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(ii) Historical development of tāla systems.
As with melody, there is an inherited body of rhythmic theory that no longer describes practice but is a source of rhythmic concepts and terminology. Again as with modal theory, the system of ‘canonical’ (mārga) tālas described in the earliest treatises (Nātyaśāstra, Dattilam) is distinctively different from that of the ‘provincial’ (deśī) tālas recorded in later texts such as the Sangīta-ratnākara. The deśī-tāla provide the basis for the modern tāla systems.
In both historical systems, hand-gestures and/or cymbal strokes, arranged in asymmetrical patterns, were used to articulate rhythmic periods. In the mārga system, an elaborate cheironomic code, using claps (samnipāta) and four different silent gestures, was employed to mark the progress of the saptagītaka, a repertory of sacred song used in the introduction to drama. The complexity of this code may have been necessitated by the extended and complex temporal structures of the saptagītaka, which do not seem to have been organized according to simple metrical cycles or strophic forms.
The mārga-tāla system also included five simple patterns that may have been cyclically repeated in less complex genres such as the dhruvā stage songs. The later deśī-tāla system consisted entirely of such cyclical patterns – the Sangīta-ratnākara lists 120 – and the complex cheironomy of the saptagītaka was therefore no longer required.
Both mārga and deśī systems defined the spacing of hand-claps or cymbal strokes using values and terminology derived from poetics. The basic values were laghu (‘light’), guru (‘heavy’, two laghus) and pluta (‘protracted’, three laghus). In the deśī system two shorter values were added, druta (‘fast’, half laghu) and anudruta (‘very fast’, quarter laghu). These shorter values, and the virāma (‘rest’) that extended the previous value by a fraction, enabled the expression of a greater variety of rhythmic proportions than was possible with the three basic values of the mārga system.
Although these prosodic values could be used to express ternary rhythm, the metrical structure of the mārga system was, at another level, exclusively binary. The basic pulse or mātrā, defined as about one second in length, was grouped into metrical units (kalā) comprising two, four or eight pulses. These units could be combined into larger periods (anga, ‘limb’), described as caturaśra (‘four-cornered’) if there were 4, 8, 16 or 32 units, or tryaśra (‘three-cornered’) if there were 6, 12 or 24. Claps and silent hand-gestures were then assigned to specific metrical units according to a variety of patterns. Each pattern could be expanded to double or quadruple length by inserting extra units between those of the original pattern; silent hand-gestures denoted these extra units.
Additive or ‘mixed’ (miśra, sankīrna) metres comprising five, seven, nine etc. metrical units were not employed in the sacred hymns and stage songs described by the Nātyaśāstra, though they were acknowledged to exist. Such metres are prominent in the deśī tāla system, where the binary kalā is replaced by metrical units of different lengths, expressed by the prosodic values laghu, druta, anudruta etc. Theorists delighted in cataloguing (and no doubt also inventing) dozens of tālas formed from combinations of these units, some of which must have been ephemeral while others have remained in the repertory more permanently. Even some of the more recherché patterns can still be heard as an occasional tour de force in Hindustani percussion solos or Karnatak rāgam-tānam-pallavi performances.
A limitation of the deśī system was that its basic units still expressed only binary proportions (apart from the rarely used longest unit, the pluta). Units of three, five etc. could only be expressed by combinations of binary units with or without virāma. In the modern Karnatak tāla system (see below), this limitation has been resolved by making the laghu a variable unit, comprising three, four, five, seven or nine beats (the druta and anudruta remaining fixed at two beats and one respectively). In the north, the prosodic terminology has been abandoned altogether; metrical units (vibhāg) of two, three, four and five beats are employed without terminological distinction.
Two further aspects of tāla that are important in the modern traditions can be traced in texts dealing with the deśī-tāla. From the Sangīta-ratnākara onwards certain composition types (prabandha, see §5(i) below) were associated with particular tālas, often sharing the same name, as in the modern dhamār and dādrā (see §(iv) below). In later texts, tālas began to be associated with particular configurations of drum syllables, though the concept of thekā emerges fully only in modern Hindustani practice (see below). Despite these theory–practice connections, however, the number of tālas in practical use today, and probably also in earlier times, in any one tradition is very small compared with the innumerable patterns available in theory. A group of seven tālas called sālaga-sūda or sūlādi (named after the sālaga-sūda prabandha in which they were used) has had particular importance since the Sangīta-ratnākara, surviving in different forms today in the Karnatak ‘formal’ system (see below) and the Newar caryā tradition of Nepal. A similar set of ten tālas was used for singing dhrupad at the Mughal court in the 16th century or early 17th, according to the song collection Sahasras. While the modern Karnatak sūlādi system comprises 35 basic tālas, the ‘informal’ system predominantly used in practice comprises at most ten (see below). These provide fast and slow varieties of binary, ternary, quintuple and septuple metre. The Hindustani tālas in common use also represent these four metrical types but with more varieties (distinguished by clap-pattern and/or by drum-pattern, thekā), numbering about 20 altogether.
India, Subcontinent of, §III, 4: Theory and practice of classical music., Rhythm and tāla.
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