Sarngadeva's Sangita Ratnakara, Composed at the Yadava Court of Devagiri in the Early 13th Century, Arranges Music and Dance in Seven Chapters and Counts 264 Ragas

The Sangita Ratnakara, a Sanskrit treatise composed at the Yadava court of Devagiri in the early 13th century, arranges music and dance into seven chapters: notes, ragas, miscellaneous topics, composed songs, rhythm, instruments and dance. Its author, Sarngadeva, was the son of a court accountant, and R. K. Shringy’s English translation counts 264 ragas in the second chapter. In the words of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the national academy for music, dance and drama, it is the most important text of sangitashastra, the Sanskrit science of music.

The son of a royal accountant

In the first chapter Sarngadeva introduces himself, and Shringy’s translation of those verses gives the family line. It descends from the sage Vrishagana and comes from Kashmir. His grandfather Bhaskara moved south, and Bhaskara’s son Sodhala served the Yadava kings of Devagiri. Kunhan Raja, in his introduction to the Adyar Library edition, says Sodhala was patronised by King Singhana. Shringy’s introduction, relying on a paper by P. V. Sharma, adds that Sodhala was the court’s royal accountant and that Sarngadeva continued in the post.

His verses describe a man who eased the poverty of Brahmins with gifts, satisfied scholars with his learning and cured the sick with medicines. A summary of three sides of his life, in Shringy’s reading: accountant, scholar and physician. He gives four reasons for writing the book: to free people from three kinds of suffering, to uphold dharma, to win fame and to reach liberation.

Devagiri is the fort now called Daulatabad. According to the Maharashtra tourism department, it stands about 16 kilometres from Aurangabad and was built in the 12th century by Bhillama V, after which it became the Yadava capital. The 1911 Britannica describes a conical rock rising nearly straight up to about 600 feet. Sources differ on when the dynasty’s rule began: Shringy’s introduction says Bhillama established it formally in 1145, and the Britannica article says Deogiri was founded around 1187.

Dating the book to Singhana’s reign

Because Sarngadeva names Yadava kings only as far as Singhana, Shringy infers that he composed the work in Singhana’s reign. Sources date that reign differently: the Adyar edition gives 1210 to 1247, and Shringy’s introduction gives Singhana’s accession as 1200.

Inscriptions explain the gap. V. V. Mirashi, in Epigraphia Indica volume 21, edits a stone inscription at Amrapur in Berar dated Saka 1133, which he converts to 1211 to 1212 CE. He writes that Singhana’s inscriptions support three different accession years, Saka 1122, 1129 and 1132, and that Saka 1133 is the earliest certain date of the reign. Mirashi thought it likely that Singhana was crowned in Saka 1132, though he may have shared in government as crown prince in his father’s lifetime and succeeded him in 1129. For the book itself, the Sangeet Natak Akademi says early 13th century, and a University of Washington reading list on Hindustani music says the first half of the 13th. Neither gives a single year.

Six chapters on music, one on dance

Sangita, in Sarngadeva’s definition, is vocal melody, instrumental playing and dance taken together. He separates marga, which the text says Brahma discovered and Bharata and others practised in front of Shiva, from desi, the music that pleases people in the different regions. Shringy’s introduction adds that the book became known as the saptadhyayi, the seven-chapter work, on the model of Panini’s eight-chapter grammar. The chapters run as follows.

1. Svara, the notes. It covers the 22 shrutis, the fine steps of pitch from which the notes are drawn, along with the scale families called gramas and murchanas and the older melody types called jatis.
2. Raga, treated in two sections.
3. Prakirnaka, miscellaneous matters. These include the qualities of a composer-poet, ornaments called gamakas and alapti, the improvised unfolding of a raga. Most of this chapter, Shringy notes, records developments after Bharata’s time.
4. Prabandha, composed songs built from named sections.
5. Tala, rhythm.
6. Vadya, instruments. Handling every instrument in one chapter, Shringy points out, departs from Bharata’s scheme.
7. Nartana, dance, covering the elements of nritta, the dance forms and the rasas.

Shringy’s translation, with Sanskrit text and notes, covers chapters one to four in two volumes, the second published in 1989. All seven chapters appear in the Adyar Library edition, together with two commentaries.

The 264 ragas

In the second chapter, Shringy writes, Sarngadeva gives a total of 264 ragas. The sum, as Shringy sets it out: 34 ancient ragas and 52 well known in Sarngadeva’s own time make 86, and a second section lists 30 grama-ragas, 8 uparagas, 20 ragas, 96 bhashas, 20 vibhashas and 4 antarabhashas, making 178. Sarngadeva lists only well-known ragas, Shringy adds, and the translator quotes the older author Matanga, who calls regional ragas countless.

Some names will be familiar to anyone who has heard Hindustani or Karnatak music. Bhairava, Bhairavi, Hindola, Vasanta and Sriraga all appear in the translation. Vasanta, the text says, is derived from Hindola and complete, using all seven notes. A shared name does not guarantee the same melody. Kallinatha, a commentator in the Vijayanagara empire, cited the practice of his own day to show where it no longer matched the text’s rules for the old grama-ragas, Shringy’s introduction notes. Later authors, it adds, cited Sarngadeva’s own statement that practice outranks written rule.

What he drew on and what he left out

In the opening verses he says he churned the ocean of earlier views and took out the cream. He names dozens of predecessors, among them Bharata, Dattila, Matanga, Bhoja, Abhinavagupta and Someshvara. Works of only some survive today, Shringy says: Bharata, Dattila, Matanga, Bhoja, Abhinavagupta, Someshvara, Nanyadeva and Jagadekamalla. Bharata’s text is the subject of the tuput article on the Natyashastra.

Shringy finds that the selection was careful. The Natyashastra’s section on dhruvas is left out. Bharata’s detailed repertoire of drums gives way to instrumental compositions. A debate on how notes relate to shrutis, found in Matanga’s Brihaddeshi, is skipped. Information on ornaments and on the phrase patterns called sthayas, Shringy says, must have come from the living tradition of Sarngadeva’s day, which also supplied the regional (desi) names in the text and the ragas he marks as currently well known. For an earlier attempt to record music in writing, see the rock-cut score at Kudumiyanmalai.

Reading it against the music of today

Later practice offers some comparisons in Shringy’s notes. A prabandha could have up to four sections, called udgraha, melapaka, dhruva and abhoga. In modern Hindustani music, he writes, dhrupad has four parts, sthayi, antara, sanchari and abhog, while khyal generally has two, sthayi and antara. The first two sections of the old fourfold scheme, in his view, have dropped out of present practice.

On the University of Washington reading list the treatise stands fifth among the landmark sources for Hindustani music, after the Natyashastra, Matanga, Dattila and Abhinavagupta. It gives Kallinatha’s commentary as about the 15th century and Ramamatya’s Svaramelakalanidhi, about 1550, as the work that begins to systematise. It dates Venkatamakhin’s Caturdandi Prakasika to about 1640 and calls it the basis of the Karnatak music practised today. Scholars as recent as V. N. Bhatkhande, Shringy writes, accepted the importance of studying Sarngadeva seriously. Pandit Omkarnath Thakur criticised the book’s way of describing one note-tuning experiment as unclear, a view K. C. D. Brihaspati answered in his own work.

Commentaries, editions and the 1994 seminar

Seven commentaries were reported by the editors of the 1879 Calcutta edition, four in Sanskrit, one in Hindi and two in Telugu. No other text of its field, Shringy says, has more than one. Simhabhupala’s, the Adyar introduction says, is the earlier of the two main commentaries. He belonged to the Recherla dynasty of Andhra, and Kunhan Raja dates him toward the close of the 14th century. Kallinatha’s commentary, the Kalanidhi, followed within the Vijayanagara empire, whose capital is the subject of the tuput article on Hampi. A Hindi commentary in Braj by Gangarama is dated Samvat 1903, or 1846 CE, and names a patron, Visvanath Singh.

Printing came late. The Calcutta edition of 1879 carried only the chapter on notes. The Anandashrama Series published the whole text in two volumes in 1896 and 1897, edited by Mangesh Ramakrishna Telang, and the Adyar Library issued its four volumes from 1943 to 1953.

The Sangeet Natak Akademi held an international seminar on the treatise at Varanasi from 22 to 26 February 1994, with 21 papers on its history, impact, text, concepts and links to oral tradition. The Akademi’s preface says the seminar had first been planned for Devagiri fort, the place where Sarngadeva lived and worked.