The Vedic Roots of Rhythm in Indian Classical Music

Rhythm in Poetry

Let me begin by linking to this wildly popular recent recording of an ancient hymn.

While there are a number of reasons for its popularity, one of the main reasons is its driving rhythm that goes “da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum,” where “da” is a light (or short) syllable, and “dum” is a heavy (or long) syllable.

ja-Tā-Ta-vī-ga-laj-ja-lap-ra-vā-ha-pā-vi-tas-ta-lē

ga-lē-va-lamb-ya-lam-bi-tām-bhu-jan-ga-tun-ga-mā-li-kām

Da-maD-Da-maD-Da-maD-Da-man-ni-nā-da-vaD-Da-mar-va-yam

cha-kā-ra-chan-Da-tān-Da-vam-ta-nō-tu-nah-shi-vah-shi-vam[1]

(Shiva Tāndava Stōtram, Verse 1)

Anyone familiar with English poetry may recognize the rhythm as being similar to the iambic pentameter for which Shakespeare is famous. In the Indian tradition, this meter is called the “pancha-chāmara chhanda (पञ्चचामर छन्द).” 

The word for poetic meter in Sanskrit is “chhanda (छन्द),” or “chhandas (छन्दस्)” in Vedic Sanskrit[2], which is where the concept first emerges, pre-1500 BCE. Vedic hymns are all in verse form, composed in mainly seven meters based on the number of syllables in each section of a verse.

For example, the most famous Vedic meter is the gāyatrī chhanda (गायत्री छन्द), which has three sections of eight syllables each (8/8/8), while the most frequently used one is the trishTup chhanda (त्रिष्टुप् छन्द), which has four sections of 11 syllables each (11/11/11/11).

Vedic meters are relatively simple, with no specified patterns of light and heavy syllables, but over time, meters with specific stress patterns emerged. For instance, the Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata (both dated to sometime in the middle of the first millennium BCE) are composed in a more refined and rhythmic version of the Vedic anushTup chhanda (अनुष्टुप् छन्द, 8/8/8/8).

This 14^th century Sanskrit hymn below is one of India’s largest-selling non-film recordings ever. It begins with a verse borrowed from the Rāmāyana, with subsequent verses also continuing in the same anushTup meter.

Notice the “da–dum–dum” pattern in the fifth, sixth, and seventh syllables of the first and third sections of each verse, and a “da–dum–da” pattern in the same syllables of the second and fourth sections.

kau-sal-yā-sup-ra–jā–rā-ma

pūr-vā-sandh-yā-pra–var–ta-tē

ut-ti-shTha-na-ra–shār–dū-la

kar-tav-yam-dai-va–mān–hi-kam[3]

(Rāmāyana, Book 1, Chapter 23, Verse 2)

Here is another example of a famous verse in the same meter from the Bhagavad Gītā, which is a part of the Mahābhārata. (An interesting thing about verses in the same meter is that you can easily sing or chant them in the same tune).

ya-dā-ya-dā-hi–dhar–mas-ya

gla-nir-bha-va-ti–bhā–ra-ta

abh-yut-thā-na-ma–dhar–mas-ya

ta-dāt-mā-nams-ri–jām–ya-ham[4]

(Bhagavad Gītā, Chapter 4, Verse 7)

Stricter meters involve the application of specific patterns of light and heavy syllables to the entire verse, not just parts of it.

The pancha-chāmara (da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum) meter I began this article with is one example. Another example is the bhujanga-prayātam (भुजङ्गप्रयातम्, literally “snake movement”) meter, which has a stress pattern of “da–dum–dum, da–dum–dum, da–dum–dum, da–dum–dum.” The Vishnu Bhujanga Prayātam Stōtram, composed by Adi Shankaracharya in the 8^th century, is in this meter.

The Importance of Chhandas to Ancient Indians

Knowledge in ancient India was passed down through an oral tradition, so it was imperative to compose in a format that was easy to memorize and pleasant to recite. Most things (even academic texts in fields such as mathematics and medicine) were composed in verse rather than prose and passed down with remarkable accuracy through the oral tradition.

Chhandas was, therefore, the subject of a great deal of research in ancient times and, interestingly, it even resulted in the development of combinatorics and other branches of mathematics.

In the Pingala Sutrās (पिङ्गलसूत्राः, 600-200 BCE), for instance, Pingala discusses the binary system as a way of coming up with permutations of Vedic meters. He also discusses a sequence of numbers that later became famous as the Fibonacci sequence. The largest compilations of chhandas describe over 600 different meters.

From Rhythm in Poetry to Rhythm in Music

Rhythm in Indian classical music has been directly influenced by the Vedic disciplines of shikshā (शिक्षा, phonetics) and chhandas (poetic meter).

Shikshā is the scientific study of speech sounds and their classification. In Sanskrit, one of the ways in which syllables are classified is based on length. For instance, vowels are classified as short (a, i, u) or long (ā, ī, ū, ē, ō, ai, and au), with long vowels said to take twice as long to speak as short vowels.

A syllable is defined as a speech sound with one vowel, and syllables are also classified as short (हृस्व, hrsva) or long (दीर्घ, dīrgha) based on the length of the vowel used, how many consonants are involved, and a few other rules. Additionally, there are special syllables that are thought to be extra-long (प्लुत, pluta), taking three times as long to speak as short vowels. The unit of time required to speak a short syllable is called mātrā (मात्रा).  

Interestingly, in the discipline of chhandas (poetic meter), short (hrsva) and long (dīrgha) syllables are treated as light (लघु, laghu) and heavy (गुरु, guru) syllables instead. This is based on a recognition that, during recitation, short syllables are de-stressed while long ones are stressed.

In both metrical poetry and music, time and emphasis combine to create rhythmicity. Naturally, a rhythm can only be experienced when you have an “action” to mark it (like a beat or a stressed syllable), but in order for the beats or stressed syllables to sound rhythmic, they must also come at regular time intervals. This idea is explored in great detail in Bharata’s Nātya Shāstra (नाट्य शस्त्र, 200 BCE-200 CE).

The Nātya Shāstra deconstructs rhythm into several elements and discusses each separately. These elements include beats (क्रिया, kriya, literally “action”), the interval between two beats (काल, kāla), tempo (लय, laya), and cyclicality (परिवर्त, parivarta), among others. Beats are further categorized into sounded actions (सशब्द क्रिया, sashabda kriyā) and unsounded actions (नि:शब्द क्रिया, nisshabda kriyā), which are the equivalent of claps (ताली, tāli) and waves (खाली, khāli) in contemporary Indian classical music.

While beats, intervals between beats, and tempo are common elements of rhythm in all music, rhythm in Indian classical music is additionally characterized by complex patterns of stressed and unstressed beats, and the cyclicality of these patterns, which plays an important role in the performance of music and dance.   

It seems obvious that the idea of stressed and unstressed beats in rhythm patterns derives from chhandas, while dividing rhythm cycles into sections of varying lengths derives from shikshā.

The Nātya Shāstra, for instance, describes five classical rhythm patterns as combinations of short (I), long (S), and extra-long (S`) sections, with mātrā (time) counts of 1, 2, and 3, respectively.

chacchatpuTa = SSIS` (2+2+1+3 = 8 mātrās)

chāchapuTa = SIIS (2+1+1+2 = 6 mātrās)

ShaTpitāputraka = S`ISSIS` (3+1+2+2+1+3 = 12 mātrās)

sampakveShTāka = S`SSSS` (3+2+2+2+3 = 12 mātrās)

uddhaTTa = SSS (2+2+2= 6 mātrās).

Of the above, the first two remain highly relevant to this day in classical music and dance genres across India, albeit with changes and diversification over time.

Timekeeping vs. Musical Accompaniment

Unlike in poetry, where rhythmicity is called chhanda, in music, rhythm is called tāla (ताल), which comes from tāli (clap), which itself comes from the word tālu (palm of the hand). After all, clapping is one of the most intuitive ways to express rhythm in all cultures.

In Indian classical music and dance, however, claps, waves, finger taps, and a few other gestures are used to mark the place in the rhythm cycle. This is typically done by singers to keep track of the rhythm while singing and is quite different from rhythmic accompaniment of a performance. Here is a demonstration.

The Nātya Shāstra describes multiple classes of instruments, of which ghana-vādya (घन वाद्य, i.e., solid instruments like the manjira, which are small cymbals) and avanaddha vādya (अवनद्ध वाद्य, i.e., covered instruments like the mridanga and other drums) are related to percussion. Interestingly, the text mentions only the solid instruments as being responsible for keeping time. Some scholars wonder why the drums were excluded from this categorization.  

My reasoning is that this is because the function of timekeeping is distinct from percussion as an accompaniment to music or dance. While the drums play many types of interim beats to accompany and enhance the beauty of a performance, the solid instruments serve primarily to keep time by consistently marking the sections of the rhythm pattern used at the required pace.

This can be seen even today in performances that feature both tabla and manjira. The tabla will play a variety of beats, but the manjira will typically only mark the beginning of each section of a rhythm cycle, serving as a much more effective marker of time.

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Footnotes

[1] जटाटवीगलज्जलप्रवाहपावितस्थले गलेवलम्ब्य लम्बितां भुजङ्गतुङ्गमालिकाम् ।
डमड्डमड्डमड्डमन्निनादवड्डमर्वयं चकार चण्डताण्डवं तनोतु नः शिवः शिवम् ॥ 1 ॥ The Shiva TānDava Stōtram, said to have been composed by Ravana, is filled with Shiva-related imagery. The first verse describes the sacred Ganges flowing through Shiva’s dense matted hair, the enormous snake coiled around his neck, and the Damaru he plays rhythmically as he does his auspicious tānDav dance.

[2] Vedic Sanskrit is the more ancient form of Sanskrit. It is the language in which the Vedas are composed. The Vedas are collections of hymns composed by seers (rishis) over a period of many centuries, if not millennia, along the banks of the Himalayan rivers, where they lived and taught in ashrams. Sometime around 1,500 BCE, over a thousand of these hymns were compiled into a ten-volume work called the Rig Veda, and they have come down to us unchanged since that time.

[3] कौसल्या सुप्रजा राम पूर्वा संध्या प्रवर्तते । उत्तिष्ठ नरशार्दूल कर्तव्यं दैवमाह्निकम् ॥ २ ॥Meaning: “O Rāma, beloved son of Kausalyā, the day dawns. Awake, O best among men! God’s work is waiting to be performed.”

[4] यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत । अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥ ७ ॥Meaning: “Whenever morality is weakened, O Bhārata, and immorality rears its head, I (Vishnu) manifest myself (in this world to restore morality).”

References

1. Evolution of rāga and tāla in Indian music, Gautam, M. R.
2. नाट्यशास्त्र में वर्णित ताल-तत्व: एक अध्ययन, Dr. Ritu Singh
3. छन्द (Meters), Dr. Vasudev Prasad
4. CHHANDA SHASTRA OF PINGLA – A MATHEMATICAL REVIEW, Mrs Shefali Joshi & Anant Vyawahare
5. Chandas – Vedas, vedangas and upangas, and Chandas- Part 2, Tattvam
6. Sanskrit prosody, Wikipedia
7. Vedic meter, Wikipedia
8. Pingala, Wikipedia
9. The Beauty of the Shiva Tandava Stotram, Rashmi Sharma
10. A Recitation That Many Hindu Households Wake Up To, K Balakumar

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Related: Vedic music from over 3,500 years ago.