Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

(b) Traditions.

One of the major cultural consequences of the Muslim hegemony in the Indo-Gangetic plain and northern peninsular India was the introduction of the written chronicles of Muslim historians, with their regular use of dates, names and places. It is largely for this reason that medieval predecessors of the modern performing traditions seem somewhat more discernible for the Indo-Gangetic plain and Hindustani music than they are for Karnatak music. Most of the accounts, however, come from sources dating from the mid-16th century to the mid-18th, thus in some cases considerably later than the period in question.

In the decades before and after 1300 the outstanding Indo-Persian poet Amir Khusrau was at the court of the sultans of Delhi. Most of the stories about his connections with music are found in late sources, and many are apocryphal, but of his knowledge of and devotion to Indian music there can be no doubt. Whether or not he invented the devotional qavvālī singing of the Sufi orders and introduced the singing of ghazal, he certainly established and legitimized them as South Asian musical items. He was also a friend and disciple of the great Chishtī saint Nizām-ud-dīn Auliyā, who successfully argued the propriety of using music for Sufi devotions, taking the case against the Muslim divines to the sultan in the early 1320s.

Timur’s sack of Delhi in 1398 scattered the court establishment, and during the 15th century the effectively independent rulers of Bengal, Jaunpur, Gujarat and Gwalior were the chief patrons of music. Sultan Husain ‘Sharqī’ of Jaunpur, who reigned from 1458 until his principality was reabsorbed by the sultanate of Delhi in 1477, is often credited with the invention or revival both of a number of rāgas and of the musical form khayāl. The Hindu king of Gwalior, Man Singh Tomar (who reigned from 1486 to 1516), is lauded as a great patron, and the names of several of his musicians are recorded. Tānsen, the leading musician of Akbar’s court and the paramount figure at the source of the most respected of the Hindustani music traditions, came from Gwalior and was first trained there.

The earliest Persian treatises on Indian music are largely dependent on Sanskrit sources. The Ghunyat-ul-munya (1374–5) also contains, however, some interpretive comment on both theory and observed practice. The Delhi court itself became a musical centre once more during the reign of the Afghan king Sikandar Lodi (who reigned from 1489 to 1517). Later historians list the sultan’s favourite rāgas. According to the earliest two accounts (1572), these were Kānadā, Kalyān, Gaud and the Western Asian maqām called Husainī, which is listed simply as a rāga in later 16th-century peninsular Sanskrit treatises. The Lahjat-i-sikandar-shāhi, dedicated to the sultan, follows the seven-chapter plan of the Sangīta-ratnākara without deviation, using the commentaries along with their citations from other sources such as the Sangīta-samaya-sāra and the Brhad-deśī (Delvoye, ‘Indo-Persian Literature’ (1994), pp.101–2; Lal, 1963, pp.242–3; Ahmad, 1954).

About professional musicians and their patrons in southern India there is less specific information, although devotional poems survive with their composers’ names and sometimes also names of rāgas. An exceptional survival is the set of copper plates from Tirupati containing texts and rāga names for kīrtanam by the 15th-century Tāllapākam composers (Sambamoorthy, 1952–71, ii, p.367 and plates 21 and 22).

The fountain-head of modern Karnatak music was the Vijayanagar empire. Several passing anecdotal references in Muslim and Portuguese chronicles suggest that the fundamentals of musical practices in the Hindu Vijayanagar court and in the Muslim Bahmani court and its successors were not substantially different. In addition, Kallinātha’s testimony (cited above) that the system had changed shows that in the Deccan some sort of syncretism of old and new practice had taken place that was as much a departure from ancient lore as that occurring north of the Vindhyas in the same period.

India, Subcontinent of, §II: History of classical music

3. Music and theory after the 16th century.

The modern period of South Asian art music may be thought of in two main divisions, separated by the second half of the 18th century. For Hindustani music, the dominance of the Mughal musical establishment for nearly two centuries characterizes the first division. In 1562 the Emperor Akbar took personal control of his government and in the same year brought Tānsen from the court of Reva to his own court. The Mughal musical establishment endured, supplying and taking from smaller courts, until the period following the last years of Muhammad Shah (reigned 1719–48).

The second division begins in the years after Muhammad Shah, when many of the Delhi musicians dispersed to regional centres of semi-independent power, as their predecessors had done in the 15th century. The most important patronage outside Delhi was at Lucknow, the court of the nawabs of Avadh, but other princely states and the newly rich tax-farmers and businessmen in Calcutta also patronized musicians. Traditions from the mid-19th century onwards are then securely traceable up to Independence in 1947 and beyond.

In south India the modern period begins from the last years of Vijayanagar in the mid-16th century. During the next two centuries musical predominance became concentrated in the former Vijayanagar viceroyalty of Thanjavur, first under the rule of independent Nāyak viceroys until 1673. After 1675 Thanjavur was ruled by Maratha kings who maintained and enlarged the existing cultural traditions until the death of Tukojī II in 1736. Following his death the principality of Thanjavur was in turmoil for several decades. Patronage revived under Amar Singh, who reigned from 1787 to 1798. Śarabhojī Serfoji II (reigned 1798–1832) signed away his ruling prerogative to the British in 1799 in exchange for the preservation of his court and his royal dignity. He was then left free to devote himself to developing, among other luxuries, the musical establishment inherited from his predecessors. The three Brahman musician-devotees whom Karnatak musicians credit with the modern transformation of their heritage – Tyāgarāja, Muttusvāmi Dīksitar and Śyāma Śāstri – also flourished during his reign.

In 1855 the royal succession in Thanjavur lapsed, but by then other south Indian courts and wealthy landed proprietors were supporting Thanjavur-trained musicians. In the second half of the 19th century a number of professional musicians learnt the kīrtanam compositions of Tyāgarāja from his immediate disciples and began singing and elaborating them as concert pieces. They were established by these musicians and those of the early 20th century as the nucleus of the present concert style. During this same period the support for musicians provided by the princes, wealthy landlords and temples began to be supplemented by sangīta sabhā (‘music societies’) in Madras and elsewhere, formed by Brahmans and others in business, government and the professions who had an interest in music.

(i) History of music theory in the modern period.

(ii) South Indian sources for mela (scale-type).

(iii) 16th- and 17th-century rāga-rāginī treatises.

(iv) Deccani and western Indian treatises.

(v) Eastern Indian treatises.

(vi) Treatises leading to modern Hindustani theory.

India, Subcontinent of, §II, 3: History of classical music, Music and theory after the 16th century.