever,- all t his onl y
applying t o W est ern Europ e-sh ave less frequ entl y, h ave a n oticeably lower
consumption of toiletp a per, ar e poorer but, thanks to their b ro therl y relation-
ship with the d evil, are less pron e t o become n eurot ic.
Wha t a bout the a dh erents of tantra n ow ? Wh at type of people d oes t his
d octrine with its n ot entirely agreable ch ar act eristics produce? The m odel tantra
follower- this is at least what appearan ce will t each us -is r ath er m ore a happy
type of p erson , permanentl y on the m ove or moved, fo r this reason fo rma ll y or
informally edu cated a nd occupied with artistic issues. H e is sensit ive to the
point of b eing a hypoch ondriac and easily frightened a nd d iscon cert ed . H e is
liv ing and experiencing life often in a cont rast to the asce tic li fe-st y les (29). The
a dh erents of tantra are following the motto: seeing, kn owing, d iscovering, en-
joy ing. In this w ay they cont ribute somethin g Dionysiac a nd at the same t im e
Cath olic, this contribut ion a ddi ng a n oticeable tou ch to India and its d a ily life,
distinguishing a nd enriching it .

11. The Light-Wave-Formation

Perha ps you h ave been askin g yourself alread y wh y t he T11dra- vt><•11 a of

a ll t hings sh ould he playing suc h a promi nen t role in t he s t ru ctu re of imagina t ions
of t he tant ra ad herents. Well, th e t a ntra peopl e are , as was mentioned b efore,
cir<" ling around a ·w ave-theory (30) with t heir refl ections . T his m eans th at a ligh t-
wave-for mation, a vis ua l sen sation , produ ces a sound t oo . Jn inverse propor tio n
to tliat a soun<l-struct ure is th o ugh t to p ro du ce a pict ure, a sound-wave-form ation
invoking an ap p ari t ion . T he T11dra-rt><•11 11 , its for m , its sym metr ical shape is t a k e n
for an e ffe<"tive magi<' signal. A t t he same t ime, a nd th is mu . t be fa scina ti ng
fo r t llf! l1111 t r11 ad he rent s, one can pr11d111"e sou11<l -wa ve-form a t io11s uf s p ec ia l
pre<"ision an J i11 te nsi1y 1m the r 11 dra-1·P<'11<t wh ich in t urn w ill evoke apparitions,
v i:-ion~, i in ages, li en r·c ~ par I ii' ula rl y signill1·a11 t Iig l1 t -wa vc-fo r ma tio11s.
W hat 1;. it t hat one has to im agine a light-wave for ma ti on to be ? f n t he
widest sense it is everythin!! v isible, s ha ped , a nd r oloure<l , <lo, ,·n to t he t ,,·e n t y-
New Delhi Yanter J"\1anter :
Th e l\1ishra- Yantra repeat-
ing the contours of a rudra
veena.
45
The two dancing g irls in
transparent dresses represent
th e sound-wave-formation
Raga Rajnee.
Footprints of Brahma; a
pair of bronze pflltes used as
i:isual aids for meditation
main.Ly on th e problrm of
symmetry-as.vmmetry.
ninth pole of your garden fence. In the stricter sen se of the worcl, however, light-
wave-formations are only those visual perceptions which induce the obser ver
to a sk "who am I ?"-thus having the quality of manipulating him into the
state of meditation. In general this is a matter of geometrical figures, circles,
triangles, rectan gles, and their corresponding combinations, hence formations
\\;th a high signal value which y ou are simply-this is considered to be especially
effective-imagining or drawing with a ballpcn on a sh eet of paper in order to
achieve by this external activity via an echo effect the transit to the meditative
level of p erception.
The light-wave-formations, called ya11tra in India, however also include
astrological buildings, the way they arc depicted in this book, and thirdly objects
like for example the 'foot-prints of Brahma'. These are identical though mirrored
bronze plates about the size of a hand which you may turn and reverse in order
that you may call to life and intensify within yourself the experience of the
symmetry of your own body. A light-wave-formation which is in so far u sable
as a tool- constellations of stars come under this heading too- need not be
beautiful and therefore not particularly valuable in an artistic and aesthetic
sense. But it is meant to release a halo e ffec t and it s hould- and please do not
say this is impossible-emit a sound. This unstruck sound, called the ' music
without man' in the sermons of Buddha, may only be pcrcciYcd by the trained
tantra follower, Ly the sensitized who arc in the secret.
One of the mctlitation fost ering signals of p sychological tonality i.- the
'yantra of the cosmic sound drum' . This light-waYe-forma tion you may- as ~ecn
Duplicity as an architectural
p rinciple: The two Ram
Yantras in New Delhi. Di-
ameter: 16 ,65 metres each.

46
 above-simply draw on a sheet of paper. The effect of this yantra, always identical
with the draughtsman's intentions, is quite clearly defined-unfortunatel y this
does not apply to allyantras. The cosmic sound drum is meant to lead the draughts-
man or the onlooker of the sign out of a possible split u p, a discord with himself,
in to singleness from the two towards one. If you unfold the cosmic sound drum
making it three-dimensional, you will be confronted with the rudra-veena : the
signal, the yantra (31), the instrument reducing to silence your inner dialogue.
A veeria, in contrast to a guitar for example, is, therefore, a two-sided
thing: At one hand it is a regular musical instrument. On the other hand, due
to i ts very shape, it is a Yantra, which is an object of sacral chara cter. You will
The ya ntra of th e cosmic experience this strange duality, as soon as you have decided to buy a Veena..
sound dru.m. Since this is, though a musical instrument, at the same time a yantra,
hence an object of a cult, the entire process, that is the commercial t r ansaction,
attains a second dimension : the purchaser of the instrument becoming at the
same time the donor of a cult object. Of course he acquires the right of possession
meaning that his neighbour may n ot take the vecna away from him. Yet he does
not obtain a full property r ight and may, thus, not resell the vecna at his dis cretion
nor scratch, mishandle, or even destroy it because b y the purchase it has passed
to the pr operty of the Goddess. In other words, although you have bought your
veena and paid for it the instrument will still be considered as leased to you and
no more. Instead of enjoying ear thly r ich es y ou can rejoice in the idea to have
done something meritorious and made an effort promoting your some day for-
tunate rebirt h.

12. Instruments

This kind of trust idea clea rly comes to ligh t when one orders a veeria :
becau se t he instrument-maker takes the measur e of the width of his customer's
hands in order that this measure may find its way into t he instrument. The
distance between the two pumpkins, i.e. the inside diameter, must correspond
to t h e width of bot h hands with the thumbs spread out so that their tips are
tou ching. In doing so the craftsm an is following the example set by Indian sculp-
tors who would a lso enter a m easure of the donor's b ody, perhaps t h e le ngth of
47 his forearm, into t he proportions of the idol of a d eity donat ed so that the rela-
 tionship between the donor and his gift may become, measure b y measure, appar- ln
ent and remain so (32). But if you order another instrument like a sitar this
principle of proportional correspondence will not become effective. No measure

of a body will enter into the sitar since sitars arc mere musical instruments lacking
that yantra quality as well a s that very shape inviting the viewer to perform the
meditative transition.
In Calcutta there are possibly about a hundred instrumentmakers working.
Very often their workshops are no more than one normal roo m where parts arc
produced to be delivered to bigger workshops. Sometimes they are but sm a ll
shops who crave a simple living by doing repair a nd maintenance work. Only
approximately twenty workshops are engaged in the manufacture of new ins tru-
ments: t he mini-harmonium which has in recent times become enormously
popular in India, the tampuras, drone instruments similar to a lute, mostly to
. the accompaniment of singers; and then of course drums of all t y pes. Less fre-
quently one sees sitars, sarods, and the surbahar, that is th e youn ger middle-
class sister of the rudra-veena. In general th e workshops, where n ew instruments
are manufactured, make good money if they succeed in jumping ov er the fence
of the vicious circle of lowpriced articles, and that means in th e first place export
orders for Europe and the United St ates . This in turn ends up in higher prices
which then means more room for manoeuvring financi all y when it comes to buying
good quality materials. And this ensues good quality which in turn will b e pro-
moting more orders, including domestic ones.
The manner in which the instrument-makers go about their work at first
tends to astonish the unacquainted onlooker. St a ndardization of these instru-
ments, if there is any at all, is still in its ver y beginning: every single instrument
bein g newly designed if not in its c11tirety then at least with regard to parts of it.
Belt production is next to unknown and the sam e applies to the u se of machiner y .
Buying a manual electric drilling machine would m erely serve t o step up the
number of jobless and-in v iew of the low wage level- onl y make th e instruments
dearer. The prices are fairly stable . A sitar, t o quote just a few examples, costs
between 200 a nd 600 rupees, the equiv alent of about one or t wo monthly wages 49
48
lnstr11ment-111aker's sliop.

49
of a skilled worker. A surbahar will cost around 1,200 rupees; but a rudra-veena
may use up the entire yearly earnings of a skilled labourer, namely 2,500 to 3,000 . .
2 3 4
•
rupees (33) .
This considerable price is the practical outcome of a somewhat peculiar
oligopoly. As mentioned above there is no want of workshops, especially not in
Calcutta. But most of the instrument-makers just are not prepared to manufacture
any veenas. Some say they are la cking t~e necessar.y experience in this field.
Others declare-naturally using very polite expressions-they refuse to have
anything to do with this sort of witchcraft. Anybody desiring to have a rudra-
veena made to order will therefore find him s~lf re.du~ed to only three workshops
(34), two of them in Calcutta and the other in Mira.], to the North-East of Goa;
and that is why they can charge relatively high prices. The tube or "beam" of a
The manufacturers of veenas, which must be said in their favour, must veena (cross section) . The
indeed be more efficient than the ~itarmakers. They m~st ~e capable of observing points indicate the position
of the four mai n strings and
a multitude of seemingly contradictory rules. To begm with, they are expected
the three ( two and one}
to produce an instrument which meets t he technical requirements and does not lateral drone strings.
break down after one year of use, which brings forth the image producing sound
spectra, corresponds to the magic regulations, and forthl y is up to the standards
of purity which have to be observed upon the manufacture of an object of cult.
In which manner t he trustees of the crea tive Shiva arrive at a compromise in
this respect may be demonstrated b y the following examples:
First there is the question of what sort of w~od to use; according to an
opinion which is widespread among those who arc m the secret the bar of the
veena or the ' beam'- in actual fact it is a Lube-must be made of bamboo. This
is the theory which, ac~or~ing ~o the statemen.t of ~ne of the respondents, is
based upon the idea, still rn existence though. mexpl1cablc, of the hicrachy of
plants and wood s (35) . In the framework of this order the bamboo see ms to he
ranking on top . In r eality, however, though this might have been d 1·rr .
u crcnt 111
days of old, it would he very hard to find a veenci made of bamboo to-da y. As
far as can be ascertained the older instrument were mainly made of toon-wood
the more recent ones of teak (36). When yo u ask for an explana tion of this differ~
ence between theory and practice the instrument-makers will either gi·vc evasive .
answers or they might reply that inspite of its great advantages l>a m boo was
not reall y suitable since a bamboo pole is too ela stic wh ich means that it would
bend under the impact of the pull of the strings. Or they might go f
as ar as
claiming the frequencies would get interfered hy th e joints of the h a m I100 st1c . k·s
W hy the 1)(Wna manufacturers practically use loon or leak-wood on} . ·
Y remains a
miradc in view of t he fac t that t here are hundreds of woods growin in Ind·
. t h a l t lu.s is
All t Iicy say 1s, . t 11c cus tom, or " l I11s . I1ow m y father <lid ·tg"
. is ia
1 •
The way these people are handling the wood is also very intr· ·
igumg to t 11c
onlooker. The instrumc11 t-maker at firs t lets the about 170 cc nt.unctres long
 Nlurari Kanailal, instru·
ment maker in Calcutta,
try ing a new rudra veena.

51
 section of the trunk- u sually bought from a wood-wholesale-dealer- float on a R epeating th e form of the
pond or a water basin of which many may be found in Calcutta. They are used rudra vccna : The Raja Yan-
for bathing, laundering, and for a fire-fighting reservoir. During this water-test tra in Jaipur.
he will observe which side of the floating trunk will he 'facing the sun' (37). It is
out of this portion of the log which may he of a thickness of anything up to one
metre that the manufacturer will cut a beam of, in the beginning, square cross-
section; then he will drill holes through it from both ends so that the drill holes
will meet in the middle of the log which demands considerable skill in handling
the drills. Finally he will plane the outside of it until it is round. In the end one
arrives at obtaining a wooden tube with an outer diameter of fifty to fifty-five
millimetres and a thickness between six and eight millimetres (38).
Once the 'beam' is finished the problem of the hierarchy of materials
will reoccur in other forms: when making a veena the instrument-maker must
evidently not u se impure raw-materials. But what is pure ? What is impure?
Let us take an example: for the manufacture of a veena you need a lot of glue,
for glueing the wooden mountings of the pumpkins as well as for affixing the
end pieces of the tube. The type of glue which is in so far best suited, meaning
that it is exactly corresponding to the laws of purity, is a substance by the name
of rolam, extracted from blossoms and of light green colour and with copper-
sulpha'te as an additive, which is though simple to apply prone t o resinify and
subsequently to break easily. In short, rolam meet s the purity requirements and
this means in the first place that it is not extracted from animal cadavers, yet
it docs not resist strong pressure or pull. What can he done about it? The clever
instrument-maker will he using rolam only for the sizings under little stress .
In case the stress is a major element he will simply take an industrial white
glue preferably ' Mowicoll' produced by the German chemical group of Hoechst,
hoping that the Germans are not using dog's hones when cooking their glue.
What this amounts t o is that industrial white glue is looke<l upon as pure. Film
glue, however, considered impure, should be usc<l under no circumstances.
A similar purity problem arises when making the ' bridges', the string
holders. According to t he prevalent opinion again, they should actually be cut
r out of ivory and be polished. This d oes in fact apply to older instruments. But
I
the veenas manufactured after about 1960 must do without ivory because-as
rumours will have it- ivory could in recent times only he obtained from elephants
which h ave been killed and no longer from animals which h ave died from disease
or decrepitude in t he jungle or while working in the woods.
The qualitatively less valuable instruments are nowadays equiped with
deer-horn, that means to say with a material which is gained from cast a ntlers.
The higher priced veenas though are fitte<l with bridges which have been carved
out of elephant's knuckles. The idea hehind t his is that the elephant is basicall y
pure. The same is valid also for his hones as opposed to those of a dog. They 52
 are rarely for sale, contrary to the tusks. That is why the bones of perished ele-
phants may he lying about in the woods weathering for years. And only su ch
weathered bones-hard as stone, leaden, and outwardly dark grey-can be
found in some distant corner of the workshop.
The question is : has the construction of veenas changed much ? The prob-
ably oldest and still usable instrument- it is now an exhibit of a private collection
in Bombay-is dated about 1880. Maybe yet older veenas could be found in
European museums but not in India, the climate causing. the wood to g~t w arped
and insects gnawing the pumpkin hulls, formerly not impregnated with wood
preservatives, until they become a s thin as pap~r .. Musical histor~ research too
docs not go back very far. The first exact description of a veena is da~ed about
1790. Its author, an Englishman stationed in India by the name of Francis Fowke,
is decribing in a letter what a rudra-veena looked like, how it was played, and
how it had to be tuned properly. The pitch es and the intervals Fowke ascertained
by the aid of a harpsichord, i.e. a piano. He even added two drawings to his
account which are reproduced in this hook.
If in addition to this we fall hack on eye-witness accounts, the oldest
respondent being born in 1889, nothing has changed a s far a s the proportions
(39) go which stand for the y a.ntra aspect. Also the characterictic little bird on
the lower end-piece of the 'beam' was and remains t o be a permanent element
of the veena : the bird, very often more or less like a sparrow, is reall y mean t to

r represent a peacock or a swan, one of the a ccompan ying animal s of the Goddess
Sharasvati who is responsible for arts, music, and wisdom. The st yl ized head of
a crocodile for the upper end-piece is the symbol of rllllra, the incarnation of the
fighting Shiva (40). This sign had obviously been unknown until the 19th century .
It appears only on the more recent veenas. The frets for to uching the strings and
striking the t ones used to he glued to th e beam with wax (41). Nowadays they
a re t ied with a fi shing-line and are thus adjustable which means that they can
be exactl y shifted to every single interval. On t op of all that the modern veenas-
a nd t his strikes yo ur eye immediately-are virtually laden with relief carvi.ngs .
The respondents t end to explain this liking for baroque decoration in a
political way. Before the independence of India in 1947, so they claim, classical
music and not only veena. music had been an inLimate and private affair, so meLhing
that was performed at the princely courts and promo ted b y the R ajahs. Afte r
the wit hdrawal of tl1 e British, which coincided with the expropria tion of the rulers,
the musicians found th emselves compelled lo make their living hy public concerts
and that was why they had to make concess ions to the tast e of the puhlic. Sin ce
th en, i.e. sin ce about the fifti es, it had t li erefore become a fashion to have the
in,;trumcnts decorated and embellished hy ca rved rose and grape m oti ves.
T he respond ents t ake relatively seriously a11other fa shion which h as
developed about t en years ago and this is I ha t I he ruc/m-1 rr11n is no longer made
1 54
 Veena p layer P andit Asit
Kumar B anerjee, Calcutta,
p ron ouncing the sound-1cave-
f ormation Raga M alkosh
recorded on the attached cas-
sette.

55
 with seven strings-four m a m strings plus three drone cords-hut with eight
strings: four main and four drone cords . Yet nobody will den y that the eight-
string veenas sound rich er. The additional eighth cord improves the veena under
the aspect of a mu sical instrument. The richness in sound which is thus gained
is, however, in the opinion of the majority of the respondents at too high a pri ce.
It is held that thereby a cosmological ratio of figures peculia r to the veena is
upset. It is a matter of losing the figure 'Pi' which is used w hen calculatinu the
circumference of circles or the volume of circles and spheres. The fi gur: 'Pi'
called in mathematics a 'transcendental irration al figure' is inherent in t h e veena
because the Indian scale comprises 22 tones (42). As opposed to the W est crn
scale it does not consist of twelve ha lf-tones. Once you div ide 22, hence t he
nu~ber of tones within an octave, h y ' Pi', i.e. b y 3.14.159, you will inva riably
ar~1ve at sev~n and not a t eight. In short, eight string veenas, although they
might sound richer, should b e reject ed for higher and magically numerical rea son s.

13. The Sound-Wave-Formation

. The often peculiar . wa ys of thinking in connexion , vit !1 veena pI ay mg ·

occaswnally appear miraculous . to Occidental pco1)le · At t i
. m c · t k I
s i wo r s tie ot ier I
way .round thou gh: 1t h~pp~n s that in the fra mework of tantra yo u may fmd
solutwns to problems wl11ch m the categories of Western tlim · k"m g l1ave rcmamc · d
obscure.
. One of t hese is t he ques tion a bout t he essence and tlie r t. f
unc wn o music. ·
Simply spoken one might say : in E urope and in America · · l
. . . . music 1s most y a non-
apphe<l art wh1c.h 1s oriented alon g t he lines of aest hetics and euphon y . It is
composed by artis.ts who are known h y name and played l'k 1 ew1sc· Il Y artists· w ho
k
arc nown by t heir names and hence it always contai 115 t lie f l
I · . · germ o a star cu t
t is p art1.cu_la~ly striking t h at the purpose of music is rather ins ufficien tl y defined;
as a rule 1t IS jus t meant to ent ertain or to cd 1'fy a n au11·ience.
~- ·veena-player n ~cd not worr y, at leas t not in t his way, ah out the problems
thus ar'.smg-th~ 'J~Cs lw'.1 abo ut wh at is hea utiful , the genera l taste of t he publi c,
and the econom ic risks l11dden hehin<l a ll that , · 11·1s music· . 1s
· not pnma · nly · Judged
·
hy t he s tandards of aesthetics And he ·11 [ · f
~-----------·_ _ _·_·_ _ __ w1 re ram rom composing an y music 56
 =---·- - - - -

himself. This is why he is spared the joy and the sorrow of the genius. N or will
he be dist urbed b y the public and its quickly changing predilections. Words like
en tertainment and edification are missing in h is vocabulary. Becau se he j u st
does n ot perfor m ar tistic music and this is the decisive difference.
But what does he do then, y ou might ask ? Can one make any m usic at
a ll which is n ot a rtistic music ? Yes, one can. The veena-players, and t his can be
pr ov ed with regard to t he la st 2,000 y ears, h ave invaria bly produced a signal-
t y p e m u sic. And what is this sup p osed to mean ? T he answer is : tones, acoustic
oscillations propagating in sp ace may also be employed for the transmission of
m essages a nd are comparable to a langu age. This is t o sa y t hat y ou agree '\ith
Yanira. your fellow-men or with t he m emb ers of y our group on certain sequ ences of
to nes. B y agreement you will then attach certain cont ents to t hese sequences
of tones and thereby create a code for yourself enabling you to make y ourself
u n derstood . This code might be a regular language like old Greek or m odern
French, or it might be a specially devised repertor y of sign s such as e.g. the d eaf-
and-dumb alphabet, t he Braille scrip t, the Morse alphabet, or, as it were, musical
sequences of tones.
It was by way of su ch musical code syst ems, which hav e only become
obsolete with the invention of radio telephony, that in the past Occidental p eop le,
too, were commun icating with each other. Just think of the horn and b ugle sign als
of a hunt or of past wars . They too were agreed signal repertories enabling soldiers
or hunters to communicate over long distances and to pass on messages. The
veena-music is ser v ing t he same pu rp ose. As opposed to Bach or the music of the
B eatles it is not purp oseless b ut a purposeful system of information a nd a kind
of language . The only thing is t hat this t ype of language is not m eant fo r com -
munication between one man a nd the other but in stead- a nd more about that
later- fo r communication with the t ranscendental world
Theoretica lly t his acous tic repertory of signals-and this const itu t es a
miraculous achievement of the Indian mind- consists of 34.,848 sound-wavc -
fo rmations (43). However , the respondents were not full y in agreem ent with
Yantra .
regard t o t his number. Some of them cla imed that t he n umber of soun d-wave-
formations was actually infinitely large. Others argued that this might theoretically
be correct thou gh in p ractice just about 300 sound-waYc-formations were still
in u se. The respondents arc capable, thanks t o t h eir in some cases extremely
high musical edu cation, of identify in g with their cars between te n and ciahtY t> •
sound-wave-fo r mations. The professional musicians amon g them can play 15 to
20 sound-wave-formations right away, i.e. without prior exercise. In s hor t, t h is
act ually gigantic system remains controllable in practice .
' Vliat arc the qualit ies of t hese sound-wave-form a tions? Formalh· s p eak in tT
t h ey have t o meet cert ain requ irements (44) : e .~. t hey arc n ot rlea~·l~· limitc:l
57 for time, in other words the player may theoretically pla y fo r any lc ngt h of t ime
as he pleases. In reality, though, what happens is this : in order to build up a
sound-wave-formation, depending also on the degree of its complexity, you will
need no less than an hour. For astronomical or astrological reasons, however,
the veena-player will be unable to sustain the sound-wave-formation for more
than three hours, because after three hours the most favourable astral time will
have elapsed.
In general, sound-wave-formations are not composed and have hence
not been invented by musicians known b y name. Their origin usually remains
obscure. As a rule they have been passed on, some for centuries and others for
at least a millenium which works by oral tradition, learnt b y heart and passed
on from one generation to the next. It is only since the beginning of the 20th
century that the sound-wave-formations have for the first time been partly
documented. Yet these are but rather summ ary playing guides and not so muc h
real music-sheets; up to now it has proved impossible even by appl ying the mos t
modern means to put down in writing and with all their nuances the sound-
wave-formations played on the veena. It can, therefore, not be proved how exact
the oral tradition works and how these systems of oscillations might have sounded
in bygone times. This question is, however, not of any bearing, sound-wave-
formations being ahistorical anywa y. They always were and they will be forever
like the astral constellations . Silently they are soaring in the circular times, now
0

and then becoming manifest for a moment as audible frcquencies when a veena-
player sort of lights them up-thereby making them resound.
Thirdly the sound-wave-formations are by their very nature diagrammatic.
One may imagine them in the shape of a system of coordinates. On the horizontal
or X -axle is oscillating continously an unchanged basic tone, the tonic which
the veena-player is producing by touching the drone-strings strung along the
sides of the beam. Above and below this X -axle is floating the real melody thread,
played on one of the four main strings only, with the curls, waves, pitches, and
arches peculiar to each sound-wave-formation. An ear used to \Vestern music
will only after some training be capalile of corrcctl y interpreting these acoustic
diagrams. Our ears have the tendency to perceive consciously the moves of the
melody thread at first only. It takes time to get acustomed to listening not merely
one-dimensionally but two-dimensionally; this means not hearing the melody
but the plane between the melodic line, rising and falling on the y-axle, and the
straight vertical and unalterable drone line thus experiencing the sound-wave-
formation as two-dimensional.
On the vertical or Y-axle the varying highs and lows of the melod y thread
can he ma rked. H ere too the untrained ear will meet with certain limits of com-
prehension at first, because the Indian octave consist s of 22 micro-tones and not
of 12 half-tones like the Occidental octa ve. In theory the Indian octave and its
micro-tones raise a lot of difficult questions (see note 42) . In practice, however,
58
Listener.
 J\1encli ca 11 cv is an old a11d
i.111p orta11l ~lem e11t of J11 din11
!if<> and rnlt 11 re. N fo st of th e
sages, in cl11 d i11g Gown~o
B11Clilh o, lrni·e m ade 1he1.r
living throug h beggi ng . Ori
this picture ( th e sound-w n ve-
f ormation ) T c111kara i s d e-
scr ibed as "very liberal in
gi1:i11g GI M.Y w<'alth to those
u•ho S<'eh alms" .

the veena-players easily produce these 22 notes, p a rtly by shifting the frets on
the tube in a suitable position and partly by tightening the s trings laterall y
with the fingers of the left hand (see note 68).
On the one h and su ch an octave of 22 sm a ll intervals h as many a d vantages .
A signal, and it is signal music what we arc talking a bout, serves i ts purpose the
better the more it is unmistakable. To put it in other words, a veen a -play cr can
produce highly complex sound-wav e-formations with his 22 tones and can t hus
express himself much more precisely than, say, a guitar-player who will only
have t welve tones a t his disposal. Yet it has to be admitted th a t this micr o-t one
syst em, how to play 22 tones on 12 fret s per oct ave, is one of the unrevealed
problems of Indian musical theory . The number of the micro -tones, d efined as
t he sm alles t just noticeable intervals (45), actuaJly is not fixed at all in the ligh t
of t his definition and t h erefore app ear s to be chosen deliberately . Mayb e th e 'Pi'
problem is at the back of this t oo. According to this thl" octave must contain
22 micro-tones because th e numher of the (seven) s trings of the vecna as well as
the number of the (seven) ba sic notes, corresp o nding t o the white keys on the
piano, m a ke 22 provided one multiplies seven by 3.14159265 or the transcendental
irrational fi gure 'Pi' . T he r esp onden ts, h ighly interest ed in this subject, were,
alas, not in agr eement whether the micro-tones could b e tran sformed into th e
convent ion al h alf- to nes or full -tones b y adrlitio n or h y di visio n, or · w hether,
t his bein g a t hird alterna ti ve, t h ey could only be perceived relatively, i.e. as
sligh tly raised or slig htly lowered n o tes in t h e fram e of an octave never t heless
contain ing 12 half-no tes . 60
S trolli ng through the Yan ter
J\1anter i n J aipu r.

1'1'-c
 How does one build up a sound-wave-formation, how is it brought into
shape and how to an eventual end? The veena-players are in so far observing
quite a number of formal rules which to describe would be leading to far here.
It might just be added that they must begin each sound-wave-formation on the
zero-line. or the X-axle with the tonic, the basic note. During the first period
they will be demonstrating in maybe twenty variations the focal tones peculiar to
each sound-wave-formation including the correspondingly proper scale and this
in the original way namely descending. The melody thread will at first fall deep
below the zero line and rest there. In the second period the veena-player will
carry the melody curve high up above the zero line. Only during the third period,
and half an hour or more may have passed by then, will he spread the entire
sound-wave-formation over the whole tonal volume of three and a half octaves.
The acoustic phenomenon which is slowly taking shape is supposed to
have an effect upon the listener, whoever this might be, and to bring about a
change in his actual existence making him receptive to the real signal and its
message. This effect is achieved by the veena-player in handling the time in a
special manner. To be more exact: the sound-wave-formation will only b ecome
properly recognizable once the player succeeds to condition the listener, be it
only himself, and to lift him up from his everyday rhythm and the historical
and linear time into another more valuable, meditative, and-needless t o say-
circular time. According to the rules he will proceed in this manner: the sound-
wave-formation in question will commence with a rhy thmless performance, i.e.
the melody thread is neither grouped nor structured by any rhythm. The tones,
so it seems, are coming out of a timeless space. The listener thus exposed to these
timeless sequences of tones will in due course lose his normal feeling for time,
hence his consciousness of an intertwined to-day and to-morrow, of the sequence
of hours and minutes, and he will more and more fall into a state of timelessness
where no clock is ticking and no heartbeat is indicating a perceptable temporal
succession .
Once this state of subjective stoppage of time is achieved, and a bit of
auto-suggestion would be of no harm, the player will set the so far static and
In all Ra onmala-books " lo11g-
o
i11g for the absent lover" '"' d
also s im pie Ion l'l i 11ess a re
important th em es. H ere (the
so1111d-wn 1·e-Jorn1.11ti 011) Kal-
la s i lai " offers frir>d rice" to
th e g ods w he11 h er h11 sba11d
marches 011 his way to th e
bu ttl e-field.

62
 immobile sound pattern in motion. He will introduce a melody comparable to a
short song which he will then repeat in all sorts of variations until it becomes
proportioned by and by into a maybe twelve-piece rhythm the beginning and
end of which coincide with the little song. In the ideal case the veena-player will
by this congruence of rhythm and song succeed in slowly bending the serpent
of time, to put it in the words of tantra. Finally twelve and one, head and tail,
are approaching to meet. The listener's consciousness is moving along the sides
of a twelve-angle and thereafter on a closed circular track of the new time of
higher value which enables him to recognize the signal and the message clearly.
In doing so the veena-player is not-to stress this point again-following
a strict pattern. He does not play like a Western musician who has to make an
effort to follow precisely the path once laid down on music-sheets by the composer
for all times. Usually veena-players just cannot read music-sheets at all. They
stick to a number of unwritten rules which vary in composition and quality
from one sound-wave-formation to another. Within the framework of these
rules they are allowed, putting it into our Western language, to improvise ; this
means that they may interpret one and the same sound-wave-formation on one
particular occasion in this manner and on another day in a different one; by
filling in the tonal pattern they may proceed according to their own discretion
as long as the result of the tonal picture is correct.

14. 11ie Magic Whirlwind

Who is he, the listener? The listener is a demon, a suprana tural being,
a deity like Ma Kali of the Kaligat who is called or invoked by the vee11a-player,
and this is done with the intention of a barter : the vee11a-playcr is sacrificing
something, a musical offering, and for this he expects a reward. This considera-
tion-be it protection from an epidemic or the timely arrival of the rains-may
in every single case be defined and formulated in one way or another. The one
desiring the love of a woman , the other needing money, and somebody else wal\t-
ing a son or wishing to be freed from rheumatic pains. Behind it all t here is in
any case the idea that the demon ought to do something i1wariable in consider a -
tion of the sacrifice offered to him: the de mon is expet·t ed to apply the powers
vested in him only and thereby suspend the laws of nature within certain limits
of space and time in order that the actually inattainable aims may yet be reached
and that, in other words, a smaller or bigger miracle may h appen.

For better understanding the following might as well be recapitulated at

this juncture: by learning an Asian art, namely how to play the veena, the musi-
cian has changed his personality. The change in personality is the result of a rite
or of a process possessing transmuting powers and simultaneously serving as an
instrument for measuring the change. The process is to be understood a s the
handling of a musical instrument which has been constructed under ma gical
a spects. This process or rite-and here a new condition is being introduced- the
pupil will not have learnt fo r his own sake nor simply for the sake of the desired
improvement of his own existence. No, he has achieved two things at a t ime:
firstly he has changed his mind in such a manner a s to enable him to fulfil the
tasks of a medium. At the same time he has learnt a language or a musical code-
sy stem which permits him to enter into a dialogue with supernatural powers
thus applying his capability of a medium in practice.

Just one more word with regard to these powers : being an Occidental
person the reader will be a ccustomed to a notion of God which originated on the
Sinai peninsula . In short, you will, if at all, imagine Him to be a paramount
being upon whom you will depend though He is independent of you, He simply
floating over the waters and generally doing quite well without y ou. The de ities
of the Himalayas, and there are hut these two religiously really fertile regions on
eart h, are however of a somewhat different quality . They cannot exis t without
somebody adoring them. They, the supernatural ones, are thus dependent up on
t he offerings of their believers and are, therefore, fundamentall y inclined to m a k e
that barter mentioned before.
Such a barter is performed, a s a rule, according to the principles of market
economy, i.e. the value of the offering and of y our desire ought to be in adequate
proportion. T hus you cannot e.g. expect to be cured from tuberculosis b y merel y
p ouring out a mug of wa ter. Yet when it comes to sa crificing, it is not merely
a m atter of value for money . There are, by the nature of things, weak sa crifices
and ver y effective ones, especially the blood sacrifice such as offering a goat. The
magically perfect offering is the sa crifice of the only -begotten son whose blood
will then be drunk and whose fl esh will he dev oured in the t emple, the wa y it is
d one millionfold in Chris tian churches every Sunday . The fundamentall y v alid
p r in ciple of value and co unter valu c is hcing relaxed again in a mira culous way
as shown b y t his example: th e offerer of the sacrifice docs indeed give away his
offering. Ye t he will often be remunera ted h y some kind of enjoyment bonus,
e.g. if you sacrifi ce a goa t you may a fter wards eat its mea t. And if y ou give a
musical offering yo u arc a llowed to listen to the mu sic of the vcena.
w-

The listen ers : Silver am ulets

portraying different deities.

65
 Now you m ay object that veena music is not suited for a sacrifice since
it is almost infinitely reproducible so that the offerer is not really staking anything
and is not giving his offering up. If you look at it that way this might be correct.
But you must take the following elemen t into consideration : veena-playing
used to be in general a p erformance to order. Thus the veena-players normally
do not play for themselves but as ordered by a client, that is for a fee (46). The
offering, therefore, is not the sound-wave-form at ion but it consist s of the three
chickens, the measure of rice,, the scarf, or the money which you, the offerer , are
giv ing the veena-player for p erforming a sound-wave-formation for you and for
acting as a go-between or an intermediary for transcendental powers.
Would it not be recommendable in that case to sacrifice the chi cken or
the rice directly? Does one need the intermediary in the person of the t•eena-
player ? One might reply that at all times and ever ywhere magicia ns and priest s
squeezed themselves in between m a n and heaven, t hereby making good money
and acquiring wealth through all sorts of intimidation practices (47). This m ight
as well be true in a number of cases. But in favour of the veena-pla yers the follow-
ing could be brought forward : by the aid of t heir special musical fac ulty of speech
they a re solving a grave problem which could not be dealt with b y the otherwise
untrained lay m an: The point is not only t o set up a nondescript sign b y the
offering but to address just that very d eity or d emon and to a pproa ch exclusively
t he one who is responsible for the desire of the sacrificing b eliever and who will
therefore be capable of fulfilling his wish .
This provokes two questions: what is the nature of su ch a relationship
and, secondly, how can it be arranged so that t h e contact with the supernatural
b eing t o wh om t he playing is direct ed is established, and with him onl y? T he
relationship resembles as regards its quality a rotating power column which
according to one resp ondent should be imagined t o be something 'like a tornado'.
Such a bundle of energy and t hat kind of pole-shaped field of force will, howeve r,
only b uild up if the veena-player is fulfilling certain qualifications. H e m u st h ave
chosen t he time and the t ype of the offering prop erly-and more about this
later- he is expect ed t o m eet a multitude of purity requirem ents such as e.g.
to be seated on a linen cloth. But a bove all t h is : he must play very carefully
and correctly.
T he second question, namely the one on the orientation of the power ,
is in principle quite easy to answer: the sound-wave-form ations are attached
to certain d eit ies and demons. By his music the vecna-player is tra nsforming
t he power column into t he corresponding characteristic oscilla tion pattern. In
doing so he is producing a n unmist akable call-sign , a n unequivocablc ' H ere am I
and there are yo u' or 'I am you, you are I ', a sound-wave-forma t ion the fre-
quency spectrum of which is corresponding to one deity only a nd which can
thus be received a nd un ders tood exclusively b y this very one.
66
Very p onwful goddess: K ali .

. th invocat 10n . resem bles ver)· much a most earthlv. t elephone

. In tins way
f d . ff e fi
your VC. SIX, . . or ~even
~
or so fi oaures t o get your subscriber
call: m st eadI o ia. mg . fi
choosing ve, six , · . , or seven notes from t he twenty -two not e
the .veena-pl ayer . is
drtogetmtouc11"• . ~th his transcendental partner.
. As opposed
Indian sea e m or e . . f tl e science of sacrificing, he will thus b e able
h l •lw is ignorant o 1 . .
to t e ayman, " . l t ed Olympus and he will have at his disposal
d l · , 1· 0 India' s overpopu a .
to fin
. . u s " ayst em of emergency-eaUs with 34 ' 848 extensions wh 1ch corresponds,
an m t.dncat b e sy t o t he u l t1ma . t e nu m ber of sound-wave-form at ions .
a s sa1 a ove, . h B ahma Vishnu, and Shiv a who are creating,
T o st art with t ere are r , . . l .
aint aining and destroym · g l I· ~e. Associated with t hem a re their. fem . a e m carna-
tmions like the ' God d ess L a k sIim1· dispensinao riches.,.a nd . Shar asvat1,
. hm v oked . b yT hthe
believer for wisdom an d cogm·zan ce , or Duraa-Kah o who gives t e p o". er . en
. l
there is the e ep ant iea e h l d d Ganesh resp onsible for successful
. busm ess,
. the
Goddess R at1· d onatmg · an d "I ··t hdrawing fleshly lust , .or S1tala . responsible fo r
small-pox ep1·d em1cs, · an d tl1ey all h ave t heir own combmat1on. of t ones . . t h e sam e
as we have our t elep h one-n u mbers · Alona o with. . these recognized
. d e1t1es goes a
multit · ude o f d em ons, m oun t a1·11 sprites , tree sp1nt , personi . fied stars, a n d n atural
powers l 1.k e r ain · a nd ,,,1'nd which the vee11a-1)la)·er . ma y mvoke, ask for h elp, and
mo b 1·1·1ze. I n s h ort , ,,.1.thin the network of tlus transcenden tal telephon e one
m ay find help for all vicissitudes of life, at least in theory. . ,
In p ractice, however, t h e m atter look s somewhat cliflerent: t he observer
often get s the impression as if t he teleph one-directory, t he key, or the cod e was
67 at least p artly lost. T he respondents are unanim ous in so far as they would attach
L
Listener.
divine origin to the (theoretically) 34,848 sound-wave-formations and they
presume, almost without reservation, that these vibration patterns were given
to man for the purpose of invocation. But once you inquire about the solidity
of the triangular relationship between a certain deity, a certain sound-wave-
formation, and a given request you will get the following impression:

~ There are sound-wave-formations addressed to a nameable deity signalling

a clearly defined request. One of these is the sound-wave-formation named
'Bhairavi' which is addressed to the Goddess Kali asking her for strength .
The same applies to the sound-wave-formation 'Dipak'. Dipak is always
direct ed to the god of fire, Agni, and the request concerned has invariably
something to do with fire.

~ Other sound-wave-formations are undoubtedly addressed to determinable

deities though it is left to the caller which type of request he wishes to b e
transmitted . This applies e.g. to the sound-wave-formation 'Todi' which
the reader may hear in part on the attached cassette. Todi is directed
to Lord Vishnu or one of his many incarnations like the shepherd god
Krishna. Here and there on e can hear people say that t he request to be
signalled was invariably a longing for communion of a sen suous or of a
transcendental nature. Yet there is n o room for a precise statement.

~ In the case of a third group of sound-wave-formations the caller's request

can yet be clearly named. One of these is 'Marva', a v ibra tion pattern
which you may also listen to on the cassette. Marva, which should always
be played in the afternoon, siginifics t he fear of the approaching night .
The addressee, here t he competent deity, is howeYcr uncertain and one
gains the impression as if '.l\Iarva' were perhaps a vibra tion bridge which
can lead t o various gods.

A multitude of sound-wave-formations finally seems to be cha ined neither

to a nameable power nor to a request. But this docs not matter nor does it, so
they say, j eopardize the system: su ch ficticious gaps can and must be filled by
the vee11n -playcr with insight gained by meditation.
You m ay now wish to know how the sound-wave-formations work in
ever y single instant. Docs 'Bhairavi' really provide the desired strength of the
Goddess Kali? Does ' l\lalhar' attract the rains? \Vill a fire light up when a veena-
player is playing ' Dipak', the sound-wave-formation of t he god of fire? This
question , which yo u might b e inclined to answer in the ncgatiYe, is not so easy
t o clarify. Let us make an attempt all the same: if the fear of the night is getting
69 a grip on you, that is the afternoon terror, or if you are feeling the pain of longing
 =

for your distant lover, whoever this might be, music, a signal-like sequence of
tones, the performance of an acoustic archetype, may have a soothing effect
even if you possibly explain this effect away as suggestive; the effect is nevertheless
obvious though it may have been produced simply by the veena-player's con-
centration.
Of course one may object that such a suggestive effect was not yet equiva-
lent to the afore-mentioned lifting of a law of nature, the aim all magicians and
hence all veena-players claim to pursue. This is possibly true. But here the problem
arises which phenomena you are willing to accept as according to the laws of
nature? If for example you consider coincidence, defined as a statistical pro-
bability, to be part of the laws of nature it will, however, be possible to produce
a so-called 'wild shot' that is to bring about a statistically improbable event.
Within a certain framework, particularly in the psychosomatic field, veena-
playing can set in motion the mechanism of a self-induced prophecy : an ardent
desire, articulated and reaffirmed through a musical-magic ceremony, will in-
variably contain the nucleus of a prognostic. This prediction may become true
with a probability which is actually contrary to the rules, provided the believer,
encouraged and strengthened by the magic practice, changes his behaviour,
though to a hardly noticeable extent, in the direction of the fulfilment of his
wish, be it the love of a girl longed for, the delivery from headache, or pecuniary
gain. In short, one cannot say that the sound-wave-formations have no effect
whatsoever.
Sceptics could object that nobody had yet seen a river flow upstream or
witnessed a man fly by himself, and if there is talk of any effects, then it must
be the consequence of a spiral of silence. Here is an example: if a veena-player
is playing 'Malhar', the sound-wave-formation for invoking rain, it might after-
wards be raining or not. If it does not the veena-player and his client will keep
silent about their flop and will not make it known. If it does indeed rain they

This lady rep resenting tir e

;ound-wave-formation Bhai-
ravi worships Lord Shiva
(the Shiva Lingam) by offer-
ing flowers. She sings songs
"with regular beats".

70
 will be telling anybody who wishes to listen about their success. In this manner
keeping silent and and telling others will eventually create a psychological atmos-
phere, a climate, where the successful people will become ever louder and the
failing ones will die away.
Let us assume once again that 'Malhar' is being played without the sound-
wave-formation producing any rain. The client, maybe a big estate-owner, will
then think that he has possibly employed the wrong veena-player, one who is
incapable of acting as a medium. The veena-player on his part might argue that
his fees h ad been insufficient in view of the unexpectedly complicated constella-
tion. But the system, that is the efficiency of it, will no longer be at issue. This
is how the sound-wave-formations act. Perhaps they work subj ectively. But
whichever way one twists things around they do have an effect.

15. Searching for the Cardiac Tone

So far we have been talking mainly about the system of veena-playing.

Surely you will have wondered what the position of the veena-player might be.
How does he see himself? What are the technical problems he has to tackle
when playing? For better understanding let us assume that you yourself are a
'Beenkar', that is a veena-player, and you wanted to play 'Bhairavi'-one of the
simpler tasks-which is a Durga-Kali sound-wave-formation in order that the
goddess may give you n ew or more strength .
How to start? First of all yo u would have to prepare for the essential
ritual which means that you would in the proper order of things have to discharge,
then take a bath, and finally put on clean garments. In doing so you will h ave
met the substantial requirements for any activity as a medium. Now the question
arises where to play, meaning that you will have to look for a favourable spot
under the aspect of terrestrial magnetism. This will usually be the point of your
room which is most agrea ble to you. If you have any doubts as to that, then
you ought to choose the place where you normally spread out your sleeping-mat.
This problem of a suitable site, which is fairly easy to solve within your own
appartment, will be causing you some trouble when you want to play outside
in the open air and in a surrounding little familiar to you. You will then ha Ye
to get settled as best you can. There are some Indian sacral buildings where the
architects have already taken care of the most suitable spot. Occasionally one
71 finds courtyards, recesses or other places earmark ed for veena-playing (48).
 ----
Once you have found your place you will use considerable care on deter-
mining the four cardinal points because you are normally supposed to be playing
with your body facing North . If you are in possession of a compass this task
will be easily fulfilled . You might be marking the North-South line b y a s hoe
or some other mark. Should you not have a compass then you will climb on t o
the roof of your house during the night and orie nt yourself by the polar star.
Should it still be daylight then you can determine t rue Sou th by the aid of the
sun, i.e. you find out when a pole, which y ou have driven vertically into the
ground, is casting the shortest shadow and is thus indicating the highest position
of the sun. You must not rely on your watch nor on the assu mption t h a t the s un
will be in its zenith at twelve o'clock noon. It takes the sun about 16 minutes
to cross even a small country like Switzerland from Eas t to West. The hi ghest
position of t he sun, and tha t is true South, can t herefore be up to eight minutes
slow or fast in relation to the 12 o'clock m ark. In a vast country . like India this
deviation may amount to minus one hour in Assam or plus one hour in Sindh.
When you have ascertained the four cardinal points and yo u have found
your place then you may turn to your instrument. You will now have to decide
to what pitch you wish to tune your rudra -veena. In this connexion it m ust be
remembered that in Indian mu sic as opposed to Occident al music n o absolute
pitch of notes is known, such as the ch amber-A with its 440 oscilla tions per
minute. Looking at it this way yo u m ay tune your instrument so hi gh or so low
as you wi. h and after all you are playing alone and t here will be no need to adjust
your elf to t he tuning of an accom panying orchestra. Yet you should make a s
liLtlc use of this liberty as possible. You will r ather tune the veeria to match
your own frame of mind and choose a pitch which will correspond to the m ood
of your body.
This harmony of your body and the veena can he obtained b y a more or
less complicated procedure. T he simplest method not r equiring any musical
knowledge j ust means try in g Lo sing the lowest n ote w hich yo u may be able to
produce without difficulty . All you do is to start with a t one agrcable to you
and then to sing down the scale until you will not get any lower after two or
three trials. Beginning wit h this lowes t tone, which yo u will now have to coun t,
you will go up four notes to reach a possibly not ideal t hough quite accept a ble
basic tone for the veena. It is t o the basic uote, the tonic, that you will tune
t he seventh cord which is st rung sideways on th e far side of th e beam and also
the fourth string which is t he second- counting from your chin-of the four
upper cords. The first and th e second s tring running along the near side of the
beam yo u will also tune to this note if one (second cord) or two (first cord) octaves
higher.
Y ou will ha ve go t a bi g s t e p furth e r now: you wi ll h ave fo und the pitc h ,
tl1e li asi e tone uniting you and y our v eenct for t h e res t of y our l ife and a c co mp an y - 72
,- • r

Ai mini{ at tlir pn/r .<t ar : The

Snmrat Yantra in n .. tlti.
 ing you unalterably; this is the X-axle the unchanged tone of which will be
forever the backbone of your music. If you now go to the piano and touch this tone
just to try you will find it to be between F and Hand as a rule near G (208 Hertz),
A (220 Hertz) or an intermediate value. All this will onl y work on one condition:
that you are of male sex. Should you be of female sex thus having a higher pitch
then you ought to be prepared to face a sad message : as t ra dition will have it,
playing the veena is a men's job (49). B eing a female you must not even touch
a rudra-veena lest you might run into the danger of becoming b arren, thus being
branded with the ignominy of remaining without children. Th e e:rceptio11 of the rule:
The somewhat boorish procedure, related above, for the determination Female ree11<1 player.
of the basic tone does approximately lead to the envisaged target though it
cannot satisfy the inquisitive intellect. This is why we shall start again and
this time as follows : according to the tantric doctrine you mus t imagine your
body, from skull t o anus excluding the legs, to be divid ed into several partitions .
Between each of these partitions there is one power-knot called chakra . These
seven chakras, localized in the anus, t he intestinal, the solar plexus, the heart,
laryn x, root of the nose, and cerebrum region, hence the fi gure seven , y ou will
have to multiply now by 2 Pi. This means you calculate 3.14159265 + 3.14159265
= 6.2831852 X 7 = 44. Taking the Indian oct ave having 22 micro-tones, yet
the volume of the untrained human voice being two octaves, this figure 4.4. as
calculated above will correspond to the volume of your v oice projected to the
seven power-knots of your body. This amounts to your average or median tone-
for men it is usually not far away from the G-being in the neighbourhood of
y our heart cha/era hence exactly halfway between your skull and your anus . If
you now, starting from this cardiac sound, go four notes downward you arrive
again, this time by wa y of the descending scale, approximately at your hasic
tone to which you will be tuning your veena.
T he procedures for the determination of the cardiac sound described here
are not undisputed among insiders, as might be mentioned for better under-
standing. The opponents to t his argue in particular that the 2-Pi calcul ation
was an undesirable magic practice. In addition, they say, the whole calculation
was wrong any way : if you multiply 2 Pi by seven then the resul t is not 44 but
43 .982296. Moreover according to respect and custom the disciple ou ght to take
over and to pass on his master's basic tone. The advocates of the theory however
maintain that a sensible guru would never press his basic tone upon his pupil
and inst ead encourage the d isciple to seek and to find himself the individual
harmony of his body and his instrumen t. The tiny calculatory <lifference may
exist on p aper, they say , but it is of no bearing in the framework of organic
life a nd of the principle of relati ve relations prevailing there.
You will hy now ha ve found the proper place, determined th e four cardinal
points, ascertained your hasic tone, and tuned all seve n strings of the v eena
74
Bridges of an old rudra
veena.

76
 0

exactly-for tuning the t hird and fifth string the reader who is better ver sed
in m u sic is referred to the annex (51) . You will now do one more thing and that
is to check b y touching all cords whether the now tightly strung steel or b ronze
wires will produce 'om' or 'ahm'. To put it differently, the point is whether or
not the strings are producing sufficient overtones in addition to their proper
tone. Do they not only say 'ah' but is the wave-shaped oscillation of the wire
divided in halves and thirds ? D oes a tower of fifths build up on top of the 'ah'
tone touched, hence an energy column sounding 'mmm' before it grows up beyond
the perceptivity of the human ear into the a rea of quiet?
As you may see from some illustrations in this book the strings of the
veena as opposed to those of a guitar are not t ightened over a vertical bridge,
i.e. a kind of wall where the vib rations of the cords will refract like sea waves
on a breakwater. The wires rather end up in a horn or ivory plate (52) a little
bigger than a match-box. This plate is, however, not even but instead ground
with a curve hardly noticeable to the eye. That is why the vibrations of the
strings d o not refract. They rather run out like waves on a beach and then turn
backwards unrcfracted, cutting and dividing by rolling hack the frequency of
the oncoming waves. This is how in the ideal case not only a basic tone or a
simple oscillation of the wire will be produced but a long resounding frequency
agglomeration which is reduced into ever smaller sinus curves b y halves, thirds,
and fourths finally to fade away into zero beyond the perceptivity of the human
ear. This ideal case does in practice not always occur. The over tone producing
curve of the ivor y plate will with the t ime be polished off by the pressure of the
strings . The sound will become dull. A careful veena -player will therefore if neces-
sary regrind t his plate with file and sandpaper until the oscillations regain a
sl ight upward sl ant flowing ba ck again into the vibratin g strin g .
L eavi n g aside here the business of planet ston es a nd a1nulets, you n~ay
now turn t o actual playing and in d oing so you first visualize a mantra or magic
syllable. This could be t he mantra 'IIring', articulated deep in your throat and
which is attributed to the Goddess Kali or it might be the Aim Hring because
the mantra Aim will be especially activating a fem ale goddess. You will t h en
press the wire plectra (53) on the fin gertips of the fore fin ger and the middle
finger of your right hand, touch with your left middle finger lightly an oil soaked
cottonwool ball to make t he fin gertips glide smoothly on t he cords, get hold of
the veena, and strike the basic n ote at first, i.e. the descending fo urth down to
your cardiac sou nd with which all sound-wave-format ions begin.
You "ill repeat this basic note and stabilize it ; a nd departing from this
note you will mould every note of the Bhairavi sound-wave-format ion d own the
decending scale and shape it precisely so that the shapeless and earthy dark
Durga-Kali shall take no~ice of t he i11"ocation. In doing so you will localize
77 each tone of the instrument wit hin your body-at first possibly feeling your
 way hesitantly- and sense it going down under your heart chakra. As you will
remember you have at your disposal between your heart chakra and your anµ s
chakra a complete octave serving as a physical measure of per ception on which
the tones, if properly struck, will begin to light up in many colours. This demon-
stration of tones on the downward scale may take a quarter of an hour or more,
but you are not in a hurry. Once you finally hav e exhausted the octave within
the lower part of your body-you sitting with your legs crossed on the ground-
y ou will play the veena yet lower down, unlimiting your body and thus prolonging
the sequence of tones into the ground and getting y our anus rooted in the earth.
This at first sight odd idea of growing roots will soon become fa miliar to yo u
once you visualize that your body only houses two octaves the veena however
covering almost four. The lowest octave thus pierces through your body into
the ground (54) and the highest one towers above your skull. When you have
firmly and safely grown roots you will tonally return to the heart Chakra and
let the melody thread rise through your throat and nose into your cerebrum
and then- this being a magically critical moment- pierce from inside y our
skull. You will he playing beyond yourself, still v er y slowly and arhythmically,
demonstrating every note like a shield and holding it up. In this condition y ou
should repress your inner self a bit, relinquish your individuality, and become
a lotus Hower in a pond rooted in the dark and growing above the water surface,
above your skull and your conscience, a pink blossom.
So far y ou will only have demonstrated the t ones of the sound-wave-
formation singly or in the intensities and combinations t y pical of the sound-
wa ve-formation. By now y ou ·will have lost any feeling for time ent irely and
what is to follow is the actual signal. It would he quite pointless to visualize
the innumerable indications and rules with which the g um has furni shed you
in order that you may unmistakably reproduce that signal on the veena. You forget
about the whole collection of regulations and you make a picture emerge be fore
your mind's eye which is still filled with Goddess Kali's mantra ' /-Iring '. B e this
picture a geometrical fi gure or an architectural construction , in a ny case it will
he a y antra, it will howe ver not merely constitute an arbi trary produ ct of your
One of the m ost prominent
own imagination. Instead it will be a cer tain if unqualified fi gure which has y antras, th e S hri- Ya ntra.
gained concre te shape as a sound-wave-formation in y our consciousn ess and
hence has become a picture due t o months and years of experimentall y practicing
on the veena. When this picture presents itself to y our eye with sufficiently clear
outlines-the clearn ess of the cont ours being of utmost importance-yo u m ay
set yo urself to the task of tracing the sound-wa ve- form a tion with rh ythmical a nd
colourful strokes of sound and develop th e sketch y shape into a multi-dim ensional
form a tion of v ibra tions or into a t onal space. The curves of the m elod y you
will, hy repeat ing, form more and m ore correctly and exactl y. Aga in and again
you will be d efining the sket ch. T he ledges you will emboss with ch aract eristic
 ... ,_

S he. Punch f or th e produc-

tion of Kali -amulets; original
size about 3 X 4 cm.

79
ornaments. Eventually it will arise within yourself, the apparition, the sound-
wave-formation, pulsating, in rich detail, and unmistakable: Bhairavi, the tonal
image of the strength dispensing Ma Kali. She is I. I am Kali.

16. The Times of Sacrificing

.In speaking to the r espondents and certainly a lso in reading this book
one might ask oneself to which degree these statements could he reliab le and
represent a reality without distortion. One should be under no illusions about
this and realize that this problem of distortion can never be solved completely.
P lease do remember what was said above about style of thinking: the respondents
see the world through a different grid which is only in exceptional cases in con-
gruence with the patterns of speech and with the categorial systems the way
they are known and accepted in Amsterdam or in Los Angeles. One might try,
perhaps by analogy, to transfer as many contents as possible from one system
into the other. As seen by the interviewer the respondents' statements only
allow to discern without doubt basic assumptions or structural elements su ch as
this one: there is a chalcra doctrine. When you go into more detail, maybe the
question if you have to imagine the body to contain four, fiv e, six or seven power
knots, the opinions of the informants will often vary greatly. In that case one
will have to put up with a 40 percent or less conformity.
One of these so far safe basic assumptions is the idea that certain sound-
wavc-formations could and should only be played at certain times if they are
to lead the veena-player and his client- this being the declared aim-to a con-
sonance with the cosmos. This much may be said in advance, that given sufficient
training you can fairly exactly tell the time when list ening to a veena-player
carefully. This may at first sound somewhat odd. You s hould therefore try to
jmagine at this jun cture, that the 24 hours of the day were divided into eight
sections or 'watches' of three hours each. The sound-wave-formations are now
assigned-this being the decisive point- to one of the eight watches each and 80
 · '-==·

must therefore only be heard within one of these 180 minute periods (55). Pro-
vided the vibration pattern, the wave-formation, and the time for its performance
are familiar to you, you can by inference t ell the time as well.
You arc now requested to improve this simple model a little. The watches
cannot be determined simply with the aid of a '\Tist-watch because they are
not dimensioned according to the legal time but in line with planetary times.
The cycle of these watches therefore does not commence ";th 0 hours, which
would be the simplest method clock time-wise, but with sunrise which in Calcutta
is in summer at about half past five o'clock and in winter at approximately half
past seven or correspondingly earlier or later in other places. Sunrise and sunset
vary in India, Calcutta being situated on the 22nd parallel, much less than in
N orthcrn countries such as Canada, Finland, or Sweden. Yet it is only in excep-
tional cases that the watches last exactly 180 minutes due to their connexion
with planetar y time. The four watches of the day last 210 minutes in summer
and the night watches are reduced to 150 minutes each. In ,1;ntcr, howe'>er,
the night watches expand and the day watches shrink. It is only when the earth
during the yearly course of the sun passes the Aries point in the spring and the
Libra point in the autumn that the watches arc of equal length, i.e. 180 minutes
on the clock (56).
This time related to the sun alone docs not yet suffice. Some sound-wavc-
formations a rc not related to times of the day or of the night but to the seasons
of the year, mainly to the Aries point and to the rainy period which in India ,
according to the location in question, will be during the months of July to Octo-
ber. But these too arc the fairly easily recogniziable fixed points within the time
pattern of the vee11a-playcr. If he wishes to play the right sound-wave-formation
at the proper time he also has to take the rest of the planets and their orbit into
consideration, especially the moon with its orbital period of 27 .3 days, or the
Jupiter taking twelve years, or the Saturn with its almost 30 years for one orbit.
For the reader it will, however, be sufficient to be a ware of the following: a s a
11
cena-playcr you should alway s be conscious of the positions of the planets b ecause
it is only this way t h at you can determine the most fa vourable time for sacrificing
and for choosing a nd playing t he sound-wave-formation vibrating con sonantly
with the planets.
The orientation with regard to pla netary t imes naturally requires the bes t
possible orientation within space. T his m eans to say that the 1·ee11a-player should
at least know his position by latitude and longitude. l\Ioreovcr he ,\;II sit with
his face pointing North for the sake of better self-definition in time and space.
There will be one fixed point, the pole-star, b efore his mind's eye at leas t and
by it he will b e able to d e fine his personal situation. Theoretically also the other
cardinal points arc of some u se. But if the vee11a-player fa ces East the cclc~tial
81 bodies will somehow rush towards him with the earth's rotation. Faeing \'\'est
-- - - - -~~-------------------

Platform for lll('(fitutinll pho-

tograph ed at llOon-timc; see
also llOtc 58.
82
 he would be likewise without optical support and he would topple over back-
wards. The Southerly direction-India being situated on the Northern hemi-
sphere- is also not of any real use since the s tellar South pole, that is roughly
the Southern Cross, will be below the horizon and can thus not serve as a support
to the eye. Let us raise the question again here what the position is regarding
the statements in relation to reality, arc they reflecting it? Well, all respondents
said that they respect the division of the day into eight watches including the
corresponding attribution of the sound-wave-formations. In practice, so the
performing musicians stated, they were observing this rule as exactly a s possible
and that the y would play the sound-wave-formations only at the proper planetary
time. So far this principle is recognized and realized. Even the state operated
broadcasting system, All India Radio, remains loyal to the astro-acou stic rule
and is transmitting sound-wave-formations only at about the time of the day
via its medium-wave stations, when they have been ac tually played in the studio
and recorded on tape. The pole-star rule, howe,·cr, is only kept in the memories
of some of the respondents. In musical practice it is obviously no longer being
observed and may at bes t be part of meditative exercises .
Why do the respondents stick to the rule s of the times of the day? As was
frequently said and maybe too often, this was done because their guru had done
so. But is there more behind it? Yes, the idea, if only vaguely recognizable,
that the planets and the fixed star constellations arc either symbols of the gods
or even identical with them. Shortly speaking, here we find the already described
connexion of the various sound-wave-formations with individual deities or
demons now reappearing in the form of stars or constellations. I s Kali Bhairavi?
I s the moon Kali? Is Bhairavi Chandra, the moon? This can only be recon-
structed piecemeal, if it ever existed.
The relationship between the astral world and the sound-wave-formations,
however, can st ill be proved, and this with the help of the so-called Tivra-Nia
phenomenon. A Tivra-Ma is the same a s the note F sharp a s long a s your reena
is tuned to C as the basic tone. And this is what that is about: in the sound sp ectra
or the scales of the sound-wave-formations this tone appears only during the
third ' rntch at about 12 o'clock noon when the sun is in its zenith above the
vee11a-playcr. At sunset the Tivra-Nla , the F sharp, ''"ill disappear once more,
it will change into an F. When the sun is exactly under the reena-player at 12
o'clock p.m. the Tivra-J\lla or F sh arp will reappear in the scales of tones of those
sound-waYe-formations which are assigned to the fifth watch b eginning at midnight.
This Tivra-Ma phenomenon is n o mere coinciden ce. Also the other notes
of t he scale will more or less systematically come into t h e acoustic foreground
in the course of the eight \rntcbes and recede into the background again . The
result of this is, if not in all individual ca ses : ea ch time of the day and each watch
83 has its own audible tonal ity which is defined by the prominence of certain tones
 ---- - - -~-----·--~-------- -- - -- -

changing with the watches (57). So far so good. This fact of the tonality changing
in the course of a day can be proved clearly up to this point and it gives rise to
this reasonable, if not quite scientific, assumption: would it not be possible,
would it not be thinkable, is it not even probable or certain that the tones of the
veena do not originate from the instrument, i.e. by the player touching the strings,
but from the orbiting stars radiating unstruck sounds in accords corresponding
to their constellation?
One may object now that this is the old story of the music of the spheres.
But this is not so. The idea of the Pythagorean music of the spheres is based
on the concept that the sphere-shaped magnetic field s of the celestial bodies
are producing sounds by mechanical friction. As far as the astral music is con- Yantra.
cerned y ou will have to start from the idea already familiar to y ou that light-
wave-formations and sound-wave-formations are two interchangeable manifes-
tations of one and the same thing. The veena-player is capable, thanks to his
powers of a medium, to transform these inaudible light-wave-formations into
audible sound-wave-formations and to make perceptible to the human car by
his instrument the vibrations of the infinite. Should y ou b elieve in a strology
and should you have pondered over what the influence of the planets on y our
life might be like you will now obtain an explanation: what you hear on the
cassette attached to this book are the astral forces determining your fate and
transformed into acoustic oscillations.
The system which you hav e come to know up to no w as a distress signal
transmitter, all of a sudden changes into a cosmic radio which not only transmits
but also receives. That means in concrete: when y ou sit facing North the con-
stellations of stars and the planet s wander from East to West ov er y our hea d
and over the beam of your veena, y ou will h e d etecting the celestial b odies with
the pumpkin-shells serving as y our cars . You are collecting the coloured lights
of t he wandering st ars and change them into sound spectra . It is you wh o k eeps
the st ars in motion. And it is yo u who is r esponsible for the m oonrise at the
correct time. Who could draw the div idin g line be t ween cause and e ffect ? With
t he sound produced by y ou, y ou will force the sun down b elow the h orizon.
And it is you who lures it out again early in the morning. You are the centre
of the world, t he en gine a nd the m o t or wh o makes the rains fall, the winds blow,
and t he celestial bodies orbit .
But what is going to happen if you play wron gly? The veen a -play cr is
not entitled to commit a n error- and h e will h ave t o put up with tha t. E rrors -
and this is the way the people will h ave it-will ensue severe punishm en t su ch
as depressions, sm all-pox and premature death , becau se he, th e caller, h as upse t
the cosmic order by his dissonant music. This burden of res ponsibility, this pres-
sure for perfection , and the fear of guilt, so t h ey say, will driv e the VNUia-player
into a restless life withou t marriage and w ithout childre n wanderin g a round 84
Ins ide th e E astem Jai P ra-
kash Y antra .
 -· - -------~--- ------ - ---

and fright ened b y the demons with whom the veena-player is otherwise associating
so closely . The veena-player Asad Ali Khan who was interviewed on that i_n
Bombay T elevision in 1975 quite n aturally denied all this. No, he said ; w as it
not for ev ery one to see-he having wife and children, how unfounded su ch super-
stition was ?

17. Obscure Languages

The idea that sound could produce images and t hat, v ice-ve rsa , pictures
including celestial bodies could bring forth sounds might appear som ewhat odd,
esp ecially to readers with some knowled ge in physics. Y ou could argue th a t sound-
waves, being so-called longitunal waves, are essentially distinguish ed from the
sinus-shaped light-waves. And in consequence of th a t , t he tra ns formation o f
light-waves into sound-waves and vice versa- this being the basic concept o f
veena-playin g-is impossible to achieve in a na tural manner. This stat em ent
m ay he true within the fra me-work of t hinking of W est ern educated middle-
class. It is n evertheless untrue. Becau se what is consequentially correct, is n ot
necessarily what some millions of seconda r y sch ool stude nts t hink is true . W h a t
is correct a nd h en ce real are the dream s of billions of peo ple and the images in
t heir minds, their m odels of self-expla n ation a nd of the expla nation of t h e world,
and not the cau sal relationships, w hich st atistically irrelevant m inorit ies in
St ockholm or in Sioux City t hink t o h e correct.
You may now shrink back from t h e idea put forwa rd to yo u here, n amely
t o consider trut h to be the con sen sus of t h e m aj ority. Once you are willing to
consider wh at is true withou t any haughtiness as a countable a nd ques tiona ble
reality you will also look at the pictures in this b ook with differ ent eyes. A m on g
them you will find pictures of a stran ge a rchitecture, agglomerations of buildings
which your ricksh aw-driv er, if ask ed , will describe as' Janter-Manter' or as' Ya ntra-
Mantra'. These Janter-Mantcr places which ar e on Sundays p opular picknick
sites and on weekdays populated m ainly b y monkeys, pigeon s, a nd long-tailed
light green parrots comprise b u ildings w hich could n either b e called com mer cial
nor housing nor sacral est a t es. 86

It?:- . -........._________________
Inside one of the R am-
Ya ntras.

87
 ~-------------------- - - - ,..
---

Again an encounler wilh the

divine : The sound-wave-for-
malion Klzambabali worship-
ping Lord Brahma. She is
"robed in a cloth as white as
lhc clouds of aulumn".

In the sense of colonialist and scientific correctness they are, with some
exceptions, astronomical heavy equipment or planetary clocks (58) alth~~gh
they might never have b een used for that purpose. In the sen se of empirical
democratic conceptions of truth they are, however, m agic transformers made
of clay, plaster, and marble, often containing form elements of the veena, and
often also serving a similar purpose in their architectural way: namely expanding
the consciousness of the onlooker, his self-definition within time and s pace, his
perception of the essential world b eyond time where s hape and sound, light-
wave and sound-wave serve a s interchangeable systems of signals with equal
meaning whose double c1uality, whose echo effect, wh ose reflected image can
only lead to an unbroken understanding of one's self a nd of r eality.
Being a reader of t his hook and a n apprentice in magic yo u will now be
confronted with the question of what the quality of an acoustic system of signals
might b e like in order to enable the transformer, in this ca se the rudra-veena,
to bring forth image producing sounds. Vis'-a-vis' this problem you sho uld in t h e
ver y beginning drop the assumption that what you are a b out to play is bound
to furnis h a comforting euph ony, to ev oke sentiments or otherwise correspond
to the music of t he Mozart time, he it in the form of likeness or of contrast. You
must on the contrary leave thi s World of concepts altogether and make yourself
familiar with t he idea, not to produce music hut to articulate an obscure language
with your finger-tips and with the strings of t he vecna.
What is an obscure language then? In t h e wider sense of the term y ou
would count a mong them any language which you do not understand. In a more
restricted sense obscure languages are acou stic systems of signals which are
either based on mutual agreement and which ser ve the purposes of protection

1.- :i_n_:_n_~_cu_o-~-~-eu__:e_:_f_1_a:_~n-u_ar_~_:i'_e :_·r__th-ne_e_1_n_f<l_t_i~-~-s-~-r-au-gm_re_e_1~_1_;_~_s_(~-~_;_e_w_:__i~_gh_u_;:_:_s_c_i:_n_F_·:_~_:_:_a1_7_;_aa_r_..

8 8 0 0 0 1 1 1
s_a_
_ __ _ __ _ _____
 on the cassette attached to this book. This drum lingo contains any type of
heat on the drum and hence every one of t he allegedly many thousands of different
drum tones in the form of an onomatopoetic and usually speakable syllable.
The initial advantage of this language is that Indian drummers can with-
out effort tell eachother across the inner Indian language barriers what they
want to play or which sequence of beats they have performed the night before.
The drummer whom y ou hear on the tape is playing the sequence of syllables
'Dha-Dha-Dhin-Ta-Keta-Dha-Din-Ta-Kita -Teka-Gaedi-Gaene'. If t he accompany -
ing drummer succeeds in audibly r eprodu cing this sequence of syllables in twelve
parts on his drum treated with flour paste (60) then the vecna-play er will invariably
understand at which p oint of the time circle divided into t w elve he will he at
that moment. The second advantage of the drum lingo is that the drummer
beats th e r hythm in a grammatical and speechlike manner, not in a monotone
tact, to enable the veena-pla yer to find his orientation and to commence a t the
right moment with the new time circle.
Besides these agreed obscure languages there are, however, revealed
ob scure languages which are not based upon human agreement but which are
meant t o serve the purpose of communication with the transcendent world.
One of these revealed obscure langu ages for instance is the Enochian language
which the God of Christanity revealed to an English magic but which however
did not make a breakthrough (61). Furthermore the l\1antras belong to this
group which have been spread all over India for 3,000 years or more and which
are a part of ever yday life t here. The mantr ic language (62) has its dialects, more
about that later. And one of these dialects which is thought to be particularly
penetrating and understandable in a sacral way you play on the rudra-veena.
I t is not music in the habitual sen se of the term that y ou pla y hut you speak a
lingo. From notes you form words. These words you build up into senten ces.
Y ou may be sp eaking, murmuring, cr ying, beseeching, wailing, cursing, reciti ng,
calling, preaching, threate ning, flattering, wispering, or praying ; yet yo u will
not b e making music. Naturally y ou may also express yourself in a poet ical
way, there is nothing to keep you from so doing; but you can only d o that-
beware of :Mozart- provided you are not indulgi ng in this poetry for its own sake
but if you understand and practice it a s a part of y our m essage.
The mantras often used in syllables like Hum, Hring, Phat, Namo, or
Swaha, are by the standards of linguist ics so-called phonems, h en ce wordlikc
utterances simila r to expressions such a s ' hallo', ' hurrah ', ' ump h' t hough they
do not express certain feelings like these English exclamations. I n general mantras
are void of sense or value and represent mere tools. Ilut they possess t he power
to evoke imaginations or to trigger off a corn1mlsion to t hink in certain images
The "Yantra" of th e Eno- ~
chian obscured language; and , according to t h e composition of the chains, to produce certain apparition s
Pandit Rajib Locham Dey
Calcutta, play ing the Pakh~:
wa= drum.
91
syllables being 'Om-mani-padme-hum', the mantra seer will be the master of h is
fantasies and will no longer helplessly drift in the whirlpool of vivid anxieties,
hopes, and remembrances.
In everyday life mantras, t herefore, are serving the purpose of d isciplining
the power of imagination, based on the idea now well known to you, that there
is, if only in a budding form, a light-wave-formation which corresponds to any
given sound-wave-formation. This technique is not limited to the so-called sacral
field, as may be said for better understanding. Dealing with mantras is rather a
common habit that goes along with life and which might be of use when leaving
the house in the morning, when doing business, upon cohabitation, or as an aid
while taking an exam: who could reasonably draw a dividing line between the
worldly and the supernatural sphere anyway? Nor should the mantras be con-
ceived as isla nds of rcflcxion. They can he integrated into the everyday thinking
or mixed into every day language the way it is done in the Ganesha (64) invoca-
tion prefacing this b ook which is framed b y drum or drummers' syllables; or in
the following Sharasvati mantra:
Om, aim, hring, kling, som .
Come, Goddess Sharas vati.
Enlighten my voice.
Take the burden from my heart,
heaped up in centuries,
increase and augment my strength.
Look at me who has crossed the ri ver
and reached the point of p erception.
Som, kling, hring, aim, om.
If you go one step further and obliterate the diYiding line, drawn arbitrarilv
anyway, between t he image and the reflexion, between imagination and realit)~,
then the world will be manipulatory without limit if you only know the fo rmula,
the mantra, especially if you thereb y wish to activate the godly beings and if
you can exploit their supernatural powers .
These basic rules of mantrics, i .e. this kind of instrumen tality
•
of thinkin (Tt>'
also applies to the more exclusive tonal dialect you arc playing on the vccna
which is reserved to those who arc in the secret. The CTOOd t:> })layer
• or mantra seer
distinguishes himself from the bungler b y his capacity to produce sounds which
may be spelt; he can spin speechlikc m elod y t hreads and produre grammat ical
souncl-waYc-formations
•
which. .
will enforce by·
their orrult S[leech nualit\·
·1
· l CT -
• 11 tal::'c"
of thought, pictures, appantwns, and realities. This means that here too t he
issu e is to shape tone into words and words into phrases (65), t o obscrYc t hr
rules of sp eaking nmnistakably in orde r to bring for th umnistakable phenomena.
 tf: Kali shrine; the prayer hall:
: lt:
Thinking wo rds of power.

'{1 !:1
~

~ ~
~
h :lz 11 'h :.1:2

92
 I s it actually very difficult to play mantra-y antra music turned into lan-
gu age a nd grammar? On the one side yes. Let it be stressed again that you mus t
set a side y our habitual musical notions, especially the idea of euphony . This
takes much time, in particular if your consciousness is blocked by Occidental
musical edu cation. On the other side you will be required to visu alize the coloured
optical quality of sounds and the coloured tonal quali ty of optical impression s
b y permament refl ective training. Once you su cceed in this interplay a nd once
yo u even manage to retrace form and sound back to a basic image of rcflcxio n
then there will remain only a few con crete ques tions to answer.
You should a ttach great care to preparing the instrument, the veena. It
would not get yo u any further to reproduce here a whole lis t of measures to take.
The power of the y antra or y our instrument to express mantras exactly according
to the pattern d ocs, h owever, depend on certain conditions . F or instance, you
should select the strings (66) with utmost care according to their matcrial-
bronzc, brass, or steel- and especially with regard to t heir diame ter (67) . If the
strings are too thin , hence relatively weakly strung for a given basic tone, the
overton es will b e missing and the towers of fifths will not be building up . If the
cord s are too thick though, hence relatively highly strung, their stress will b e a
load for the ins trument and a problem for the finger-tips of y our left hand by
which you arc tightening the strings laterally for producing the quarter tones.
The problem arising mos t frequently in practice, retuning t he s trings, whose
tension is rising and falling from 30 to 60 kilograms tensile force by this kind
of pulling away laterall y, has until this clay of n early 2,000 years of vecna-pl aying
not been finally solved. One has t o manage som ehow either with a rctightening
cursor, b y tightenin g screws, or by re tuning slackened strings high above your
head a t the wooden pegs without interrupting the flow of music-s peech.
You should also have in mind that speech is adj u sted to a scale of tones
but it is not recited or sung purely in so far but in between t h e s t ages of the
scale. If y ou wish to play in a grammatical way you will h ave to practice the
'mee r' (68) again and again. This means the capability to touch vibrating micro-
toncs with the string tightened laterally, to play stcplcssly a nd to bring up a
fourt h silentl y and untou ched so exactly that, upon t h e following touch , it will
sound purely . Or it m eans the skill to play the sam e tone with four or five diffe rent
t en sions of the cords in five different shades of sound, hence to bring it up from
five different frets .
According t o a s till vivid legend the real vecna-player ou gh t to drive a h ook
into the ceiling of his room and tic his hair to it with a piece of string in order
that he may be awakened b y his pains in case he should colla pse from s h eer
exh a u s tion during his daily practicing. Perha p s one need not go t h at far. Uu t
without diligen ce and experimenting endlessly you would not m ak e any progress.
93 Dilige nce alone, howe ver, will onl y solve part of the basic problems of 1 er11a- 1
 ---=:w
~~

Instrument-maker preparing
a steel-string.
=:w -
~

-
r--
•t

laying: have you a message to tell at all? Can you at least fo r some minutes
rmagine a supernatural b eing taking shape, su ch a s the elephant headed Ganesh,
the god of success? Problems of this nature, so the respondents also say, the
student will be able to evade at first through copying his master. They can eventu-
ally be solved only t hrough a m editative growth in cognizance, hence t hrough
revelation in a n absorbed state.

18. Bending the Time

How docs one meditate ? H ow do the godly b eings reveal t hemselves?

Being a veena-pl ayer how does one obtain image sounds a nd sound pictures?
The experts on the matter have t ried to tack~e this problc~ in ~ very pr actical
way . Since about t he 16th century a p eculiar form of pictorial presentation
called Raga-ma/a (69) painting has developed. The Raga-mala painters have
painted or drawn t~ie ~ound-wave-formations n~ a personified fo rm in or~~r to
create for the mcd1tatmg musician a fixed pomt or support and to facih tatc
t her eby his meditative cognizance. Some of these pictures you will find in the
book. They may, at the sam e t im e, h ave ser ved the p urpose of passing the sou nd-
wave-formations on from generation t o gen eration unaltered and to strengthen
the p r inciple of oral tradition without script and b y pictorial tradition.
D ocs one get any further meditatively with t hese Raga-mala pictures?
The Raga-ma/a painters, influenced by t he P ersian miniature painters, on the
one side frequently depicted the sound-wave-formations different ly fo r reasons
hard to tell. They furnished the onlooker with var ious st arting points for medita-
tion which woulcl therefore have t o leacl also to different percept ions. The sound-
wave-fo rmation 'Todi' on page 4 you will for inst an ce find along with a vee 11 a,
without one, with deer or antelopes, b lack or red ones at you r choice, but also
unaccompanied by a nimals. The respondents felt on t he other hand that the
Raga -ma/a pictures were of u se for t r ivial m editation at best in v iew of t heir
low degree of abst raction a nd t hat i in respect of the rather naturalistic type
of presentation of the sou nd- wa ve-formations, mostly depicted in the form of
noble w omen. F or a means of getting access one should, if at all, u se real ya ri trns
which are abstract geom etrical figures and which can be visualized bcfo;e one's
95 mind's eye or b e drawn on paper.
 There is the impression that the respondent s also, or even more so, tended
to be of the opinion that the abstract meditation void of images was b e tter suited
than the one with images to obtain a more profound cognizance of sound-wave -
formations . Inasmuch a s they were able to express themselves at all the res pondents
were tending in the direction of r eversing the process, i.e . to get hold of a veena
awaken a sound-wave -formation and with it, if only vaguely, the corresponding
picture: This sound-wave-formation they will then clarify v isually and acoustically
to achieve more precision. They will set themselv es to the task of m aking this
picture more and more colourful, better contoured, and plastic b y a trial-error
process. Or they succeed- the one not excluding the other-to reshape a cou s-
tically an image appearing in immediate totality. L ed by the lighting up or
fading of the shape they will find its tonal counterpart and finally reach the
consonance, the congruence and the unity of light a nd sound.
What are t hese pictures like which the veena-play er sees before his mind's
eye? In this respect the respondents do not really give any exact answers. It is
a question of colourful formations often in geometrical and abstract shapes, and
to this ext ent the respondents would agree b y and large. These vis ions in n o
case r esemble huma n beings or images of the gods as one may see them in Indian
temples, as they can b e found hanging on the walls of ironmongers' shops or
sticking on the d ashboards of taxis . And also this can be taken for sure. These
apparit ions ar e obviously not rigid eit her but mainly pulsating images.
The undetermined an<l parabolical expressions used b y the resp ond ents
in t his context ('you must imagine that to be something like .. .') can be largely
explained Ly the fact that m edita tion, as oppo sed to magic, of which we h ave
mainly been speakin g so far, originates in an area of ex per ience wh ere there arc
no words, n a mely m ysticism. What is m ys ticism and in which way does it differ
from magic? N o clcar cut dividing line can b e drawn Letwccn the two. Yet one
may be permitted to say t he following: the m agician is runnin g a kind of trans-
cendental business a imed at gaining strength. H e is offering his sacrifice and h e
expects consideration for it. In doing so h e w ill always rem ain himself though,
and his problems are mostly of a procedural natme: give n t h e aim how do I
sacrifice t he proper thing at the right time and in the right way?
In t he area of m ysticism the significance of t he sacrifice is red uced to
almost zero and that is the v isible sign of m ysticism. The m ystic will not e nter
into bargaining with t h e gods a nd please accept this actually not permissible
split-up for the moment . He rather wishes to a malgamate him self w ith t hem .
This means t hat h e d esires to give up his self b ein g co nv inced t h at a transcenden tal
power w ill take the place of his self, which will h en ceforth gui<le and for m himself
and his life. T his self must apparently not h e understood as an illdividuality or
as a personal consciousness. No, tl1e self of which we arc sp eaking here sh ould
$ • )
-.
 1\1alhar , the sound-warn-Jo r-
mcllion attracting the rain,
"is g rey-haired, long-ea red,
taken to be a hermit and
wears a loin cloth and a
sacred garlancl".

bbetter
d he imagined
d' to be that
' inde e d 0 ften imperfectly
· functionin g mental switch-
oar coor mating y our feelings ' your w1.11 power, and your thinking.
·d . hNow . you proceed. another steP {'.orwar d an d get used to the foll owing
I ea. t e imperfectrnn of human life
feeling f . . ' our d at·1Y self -torture, the seemingly n ormal
o a sp 1it-up emptmess stems f h. . d. .
feeling d ')) s· TOffi t IS lil lStmct tuning of t hinking
'
you may d an Wt
. mce. yo u rep ace y our mnate self b y a higher valued force '
l ·
t hat confl·re t uce. hyour mnerIf tension a n d y ou w1·11 no longer wear yo urself out by'
ic wit yourse . you will make ]f bl f
top achievements l · . y ourse capa e o p sychosomatic
no two. cu mmatmg m a blissful experi en ce of unison where there is

This experience of unison thou h it

now-and this is th l' . ' g i:nay last but for a few minutes, will
. e pecu tan ty of the umo t. . .
consc10usness or y ou power of s h I mys ica- extmgmsh yo ur speech
start st ammering resort to pke.ec . . n other words: the respondents either
. , spea m g m not alwa . 11' 'bi
evasive answers, or they frank] d . h ys rnte ig1 e parables, give
· h' Y a mit t at they could n t 'bi
m t is respect. Starting from th . o poss1 y say anything
b 1 . e assumptrnn that veena I . .
e ongmg to the revealed obsc l. -p aym g is a tonal dialect
. ure ang uages and not th 1
JUst put t he form of its revelation asid. . e agreec on es, one ca nnot
and t . . c as something of no 1· l .
ry to gam a picture for oneselfb . or ttt c importance
t 'wn. I n t h'is way-like in t he ea· Y
f' arrangm g all the I 't
J I s an
d ·
pieces of infurma-
y se o tantrn' -one cl I
. et one may hope to draw an inference I ocs n ot rca ly get anv further
f h on tic n at ur f h . . .
come to know when they are in the state of meditation and receives the following
certainly incomplete replies:

l:f. In the first place one experiences a fading away or a shrinking of the
subjective feeling for time. He who is meditating is no longer able to tell
what time it is because the consciousness of time has left him or because
the pr o blem of time has simply moved to the m ar gin of perception an d
into the field of the unimportant.

The fading away of the feeling for t ime can b e a slow or a sudden process
and with it the t hree-dimensional perception apparently changes in the
way of an expansion. H ence, t he more the time consciou sn ess is approaching
zero the more the sensation of space is growing towards the infinite.

In t his way one now arrives at a non-perspective view and this means
in concrete: things which are situated at different distances from t he
viewer , foreground and background begin to move together and t o melt
int o one another. The optical perspectives disappear and a state of me dita-
tion is r eached when the environment presents itself to the eye as flat like
on a photograp h. This loss of t he third dimension can obviously be delib-
er ately pr oduced and that is why it occasionally serves as a n initial point
of medita tive departure.

The fourth a nd probably most impor ta nt characteris tic of m editat ion

is t he shaking off of the structures cat egorized as im portant or unimportant.
This implies a form of perceiving, like hearing and seeing, which no longer
works in a selective way and makes t he ear and the eye sense no more
only that which seems to be of importance on the background of one's
Jifo st or y and of one's personality structure. It is t he empty space between
t hings which b ecomes visible, dctailsnever observed before which grow
up to a level of equal value through the abolition of the structur al grid.
These are disengaged sounds and t ones which have never att ained t he
stage of perception in one's every day consciousness.

T he people practicing a revealed or revelat ory music naturally find t hem-

selves invariably confronted with t he question h ow to find an arcess t o meditat iYe
perception a nd h ow to k eep it open. Of course they must not lea,·e this to rhanre
or to momentary moods. Some use all sor ts of ri tual procedures-like bathin~,
defecat ion, puttin~ on fresh clothes-in order to solYe t his arress problem and
to shake off cYeryday percept ion and to find the way of transition into the world
beyo1ul time. At times t hey also resort to more radical mean::; of extinp:uishing
for one hour. When the wick burns the veena-player will settle down and play
a sequence of tones consisting of 10, 12, or 16 notes. This melody he then repeat s
without interruption. This procedure will he quite exerting. He will after ten or
twenty minutes recede into self-forgetting which will increase to the point of
tonal intoxication ending up in a loss of the ego with the accompany ing char-
acteristics described above. The dying down of the candle, for which it is needed,
will indicate to the musical mystic, meanwhile void of time and of his ego, the
end of the exercise and will save him from a state of trance which might be too
deep, menacing himself.
Such practice, which may make crumble an otherwise quite solid ego,
is only m eant as a preparation and as a means of loosening one's everyday con-
sciousness b efore the access. In other words, the veena-player makes an effort
to achieve the condition enabling him to play. Now y ou must again, and contra r y
to your habitual way of thinking, swop cause and effect and get u sed to the
idea that a sound-wave-formation played in the proper manner will bring the
listener, and that is foremo st the player, quite inevitably up to the stage of
meditative perceiving and invite him to cross the border. This is achieved mainly
through a special way of handling time and by an arhythmical construction
which is at the basis of all sound-wave-formations and which is in most instan ces
carefully observed by practicing veena-players. In simpler words one may say:
the sound-wave-formation always b egins arhythmically, i.e. the seque nces of
tones during this first phase a re floating in a timeless sphere. This form of tonal
presentation will sooner or later make the listener emerge from his linear, historical
time tied up with his own life. It is only then that the veena-player will give the
tonal sequences a rhythmical touch . H e now introduces a new and different
circular time, i.e. he makes the melody thread end up in a la r ge c ircle which
m ay he divided into twelve sections.
But this b endin g the time into a cycle is not so ea sy to achieve. The player
must keep counting in his mind, and this is a bad procedure since it disturb s
concentration. To regain easily the correct starting point of his time-cycle
he may possibly h elp himself by reciting a verse with twelve accentuations, e.g. :
'My Lord I recognise you in the mirror Of m y soul perceivin g that you hitve
one thousand names / my Lord .. .'. Or h e v isu alizes a twelve-syllable m antra-
chain in order t o endure the long rhythm and to end up once more corr ectly
at the 'one'. Once this t ime cycle is firml y est ablis hed, standing before the eyes
of the listener like a wheel wi th twelve s pokes, the player further b end s the
t ime and into a spiral, w hich may take hours, whose inner line will eventually
arrive at a focussed time without exp anse, h ence the m ystical timelessn ess.
To make it quite clear, veena-players <lo not always operat e w ith a t ime
cycle divided into twelve sections, hence with a geo metrical figure looking like
your wrist-watch. T he t ime circle may be div ided into seven , nine-and-a-half, 100 "
 ' I

.. . .l

\. .. ,, ..
i • • ...... ~

_it ••

'-.,... •' ~ l
)> . ...

:·!· ·.<
.· . ' ~ .. "" ~ .._...
..... · .. \

..... ...:.. -~

-~

,t
"

. p

\ ....

Sunday in Jaipur: Visitors

climbi 11g down the large Sam -
" 101 rat Yanira.
 ten, twelve, fourteen or sixteen beats . In short : one a nd the same sound-wave-
formation can be played in various rhythms though the timing once chosen
must be observed from beginning to end. A s a rule, however , the veena-players
divide the time b y twelve becau se there are certain magic qualities which go
with the figure twelve. It corresponds with the number of the signs of the zodiac.
The twelve and the twelve only may be divided by the sequence of the fig ures
one, two, three, and four. The total of the digits, 1 plus 2, m a k es three. This is
considered especially static, calm, round, and cosmically p a rabolical as opposed
to the dynamic a nd indivisible seven.
If the veena-player divides the time circle into seven sections for instance
then this will not ch ange the principle of b ending time. Being a listener you
mus t only get used to a different t ype of participating a nd to j oin in counting.
According to the Indian cu st om you u se your left hand for count ing (71) . In
doing so you move with yout thumb-tip over the three joints of yo ur fo re -finger
and ending up at the tip of your little finger you will have arrived a t the number
twelve, namely four fingers multiplied by three finp;er-joint s. This syst em of
counting, taken over from mantrics and useful fo r correctly reciting mantras, you
will alter in su ch a way as to count only up t o the firs t j oint of yo ur rin g-finger,
that is counting up to seven and restarting with number on e at the bottom of
your fore-finger.
Once again, what is meditation? How is one t o know that one is in a state
of meditation? Can meditation be sufficiently described by geometrical time
models like lines, circles, a nd spirals ? Some respondents are more in favour of
a different statement not m entioned so far. They say that the state of m editation
commences wh en t h e kundalini snake wakes up and rises within the body via
the chakras. What is meant hy that? The kundalini snake, a purely magic re ality,
you must imagine to b e like a real sn ake, sleeping coile d up three-and-a-half
times within your body and in the ring of your p elv is a t that. Though rea l this
snake is not a natural one but an energetic and transcendental snake w hich wakes
up whenever a sound-wave-formation is created, h ence when a vee11 a is correctl y
played. It then ri ses and, starting from your a nus cha/era, it slowly slides upwards
into your brains. All this is n ot only imaginary but can h e felt. In other words,
the lcundulini snake-does she only go up to the h eart chakra or higher ?-is
sup posed not merely to indicate the state of meditation but a lso its extent.
Perhaps the reader manages to accept this information without complaint .
Should you, however, h e unable to pu t up with this you could approach the
snake, it heing a subjective reali ty, b y goin g over a psychological emergency
bridge and just figure yo ur consciousness lo be a sevenfold entity or div ided into
seven parts. Thi s corresponds on the one side to findings of perceptio n psychology
to the effec t that man can grasp spontaneously only a form shaped out of seven
elements as t he maximum . Among these sevenfold entities are b esides many l 02
 other things the simple octave of seven st ep s or the sev~n white ke~s on ~he
·
piano. l\1rius1c
· eth noI og1s
· t s teach that apparently all people Ill the . world
. includmg
· h h
the Indians are horn ,\;th this sort of consciousness arranged I~ lin; wit t e
figure seven. How can one get released from this seven -room prison . H owl can(
one's consciousness be extend e d ?· Wh at is . m. b etween the s teps. of. d the
d sea if e o
rl '
tones and the keys of the piano ? H ow to fi n one s '\a . y to an und1Vl e ' un orm,
unimpaired conscious ness ? .
Maybe it is an answer t o say that the veena-pla) er is operating with a
. l Th . . a stru cture which in no way corresp onds to
twenty-two mtervals sea e. is is . . means of a no t
. sness If h e app 1ies 1u s
the sevenfold simple ever y d ay consciou · . h h di dible over-beats
con gruent scale adroitly-tlu.s is . mo stl y done wit ar. y au - h e will wear
. . · ar t octave 1nterva 1s
and under-beat s of the primitive seven-p< . lonu that they
· by his interferences so "'
down the partitions of the consciousness . . the view out to the
will eventually colla pse l1 e .k the walls of J encho, openmg b he~r d b e f ore,
things behind the things and maki - ng au d 1.blc what has never cen
the ton es b etween t h e tones. . . t onl)· t h e tones touched-
.
H 0 '\ I·s one to imagine all this? P erhaps it is no duced by the
h . I1 t 0 11es pro
· f of this notion-t at is t e tidents are
and much speak s m av our . . f the respo .
·
veena-pI ayer on its cor s.
d In this respect the opm10ns
d [
0
· t rument 8
rc audible.
h I the struck soun s o t 11 e m s of musical
div ided. Some. state ~ at onl ~ bein rr one of t h e unsolved probleu1s 1.)e of sensi-
oth 1
th.nk it poss1ble--t 11s b · capav
ers
. . k nds perceive · d b y the outer ear bcmg tO hear t he
1
m)'St1c1sm-t ie struc sou bi. the listener B I
. r car a nd thus ena mg dti ra iman
tizing simultaneously the urne I I nd of God Bra hma. Na l sen se is
. . h I , . da Bra iman, t 1e sou , ic°' '
'music wit out peop e . na ·1 . h al thou ah inaudible in t h e p 11) s ·1drcn. Also
(72) is the unstruck sound '\ u c ' bh t buffalos the chi . and the
. · 1 Padd)· fields, t e d wah er ' . 10 ~· ,
mnate to all thmgs, to tie 0
ld·na
1 b t his book I e streets of
1
ds the very ban s
t o stones and even your 1a n ' I b ·sscs of_...t_.1 ~~=;;m
grey streetcars rum bi mg . t liro uah
" the p oster strewn a )

To b,. fnir-rn111pll'xio11 NI is
cn11 .~ i d1• r,.tf lwnu tifu l. , o th l'
"fa i r-r·om plr•xi011 Nl" so u 11 tl-
11·r11"f'-fo r111nti011 Gou d i. tllC'
larly Of/ 1/,,. lr',ft sirlP of t/r p
pirt11rP. /111s plan•tl b1',forr• lr l'r
( i11,,1•r ?) 1•y1•s Nati and ,H a11-
111 11 tlw. t/11• p,od s of 1·11r,,al
d 1•s irl'. 11 fl oi11tiflg t/11•111 ll'itlr
wlrit P , a11t!alrrnnd 1111stP.

1 0:~
Calcutta. Nada Brahman, so it seems, is only p erceptible in a state of vision in
which all this, the paddy fields, water buffalos, and children-and this must be
understood quite literally-becomes illuminated from insid e, showin g it in the
soundless glamour of its transcendental creation .

19. The End

I n the course of r eading this book you have probabl y wondered many
times how the music here described and its reflective images match with present
day life. India is today one of the countries which enjoy an astonishingly free
press, a relatively stable curren cy, a n almost balanced trade-balance , and an
industry growing steadily from year to year. Certainly not a paradise every where,
the country is one of the world's best democracies . Can one still be a mantra seer
now, a magician, a rudra-veena-pla yer in India ? The tantra-cult, the s piritual
basis with its light-sound doctrine is evidently still blooming lavishly and un-
changed. As opposed to Hinduism it does not conflict with the political and
economic exigencies of a modern state provided tantra manifest s it self in suffi-
ciently abstract forms . Accordingly a n art w ith su ch a high d egree of abstraction
like veena-play ing has, theoretically speaking, a good chance of surv iv al.
Practically though, veena-playing has been v irtually extinct since t he
fifties. One can often hear people, including the respondents, say that veena-
playing had been too firmly and exclusively t ied up with the princely courts of
which ther e had been up to fivehundred on the territory of what is now India.
After the expropriation of the Maharajas and the independence of India in 1947
the veena-pl ayers had not fou nd t he way from aristocracy to d emocracy , hence
from the p alaces to the con cert-halls . The instruments which have remained
unaltered (73) for centuries are too faint in sound, the music is hardly pleasurable,
and its performers are conserv ative and superstitious . With all due respects to
government b y the people the down ward moveme nt of veena-pla ying is once
more confirming the thesis a ccording to which true culture could onl y flourish
under a feudal regime .
All t his may b e correct . In actual fa ct traditional veena-play ing to-day
is mainly threaten ed by electronics or b y the inability and lacking preparedness 104
 of the veena-players to get adapted to a technology alien to the system. Such an
adaptation would, indeed, be hard to imagine : electronics d isengage t h e veena-
music from time, fix it on tapes, cassettes, and records, thus changing it into
a nearly indefinitely durable staple commodity . The buyers can play off the
s ound-wave-formations as often as they wish and, worse still, at any time. This
means in general: at the wrong time, at the wrong constellation of the planets
and with the wrong consciousness. In t his way the veena-play er, who tries so
h ard to find the proper a stral moment and who is so car eful about purity and
consonance, is b eing d eprived of his basis. Put on the same level wit h P u ccini
or the R olling Stones he must even fear to create a cosmic ch aos b y the modern
omnipresence of his sound-wave-formations.
Here and t h er e they do console themselves with the idea that a music
transmitted by transistors and diodes is lacking the transcendental effect. In
other words, possible r ecords and tapes could not cause any cosmic disaster.
But no salv ation either. And this is the second problem: t h e veena-players u su ally
r efuse to play with contact microphones or electronic pick-ups such a s those
screwed or glued b y guitarist s to their instruments in order that their sound
may be made perceptible down to the farthest row of a concert-hall. They fre-
quently argue that amplification alone, not mentioning the dist ortion of the
tone through loudspeakers and reverb eration, destroys the s pecial mantric qualit y
of the sound produced b y the veena.
Leaving aside the question whether or not s acral music wit h t he charac-
teristics of an obscure la n guage should be pla yed in public, there r emains in
the third place the problem of limited time. The usual records and t apes only
contain 25 or 45 minutes of uninterrupt ed music and also Indian concert -goer s
a r e nowadays hardly willing to listen to the building up of a faint sound-wave-
formation which a ctually t ake s hours. One might argue that it is not really
essential to play in public and that one could have a go a t t he veena in t he frame-
work of d omestic music. T here are indeed some attempts in this direction. In
general this is wh ere it ends, too, since veena -pl aying demands tremendous effort
a frightfully long time of study ing, and above all t eache1 s who have b y n m;
almost completely died out.
Finally , the veena-players have fared badly in competition wit h the sitar-
players . The sitar- perhaps y ou hav e heard sitar m usic-is an I nd ianized and
originally Ara b long-necked lute which ca n b e played easily and v irtuosically
and with great euphony . The sitarist s like Pandit Ravi Shankar will also r efer
to t he musical tradition of sound-wave-formations, t hough they ha ve adapt ed
themselves 'wi thout any reserv ation' so that they mostly play in accordance
with m ass tast e, i.e. loudly, sweetly, for short times and often so fast t h at t hey
105 can no lon ger sh a pe the 22 micro-tones of the old-Inclia n scale, falling back in
104
consequence on the simple seven-intervals scale which , as yo u now know, narrows
consciousness.
The sitarist s, of which there are probably a hundred th ousands or more,
in addition spread t he rumour successfully that the vcena-players are unstead y
fellows with glowing eyes a kin to the d evil and capable of bringing evil to land
and cattle. The vccna-players for their part accuse the sitarists of hav ing degen-
erated the sound-wave-formations to artificial mus ic and to b ox-office hits with
their own hands. And they also have market ed India's musical honour in the
record market as well a s at hippie meetings in Europe and the United Staates.
This reproach h as also not remained without any effect. In order, to draw
level with the veena-players, at least optically, the sitarist s often screw a second
and acou stically superfluous pumpkin on the top of their instruments. This is
done at least for public concerts and in any case for tours abroad in order t o
decorat e themselves with the strange cosmic qualities of t he veena-players a nd
their ' music of the path'. Because the real and true Indian music-and this is
still valid from Bombay to Calcutta-is the shrill and quiet veena-music in search
for the dia log with the d em on .

I 0(1
 Sam rat· Yan ira in Jaipur.
Height: 27,36 m etres.

0(1
~--~-------'--------~~~-~

20. Instructions on the Cassette

When listening to the cassette attached to this book you should not open
the. vo~umc control of your recorder or of your stereo-set too much. Despite
their size the veenas produce relatively faint sounds filling only s mall rooms
of up to about an area of 20 square metres. Because of th e limited volume of the s
instruments it happens that during the reco.rding ambient noise finds its way
on to. the tapes. s.hould you theref~re hear a riks haw-man ring in the background
or children shoutmg or a car h ootmg then this will be no d elusion.
All recordings have been made under real conditions and · ·d
. . not m s1 c any
studio. T his means that the veena-player is sitting on the fI · .
. . oor 111 a 11tt1e room.
He 1s playm g alone or to the accompaniment of a tampura-p] d d
. a ycr an a rummer .
As a rule he 1s surrounded b y three to eight list eners beca · h .
use wit veena-pla y m g
one n eed s a kind of attendance or encouragement which is d b
. . . cxpresse y an oc-
ca s10nal swaym g of the head or by sighs of approval- less frc tl b
. . quen Y y acclama-
t10ns- on the part of the audience.
During the p erformance the atmosphere is norma lly ·t l l
qu1 c un 10 y. The
list eners like to chat on ce in a while unless one reques t s th em t k - .
. o ecp s11cnt with
rega rd to the recordin g. Eating a nd drinking a re not always rul d t Th l
. . e ou · e p ayers
occas1onally a lso smoke a cigarette while playing b y h aving 11 · h h .
. . . . a pu W i t t CIT
left hand while the right h a nd 1s contmuing to p lay and to k I d
. . . . ecp t 1c me 1o y
t~read alive. L1stenmg to veena music has nothing in common with that d ea thl y
silent st at e of emergency you would find in an Occidental concert-hall.
As you doubtlessly know the limited running period of cassettes a lone
does not permit the reproduction of a sound-wave-formation full-length. On
the cassette attach ed to this book you will therefore find four p arts w hich a re
meant to furnish you w ith a n impression as complete a s possible of the tona lities
and the techniques of playing.
 Side A

1. At first you will hear Raga Panclwmkosh played by Ustad Zia Mohiuddin
Dagar. P anchamkosh is among one of the unusu al sound-wave-formations which
arc rarely list ed in the appropriate h andbo oks. It is a var iation of the sound-wave-
formation Raga l\1alkosh. l\1alkosh is a tonal reflection of the warrior God Shiva
with a back ground of a nocturnal victory celebration: as a rule Malkosh is played
soon after midni ght. Assuming for better underst anding that the basic tone of
the veena is C then the scale '1ill be here C-E flat-F-A flat-B. It therefore consist s
of five tones. To this originally five-tone Ma lkosh formation Ustad Zia 1\Iohiuddin
h a d added a sixth tone, a G (= Pa or Pancham) and has thus ch a nged Mallwsh
into Pan chamkosh. The add ition of the comforting G (Pa) signifies last but not
least t h e postponement of the victor y celebrations or thanksgiving from the
night to the day because where the G (Pa) appears in a prominent position there
will be the sun . The recording was done late in the afternoon at Chcmbur, a
suburb of Bombay. Ustad Zia 1\Iohiuddin Dagar, accomp anied b y a tampura,
plays the n on-rhythmical opening (alap) and the followin g rhythmical p art (jod).
2. After the ver y rich Panchamkosh follows for t he las t seven minutes
s of the front side of t he tape the origin all y five-note sound-wave-fo rmation Raga
Mallwsh, played b y Pandit Asit Kumar Banerjee accompanied by a drum (pak-
haica;;). The pakhmcaz-pla yer is Pandit Rajib Locham Dey, professor of pakhmca;;
and tabla music at Calcutta un iversity. The recording was done at nighttimc at
Calcutta's Great Eastern Hotel.

Side B

3. \Vhcn you have turned the cassette around you hear Ustad Asad Ali
Kha n of Delhi, the representative of traditional 1''ee11a-playing performing the
sound-wave-formation Raga Marva. Marva as opposed to pa11chamkosh and
malkosh is a rather shrill signal which as for time belon gs t o t h e afternoon and
which expresses (or silences) expectant fear, namely fear of the night and the
darkness rushing in fast in t he tropics. T he scale contains six notes, C-C sharp·
E-F sharp- A-II . A nd these notes ma y not be p layed in a n arbitrary order, som e-
t hinrr that you find also with other sound-wave-for mations. A binding rule says
tha tothc basic n ote C for example mus t b e reached from higher up, e.g. in the
order of B -C sharp-C, and never in the order of B-C. Along with this go a number
of n ominal r ules fo r playing man•a, which arc scrupulously observed by Asad
Ali. T he disharm on y m a inly occurs because Asad Ali is playing the C sharp
very high-pitched following the rule according to which this C sharp ought to
sound like 'the cry of an elephant'. With a v iew to the running period of a cassette
the Ustad plays some minutes without rhythm (alap) then rhythmically (jod)
and finally 'fast' or 'advancingly' (jhala). All this is done more in the sen se of a
technical demonstration rather than with the intention of building up a sound-
wave-formation properly.
4. In the end you hear a section from the sound-wave-formation Raga
Todi which is not addressed to the (moving and destroying) Shiva but to the
preserving God Vishnu or his humanized incarnation, the sh epherd-god Kris hna.
According to the rule this signal should actually he play ed with the accent of
' happy adoration'. Pandit Asit Kumar Banerjee though, making u se of the
freedom of the master, is formulating todi in sometimes sombre and threatening
mantras which however end with a clearly audible and peaceful ' aum' or 'om' .
The sound-wave-formation todi consist s of six tones the way it is presented
here, namely C-D flat-E flat-F sharp-A flat-B, the basic tone is simply called
C here again. Actually todi is not a quite determined sound-wave-formation
but rather the name for a whole family of sound patterns dedicated to Vishnu
and his incarnations and distinguished from one another through variations of
the scale of tones. Thus there is also a seven-tone form (with G) or an asymmetrical
form the ascending scale of which has six (without G) and the descending one
h as seven t ones (with G). The tape was recorded in 1975 at Dhanbad, the centre
of Indian coal-mining, at about 1 o' clock p.m.

21. Notes
(1) Indian mus icians s ince millenniums make a
difference between "music of the p eople" (s angeet desh)
and "music of the path" (s angect marg) . l\lusic of t he
people only s er ves earthly pleasures wh er eas mu sic of t he
path is said to protect t he listener from un h appiness and
to guide him to las ting spiritua l happiness. This spiritual
h a ppiness may b es t b e d escribed as a change or a r enewal
of the lis t ener's person ality enabling him to ach ieve an
auspicious rebirth and to prevent h im from b eing reborn
as a worm in a clog's b e lly .
(2) Ju Indian m y thology Rudra is the fighting
a s pect of Lord Shiva. T h e wor<l R u dra literall y means
howler, b eca use Rudra , as we arc t old, once ad opt ed the
appearance of a weeping chi ld. The word veena (vi11a,
..· bina been bin ban ba11a) possibly d erives fro m the
anci~nt E~ypt '1a 11g t;agc (sec Farmc·r, H.G:: "~Iusic of
J\ncicn t Egypt", N ew Oxford His tory of l\Ins1c, \ olum c 1,
A n cicnt an d Oricn ta\ Mu sic, p. 271, London 1957) ·
Farmer m e nti ons two t ypes of th e harp with similar
1"IB!r1es (bin -t, bin , ben, ben-t) . Ilut an equal word (ba~a)
is a lso fou nd in th r anricn t I ndian languages (sec Knsh -
na s wam i, Vidvan S . : "Hrscarch o n l\lus ical lns lrum r nts
of In dia " in Journa l of thr Mus ic Aradt'm y. p . 100,
l\Iadras J 962). T lwrr is som e cvid1·ncl' that thl' word
veerrn originall y m l'an t a whole fa m ily of pluck1•d string
instrumrnts <"nmp risin g at ll'aSt twrnty diffl'rcnt types.
At aho11t 200 B. C. t h e word vee11 a was us1·d to d en ot e a
b ow h arp which is no morl' in 11s1• today (sl'e \ Vi1•rs111a-t c
Nijl'nhu is, E. : "Dattilam", p. 75, L ridrn 1970). ln the
following t ime-since about 600 A.D.-the wor d veena
often but not a lways mean t the instrument called Rudra
Veena toda y . The prefix Ru dra seem s to b e of relatively
recent origin. It only appears in books p rinted in the
l 9th century or later. At pr esen t the p r efix Rudra is
u sed t o dis tin guish the Northern Indian stick zither
Rudra Vee na from a ver y popular (and ver y different )
South Indian lute mainly called Sarasi:ati Veena.
(3) The probably old est picture of a vccna-player
was fou nd in the Ajanta caves (Union State l\Iaha -
rash t r a). This r ather faidcd painting sh ows a musician
with the instrumen t pl ace d on his left sh oulder as it is
common practice among reena-playcrs u ntil t od ay.
(4) In a broader sense the l\Ioghul per iod started
about 1300 A.D. with the perman ent occupation of
Northern In dia by I slamic invadors coming fr om T rans-
oxania, whi rh is t h r country " beyond the Oxus river ",
actua lly Sou th ern Russia. In a narrow sense the l\loghul
period began in 1486 A.D . .and en ded in 1707 with the
official implementation of t h e British rule in India. The
miniature painters of t h e l\Ioghul period frrqucn tly
paintt·cl m ale a n d, p oss ibly C\'1' n more oft en, frma lc
i1ee11a players, hut r ar ely in the r ole of profess ional
music ians. Ther e is a good ch ance that the t•cena only
serves a s an iconographic attribute denom ina ting the
noble d escent of the depicted p ers ons.
(5) Sarasvati , ori g inally a river god dess, is con-
s idered nowad ays a s a fe m ale incarnation of Lord Bra h m a,
the cr eator. A s we arc told Sarasva ti firstly was t h e
wife of the life p r eserving L ord Vishn u . But Sarasvati
was s o quarrelsom e that Vishnu could not stand h er
anym orc an d gave h er away to Brahma (sec I on s,
Vrronica: " Indisch c l\Iythologic", Mun ich 1967). Saras-
va ti is t h e protector of scirncc, wisd om and music. She
is often a ccompanied h y a p r a cock and a swan a nd sh e
h olds a reena in h er hands.
(6) A min iature of this k ind i;; r<'proclurcd on
page 4.. It shows the us ual mistak!'s: T h i' fe m all' 1·1•e11n
playrr has thl' ins trument placed on the wr ong ~houltlrr.
The d amsl'l, rrpres!'nting the souml- wav!'-><ignal R aga
Todi , also h olds h r r instrument in a way, th at it r o11l1l
not hi' p lay1•d b1"1·ausc t h e t uhr rest;; 1111 hl'r ;;ho11l1ll'r
and not thl' upprr gourd. T lw hridg1•, lwaring thl' :< t ring;;,
is p ain Lt'd in a wron g po,; it ion. l n ro11s(•11n1·11<·1· t lw n• - is
 some r eason to a ssume, that the unknown painter has
never seen a veena -player from close (see also Wald-
schmidt, Ernst and Rose Leonore: " Musikinspirierte
1\Iinia turen", Volum e 1, p. 82, Wiesbaden 1966).
(7) Bharata is the name of a legendary music-
saint never clearly identified b y historians. The book
ascribed to him, entitle d ,c Natyashastra", is possibly
writte n b y several authors (see Gosh , Manomahan : " The
Natyashas tra", Calcutta 1961). Bhara ta's work, written
in Sanskrit, stems from the time b etween 200 B.C. and
200 A.C. Besides many other things it explains for the
first time the basic musical t h eor y still in use t oday.
(8) One of these h eartbreaking tales can be found
in Sufi Inayat Khan's book " Music" (p. 36, N ew D elhi
1973). The Sufi writes: "A great Indi an poe t sa ng in
Sans krit the praise of the v ina. 'That ins trument of gut
s trings! By looking at it, b y touching it, h y h earing it,
y ou can b e made free, ev<'n if you kill a Brahm in!' And
to kill a Brahmin is consider ed to b e the great est of all
sins. This instrument was invente d by the Lord of
Yogis, Shiva, wh ose nam e is a lso l\lahadeva. H e ga ve to
the world hi s lifelong exp<'ricn ces in the practice of Yoga
and is wor shippe d in India a s a godhead . His scriptures
arc cons ide re d to Le holy. H e was a gr eat mast er of
br<"nthing and asc1· ti c; he lived in the mountains, where
he sa t and l1r!'ath ed the free a ir of th e wid e horizo ns of
the East and praeti sf'd Mantras, w ords and phrases which
ch a nge th e whole bein g of man. Thl'n lw wanted to make
so me in strum f'n t t o be used for higher exaltation through
music. In t h e for est h e cut a piece of hamhoo. H e made
gut s trin gs from animals and these h(' tied t o th e instru-
men t; in t his wa y h e m ad e l1is firs t v ina, and he practised
011 it in the solitude . It is told, that wlwn the clcrr in the
forest heard him p lay tlwy u sed t o i;a y, ' l\lakc the s trin gs
of m y own vc i11s, and put thf'm on your v ina, but a s
long a s I live, continue to play' " .
(9) A lso n on-Indian authors tend to 1l1·scrihe the
Rudru Vr.ena using som1·timrs <'Xagg1·ratt·cl words. Tlw
G1·rman mu i; icologist Curt Sa<"h s fr1·ls that tlw t 'l 'l'llrt " is
11 ot 1·xc1•llf'd b y any ot hf'T no 11-onid1·11tal s trin g i11 s tr11-
mP11t". B1·eauHt· of its diffic ult pla y ing tf' <"h11i1p11· the
vcl'IW " is a11 1·xclu siv1· solo i11s tru1111•11L n •se·r vl'll Lo thC' top
musidans" (Sachs, Curt : " Die Musiki11str111111·11tf' J11di1·n s
und Jndon<'s i1·ns", JI· 99, flr·rlin 1923). A Briti~h arm y
J 12 offic<'r, Captai n N. A ugm;tus Wi ll ard , thinki:; th at the
veena "is the instrument of great es t c apacity and power,
and a r eally supe ri or veena in the h an ds of an expert
performer is little inferior to a fine -to ne d pia no" (see
Tagore, Sourindro Mohan : " Hindu l\Iusie from Various
Authors' ', p. 99, Benares 1875, reprinte d Calcutta 1965).
(10) The mos t common wa y of condu cting opin-
ion re search is questio nin g a r epresentative sample of
2000 p eople. That way a social r esearcher can find out,
which political party p eople would vo te , if ther e were
elections next s unda y , or how many of them believe in
life after d eath. This m ethod , naturally, onl y leads to
u seful results whe n the s ubjec t of the study touches a
whole population. But when a social res!'a reh e r lo oks for
s pecial information like the futur e de velopmen t of
Marxis m, the actual situation in the field of oec anology
or the cons umption of ethical drugs, he would not
question a represe ntative sample hut mayhc a d ozen
e xperts in oecanology, l\Iarxis m or pharmacology. In this
ease a lso the inter v iews would not go for 15 minutes but
possibly sev eral h ours and the in terview er docs not use
a st a ndardised ques tiona ire hut a tape rf' cordcr. The
tap es then are care fully evaluate d phrase b y phrase.
This tim e cons uming t c<'hnique docs n ot produce a
hroad and flat picture like the samp lin g nlC' thod but a
sm a ll a nd ver y sharp photogra phy of the subject stud ied .
This h ook is hased on an exp ert questionin g . .The in-
t erviewed p1·r son s have n ot bee n _rE~ In .some C<~ses
they were rc m11ne ratC'd b y s malfl>rrs e·nts hk<' musical
strings or b y the simple fa c t tha t the qu1·stionnC'd p erson s,
through the intl'rv iew, h ave llf'cOmC' a equaintrd with
the thoughts and a c tivities of other cxp<'rts include d in
this s tud y.
(11} Dhrupad is an an eif'nt s t y lr of h y urni c chant,
som<'what similar to thr Cn·goria n eh a11t in E urop e. It
is th<' vocal e11uiva lt·nt o f t·ec11a music, wherc·as t·ee110
music is the· ins trum1·ntal equival e nt o f JJhrupad sin gi ng.
( l 2) The wor1l Gliarana mC'au s "school" or " tra-
dition". The Charn1w s play1·d an i111porta nt rol1· in
Indian mui:.il'al h ii-tory . Th <')' oft1·11 de·v1·lo11l' <l unde·r tlw
prote•c tion of lo<'al pri11 e1·ly co urts. Tlw founder s nor-
mall y wrn: 11111sic-saints tra 11 s111itt in g th!'ir knowlNige
to a g rowin g or diminii- hin g nurnlu·r of tli ,;eiplrs. This
k11owl1·dg1· C'On F.is te·d p artl y of philosophi cal <'Ogniti ons
anrl par t ly of i<11e ·cial play in g te·chnirpu·s F. 01111· of thP111
kq1t a s a srcre·t unt il toda y . Oft1·11 the· Gharn11a s haY1·
produced musical style s of their own. They frequently
u sed to blackmail and to fight each other a lso in the
literal se nse of the word. One of the mos t influential of
these socie ties was the S eni Gharana, whose members
con sider l\I y an Tansen a s their spiritual ances tor. T a nsen
was a music ian at the court of Akbar the Great (1542 to
1605). So m e Gharanas s till exist at the present time but
they have los t their influe nce as ther e are no more
wealthy princes to sponsor them in modern d emocratic
India .
(13) The idea of the circle-shaped tim e, on e of
the fundam e ntals of Vccna -playing, frequently appears
in this book. Therefore, it is explained h ere in detail:
Time can b e imagined in different ways. These different
notions of tim e can b est b e made visible b y confronting
the m w ith the influence they exer cise on work and
<lea th res p ectively: a) A linear, histori cal and s treteh-
likc n o tio n of tim e, a s it forms tltiuking and ac ting in
Am eri ca and Europe, implies the idea of the uniqueness
and- there fore -preciousness of a n indiv idual life. This
again creates a ll kinds of " now-or-never " philosophies.
Wher ecver s uch thoughts arc cre dited , the idea of r e-
birth is tabooed . This b ecomes evide nt, when one visits
occide nta l graveyards. The tombs, a t leas t the older
ones, a rc covered with ver y heavy stones t o prevent
the d ead p eople to com e out again and to wander aro~ nd
a s g hos t s. b) Where the notion of the circle-shaped t ime
is valid- this is mainl y in Asia- r!'hirth is consider ed a
principle of natur<' . Due to the non-uniqu<'ncss of events
a nd thin gs, hirth and dea th rate lower in valu e a11d the
fear of d C'a th see ms r cducC'd . The Au s tra li a11 Ministry
of H C'alth rl' ccntlv refusC'd to lC' t India n physicians to
se ttl e in A u tra lia: Though physicians <ire badly wanting
in t h C' C'O untrv , thC' Aus tralian gouvrrnm <'nl ft It, that
Tndi a 11 d oc-tor~ h ave "another" viC'w of thC'ir pa tients
a nd tha t th1·v arc not willing t o defr nd li fe ~gaiu.~t
<l!'alh at a nv. pri f'<', a s it is <'X)lC'CtC'cl from occidental
d o1·tors. c} ~\ poi11t-sh a pcd , unstrC'td1C'cl time, to be
und r r stood as a purl' JHC'SC11«1', is thC' privil<'g<' of the
m y ti c. Lift. in tlw p oint-sh ap ed timC', in th<' bliss of
awan• 11C"i:;s, is on ly a llow<'rl within socit' ti es acl 111itting
li<'gg;1ry and lu·rn; itag<', a nd whosC' m PrnlH'rS arC' w illing
to frf'd a11d t o tolf'rat<' a rPr tain p rr<'l'll tag1• of persons
1111a hlP or 1111willi11g to w ork. Thr prohl1·m of hirth a ml
1kath , na tural h ·, d o<'s not ar isl' or it is co11sidl'red a s
OVl' r1·01111·. - 1;h1·sf' diffrreut n otions of tim r mu s t no t
ne·1·f'ssarily rl'gard1·d a s stablC' or irriYl'rsihlC'. Thr y are-
in v oluntaril y or Yol1111t arily-dian g<'a hlt• pe·rc<'ptions of
life or ways of awaren ess, who, if a p erson does not want
to b e e:i-q1clled from society, must b e adapted to the
specific situation or th e demands of others: A linear
notion of time generally favours results and economic
wealth. If it goes for r elaxation a nd the ability to suffer
a circlc~2.f!Red notion of t ime is re quired, but it docs
not necessarily lead to wealth. The point-shaped notion
of tim e is sa id to enlargen the awareness, but it easily
leads to personal isola ti on a nd financial poverty . The
different time qualities described here are also reflected
in music. In a society with a linear time con cept music
tends be linear, comprising a marked beginning, a
predictable length and, again, a marked end, like a
classic occidental symphoni c concert. The circle-shaped
time is reflect ed in Indian music, wher e no dietinet
start, length and end is known. In the point shap ed
time, h aving no ex tension, music cannot exis t a s long
it is unders tood as a sequen ce of struck sounds.
(14) T o some ext ent the substan~l thinking is,
a t the same tim e, the origin a nd the r esult of a r ebirth
theor y. This widespread b elief, which , by the wa y, is
not officiall y linked to Hinduism , includes the idea ,
that ever y event, every dee d and omission, add up to
the subs tance of an indiYid ual b eing and cannot b e
pardonned or lost in any other way (sec Glascnapp,
H elmuth vo n: "Entwieklungsstufen des indisch en D en-
kcns", Koni gsberg 1940) . The conception of the word
substance sh ould be taken literally h er e : Follo";ng a
popular belief in India also the personal history of a
human b ein g is cre mated aud determines the composition
of the upgoing s moke of th e fire. Guided by tllC' quality
of the smoke the gods then decide, h ow and where a
person may be reborn, either a s a Br ahmin , which is
eonsidC'red tl1 e best, or as a worm in a eo,,-'s gut. Cr !'ma-
tion, thC'r<'fore, is not just a qu<'s tion of taste or of
hygien ics but a- not always fulfill<'d- preeondition of
r l'hirth : A cr C'uiation last s four to six h ours. depending
fr om the weight of the body . The necessary wood (nor-
m ally ~langoo} so meti1111'S costs m ore money than t h <'
V<'ry poor fa milit•s r an afford. On t lw othC'r hand Y<'ry
rid1 Indian fa111ili1•s eri· mate t h C'ir expired rl'latin·s
using Sandal wood l<l imprO\"(' t lw raising smok1·. 1'ht'
iclf'a of ac cunn1lati11 g (pos iti , ·1· or ne·gatin•) suh ;;tanee
durin g a l ifrti nw i,; not rt•strir·tc-1! to human llt'i ngs hu t.
to a rf'rtaiu Pxtent. also to ohj ('rt;;. :'.\l u ~ il·ian s 11ft1•11
a ssu111 C' for e·xa111pk. t han an ah• ays eon1•t·t ly play1•d
an d cart·fulh· maiut ai1wd l~udrn l "l'c>na al,;o 1·11rid1t•,;
itst•lf with l ;li~,:;ful suhs t a 111"t'. For that rc·a"on rn111t· of lH
 them want to b e cremated t ogether with their instru-
m ents.
(15) The Sitar-player Arvind P arikh, Bombay,
once h as explained at the occasion of one of his r ecitals
in Ossiach, Austria, in what r espect s the modal Indian
music differs fr om the occidental music: a) In India
the musician n ever ch a nges the tonic, whereas in oc-
cidental music the ton ic is frequen tly chan ged. b) Modal
music, a t least in its traditional form , is always unani-
m ou s, w hereas occidental music normally is concerted.
c) Indian musicians can and must improvise in a certain
frame, whereas occidental musicians can only interpret
a given music. d) Modal music str esses the colour and
r efin em ent of each note, wher eas occidental musicians
co ncentrate on harmony. As a fifth differ en ce Pandit
Arvind Parikh m entions the relatively long and com-
plica t ed rhythm s commonly used in Indian music but
wanting in occidental music.
(16) The idea b ehind mouth-t o-mouth-deliver y
is, that the m edium , the Guru, r em ains an important
p art of the message. The other side of the coin is, that
precio us knowledge, on ce acquire d , should stay v endible
again and agai n a nd tha t it sh ould not lose its value b y
m ech a ni cal multipli cation. In India, a nd ther e we com e
to a third point of view, 7 1 percent of the population ar c
illiterates (sec: "India 1976-a R efrrc nce Book, p age 53,
New D elhi ] 976) whatever thi s migh t m ean in a country
whP.r e severa l writings ar e in use. As illiteracy seem s
to h e widcspreacl in any case, the access t o knowledge
cannot an d sh ould not dep c ncl from literacy and h ooks
a lone.
(l 7) The Gurus nowadays oper a ting in India,
Europe a nd the U nitr d St a t es oftc•n derive, if at all,
their authority an d legitimation from their own p ast or
biography. Na mely in the fi eld of mu sic Gum ship is
oft Pn founde d on a hnrditary basis: Man y Gums r ely
on a long an d unbroken family tra diti on , which oftc n-
mayhe too often-begins with Tanscn. Mian Tansen
(1531- 1589) plays a role in India n music co mparahle to
Johann S<'hastian Bach in the occidPnt. Tansen, orig-
inally a Hindu, co nv<'rtc·d latrr to the I slam with th e
rrsult, t hat today Hindu - as well as Islam ic teach er s
can declare Mian Tanscn as t h eir a n c1·stor. Oth er Gu.ms
wou ld nPvcr s peak about their past lifr in ord er to avoi d
114 the ticklish prolilrrn of lt>gitimation. T h e Indian j our-
nalist Kushwan t Singh tells u s in his book entitle d
"India without Humb1:1g" (B ombay 1977) , tha t some
Gurus, known to him, try to solve the problem of legiti-
mation by the assertion, that they have b een working
as sh epherds and thus -in the solitude of nature-have
exp erienced a n encounter with the div ine. Still another
form of legitimation, so Kushwant Sing h m e ntions, is
the asserti on m a intaine d b y witnesses or the Gurus
them selves, that their urine and their excrement s do
not stink a ny more, which, following popular b elief, is
considered as a sig n of purifi cation and divin e elec tion.
(18) D eliver y prescribes, that the true Guru
should not t a k e an y money as a r emune ration. H e
s~ould only a llow his disciple to make him present s
like clothes, food or the like. This old h a bit certainly h as
m a de sense, as long as the Guru s h ave live d in a feuda l
syst cn:i, economicall y protect ed by a local prince. Since
the withdrawal of the British in 1947 and , a s a r esult,
the expropria ti on of the Indi a n princes thi s tradition
~s slowl y collapsing. If they do n ot enjoy a r egular
~ncome a s university t eachers, t h e Gurus a r c now paid
1
~ ~Oney, values in kind an d a ll sorts of servi ces by the
d1sc1plc. The monetar y fee is normally not linked to a
fi xC'd hou rly wage, but it mainly d epends fr o m the
fi.n ancial cap acity of the di sciple's family , so th at the
r~cher ones p ay more an d the poor s tud ents less. For-
e'.gncr s stud ying music in India a lways arc c onsidered
rich. They arc ex pect e d to p ay a m onthly con trib u tion
~f about 200 India n Rupees (60 Swiss Fra n cs, 28 US-S)
111
cash , tha t way supporting one or sever a l Ind ian
students. Disciples from a broad arc ge nerally fri endly
welcomed , as t h ey a rc known as sys tematic and cager
workers. Nevertheless foreign stud ents sh ould not b e
t oo cager and worry th e Guru b y askin g too many why-
qu e~ti o ns. Asking why-ques tions again an d again is
a?a m st Indian hab it s an d for ces the average C unt to
give often meaningless a n swer s as : " It is so b ecause my
O\.vn Guru h as t old m e so", or: " Just try it m y yo ung
fn cn~, a nd you w ill find the a nswer yourself". The
~ucs t1on of the Guru's tran scr ndc nta l wisdom excelling
JUSt trchnical skill cannot be a nswer ed in a gen<'ra lising
way ..'~here C<'r tain ly arc a number of G11r11 s carefull y
explo1tmg the yearning for piet y of fo r e ign stud<'nts,
name~y Americans. But th ere arc also m astf'r s deserving
the h1gh rst n~spcct as spiritual lrader s.
(19) The go uv rrumC'ntal mus ic sch ools, called
S angcet N 11t11k A lrademies, ex ist in a lmost a ll Union

States of India. One of their main goa ls is "to mainta in
forms of art , whi ch e lse would slowly disappear due to
socia l ch ange" (see D c va, B.C.: "Music Akademics rn
Indi a" in "Sangec t Kala Vihar", Volume I , No. 1,
Baroda, January 26, 1970).
(20) Also optimist s do n ot expect a renaissance
of the tradition al Indian music in the near future.
Mean while, so some Indians do h ope, foreign experts
could possibly help t o conserve and to prot ect it, as
lon g as the actual difficulties of the country will last.
F oreigner s, this should possibly b e explained, h ave,
a lso in the past, execu te d a peculia r fun ction as catal-
ysat ors and preser vers: a) T h e British , in the first
inst a nce onl y in te rested in profitable cotton, salpctrc,
jute and t ea business, b ecam e a ware of the culture of
the ir n e w subject s o nly about the end of the 18th ce ntury.
The a rticles and b ooks, since that tim e written partly
by army officer s and partly by East India men, ar:
r epr inted , r ead and quote d by India n authors until
t oday. b) The India n population , actuall y not .v~ry
fond of its own cultur a l past , is, n evertheless, w1llmg
to take an in t erest in classical Indian music, as long as
the musicia n s a r c praised in foreign cou!1~rics. The
Sitar playe r Ravi Shank ar for example, on ? mal.ly n ot
very known in India, was r ecognised ~Iso m h1~ own
country only a ft er his en orm ous su ccess 111 the occ1dc nt.
c) As the exchange r ate of the India n Rupee was low
dow n for many years, ther e is, cvC'n now, a c~ns tant
scllout of Indian mu sic: T h e b es t t eachers have e migra ted
to California the b est an d most cxpensiYe instruments
arc now fou :id in l\Iunich an d New York City and the
largest choice of records is offer ed in Amstcrdam.- In-
d ian intellec tu a ls, and a lso som<' of the respon~c nts,
expressed th eir concern about t his ambivalent r ?lc of
the for<' ig n<'rs in India n mu sic. The foreigners, so it was
h canl , h ave corru pted Indian musicia ns .and Imlian
music. They h ave firs t exploited th<' cconom1c rc~sou.rcc,~
of the c ountry a nd try now a "cultura l colo111sat10n
by st ealing India's ar t and philosophy.
(21) Calcut t a has bC'en found <'d around 1600 .b y
British m erchants. Un t il 1911 Calcutta was the C~ fHt~I
of "llritish India". Tlwrc for<', th<' history of, t h e c'.~Y ;s
exac tly doc um<'n tc d ( 1·r l\loorhousr, Geofl rcy.: ~a -
cu tta", New Yor k 1971). L ooking at the lustoncal
sources one' feels, that the' s trangr a nd ach·cnturous
conditions of Iifr in Calcutta do not only result from the'
presence' of t h e Ilritish , but a lso fro m the fi rC'-sp itting
J
habits of the Bengali population: Due t o the unrest
and inobcdience of Calcutta's inhabitants, King George V.
decided to move the British gouvernment from Calcutta
t o D elhi, to avoid further trouble.
(22) In the narrow sen se of the word Tantra is
the science of the Nlantra (obscured language), which is
described later in this book (see Bharati, Agchananda:
"The T a ntric Tradition", London 1965). In a broader
sense Tantra means a ll kinds of Indian sorcer y. Tantrism
is divided in two main wings, differing considerably in
contents and style: The Tibeto-Buddhist Tantra , actu-
ally represented only b y T ibet an refugees living in India
and some American and European sect s, a nd the Hindu-
Tantra , which seems to be spread a ll oYcr India \\;th a
certa in conce ntration in Bengal. The Hindu-Tantra is
a lso influenced by the Sufis, which is a sect , whose mystic
t eachings h ave been brought to India by the l\Iuslim
invadors.
(23) In daily life one can obser ve some d ifferent
degrees of vegetarianism. Firstly, there arc veget arians
ea ting chicken and fish but refusing to cat cattle. Sec-
ondl y, ther e a rc t he so-called "cggctari ans", people
r efusing also fish and chicke n but still accepting eggs.
Thirdly, there arc the orthodox vege t arians refusing
n ot only eggs, bu t a lso potatoes, carrots a nd the like
b ecause, b y pulling them out of the soil, an an t or a
worm could h ave b een killed .
(24) Ncvcrtlwlcss there a rc some sources in-
dicating a certain rela tion h ctween Tantric Vce na playing
aud Tantric sexual practicrs. In the "Kamasutram" fo r
c•xainplr, the Indian t each book of lovemaking, ther e is
a n instruc tion on h ow a man of fashion sh ould furnish
his b edroom: " His room (wr arc told) sh ould contain
a pleasant and soft b ed with a pure white coYerlct, a
decorated canopy, and two pillows, one at t he foot
aud t h e other at the h ead . The room should a lso h aYc
a diYan, at the h ead of which perfu mes, unguents,
flowers, and pots of collyrium sh ould b e ke pt on a little
table. On the floor nearby sh ould be placed a cus pidor,
to receive the rrd expectora tion caused h~· brtcl chewing,
and a ch est for ornaments and cloth es. On the wall
should h a ng a Vce11a" (sec Basham, A.L.: " The \Vonder
t h at was India" p age 207. Calrntta 1975).
(25) Following anoth er opinion exprcssrd hy one'
of the rrsp ondents t h e 1'ee11a wa$ n•srrYcd to tlw Brah- 115
 mins-thc highest cas te in the socio-religious syst e m
of Hinduism . But no proof was given in so far. However
it is certain, that mos t of the professional veena players
were Muslims, at leas t in the 19th century. In his up
to now unpublish ed book e ntitled "Die Kun stmusik
Nordindiens im 19. Jahrhundcrt" Manfred M. Junius
mentions only Muslims (to b e recognised by their names)
as preservers of the veena tradition: " The Vina'', Junius
writes, " is considered the mos t distinguished ins trument
in Hindos tani music. The shape and the sound of the
Vina differs from the South Indian instrument also
called Vina. The North Indian Vina is a s tick zither
with two resonating gourds. It has four m elod y strings
and three drone strings. The Vina is the ancestor of two
other musical ins truments, the Sitar and the Surbah ar,
which have preserved two importa nt charact eristics of
the Vina: Firs tly a sp ecial type of bridge made of iv ory
or horn , whose s urfa ce is ground in a parabolic curve in
the direction of the strings thus producing a sound
enrich e d with overtones. The second similarity within
t he famil y of th e Vina ins truments a rc the frets made
of st eel, on which the s tring can b e laterally pulled
away: By incrca siug the t en sion of the s trings the
notes rise glissando-like or the freque ncy slows down
when the player loose ns the t ension of the s tring again.
These gliding notes, called l\Iind, have a douhlc fun ction.
They lin k the notes with each other. And they arc used
for several kind s o f m elodi c decoration ser v ing as an
important means of mu sical expression . The North
Indian Vina produces a noble sound of great sensibility
corrr spondin g to the tas t e of an e duca te d and aris to-
cratic society. The ins trum ent never became as popular
a s the Sitar or the Sarod. For that it was too demanding.
This is not only truP for its playin g tcchni<1uc hut also
for its mu sical s t yle, whi ch is V<'ry close t o the (vocal)
Dhrupad s t y le. During the 19th century the instrum ent
is mainl y found in the hands of profession a l musicia11s,
who f'agrrl y co11 r 1·alrd t lll'ir srcrcts. Tiu: mos t important
play 1•r s in th1· ] 9. ce n t ury wrr1· Ban d e A li Khan (1830 to
1890) an <l hi s di ~r iplr ;\Tu rad Khan ; Umrao Khan, the
in v1•n tor of tlw S urba har ; lmrat Khan of J a ipur (mid
19th 1·1·11tury); A m ir K ha11 of H a111pur (1·x pircd 1870);
Sacli11 Ali Kha n , th1· court mu sicia n of of awab Ilamid
Ali Khan. Jn our 1·1·ut11ry th1· trnditiou i,: uphrld li y
Sadirr Ali Kliau of Hampur ( IWJ3- J 961) and hi s sou
/\sad /\Ii Khan; Da hir K hau (1905- 1971) a11d Zia
Moh iudJi11 Dagar. Tiii' Vi11a pla yr·rs alw ays k1·p t C'los1•
to d1•li v1·ry. ~ I ri v iu~ lo <l1·fr11<l tlwir pn·1·iou s i11lwritan1•p
agai11st t lw Sitar. \\ hid1 agn •s,..i\'t · l ~ ,.. tart1·d to 1·0111pPL1•
I J(, t 111' Vina in ll11· I 9 t Ii 1·1·nt11n"'.
(26) India n wom en so m e tim es live under un-
favourable conditions. As ever ywh er e in the world a bout
one percent more women arc born than m en in India.
Yet the s tatis tical yearbooks s h ow a so metimes con·
siderablc lack of women. The li fe ex pec tancy of new-
born male babies wa s 47.1 years in 1976, whereas female
babies had to expe ct o nly 45.6 years.
(27) This book is not writte n for s pecialis t s. It,
therefore , avoids Sanskrit and Hindi t e rm s as for as
possible . This is es pecia ll y true for word s like " raga"
or "shruti", which arc re placed h y "sound-wave- for-
mation" and " mi cr o tone" or simila r words.
(28) These differen ces in lifes t y le be twee n (Euro-
p ean) protestants a nd catholi cs have b een car efully
r esear ch ed mainl y b y Schmidtchcn, Gerhard: " Pro-
t estantcn und Katholikc n" , B er n 1973.
(29) In b ooks on the his tory of India the authors
so me times point out, that the (not v ery puritanical)
Tantrisrn must he unders tood a s a normal rea ction to
the fo rego ing Buddhis t pl'riod and its auster e hahits
including a h os tile attitud e agains t w o men.- Iludclhis m
was almos t complc t C'ly eradi ca t ed b y thr l\Iuslims in-
vading Indi a in lhe llth and 12 th ce ntury . But r ece ntl y
the number of Buddhis t s is in cr eas ing again, namel y
beca use Hindus, h clonging to the lowest class of the
so-calle d " untoll chahlcs", try t o evade lhcir social fate
liy c onverting to Buddhism. The per ce ntage of Hindus
- a ctually 82 p erce nt of the Indian p o pulation- is
meanwhile slightly dim i11ishiug.
(30) Tl11· idl·a, tha t sounds ca11 produce pictures
in the mind of tlt1· lis teuPr, or , that pictures also ca11
evo ke sounds in th1· !wa d uf the onlooker , is not n·scn·C' d
t o Tantrism . Las t hut not )pas t it kl'e p s today's pro·
du ccr s of r l1·etro11ic outl1·ts bu s y: At th<' occasion of
th e " H ifi \V ork shop D 11 45.500',.in Ham burg, s ponsor1·d
li y the Na tio nal P a n as onic 1·ompa11y (J 11111· 1977 ), Hans
P c t1·r RrinPekc from tht' Cnman " l11s titut fiir M11i> ik-
forsch1111g", B1•rliu , pointl'd out : "Tiu· faet is, that ,
i>i11 c1• 111ille 11i11111s, tlu· huma11 s1·11sr s lutYC' <ll'vt·lopl'd a
co mpl1·m1·11tary way of fun c tioniu g. O ptical stimuli for
1·xa mplc C'an g uid1· tlw acous ti c s1•nsori11m aud vice•
Vl' rsa . .. On1• s h o11lcl l11·ar in 111in d, thnt tlwi>1· ~ c·ni>oria l
sys tl'rn s lwlong tog1·tlwr, a nd 0111• 1·a1111ot rt·a,:onably
~c·111 ·r atP thrtn from 1·:11'h o th1•r. Tt i ~, lh1•r1·fon-, i111porta11t
to nolr, that lltf' i,.;ofatiun nf tlw a1·0 11 ,:li1· C' ha nn1·l as tlw
sole organ to p er ceive sounds is the r esult of a n out-
mode d 19th century philosophy : The false isolation
of the acoustic chann el came in fashion exac tly at the
tim e, when th e class ic scienti st s have put the differ ent
problem s in differe nt drawer s: The se nse of tou ch was
now m ec hanics, h earing b ecam e acou stics, seeing changed
to optics and so on".
(31) The Yantra quality of the Rudra Vecn a is
not ju s t a r <'sult of ch ance or of gurssing. Abu! Faz!, a
16th cen tury author, \\Tiles with r eferen ce to the con-
stru ction of the vccna: "Th e Yantra is formed out
of th <' h oll ow neck of wood , a yard in length, at each
end of whi ch are a ttached the h alves of two gomds.
Above the n eck are sixteen fre t s, over which arc s trung
five s t eel wires fast ened sccur<'h · at both ends. The
low a nd the hi gl: notes and th eir v~riations arc produced
b y the dis posi tion of the fret s" (sec D cva, B.C. : "i\1usical
I nstruments", p. 92, New D elhi 1977). T he Yantra of
the cosmi c so und drmn is also call<'d Damaru Ya11tra .
The cos mic so und drum produ ces a double field. of
e nergy, symbolised b y the d ouble souud rnrrgy Imes
(sec l\Ioo kc rj t>c, Ajit " Tantra Kuns t", p. 74, Ilas<'l 1967).
(32) A d !'tailc <l outlin e of thC' Indian theory of
accordance has L1·c n givl'n In · Tiuc lius, Hans : "Tala -
mana- l\lctrologic und Prop~ rti onslrhrc dcr Tndcr"
(article puhlis hrd in " Drr Y<'rmrsscnc i\1l' nseh - Anthro-
po1nrtri.r 111 · K un st 1111cI "'' " 1' ssrn scI 111 ft" , Vrrh" • c Hans'.
l\Toos. l\l1111ic h , undated). Hurlius writes, that the ch oicl'
of the 1111•a s11ring s ystem d1•1H·nd s for exam pie from tl~r
qua I1ty. of tlw mcas · urrrI t I1111g.
· ] f 1· t is
· 11."l'd
. . for. 1111bl1c
purposes one va rdi> tick is <'mploycd, ancl if it i s mad <'
fo r p r r ,:onal II ~<', another yard tick is tak1·11. Thr itl'l~I S
<1Ptcrm1111"c
. 1 f or persona I 11 s 1• " an• 1IJ ("lSllr('d • bY • 11111ts
. famih· of r r dwoods. "T<'ak" in the contrary is a gc ur ric
dcrivccl from measurrs of lhC' r lfrnts hod y". S ur h un its
ran h C' won a) hy cliYidiug th<' leng th of his hod~> h) hy
tli v idin g tlw le n gth of hi s nlna, r) h y 11J('as1mng ~he
mitldl1• li11l' of th1· middl<' fin ger am! d ) hy m<'as ur~ng
thl' il' n g th of tlu· rlil'nt 's hand s pan" . thr latt<'r hl· mg
th1· co111111011 nH·as u rr· for t !11· C'ons trnr tion of a 1'1'1''.ta.
I 11 tlwor\' th1·r C' is n othing t o ohjl'l' l agains t this llll'asurmg
11wthu1l .in o rdr r to dt'tl'rllli111• till' clis ta111·1· h..tW<'l' ll llw
two g1111r cls, a lon g a s thl' pla~·1· r-cli<'nt's holly is ll.llr·
mall y pr11portio111'd. Bul wlwn tl11· rlicnt is tl~it'k . h a\' ing
s m a ll ha11cl s at thl' sauw t inH', th<' 1111 ·a~11nng sys ti·m .
hasl'd 0 11 thl· hand-s pau, n a turally ro·su)t,.; in too ~ mall
a dis ta11e1• lw t\H't' n th go urd;;: Tl11· i11"tr11m1·11t '11.ll he
too 11arrow. Jn s uch t'ai'•'" of 11011-accnrcla111·1· of the
real and the ideal measure (thickness of the bocly versus
double h and-s pan) the instrument-maker will not be
confused. He will then feel, that this accordance or
non-accordance indicates his client's predisposition for
veena playing. In sh ort: Only well proportioned p eople
should play this ins trument.
(33) In hi s book " i\Iusic of Hindostan" (p. 9,
L ondon 1914) A.H. F ox Stra ngways ' nites, that the
price of a ree11a, " the oldes t a nd most distinguished"
musical instrument, was about t en p ounds sterling. That
wav one can assunw, tha t t"eenas, also at that time,
wc;c not chC'ap. "The many t ens more that may be
sp ent on it are lavish ed, though not was ted , upon its
ornamcntatio11". The i ·ee11as of that period were partly
r mb r llis h!'d b y paintings and p artly h y sih-er or iYory
decorations, but rarely carYCd in relief, as it is the habit
todaY.
(34) T he actually (1980) m ost famous i·eena
makers arc Muhammad Aziz in l\liraj (l\laharashtra)
a nd Ka11a ilal & Brothl'r, 377 A, Upp<'r Chitpu.r Roacl ,
Calcutta 7 (\Vest Bengal). The Miraj 1·1'e11as follow the
old tradition , hC'in g rclati YC!y light (5 to 6 kg) with an
open sound. T he Bengal l'l'e11as, in the contrary, arr
rather hr avY (7 t o 11 kg) with a som <'what closl'd so und.
The constr~c ti o n of a rl'ena takrs at h· as t six m ouths
and, as a rule , On<' year.
(35) Th<' tuhr-sh aped wood , l'Sp<•cially in its
natural form of r<'cd and bamboo, has a high significan ce
and symholi c p ower in Sufism (s<'r ali>o note 70) .
(36) T oon wood ( toona si1w 1sis) belongs t o the
trrm .COYl'ring diffl'rrut woods : lnclian instrument ma kt•rs
prl'frr eith<'r Burmah-Trak ( tectorta gra11dis) or " lla!'tard
Teak" (pterorarpus mars11pi11m), the latter bring lwttc•r
than its u gly 11a11u•. Vee11as madr of Toon-wood art'
light in w<'ight, produce a dir<'<'t anti ph·asing, sometimes
too swt't't a sound, hut, due to t h l' softnrss of the fi hrl',
i·eertas ma d t' of Toon an· not , ·rry r1•!'is tant. lni>trnml'Uts
madL· of Tea k 1•asi h- r!':<i:<t a l::o 1>tr1•::sing dimatir ro11-
ditio11 s but tl1<'y r~st pretty hP aYil~· on the playa',;
should1•r. Their sound is neutra l anti ::111111'" hat h1·::-itating.
(37) Floating i11 till' walt'r, a !'1•ction of a \\tH•d1·11
11-;-
truuk always turns th at ::itll' upright. \\h ich ha~ gro" II
 in the warmth of the wind shadow and, ther efore, h as
slightly broader annual rmgs. For that reason the
sp ecific weight (Toon: 0,55, T eak: 0,66) 1s slightly
r educed at that s id e of the trunk and makes it "face the
sun". The conclusion is, that the instrum ent makers
just select the most unstable portion of the wood (the
one with t h e broadest a nnua l rings) and this again
lead s to t h e a ssumption , that this strange kind of quality
control is, in r eality, a ritual aiming at some thing else.
(38) Besid es this m e thod- hollowing out a s quared
timber b y boring- th ere is still another way of prod ucing
a wooden tube for a ·veena: The ins trum ent maker saws
the timber longitudinally, thus producing two h alves. H e
then carves a groove of a semicircular diam et er into
each of the halves, glues them t ogether again and avoids
the time-cons uming and ris k y bus iness of <lrilling. T h e
glu ed seem s mus t not b e v isible, b ecause instrum ent
maker may cover the o uts id e of the tube with vcrneer
to s tiffen the tube and m ak e it more r csis tcnt against
climatic influences : In Calcutta, due to the swamps
surrounding the city, the humidity of the air can rapidly
ch ange from 30 t o 90 p er ce nt, so that a woo den t ube, if
not completely seasoned , may easily split or warp. The
hollowed g ourds arc firs t soak e d with water to soften the
material. Thereaft er the instrum e nt maker fi xes th e
now softene d go urds into their w oo d en sockets b y t he
help of g lue and bamboo na ils . When drie d aga in the
gourds arc scr ewe d t o the wooden t ub e b y m eans of
brass threads a nd thumb scr ews, s o that the player,
when travelling for cxamplr, can always dis a sse mbl e
the ins trum en t into three pieces by r eaching through
the so und holes of the gourds and l oose nin g the thumb
screws aga in .
(39) As the table shows, the proportions o f thr
Rudra Veena have not ch anged very much, at leas t n ot
during the past 100 years. \Vith !'Orne n ·s1· rvat ions one
ca n say, that the overall leng th of th e tubes is a little
prolonged t oda y an d t hat modern ins trnuwnts often
arc h eavier , due to the fr eq ue nt u se of T eak wood. The
ins trum e nt no. 1 hdo n gs to a Germ a n player; the reen as
no. 2-5 be long t o a priYatc coll ection in Ita ly . No. 6
is cx pos l'il in t h <' museum of th<' Sa ngeet N atale A lcademi,
New Delhi, a ud the instruments 11 0 . 7- 9 hd o ng t o a
collection owned b y Mr. Shantilal G uj ar, Ilo mba y .
('1·0) In ~ t<' a d of crocod ile hl'ads t h l' r e an• so m r -
time s a lso ra rvc d Lot us b losso m s or, i n~t1·a d of a c arvin~,

Main data from nine Rudra Vecnas (cm)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
tub e : len gth over all 161 144 163 IM 152 151 140 126 140
t uh c: uppe r p ortion 48 44 49 4-8 37 45 34 32 41
tube: lower portion 15 8 15 18 18 7 6 6 7
tub e: bore 98 92 99 98 97 99 100 88 92
tube: outs ide diameter 5,4 4,7 5,4 5,4 5,5 5,5 5,7 4,6 5,4.
number of frets 24 19 24 23 24 22 20 22 21
wi dth of frets 8,2 7,1 7,6 7,6 7,7 6,4. 7,0 6,7 6,7
wood T eak Toon T eak Teak Teak ? Bamboo ? Toon
h cigl1 t of gourds 32 33 36 28 33 37 31 34 37
gou rds: cir cumferen ce 128 122 129 127 137 127 129 120 136
go urd s : di am e t er sound hol!~s 11,5 11,0 10,0 9,0 13,0 9,0 B,O 8,0 11 ,0
g ourds : dis ta1H:1• of Sol'k1· ts 73 67 73 71 74 70 73 69 73
materia l of b r id ge s tag horn ivory clcph. l1011c c lr ph . hone s tag hor n horn ivory 1v orv ivor y
ton ic a h a flat a flat g ? a flat ? ?
d1!coration grapl'S painted gr ap1·s grapes rOSf'S ll Oll C ivor y leav1·s leaves
y ear of cons tructio11 1976 1930 1975 1973 1962 ? 1910 ? 1880

118

r---~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--.-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
j ust a r in g mad e o f silver or some sort of n ickel a ll oy
t o prevent the tube fro m splitting.
(41) To fasten the fre t s with fish ing line was
regarded a s a morally d oubtfu l hab it hy some r espond-
ents. They considered this a very practical idea, a s the
v.cena p layer can s hift the fre ts togcth <'r with the fis hing
Itnc, norm a ll y a simple n ylon wir e. But they also fe lt,
that t hi s k ind of fastening the frets is r a ther close to
the habit of l ow-b orn musicians playin g impure ins tru-
tn!' nts and fixin g the fret s w it h eat gut. Just to avoid
sus pi cion , the fr e t s s hould be glued with wax mixed
with t extile a s h t o h ard en it. Then the frets can be
mo ve d on ly b y h eati ng the wax a gain. But this dis-
advantage, s o we a r c t old, is a p rice, a thou gh t ful player
mus t pa y.
(42) The Indian musical scales were and still
arc a ve r y popular theme of philosophical and mathc -
ma t ica I sp eculati on. Jus t t o ou tlin e s ome points of the
riddle the nowa d ays official I ndian scale (called "Sa-
grama") b e presente d h er e. F ollowing a commonly
sh a r ed opinion, this scale is divi ded in 22 mierotoncs:
c h oltz, H erm ann von : "Sensat ions of Tone", London
Do
Re D
Sa
Ri l
J
4 m ier otoncs
Mi E Ga }3 m ierotoncs
Fa F Ma }2 m ier ot oncs
So G Pa }4 rnicrotoncs
Dha }
4 microtoncs
La A
Si H Ni }3 microtoncs
Do c Sa }2 microtoncs
22 m icr otoncs
Starti ng n ow from t h e (un certain) assumption, tha t
thcsf! mi cr oto n!'s b e equal int<'r vals, the step from D o
to He (4 microton cs) would be larger than the step
from He t o i\'li, compris in g only t hr<'!' mi croto ncs. Ilut
thi s agai n Sl'rms t o b e impossihl!' as, following a notlwr
wid <'sprr ad t cal'hin g, the Tndia n srall' consists of 12
h alfton cs '"qua] in s ize and won hY mathematiral divi-
sion . And this agai n do1•s seem to h e Ycry u nlikely
a s 22 (tlw numlH'r of mirrot0111's within ~n ortavr}
-------.
ca n not he divided through 12 without painfully splitting
one or several microtoncs. But also the mentioned divi -
sion t hrough 12 is no real d ogma in an intellect ually
rich country like India: N.A. Ja irazbhoy ("The Rags of
North Ind ia n Music", p . 21, London 1971) for example
refers to a vcen a player dividing the octave through 14,
though h is instrument had only 12 frets per oct ave.
T h e p layer, when q uestioned , explained that , unhap -
pily, there is not enough space on t he t ub e of his vccna
to place 14 fret s per octaYe hut, nevertheless, t he octave
h as to be di·vidrd through 14. Apart from this official
scale ( Sagrama) there is an un official one called .M agrama,
starting from Fa = F = Ma. The diffe ren ce between
Sag rama and NT agrama consist s of a sh ift of only one
mi er otone from one interval t o the other and is pr ac-
tically inaudible. A third scale, starting from l\Ii ( = E =
Ga) is still mentioned in books, hut it is obsolete and
its in tnvals seem to be forgotten (sec Jones, Sir \l:' illiam:
"On the Musical Scales of the Hindoos", Calcutta 1784).
For the sake of riddle lovers and t he friends of speculation
the whole problem he d emonstrated her e in the form of
a graph. T he graph shows three possible divisions of
the octave: The firs t column demonstrates a purely
mathematical division follow ing Helmholtz (sec H elm-
1875). Helmholtz, a widely interest ed physician, has
based his calcula t ions on t he idea, that simple mathe-
matical proportions, like 2/ 3 or 1 / 2 , res ul t in an op timal
sensation of harmony . The intcn·als of t he H elmholtz-
scale, a lso callr d " natural scale", evidently arc unequal
in size. This H elmh oltz-scale produces a somewhat
st ra nge but pure music, as long as the musician uses
C as his tonic. But a s soon as he ch anges the t onic from
C to a n other note t he music will a dopt a so-called " l\lou-
staffa-sound" and the bea ut y of t he H elm h oltz-scale
will b e lost, b ecau se its underlying harm ony only develops
when t h e toni c is C. The second colu mn shows the
proportions of the so-called te mper ed scale u sed in
occiden tal music. T h e intervals here arc m ore or less
equalised . This rrgularity a llows th e wrst crn musician
t o r h a ngc the key arhitrarilv. EYcry note can serve as
th!' tonic and no "Monstaff~-so und'; will spoil the }lCr-
formancc. Yet whe n playing the t em pered scale tlw
m usician must put up with a gcrn•ral loss of hannonv
caused hy th!' str<'tehi11g a nd pn•ssing of t he interval~.
T he third rolumn on the right side sh ows the Indian
Sagram a -sralr and its 22 mierotoncs (assum in g that the
micro tones h e of equ a l s izl' ). If t lwsc m ierot ones arc
projected to· t h l' s1·vcn wh ole notes of th<' tr mprred
 (43) The figure 34-.848 can b e un d er stood onl y
whe n the reader r eali ses t h a t Asian sca les-in so far
c differ ent fr om occidr nt al onrs-can h r asY mnirtri cal.
12 22
12 There arc scales, whose a scc n<li11g in terYa );; . diffl'r from
h 21
t h e de sce nding interYals in numb er. Sonw scale;;, for
11 11 20 cxamp_l c, h ave seven notr s whr n play1·d way -up, hu t
19 on ly six or five wh r n played d ownward s. This lrad s u s
10 10
a 18 t o t he fo llowing sp rculativc calculation:
9 17
9 upwards d ow11wa r<l s poss il1'1·
16

g
8

7 - 8

7
15
14
13
12
11
7
7
7
6
7
6
5
7
nu mber
1
6
15
6
6 6 6 6 36
10
f 6 5 90
s 9
5 5 7 15
8
e 5 6 90
4 7 5 5 225
4
6
3 484
3 s
d - 4
2 2 W h en thl' numh r r of poss ihle \"ariations (484) is mu lti-
3 pli ed with 72, whi ch is th e 1111mbr·r of basic scal1's, o ne
1 2 co nws to 3'1-.8tJ.8 possi bit• !'011nd-,,·a v1· -forr11a tio ns. T his
1
1
c rather simple calcu lation is Lasrd 0 11 t h e a ss11111ption.
t h at t h rrc arr not mor e t h an seven and not lr ss th an
Helmholtz Tempered Indian fi ve notes in o nr sca lr. If one takrs, a1ld it io11all)·, i11to
con sider ation , t h a t Indian scaks arc not llf' Cl'Ssa r ih-
" stra ight" hut runnin g a lso zi gza g, t hl'r r possiblr nmn lH:r
scale (the wh ite keys on the p ian o) one a chi eves a fairly is once m ore i nr rea sl'd. S uch a z igzag-scale is s hown o n
useful scale w ith a rath<"r hightc nc d D and A . W h en the graph. It portrays the sca l1• of the sound-wa vl'-
proj ecting t h e 22 rn icroton cs to the 12 h alftonrs of the formation "Darbari Ka 11ada", wh ich go('s upward s in a
tc mpcr r d sca le (white and b lack keys on thr p iano) o ne ;;trai gh t linr, hut downward s in a zigzag fo rm. \ Vlwn
will never come to a res ult, if not h y s tretchin g, com- including also thr z igzag-sca ll's i11Lo the ca lc ul at ion thr
pressing or omitting somP. m icrotoncs. With a little poss ihlc num lll'r of so nn d-wa v•· -form atio ns wo uld rt'ach
be n evolen ce h owcvrr the 22 mi crotoncs of th<" Ind ian a lJOut a billion. Ilu t tlwrc is s till anoth <"r wa y of cl1·fining
scalt' (column 3) can ht~ proj rctrd to the H elrnholtz- the possilil1· numlirr of scalt- s and so 1111d-wav<"-for m a tio11.
scal c (column 1), es pecially when adding the T his is t h <· so-ca1lc·1l milk-111aid-1"alcu latio11 , Px pla ining
prohlt>matic al 17. mi crotonc to tlll' A-H inter val thus us, that tilt'rC' arl' 011ly 16. JOB poss il 1l1· Sl'al1•s. Tilt' rea so n
re ducing the 1·xc1·ss i'v c C-A intr r v a l t.o a rras~nahlc is, that t ilt' lilut"-co lou rt·d Lore! Kri:<lrna is sai1l to h av.·
size. T h e outlirwd projPction of th<" In d ian sea l<" t o t he sedu cPtl 16.108 m ilk-maids . Earh of tlH'Sl" girls, so the
H1•lmho lt z-scalP a lso s1·1·ms ju;;t ifi1·d hy tlw fa ct , that story g0t·s, h a s s un g a diffl'r!'nt sound w av1· s ig n a l t o
Vlll' nUS (and man y oth1•r f ndi a n instn1m1·nts) arf' a lways h f' r h1·avP11ly lovPr (scf' Danirlou, A. : "Th e Haga-s of
p lay 1·d wit h t h 1· sa nw to11ir . E s1wr ia ll y v1•1·na-playcr s Nortlwrn Indian Music", p . 92, L o ndo n ] 968).
n<' ver ch ange tlw kPy th1·y ha v1· on er a doptr d a nd t hP y
c an also stick to it as t h<" y mus t not ea n · for otlu·r instru - (44) Sonn<l-wavP- form a tion s mus t fulfiJI a num-
m1·11ts: Th1·y a lways play al01w an d nt'Vt'r in a 11 ord1<"stra. b er of formal r ondition s, m ai nl y: a) T hP y must h e
 definition implies the a coustic training and the personal
capacity of the lis tener ,. a m icrotonc is n o absolute hut
a relative m easure.
Sa
• c

ni
~
• •
(46) Veena players were somet imes app ointe d as
court musicia ns. Or they filed an appli cation to become
court musicians. In the latter case they often h ad t o

dba
I
• l\ Aa
pass an examination. The same (or other ?) players
evidently cr ossed the country wor k ing a s freelancer s,
h ea ling h ere, d oiug sorcery there and occasionally p layina
at temple festivities. They evide ntly were well paycd~
r.
I
• • • c
A.H. Fox Stran gway ("l\Iusic of Hindostan", p . 180,
L ondon 1914) reports on a balance sh eet of a t emple

Ha
I
•
\ • •
cer em ony, whi ch h as b een celebrated in 1051 A.C. The
fees of the st aff m embers wer e defined in "shares" and
th ese shares were payable in paddy. A drum mer, so we

I l\
learn, has received one sh are, a flute p layer 1.5 sh ar es,
a solo vocalist able to sing in Sanskrit 1. 5 s hares, h ut the
veena p layer has cashed 1.75 shares, only excelled b y
&a • the treasurer of t he cer emony (2.0 sh ares) a nd the

Hi
I
• •
female super visor (2.0 shares), who h ad to t a ke care of
the 400 da n cing girls (ca shing 1.0 sh are each). A par asol

I bearer h as receive d o nly 0.4 shares and a lamp lighter

0.5 shares.

(47) Indian comm unists, wh en discuss ing m usic,

Scale of the sound-wa ve· format ion Raga Darbari Ka-
nada: Straight in ascent and running zig-zag when de-
scending.
p l a ye d following a precisely fixed scale within the 22
s teppe d Indian octave. The sca le can con sist of five,
six or seve n notes. b) With in the g iven scale there is
a lwa ys one dominant n ote a nd a second d ominant note,
T h ese two notes mus t b e a cce ntuated b y the p layer in
order to s tress the difference from oth er sound-wavc-
format ions fo llow ing possibly the same but scale having
diffr r r nt m a in note s. c) A sound-wave -formations con-
t a ins onr or srveral basic mrlodics \vhich arc const a ntly
rrp<"atrcl a ncl vari C'd . These b asic mrlodies are not
s trictly pr<'crihed . The y can ch an ge a b it du<' to the
pla yt·r s m r ditativc insight or t h e musical tra dition he
adhcr s t o . Th<"S<' importa nt co ndi tions art' romp ll'tcd
h y a long r ang<' of sm a ll prescrip tions, which , as a whole,
sh apr the unmistakable chara cte r of the sig nal.
(45) Thr official d efini t ion says, that a microtonc
(shruti) is t h e s m a llrst still aud ib lr int erval. As t his
like t o str ess, t hat i·eena playing and t he old magic
music in gener al is jus t one more t echnique to suppress
and to exploit t he peasants' and workers' class. As this
m usic is no folk music the instruments a nd its plavcr s
so one learns, may b est be st ored away in a hist o.r icai
museum of the class confl icts.
(48) One of these pla ces for fo r me ditat ion or
invocat ion can h e srcn on p age 44. It is called " Disa
Cakra" a nd it is p ar t of the J a nter-l\Ia ntcr (astrological
ccnt er) in the city of Jaipur (sec also note 58). l\IC'asuring
30.4 metres the d iam eter s run from East to \\"est and
from South t o or th. The pictu re is tak r n at <'Xactly,
12 o'clock noon. Therefort', t h r sh ad ow of thl' bov
s tandin g in th e ce ntr r , points t o t h e North.
(49) Thr idra, that women arc not t'Yc n allowC'd
to touch a 1•eena, probably rrsults from t h t' widesprrad
assum pt io n, that only men , due to t heir bett er in carna-
t ion, can m ed iate b etween IH'avcn a nd t"arth. A S<"cond
n ·rsion say s, t h at this r umor only S<'rvcs as a market
e xclusion °str at rgy to rr du ce rompc t ion. FoJlowing a 12 1
 third version, husbands, by this menace, used to frighten
their wives to prevent them from banging against the
instruments when dusting around, that way spoiling or·
mistuning them.
(50) In general the chakra (or cakra-) rule is
undisputed. But the respondents expressed differing
opinions concerning details as for example, how many
chakras may be located in the human body, if the knot
of power placed directly below the brain pan is a real
chakra or not, and, whether the dividing lines are running
b e tween the chakras or through the chakras, which
would lead to differe nt mathematical proportions.
Danielou writes : "Appropriate knowl edge about the
shape, the pos ition, the colour and the e ffect (of the
chakras) was, until now, only obtained by the practis ing
Yogi" (Danielou, Alain: "Yoga - The Method of R e -
integration", p . 140, London, 4. edition 1973).
(51) There is no generally accepted rule of tuning
a veena. The intervals may differ from instrument to
instrument of from player to playe r respectively. Assum-
ing that the tonic (Do, Indian Sa) be a lways the note A
(220 H ertz) one can find the following tunes:
drones m elody drone
(right) s trings (left)
common (mod ern) a II a' d' a e H a
common (classical) a II a' d' a c A a
r ar e (Sou th India n ?) a " a' d' a d A a
hi storical a II a' d' a e' cis' a s hortened whe n s winging downward s and slightly .lcilothe
The tune d escribe d as "histori<'al" h er e is m entioned in
a letter written by Francis Fawkc in 1790 ("The Vina or
Indian Lyre" , r e printccl by Tagor<', Sourindro Mohun
(e clitor): " Hindu Mus ic", volum e J, Benares 1875).
(52) Indi a n music docs not always s ound plea sant
h<'cause the roun<lnl'SS of the ins trum,·nt's liridge is
w rongly ground. The s trings then produce only muffl" d
s ounds. This, at the firs t sight, unirnporla nt dl'tail of
grinding a lirid gr <'Orrl'!'tl y, h ai; lil' <'011111 a prohl,~11~ in
Jndia's contrmporary mus ir : At onr hand th<' m11 s1c1ans
Lhcms,·lves an· not areu s loml'il Lo t1 S(' a fi l,• a nd sand-
pap1·r, and , on thi> oth1·r, thl' 1111111lwr of cra fts m C'11
n,all y mast,·ring lhr art of " j111rnri" h as dimini slwd .
J 22 " ./awari", this is t1111 art of gr inding a lirirlg .. , litf·rall y
2
cbl'.ljcal
m eans "to give life" to the instrument. The ~bofl'.las :
procedure has bee n full y d escribe d (l\far co tt)'• j\'[aJlfred
" Djovari: Giving Life to the Sitar" in JunitfS, iqlJe",
M.: "The Sitar - The ins trument and its T eehO lJtJine
p. 84, Wilhclms haven 1974). Therefore, a short Zahar) ,
may s uffice here : The bridge of a veena (sitar, sur ):itc of
which carries the four main s trings, is a little P ivory
about the size of a matchbox, con s is ting of bone, t first
or s tag-horn. To achieve a p erfec t jawari one 1'.J1us cf11 Ily
flatten the surfa ce of the bridge and then .car )most
round it jus t a little bit. The problem is, that this ad or
invisible roundness mu st be e ither c ircle-share sion
parabolic, depending from the diamete r and th~ te~ceh­
of the res pective s tring, a s w ell as frorn the pla Y111 g the
niqu e of the mus1c1an . The id ea b ehind is, tb~t the
vibrations of the s tring must r ea ch the brid~e ;~uhtlY
smallest p ossible anglP. In this case the s tring is 5 0 .,t)i-
cnc d when swinging upwards, that w ay producing ·c
silvery overtones di stingui shing fin e Indian s tring n:1 115 1s'
.
The 1awan . proce d ure 1s
. a ver y t1m. i> con sum111g
. Lus1nes
· •
r equiring a lot of ex pe rie n ce and patience .
(53) Today s ome player s use plectra on the index
finger and lhe middle finger and (to s trikr the dron~
s trings ) s ometimes a lso a plectrum on the fifth fing<'T 0 l
the right hand. The plectra today arc mad e of s t<':
wire . In the pas t a lso plectra made of ft shuo1H' wnc 111
usr. Playing with plectra favours a clear aud !'Veil to•.1ch
of Llw s trings. But pl ayl'rs us ing n o plectra e mpha size,
that lhe plertra can produce a clic king b y-nois r, ~tul
that a clear tou ch can al s o b e aehiew·<i b y c1nployrng
ju s t lhe ba r<' fin grr tip s of thP right hand ins t<'ad . .'Th<'
play,·r dips thl' fin grr tips of the le-ft hand in a little
m<' tal I.ox llll1·d with oi l-><oaked c otton from tim<' to
time, to make the fingertips slippery. The oil allows
sound-wave-formation season daytime
fas ter play ing and , as a by-effect, protect s the s trings
against ru s t.
1. Bhairava Raga autumn before sunrise
2. Bhairavi Ragini autumn late night
(54.) Though age-old, the technique of vecna- 3. Nat Ragini summer late afternoon
playing is not v er y standardised. There are not less than 4. Malashri Ragini winter late afternoon
four r ecognised playing-pos itions: a) Sitting with the 5. Patamanjari Ragini spring early morning
legs crossed on the floor, the upp er gourd of the instru- 6. Lalita Ragini all season s before sunris e
m ent p os itioned on the le ft shoulder. This posture is
co ns idered usual. b) Sitting on the heels as it is the 7 . Malkosh Raga winter midnight
habit in J a pan. This kneeling pos ition , alco called 8. Gauri Ragini winter early afternoon
" l\Ioghul-pos ition" s t em s from the ancient I slamic 9. Khambhavati Ragini ? night
courts, where everybody had to kneel down in the 10. Malavi Ragini ? ?
presen ce of the ruler. c) Sitting on the floor with the legs ll . Ramakali Ragini ? morning
12. Gunakali Ragini winter /autumn sunset
crossed supporting the upper gourd on the left knee-not
shouldering the instrument. This pos ition comes close 13. Hindola Raga spring, rainy s. morning
to the wa y of playing the Sharasvati-Vccna, a large 14. Vilaval Ragini ? morning
lute, not a s tick zither, pla yed in the South of the country. 15. Todi Ragini winter noon
d) Standing, the instrument s houldered . This pos ture- 16. D eshakhya Ragini spring early morning
oftc n portra yed in Indian art- is unusual today. It 17. G andhari Ragini ? early morning
possibly was common, whe n vcenas s till were played in 18. Madhumadhavi Ragini spring early morning
t e mples or, to put it more correctly, standing in front of
a t emple . A vcena can a lso easil y b e played when th e 19. Dipak Raga summer after sunse t
mus icians s its on a chair- not ovc rs tre tching the sinews 20. Dhanasri Ragini a utumn afternoon
of th e legs. This is a n advantage for foreigners unac- 21. Vasanta Ragini spring morning
cu s tomed to s it on th e floor. 22. Kanada Ragini ? late evening
23. Baradi Ragini autumn afternoon
24. Dcshvarati Ragini autumn evening
(55) The timing of the sound-wave-sign als, d e-
25. Mcglia Raga rainy seaso n night
scrib ed her e, is firstl y m entioned around 900 A.C. in a
26. Gujari Ragini rainy sea son after sunrise
hook ascribed to a legendary music-saint named "Narada"
27. Gormalhar Ragini wiutcr before sunrise
(sec Ka11fman11, Waltrr: "The Ragas of North India",
28. Kakhuba Ragini ";nt cr sunrise
p. 14, Calcutta 1968). Earli er authors like Bharata and
29. Vibhas a Rag iui winter before sunrise
Dattilam , both about 200 A.C., do not ye t m ention the
30. Bangal Ragini autumn late afternoon
time -theor y . The following lis t (taken from Dallapiccola,
Anna a nd I sacco, Enri co: "Ragamala'', p. 8, Paris 31. Shri Raga autumn/winter late afternoon
1977) indi cates the daytimes and the seasons r ela ted 32. Paurhama Ragini summ <'r afternoon
to 36 diffcrC'nt sound-wave-s ignals. The daytimes m cu- 33. Kamocli Ragini sununer noon
tion cd h er e ar<', with som e variations, s till rcsp<' ct cd , 34. Seta l\Ialar Ragini rainy season ?
wher e a s the seasons h ave m a inl y fallen into oblivion. 35. Asavari Rag ini winter noon
In this table the s ound-wave-signals are listed cor- 36. K eclara Ragini autumn/winter night
r esponding to the "ancie nt sys tem". The ancient syst em
div ides th<' sound-wave-signa ls in to s ix groups or families,
rach pr<'sided by a male king or d eity (Bhairava, l\falkosh This anri<'nt s ys tem of grouping the s ound-wave-signals
e t.). Tll<'SC s ix fathers (Ragas) Parh have five "wi~es" is by no m <'ans log ically bast·d: The diffcrcnt "families"
(Raginis ), incidentall y als o six. To these 30 or 36 w1v~s sc<'m to b C' eo mpost'd ddihera tcly. The Indian musi-
a vary ing numher of " sons" (Ra gaputras) can h e attri- cologis t V.N. Bhatkande has, then·fon-, re-arranged the
buted (n ot m entioned in the tablr) so that the number sound-waYC'-s ignals in 1932, now r especting tht• resem-
of sound-wave-formations easily incr eases to thr infinite. blance of t h eir scales. 123
 (56) These compressed or stret ch ed hours arc
n o Indian p eculiarity. They can be found wher eever Noo n
time was measured b y the help of sundials. The e mperor
Augustus for example h ad a large s undial built in Rome,
which is now destroyed , to measure the "ancient"
hours of varying length {see Kern , H ermann: " Kalender-
b aut en", Munich 1976).

. (57) D et ailed d escriptions of the d ay-time-theory

are given b y Dr. B.C. D eva ("India n Music", p. 19,
New Delhi 1974) and Walter Kaufmann ("The R agas
of North India", p. 16, Calcutta 1968). The following
graph taken from Kaufmann's book v isualizes, h ow

Cia D Di • £ P Fi• G Gia A Ah ll

t I I Midnight
be fore auoria e

J. aunri•c

a f t e r aoo r iec

2 . e•rly • or ning

I at e •ora iog
. }l (1686- 174.3), tt:I
(58) J a1. SJilg
ier-1""
r, anter-conSltller<tli'ltadja of Amber ,
) . DOOD

h as ~uilt ~ve J~:::it]Jura, Be.nares <tnd tis a ltogeth er: in

e arly a f ternoon 10
"· loh ortc r nooo
D elhi, J aipur, !' .. ,v- those m De lhi, J .Ujj a in. T hree of
be f ore aunect
the m exist until pO Jl'lcnt adrcssed to th<\ 1llur and B en ar es.
5. euruet
J a i Singh , in a d 0 c~t a n eed to justif e Ctnper or Muha m-
a f t er 1un 1ct
mad Shah, h as f cl c argument, tha t y th.e exp en ses. H e
m a .m 1y strcsse v~ t 1 ical m .
struments lne <lsurcme nts with
0 01
la te e vening the usual astr~ll sJl'lall dimensions. Nel'e unsatisfying,
bceause of their d r eason s t o asst eve rtheless there
•fhr •id n ight
a
re som e ver y t:>d 00 ever served a l ll) e , t hat J m. s·m g h's
e. b e f ore daW'D calend ar buildings,;,_Afanter buildi~ asttonomical instru-
m ents : a) The Ja ri 4 a nd b gs h<tvc b ee n planned
cell 172 , a out 17 .
a n d erect ed b et\\' I d ·
a r ea y invent d
1.0 At that tun e
· ·
the t elescope was c · So t h e Janter-
t "ons-secn as a
Manter construe 1 d f Stl'onomical instru-
the notes of the scale app ear a nd disapp e ar during the m en t s -wcr e ou t "' ..... ode rom t h e ve l'y b e"'1nn1ng.
. . J a1.
e ight watches of a day. Dr. B.C. D cva, director of the Sin gh mu st have kn o:wn ahou~ t h e telcscop~ as h e h a d
S angeet Natak Akadem i, New De lhi, in the fo llowing employed two Bavarian J csmt s as cons ultants n a m ed
graph refers to another a s pect of the time-t h eor y . Andreas Strob l and Antonius . Gah elsp <'rgN. b) The
Leavin g asi de the ch a nge of the scales the picture shows, lar gest Janter- Man tPr, th~ one Ill Jai p ur, is located in
how t h e main notes ( vadis) of t h e sound-wave-signa ls t h e b asin of a valley, wh ich of course is the worst place
arran ge themselves symmetrica lly, when the da y and fo r as tronomi cal obsNvations. P a rt of the cons truction
124 its eight watches arc shown in the form of a circle. is a la rge p la ce for m f'ditati on , w h ose exist<'n ce again

points out, t h at J ai Singh did not aim a t astr onomical
but at philosophi cal and a strological purposes. - Also
t~c denomination " J anter-Manter" favours the assump -
t10_n , that the buildings h ave been constructed as ar-
~hitcctural symb ols, a s pivots in b etween time and space
Ill t h e Tantric se nse (see Kern, H ermann: " K alendcr-
bautcn ", l\lunich 1976).
(59) T h e so-called bols or bolas, the syllables of
the Indian drumm ers' language, practi cally ser ve as a n
arr~ngcd-upon ob scured la n guage. But t h ere is a lso a
saym g, tha t the bols have t o be consider ed as mantras
r evealed b y god s in forme r times. In addition we arc
to ld, t h at n o t the bols (th e sylla bles) b u t the different
drum-strokes (denominated b y the bols) a rc of mantric
c h aract er. A third explanation, presented b y the Indian
vocalist Amir Khan , says, that the drummers' syllables
arc mutila t e d P ersian words : The prcfcred language at
the courts of the 13th cen tury was P ersian. T o p lea se
the P e rsia n s p ea king noblemen , assembled a t the im-
p e ria l court , A mir Khan r eports, t he I ndi an vocalists
h a d attempted to sing in P er sian and the drummers
then h ad ado pte d t h e singers' pidgin-Persian t o designat e
their strokes (sec Khan, Amir : "l\lusic East and \Vest -
Indian Co un cil for Cultura l Freedom", probably Bom-
bay, undated ).
(60) V ccna -players arc som etimes accompanied
b y a cylindrica l drum , offi ciall y called " .Mrdangam" an d,
inoffi cia lly, " Pakhmva:;" (or P aldwwaj). These drums
arc, a s a r ule, car ve d from Margosa hitter-woo d ( A1elia
azadira chta). T h e ir two h eads arc covere d with goat -
akin . T h e Paldraw a:; is played wi th both han ds. The
pitch of the la rg<'r drumhead on the left side is lowered
b y cover ing th e skin with we t flour p aste, so that the
. . '' ,,
d rum is en ab led t o pronounce a n aus p1 c10us aum
or " om" . T he C<'ntcr of t h e drumhead on the right side
is past e d with a layer of caou t chouc m ixecl with iron
du st. Il y a rath er difficult beating tech nique t lH' drummn
can produce a la rge varie t y of notes also ch anging tlH'ir
overto nes so t h at the Paldwwa:;, played at its best ,
ca n pronounce s peachl ik c sequences of syll ables. T he
Pakhawaz is ca lled " the q uee n of the dru ms", hut today
it is ousted by the Tabla-drum. Pakhmva:;- players
nowadays can only b e h<'ard accompanying vce11a-
playcrs or Dlr rupnd-vocalists, the rare represcutatiYes
of the sacr<'d "mu sic of t h e path ".
(61) In t h e 16th cf'ntury the Chistian god has
rcvcalf'd a number of "key-words" to t h e m agician
..
Dr. D ec and his assistant Edward K elley. B y t he help
of t hese ~cy-words, m eant for invocational purposes, t h e
t wo Enghshmcn h ave developed the so-called "Enochian
language", which is said t o b e a real language and not
gibberish (sec Cavendish, Richard : "The Encyclopedia
of t h e U nexplained ", p. 83, London 1974) .
(62) The scien ce of t he Mantras often r esist s t o
occident al under st anding, as there is no compar able
ph enomenon in t h e W es t. T he following quotation from
an Indian Mantra-t extbook entitled "Great Ocean of
Mantras" sh ows, what the actual stat e of t h e art is
like : "Thanks t o the grace of the Supreme Brahman we
have now succeeded in completing this work. Especially,
we h ave t o offer our thanks to th e a lmighty Shiva
through whose benign glance the mant ra-sh astra (Man-
tra -t ext and dootrine) h as been revealed- through which
shastra that people in former times wer e able to defeat
the gods even, and h aving subdued them, made them
do for them wh a t ever they d esired. T hrough man tra-
sh astra d emons like R avana could give fight to Shri
R amacancr a and oth er dcvinc h eroes. Through t he
m antra-sh ast ra people could v anish out of sight ri.,.ht
in front of others. Through it, t hey could assume oth:rs'
forms and b odies. Through it , they wer e able t o move
below water for th ousand s of . . . miles. T hrough it ,
they could move in the sk y and visit t h e abode of t he
god s . . . Throu gh it, they readily acqu ired the eight
m iraculous powers . . . It is a verv sad matter t h at
today t his wishfulfilling jewel, the 1;iautra -shastra, has
been lost to t h e world. The reasons for this loss arc ,
that, first of all, such v aluable things are h ard t o obtain,
fo r if any person possesses some thing of t his (litera ture )
h e keep s i t a secret and d ocs u ot sh ow it to anyone;
a nd if o ne d oes lay hand on one t ext or the other, then
it is garbled or a corrupted text . . . (and) no one k nows
how t o perform t he accompanying wor ship propcrlv,
n or is a nyone able to pronounce it correetlv or l~c0
d ocs not know at what sor t of pla ce it is to b e read- or
else, ouly ju st t he b are man tra may he available-thc-u
pray tell m e, h ow can t h ere b e SU<'ccss in the pcr form-
anf'c? Aud due to this fac t (of failure t hrough i11com-
pl<'t1wss) t h <' mantra yields no results n owada ys; and
t hc-n (modern) people say t hl' wh ole thing is n~nsemc .
llut this idea (of mantra being nons1·11si{·al a nd futile)
is a graye error on the part of intelligent people aud
sch olars. l t is a grayc error, first because Shiva h imsl'lf
h as proelai nwd the shastra and its miracolous effec t s
were witnf'ssetl hY 1wopl1• . . . Ru t , the a bsf'nC'<' of l2S
exact dire ctives (for the use of mantra), and y ou people's
doubt a nd hardheadc dness even in the (occasional)
presen ce . of su ch prescriptions, these arc the r easons
for the failure to achiev e (insight) through the mantras . . .
In order to please your ista-dcvata y ou will see that t h
comple . . t e worship and man t ra -procedure of ea ch gode
or . d1vme asp ect _is a~ways list ed under one h eading (in
tlu s book) , not hke m older books of this kind, wh er e
you h ave to turn the tome topsy-turvy · .. a n cl t h en
to . run . o:er anyway to the mantra experts to have
'.mmte lhg1ble passa ges expla ined. This book here h as
1th all:· The 1· ·m a ntras of y our ch ooscn god , the p l ace,
t . e ntua 1st1c touch, m editati on , the worship of the
p1 t h a, the Shakti of the pitha, the construction of the
yantra (~ ysti cal diagram) , of the a ltar, the install at ion
of th~ d eity , the six t een ingredients an d t heir resp ective
locat10n (on the altar), the laudatory h ymns, in fact
~he comple t e fivefold arrangeme nt will b e found together
m on~ place (undc~ one h eading), so that you can p er form
~he rites y ourself JUSt b y havin g this book or b y giv ing
it_ to a Brahmin whom y ou want to p erform it" {see
Fisch er, Leopold- Bhara ti, Ageha nanda: " The Tantric
Tradition ", p. 123, London 1965).
(63) T~e. relation b et"".ecn th e tona lity of space
and the spatiality of sound 1s alread y m entione d in a
docum ent st emmin g from the llth century: The Tibet an
;.onk R~chun g, wh en praising his Guru Mila repa, writes :
H e (M1larcp a ) was an exp ert in the field of t h e goo d
a nd t h e b a d meanings of sounds a nd h e knew tha t
every sound is p er ceivable sp ace" (see Evan s-Wentz
W .Y .: " Mila r ep a", p . 24, Wc ilheim 1971). E vans-Wen t z'
the translat~r of R echun g's t ex t , a dd s, tha t this passag~
rdrrs t o Mila rep a 's mas t er ship in the occult science
of the mantras or words of power , wh ich are based on
the physical law of acou stics. The "Mantray ana" ( m a.n-
rra -tcxtbook) t each es, so E van s-Wcnt z mentions that
ther e is al ways a sp ecific rela t ion of oscillations bc~wcen
evr·r y object and nat ural clem en t a nd ever y or ganic
su~hum an , human a nd superhuman b<'ing , includin g
h <:mgs of the high est rank like god s. Wheneve r this
r cla tio_n is kn own a~d acou stically expressed b y pro-
n o_u?cm g t~e resp r.ct1vc mantra., then th e ex prrt forces
sp1nt ua l bc m gs or lowr.r dr itics t o a p pear.
(64) T h r clcph a nt-hcadr d Gancsh a is the god
approach ed fo r su ccess. Musicia ns ofte11 i11 v okc Gan <'sha
hr.for<' t h ey start to p lay. So do businr ssmr n w hen
__:-~~~~~~~_L~~~~~~~~~
planning r isk y t r a nsartions a nd st udents facing a n
examination. Ga nesh a is oft en depicted with one tusk
only
f I. · The Gancsh
. a -.l\1 a ntra. quoted a t th e b egmnmg
· ·
o t u s b ook is t~ke n from a still unpublish e d b ook
(Manfred M. Junms : " Die Talas de r N cl' d ' h
M 'k") . or m 1sc en
~ u~1 ' which ~or the fi rst tim e, lis t s and a nalyses the
nd1 a n rh ythm s m a n e n cyclopedi c form .
(65) The idea of t h e "lettered sound" seem s t o
be of old_age. T he_ "Da ttilam" for exa m ple, one of t he
m ost a ncient trea ti ses on Indian music, written around
20? A.C., star ts with t h e follo wing words : " After h aving
p a id h on our to the Grc a t Lord a nd t o Bra hm a the
other . ~ods a nd a lso the t eacher s, I sh a ll give a ' brief
e~pos ition of the t h eor y of music, which con sider s only
tie ~o st esse nt ia l t hin gs. - In the b eginning music
w ~s given h y the Self-existin g One t o Na r a d a (a music-
~a mt) and the other saints. Then it w as duly t a k en
0 ':n t.0 earth b y N a r a d a. - A collection of n ot es
~hich is b ase d on word s, whi ch is well-meas ure d b ;
t~m e -mcasurem cn ts a n d w h ich is executed w ith a tte n-
tiven ess
. • m ea ns b rm · gm· g t h c ng
. h t u n d er st a ndmg
. .mto
prac ti ce · · · " (sec w 1cr
· sma-te N ij cnh uis, E . : "Dattila m "
P· 17, Le ide n 1970). '
. (66) ~h e st eel and b r ass s trinrrs, pulled b y h an d
m Hform
A F er. tim es ' cvi'cl ent1Y h ave n otb b ee n ver y solid.
L· d ox -Stra n gways ("Mu sic of Hin d os ta n ", p age 78,
on on l~l~) r eport s t h e follow ing litt le story: " A
music.ian ' Mu si·1 a o f u··
feeble
V ]J a .m, w h ose music . on the
G
een~ was like 'scratching on a m a t ', ca m e to learn of
uttila . a n ear 1·1cr · b 1rth).
. of B anaras {tl ie B o diu.satta m '
G uttila 's pare n t s, w l1en t h ey h eard ]um, . .
said, 'Sh oo!
Shhoo! the rat s are gnawin · g t h e y ec n a t o pieces'.
. .
Gutt ila,
~ o, as a Bodhisatt a, was 'skille d in discerning from the
ineafm ents o f the b ody' said , 'Go, m y son, this art is
not or you ' · Bu t M us1·1a got h'1s way· a nd Gutula . B odhi-
satta ' who ' did no t stm . t h 1' s k n owle
, d ge' a t la st pr o-
.no un ced his p up1·1 p er fect. M us1la . pressed' to b e taken
mto the kin g's. serv ice. · Th'1s w as d one; b u t t h e king
awa rde d Gu t t ila twice as m u ch as his p upil. Musila
protest ed ,. a nd fo rce d ma ttns to a contest , of which
proclam at ion was m a d e t o tu ck of d r um. The Bodhisatt a
re fl ect~ d that h e was old, a nd that 'if h e b eats me,
death m the wood s is better th a n t h e sh ame which will
be m ~ portion'. So t o the wood s h e we n t; hu t ' k e pt
re turnm g t hrou gh f Par of de a t h , a nd go ing h ac k t o the
woods for foar of sh a m e', so t h a t 'th e grass dir d as he
walked a nd his fo r t wo re away t h r path '. I n his t rou ble
Sakka , thr kin g of t h e gods, a ppc a rr d : Gu ttila was to
bre ak, in t h e co ntes t , one string after a no ther , b eginning in th~ cont rar y , use strings of unequal tension. T h e
at the 'beestring', and t h e music should be as good as followm g table shows, what kin d of strings two pro-
b efor e. Then ' y ou sh all go on p lay ing with nothing but fessional play er s u se :
the b od y ; and fr om t he ends of t h e (broken ) str ings t he
Veeoa A• a d Ali Khan
sound sh all go for t h and fill all t h e land of B a nar as for
the sp ace of t welve lea ges'. All h a p pened as was fo retold
1. string (d') 293.7 Her tz 0.55 m m 0 = steel 42.9 k g tension
2. string (n) 220.0 Hertz 0.60 mm 0 bronze = 48.8 kg tension
{b y Sak ka) and t he scholar, beat en out of t he field, was 3 . string (e) 164.8 Her tz 0.90 mm 0 bronze = 61.6 kg tension

stoned a nd t orn in pieces b y t h e populace" .

4. strin g (B) 123.5 H ertz 1.10 mm 0 bronze = 51. 7 kg tensioo

Vecna Asit Kuma r Banerj ee

I. string (d' Rot) = 277.2 Hertz 0.46 mm 0 steel 39.9 kg tension
(67) T h e quality of vccna-music la rgely d epend s 2. str ing (a flat) = 207.7 Hertz 0.85 mm 0 bronze = 77 .S kg tension
from the c hoice of the strings, n am ely their dia m eter. T he 3. str ing (e Rat) = 155.6 H er tz 1.00 mm 0 bronze = 67.8 kg tension
4. s trin(I (B Bot) = 116.5 Hertz = 1.25 mm 121 bronze = 58.4 kg tension
b est diamet er of a m u sic wir e can be det ermine d by the
h elp of T ayl or 's formula :
~68) The d~flcction of the melody strings (pulling
c = gt
4 m2 f2 w t hem s:~eway~' '~'I th ~he. finge rtips of t he left hand) is
or its conver sion: called meend m H md1 and "meer" in Bengali. T he
meer-tcch ni quc is a spccialty n a mely of t he veena-
t = - -- - - m us1cians . . A good player const a n tly p la ys with t he
g
melody st n ng deflected (drone strings are never defl ect ed)
" t " m ean s " te nsion" measure d 1n . kil· ogramms (usmg .
to rc~ch the following goals: a) Throu gh t he meer-
a spring bala n ce). The t en sion of t he fo ur melody strings t echniquc one can p lay t he same not e with a differ ent
of a V ccna sh ould r a nge wi thin 30 t o 50 k g each , so t en sion ?f th~ st r ing, so t hat the same not e can be pro-
tha t the t ota l ch arge of the tube sh ould var y b etween duced with different over tones. b ) By t he meer-techn iquc
120 and 200 k ilogr amm s, depen ding from the ty pe and t he_ t 1eena.- player can ~1ightcn or lower a n ot e st eplessly,
the solidity of the instr u m en t. "m" stand s fo r " m easure- This agam enables him to make a "knot in the air" .
m e nt" expressed in m et er s. The m easurement of a Veen a c) The mccr-technique allows t h e pr od uct ion of extremely
{the distance from bridge to b ridge) var ies b et ween 0.9 pure sou nds, as t hese sounds a re indepen dent from t he
a nd 1.0 m et e r . " f " is " frequency" or the number of (never . correc tly p ositioned ) frets on the finger board.
fre qu enc ies p er second . " w" m ean s "weight" or the l\Iaster mg t he mcer-t echniquc re quires years of practice
sp ecific weigh t of the m etal out of which the string is b ecause the width of the deflec tion, m easured in milli-
made. T h e specific weight of st eel is about 7.85, an d mc t ers, and the necessar y strength of the fin"ers (in-
tha t of b ro nze a b out 8.96. "g" stands fo r gravi t y or creased tension), measu red in kilogramms, Ya~y from
for ce of gravit y . T h e gravity varies a little bit from fret to fret.
place to place due t o the uneven st ru cture of our planet.
F or practical pur poses a n average value of 9.81 (met ers (69) R agamala is the denominat ion for b ooks
per second ) is good enough. "c" means "cross section", made of paper or p alm leaves containing 36 and some-
whi ch is t h e little r ound face of a string in square meters. t imes 42 paint ings or drawings representing sound-
It is assum ed h ere, that t hese cross sect ions of mu sical wavc-formations in a p ersonalised form. T h ere arc t wo
wires a r e p r ecisely circle-sh aped (which is not a lways main styles of Ragamala-art: a) T h e \V estrrn st yle,
true in r eality). When det ermin ing t he t en sion or t he st emm ing from t h e Moghul p eriod, wh ose geographical
cr oss sect ion of a st r ing one sh ould bear in m ind, that c ccntrr was t h e actual Union State R ajasth an Sou th of
{t h e cr oss secti on ) is n ot identica l wi th t h e diamr t er. D elh i. The n a gamala -p ict ur C'S of the W est ern school
The m a the m atical st ep from t h e cr oss sectio n to the arc coloure d mini ature pain t ings influenced by P ersian
2
di a m et er or vice versa is m ade by t h e help of the r pi- a rtists. One example, the visua lisation of t he sound-
for m ula. - O cciden tal m usicians are used to string wavc-signal T odi, is repr oduced in t his b ook (sec page 4).
instrum en t s wit h a lmost eq ual t ension on each str ing. b ) Thr Eastern style, cvid1•ntly u ninflue nced hy the
T h e t en sion of norma l guitar-str ings for ex ample varies P ersians, is cr n tcrcd in \'\1est Bengal and Orissa. Som e
arou nd six kilogram m s, so that t h e wh ole charge is t•xamplcs of t h is Eastern style, all simple h lack-and- 127
(6 X 6 = ) 36 k ilogramms or the like. Ve<'n a -playcrs,
 white drawings, a re as well r eproduced in this book.
They arc taken from a palm-leave book found in Orissa.
The originals arc a little smaller than a matchbox in
size. - Though there is no doubt , that the unknown
painters, intended to paint or to draw sound-wave-
signals, there is no solid relation inbetwecn the pic tures
and the sound-wave-formations they depict. Kl au s
Ebeling, who h as carefull y rcsf'archf'd the Ragamala-
p ain tin gs, comes to the following conclusion: " I h ave
analyze<l la rge numbers of pa intings, partic ularl y single
titles or single r egional st yles, to find answers to several
ques tions : Do colors corrf'spond to the notes of th e scale?
No. Do qu a ntities of pi ctorial ele ments establish a ny
numerical pattern found in musical structure? No,
al though the a uspicious numb ers 3, 5 an <l 7 occur con-
spiciously often, both in p ainting and music. Arc colors
u sed to symbolize v arious ra sas (musical mood s)? In-
con clusive, if one com pa res the p ages of single Raga malas
(books). No, on any wide r basis" (Ebeling, Klaus : " Ra-
gamala Paintings", Basel/ P aris/New Delhi 1973, p. 16).
(70) This procedure of ego-ex tin ction in Tantra-
music probabl y deri ves from Sufism . Though older
than the I sla m , S ufism t oday is considered as a n un-
orthod ox b ranch of t h e I slam ic rule. Sufism reached its
p Pak during the tim e of Djclal eel-Din Rurni , a poc t-
saint li v ing in t he (today Turkish) city of K ony a. The
S ufis h ad so me influ rn cc on India n music, especiall y
durin g the Moghul p e riod. A s all m ys ti cs, they we re
pnsu f'd liy the official priesth ood, in this case h y t h e
mu/fahs. New·rtlw lrss th f' S ufis' hrrctic pra c tic(~S of
mf'lti ng into thf' ulli vPrse b y r mployin g alcohol, u nusual
form s of SPXtiali t y aud forbidden music on flu te-li ke
instrumf' nt s, h ave wid(•Iy sprf'ad in India. - Since
around t h e 9th cc utury A.C. thf'rc is a Sufi t eachin g
sa y ing, t h at tlw hu man soul is like a moth fl y ing aro und
t h c d iv irlf' fl amf' (th P randlr) which , afte r a wh ile a ttrac ts
t he moth so much that it is hurned to ashrs. When
b urning, the moth hecom(•s a com po ne nt of t hf' div ine
light for a h appy mom ent. - In the described ritual t he
rn usir·ia11 Jll'Tforms thi s old S ufi ritua l in a symb olic
way. It is consid r·ri·d cspPcially f'fficil' n t, whr n tube-
shapr rl i11strurrll'11ts likr flutes, ohors or Rudra-Veenas
arc usrd . T h" rcasou is, t hat in S ufism th e hurnan soul,
long ing for m ys tir: un ion, is also co11!'l icfrn•<l as a n up-
roo1 ed n ·cd or h a mboo , yearn iug to find its way ha ck
to the pl ace of its <li v i11c ori gin.
(71) T ht!TC arc rliffcrPnt ways of <'01111 ti ng hy t h r
128 hf'lp of th•~ ft11grrs. ThP y a ll can lw 11 sPcl for mantra-
r ecitation as well as for locating the r espective pos1t1on
on a musical tim c-circlf'. No rmall y one uses the thumb
t o count the joints (including the tip s) of the four r e-
maining finge rs, as d emo nstrate d in figure A , thus
a rriv ing always at sixteen. This k ind of counting is
m ainly used for si t a r-mu sic, as sitar-pla yer s prefer
rhythms li ke "Tecn tal", co n tain ing 16 h eats p er r ound.
In a similar way of counting the thumh docs n ot t ou ch
the joints (including the tips), but t h e limhs of the
remainin g fou r fingers, thus arrivi ng at 12 (sec figure Il).
a b c
Rhy thms of twelve h f'ats arc prcfrn•d b y 1•ee11a-pla y1·rs
as 12 can b e d iv ided t h rough 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 ha ving,
th erefore, a special and a u spicious nlf'a11in g. A third
method of coun t ing, de monstrated in figurf' C, div ides
the tim e-circle i n to tf'n Sf'cti ons. T h e thumb lwrf' prr -
form s a sp iral-sh a p ed movcml'nt f'IHling at 10 with an
indicative exit.
(72) T he rrsponde11ts, if at all , c·x plainf'd tlw
orig m and the audibility of thr N ada Bralrmmr in dif-
fe rent ways : Na da Brahman , so m e said, is h l'ard , whrn
y ou prrss the index fingf'Ts in y our ears. Tha t way y ou
ca n listr. n to thr. rush of yo ur lilood and your h ea rt
b Pats, thus becom ing awarf' of yo ur own li vf'l i 1u·s~.
Others found t h is method rath f'T t ri vial. Th Py t·xplai11 Pd ,
t h at Na da Brahm an can lw mad e au clihl(• by u sing a
CfTtain lirPa thin g t('(:h11i<jt1f' borroWf'(l from Yog a. This
is a carefull y st ef'rcd gradual c hhi11 g awa y of hrPa th.
A s a b y-prod uc t of the in creasing lac k of oxyge n t h e
inner ('ar sudde nl y p rrcl' iVf'S a di stin c t so und, similar
to t h e "sound of a barnhoo flu te", w hich is N ada Brah -
man, t h e " unst ruck sou1Hl".
22. Bibliography Basham, A .L. : " The Wonder tha t was India", 3. edi tion,
Calcutta 1975
B harat i, A . : "The T antr ic Tradition", London 1965
Ca vendish, R ichard (editor}: "The Encyclopedi a of t h e
Unexplained", London 1974
Dallapiccola, Anna and l sacco, Enrico : "Ragamala",
catalogue of the Marco P olo gallery, Paris 1977
Danielou, Alain : " Asthetik und indisch e Musik", m
"Th e World of Music", No. 2, p. 60, Wilhelmsh aven 1976
Danielou, Alai n: "Le alternative al sistcma t emperato"
in " Seminario di stu di c r icerch c sul linguaggio musicale" ,
Vice n za 1972
Dan ielou, Ala in: "Tableau comparatif d es intcrvalles
musicaux", P ondicherry 1958
Danielou, Alain: "The R aga-s of Northern Indian Music",
London 1968
Danielou, Alain: " Yoga - The Met h od of Re-Integra-
t ion", 4. edition , London 1973
D eva, Il. Chaitan ya : " Indian Music", New Delhi 1974
Deva, Il. Chaitanya: " Music Akadcmies in India", in
"San gcct Kal a Vih ar" , No. l, p. 13, Baroda 1970
D eva, Il. Chaitanya : "Musical Inst ruments", Delhi 1977
Ebeling, K lau s: " R agamala P aintings", Basel/P aris/
New Delhi 1973
Evans-Wentz, W.Y.: " l\Iilarcpa", Wci1hcim 1971
Farmer, H.G.: " Music of Ancient Egypt" m "New
Oxford History of l\Iusic", volume I, London 1957
Fox Strangways, A.H. : " The Music of Hindosta n" ,
Oxford 1914-
Helmuth von · " Eutwicklungsstufrn indi-
Glasenapp, ·
sch cn Dcn kcns", K onigshcrg 1940
Gosh, i\Ianom oh a n (transla tor) : " The Natyash astra",
Calcu tta 1961
Goven rmcn t 0'J.1' Jnclia •·"India 1976- A R eference B ook",
New Delh i 1976
Ions, Veron ica: " lndischc l\Iythologic", Munich 1967
· bi10 v, N• A• ·• "The Hags of North Indian Music -
J c11raz
Thrir S tr~1e ture ancl Evolution", London 1971
Junius , Manfred i\L : "Die Kunstmusik Nordindiens im
129
19. J ahrhu ndert " , u npubl ished
~----

Junius , Manfred 1\1. and Marcotty, Th.: " The Sitar - The
Instrument and its Technique", Wilhelmsh avcn 1974
Kaufmann, Walter: "The Raga s of North India'',
Calcutta 1968
Khan, Sufi Inayat: "Music", 3. edition, New Delhi 1973
K ern , H erm ann: "Kalendcrbauten'', Munich 1976
K eskar, B.V.: "Indian Music - Proble ms and Prospects",
Bombay 1967
K rishnaswami, Vidvan S.: "Research on Mus ical Ins tru -
m ents of India" in "Journal of the Music Academy" ,
p. 100, Madras 1962
!lfookerjee, Ajit: "Tantra-Kunst - ihrc Philosophic und
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•
 I

The Contributors

UsTAD AsAD ALI KHAN, born 1937 in Alwar,

Rajasthan, descends from a family of musicians. He
is known as the Veena-player adhering to the ancient
Hindostani tradition. His a dress is : A-62, Nizza-
muddin East, New D elhi 110-013.

UsTAD ZIA Mom uD DI N DAGAR, born 1929,

' f. also comes from a family of professional musicians.
\ He is kn o wn as an innovator of the Rudra-V eena
Jind its playing technique. Ust ad Zia l\Iohiuddin
teach es in India and the U nited Sta tes. His a<lress is :
rt~kmini Plot 20/4 , Chemlmr, Bombay 71, India .

-. , PANDIT AsIT K UMAR IlANERJEE descends

from a n industrialist 's family 111 Dhanbad, \'\!es t
Beng!-tl. He is a professional Veena-musician and
teach\ .r famed for his d ynamic style of playing. His
adress is 62J36/l H aripada Dutta L ane, Calcutta
700- 033 .

PANDIT RAJIB LOCIIAM DEY is t h e drummer

accomp an ying the Malkosh sound-wa ve-signal on the
first side of the cassett e. Mr. D ey teaches Pakh awaz- ,1
and Tabla-playing at a Calcutta university . His
11
a dress is: 77, Akhil Mistri Lane, Calcutta 700- 009 .

TnOMAS MAR COTTY is a j ournalist specialising

in market and social r esearch . As a side-line h e t ook Ii
up Indian music and veen a-playing. He has written
this book, he h as recorded t he music and he h as
DECISIO-EDITRICE taken most of the photographs. ISBN 88-900002-0-1