Music as Ritual

Music and Ritual

In India music and dance and arts has a ritualistic background whether tribal or Vedic.When I speak on the cultural heritage of Indian music and arts ,someone was asking me “Are you promoting Hindu religion?”
When I was speaking about the classical music and its effects on the health of my clients ,then also someone asked me “Are you promoting Yesudas?”
I don’t know the meanings of both these questions.
For one thing there is no need for a person like me to be a promoter of either Hinduism or of Yesudas.Both are already famous and accepted by a very large section of society.The second aspect is that if any one who does research on Indology is a Hindu Fundamentalist ,then it is better to be that rather than doing no research at all on our past history of heritage and culture.The third aspect is that if I am promoting both Yesudas and Hinduism at the same time ,that is an impossibility ,as any fool can see from the first glance itself.

I saw a journal published by Spanda Foundation a Transnational Non-profit NGO for sustainable advancement of peace ,knowledge and understanding and they had published a Music and Ritual Project edited by Keith Howard in 2006 which I happened to read in 2010 .This book should be seen by those people who asked me whether I am promoting Hinduism and Jesudas .They have said in the introduction itself that in all cultures of the world art and ritual ,especially music and dance ,occurred together and developed together.Ritual is a human activity from early stage of human development and in that music and dance were for creating atmosphere or to provide aural and visual markers that lend efficacy to the procedures and atht is part of an ethnic people’s developmental history.In Indian people’s developmental history,then Indian music ,dance,arts and languages and other scriptural stories etc has a n important role and to ignore it saying these are just myths and religion,is not to know our own past and our own evolution as a people together.Which one developed first ,music or ritual?The newborn child develop ability to explore sound and dance before it speak and walk and pray .So first is music and art .This ethnomusicological approach is what I am using in my studies.
Nepal in the Himalayas is a prehistoric part of India where part of Videha king Janaka and his daughter Sita ,and the branch of Rama’s succcessors (Of Moolaka) as the Sakya Sudhodana and GouthamaSidhartha lived.The first article in this research work deals with the tribal old musical rituals and how the shaman heals with it .
The horoscope predictions,scriptural text readings and shamanic rites of sending dangerous spirits of ancestors away and applying music for pestilence and other disorders ,the need for correct intonation and chanting are used by tehse tribals just like the Sanskrit Thanthriks of ancient India.Gurung is the word for Guru used by them.The shaman is a ritual expert and an astrologer ,head or chieftain as well as a Gurung.To be a Shaman they start learning at 4 years of age and continues till 24 (20 years of study. Comparable to Indian traditions ).The hills of Pokharan at 5000 feet height has a place called Yajnakot where the shaman interviewd by the research team had been living for generations as Shaman Gurus.At the beginning of the ritual they too chant the entire history of their Guruparampara (which has a 100 )just like the Vedic practice.The shaman say that the Nepal Shaman has come from the four directions-South,east,west and North.This particular family has come from south (Cho or Ui Cho Hyula ) and call themselves as Namtithu Namtahya Pachyu Tamu/Tamumai are considered as outsiders as Gurungs.Prominent in Annapurna hills and Manasalu mountains of Central Nepal speaking Tamu-Kyui language,.Pachyu is a pucu /Poju(Poojari) or shaman pajyu and the term is present in all mythical Tamu histories.The other Pajyu is from Karkola from the east ,pron from west,Chalden from South says Pignede (1993).
Pachyu Chiba means the head Shaman chosen by a possession .The learning has to be completed before marriage (during Brahmacharya as in Indian tradition).Four of the relatives play percussion instruments for the shaman and assist in his curing spells.The shamans are also Vaidya preparing herbal medicines.
For the training of Pachyu phases of moon are important.Training starts from a time of partial eclipse.During full moon period spirits have less power so the student is taught to fight them during full moon.Healing is practiced as new moon rises,so that patient become better when moon becomes full.At daylight they collect herbs and at night they sing,dance play instruments and give herbal medicines .The dress (especially the cap and drum and cymbal of Pachyu resembles the Vealn/Vannan Veriyattu and the Khlypri that of Parya and Theyya Manthravada kolams (though the Nepali shaman is shown to wear shirts in photographs –may be a new addition to the attire-and the Vannan and Paraya does not wear it in their ritual times.).Fighting ancestaral spirits is done by Pachyu only and they do not eat pork or buffalo just like Indians .Khlyeperi’s job is to purify dead and send tehm to upperworld.Before they do it,the Pachyu has to send the dead spirit away by their ritual.The music and rhythms of these two groups differ.
The funeral rites rhythms of the Nepali ritual starts with rhythms of creation,not with destruction.Then invites ancestral spirits,goes to lower worlds,and call souls of dead,then bring soul back to meet the living.This is played with special drums which are rare (Padu and herga they call them) and submetric units change frequently as one pattern give way to next.The patterns are sad and amrk separation and loss and there is gradual acceleration as sequence progresses.The interlocking patterns of the two drums represent split pulls of human life or struggle between good and bad deeds.(says Killius about it).The two drums speak between them a secret language in rhythms.
I remember the small hut of a Paraya just opposite our Nalapat House ,across a small field.When at night a drum beats with a sad pathos note,my grandmother used to exclaim “Someone has dead.Appunni is calling the spirits “.Nowadays that rhythm is not heard anywhere in Kerala ,I think.That rhythm which reduce all the bad karma of the dead soul and make it pure and tehn send it to upper worlds or heaven is lost .For brass cymbals (called siljyo chhya) or Chyolle ,the shaman says they are fighting with spirits by speaking through cymbols and driving them away (bad ones).For a spirit (dead one) crying they use a Horn which Appunni also played in his ritual.Long hollowed and spiraled horns and conch shells are used for making two types of sounds –sad mourning ,and happy auspicious ones.Cymbols are similar to Tibetan rol-mo.The instruments are bigger for khyelpri and high resonant frequencies come and go.The effect of a constantly changing harmonics is created.

The Nepali shamanic ritualistic music and its notations are given recorded from Cambridge research center in the book.And the British and western researchers are interested in how the eastern prehistoric music was used in healing ,both by tribal and classical musicians of India.There is no religious interest in that type of research ,but just a search or quest into the ways of an ethnic group of people and their past histories and cultural heritage and its development.
In Balinese history dance and drama is to pass down cultural values through tales of Ramayana,Mahabharatha,and other such epic stories.Bali dance is ritualistic and part of the popular religion of the land and propagated by court of royal kings.The relationship between what westerners usually call religion and what Balinese call Agama is a twisted tale .(page 74 Damp dreams some problems with dance in Bali by Mark Hobart . Keith Howard Ed Music and ritual).That is a sentence which catches our attention. Agama is an Indian word for Vedic culture .And that is not what the religion means in English language .This lack of understanding of modern human beings and scholars and westernized educationists has caused the question put to me as I had pointed out in the first paragraph itself.We have to rethink and redefine our understanding about India and its culture and its terms and rituals which are for healthy living in a geographic region.
Even the Vedic utterances against the enemies has to be understood as rituals to ward of harmful spirits as enemies in the early evolutionary history of human beings,and not as the political history of a servant class as enemies to the masters.It is an absurd idea to feel like that ,and that idea came from the western masters who were facing struggles from the subdued colonial people as their servants and enemies and has nothing to do with Vedic rituals.The Thripura destroyed by God in the Veda is as much the final covering of mundane life as a triangle around the Bindu in the Mahathripurasundari Chakra of Srividya ,rather than the political destruction of any city /urban center.Unless one know the different rituals associated with the vedic and tribal and thanthric people of the land and understand each as offshoots of the same primitive popular cults of the land ,this fact will not be cognized.And when the wrath of Parasurama killed entire race of royalty,and when during end of Dwaparayuga destruction of all was predicted ,the people of the land had codified the important scriptures and protected tehm in popular as well as academic discipline (in Gurukula) for posterity and the message was given through Katha (which is a story drama,with dance and music ) to all alike as a means of survival of the knowledge among the remaining few (especially women and children who were the only survivors in both the situations mentioned).

In Balinese language Pulau Dewatha means The island of Divine ones.Pulau or Pulu(mayi ) and Pulava is then an islander for Balinese.Sumatra known a steh Gateway to Mecca of South East Asia the group music,dance and rhythmic percussions are famous.One type called Ratoh duek (sitting chattering) in Achean and Sman in Gayo is a secular folk game .The other is a Rateb duek (sitting devotional) partly religious.This was modified and used in Kerla Muslim traditions till the beginning of last century .I do remember groups of Rateb players(Mostly Muslim)coming to our courtyard to play this rhythmic dance in a circle with their percussion instruments.Th eorigin is Mughal Indian ,says the book (page 88).The rateb is a sufi style trance and the music and dance rhythms are played throughout night just as the Paraya and Nepali shaman do .This is done during circumcision,weddings and for honouring guests too.In China the Xian Gyuye with wind and percussion instrumenst is the oldest surviving music of the land ,the living fossil(Huohuashi) as known by Chinese scholars.It was a popular music by folk musicians,labourers,peasants and lower social classes.The silk route had contributed to this musical culture to China and flute is a important constituent of the instrumental music.Confuciou sis attributed to have the four basic principles of ruling established as music,law,rituals and administration.Slow simple music along with rituals was a must in law and administration of China from Confucius times.Music had a ceremonial cultural value in administration of state since it was essential for stress relief and efficiency of rulers and citizens of the nation.The same principel we see in the administrative laws of India where royalty had ritualistic music ,just like the common man ,and both had to be healthy in mind and body and intellect for a healthy nation.
The two tables below show how the Confucian administration was same as or similar to Indian system of music and astronomy,and Ayurvedic healing and use of it in the five elements and the state administration.

Table 1:-
12 pitches .Huang zhong,dalu,taicou,jiazhong,guxian,zhonglu,ruibin,linzhong,yize,nanlu,wuyi,yingzhong.
Each of these alternate as yang,yin,yang ,yin
The five degrees :1st pitch is gong.3rd is shang,5th is jue,8th zhi,10th yu
Order of state: Gong is emperor,shang minister,guxian people,zhi matter,yu affairs
Internal organs:spleen,lung ,liver,heart,kidney in that order (for the 5 degrees)
Human character:-trust,loyalty,humanity,courtesy,wisdom (for the five degree)
Element :Earth,metal,wood,fire,and water
Directions:Middle,west,east,south and North
Colour:-yellow,white,green,red,black
Table 2:-
Source of sound.. instrument moral implication
Metal Bells order,horizontal,power,military commander
Stone chimes discernment,death,result of defending frontiers
Silk Qin,Se sadness,honourable,will power,courageous officer
Bamboo flute spreading out,gathering crowd,resource gathering officer
Gourd mouth organ
Earth globular flute
Skin drums power,movement,a moving crowd,generals and officers
Wood zhu,Yu
Yhis ritual and meaning came to existence in 3rd century BC in China.

When I compare this with the extensive Thanthric scriptural material and Yoga literature of India and also the Ayurvedic and Musicological ancient texts , along with my childhood experiences of popular and folk music of my small village where all the tribal and folk arts existed harmoniously ,I find what a rich tradition we had and compared to the other parts of the world how much research can be done in Indian music and culture ,if the foolish so-called Intelligentia and academicians of universities thro waway their preformed notion that whatever is written in Sanskrit is religious and is whatever is ritualistic in India is Hinduism and it is equivalent to the term religion as used with the semitic meaning.Hinduism is a culture,a living tradition of ethnic geographical civilization of a people who lived in the subcontinent from Himalaya to Kanyakumari and the varied cultural peculiarities of each region and the codified and educational schemes organized by ancestors to protect each needs more care and research ,rather than dumping it in the dustbin of religion and politics and terms like Right wing an left wing.
I am totally unaware of the right or left wings since I always take the Royal Middle path to truth ,what is called the Rajamarga ,as in Tyagarajas’s Kharaharapriya composition “Chakkani Rajamargamu”.
I have only one request to researchers who are true truth seekers.Dont be fooled by preformed opinions.Observe everything,question,analyse and if found to be logically and experimentally as well as experience-wise true ,accept it as truth.That is science.To label something as myth,untruth,religion etc and refusing to study and analyse it makes that been lost to posterity forever.The ethnoarcheology,ethnomusicology and ethnic history of India is a living tradition still and study these well before coming to a conclusion.There might have been superstitions in it as in the shamanistic beliefs of ancient past ,but those were the first thought processes of a people before they became evolved and in every step of evolution,in their changing scriptures we find evidences of the evolving thought processes and studying that we will be able to compare our own knowledge systems with the knowledge systems of ancient and from that comparative wisdom we would be able to make a better,classless and free society equal in every respect –economically,educationally ,but diverse in their cultural ritualistic music and arts traditions and belief systems.
I had finished writing this short piece yesterday night,before I went to sleep.Today morning (on 7th June 2010) Times of India reports that a psychologist Matt Rosano ,Professor and Head of Department of Psychology in his book “Supernatural selection :How religion evolved” has stressed the role of religion in the struggles of prehistory for survival and reproductive advantage.He says that roots of religion stretch as far back as half a million years,when our ancestors developed the motor control to engage in social rituals-that is to sing and dance together.70000 years ago,a global ecological crisis drove humanity to edge of extinction,and forced survivors to create a new strategy for survival,and religious rituals were foremost among them.This book is said to be a response to the 2006 bestseller “The God Delusion”by Richard Dawkins,an atheist manifesto that pitted science against religion.
Rossano says Dawkins missed the science that revealed how religion made man more human.He pulls together evidence from a wide range of disciplines to show the valuable purpose served by systematic belief in the supernatural power.According to him,evidence confirms that at its core religion was not about doctrines,creeds,institutions or miracles,but about relationships.Religion is a fundamental way for humans to relate to each other and the world around them and in early prehistory that was a definite advantage.
I have not read both the books.But it seems to me what data and evidences I have been collecting throughout my life(from my own personal and professional life experiences,from other people’s experiences and sciences and scriptures of east and west and comparisons thereof) has something in common with Rossano’s work.May be we are two samaanahridaya(likeminded individuals)who have done the same methods of observations and research ,at two points in space ,simultaneously ,or as a synchronicity ,in psychological and astronomical terms.