Veda Recitation in Vārāŋasī by Wayne Howard Review by: William J. Jackson Asian Music, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Autumn, 1988 - Winter, 1989), pp. 154-158 Published by: University of Texas Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833861 . Accessed: 18/06/2014 21:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
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that Dr. Slawek's book fills an important gap, and the thoroughnessof the descriptions contained are not likely to go out of date. George Ruckert U. of California,Berkeley All Akbar College of Music.
Wayne Howard, Veda Recitation in VYriaras7,Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,1986. $40 (dist. South Asia Books, Columbia,MO).
Banaras, or Varar)asi, to use the earlier form of the North Indian city's name, has been for many centuries a major center of orthodox Hindu learning. The Vedic reciters of Banaras are renowned for their fidelity to tradition. Pandits with ancestral ties to Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujerat as well as Mahara•tra, to preserve and transmit their modes of chanting India continue South in this city of pilgrims, Gangesghat and shrines. Detailed studies of Vedic reciting are not plentiful. Musicologist Wayne Howard,by taping chants in India and analyzing them syllable by syllable, has resolved some of the tangled misconceptions about the variations in style found among the reciters, and has answered questions about their accuracy and hence authenticity. Howard shows how the elaborate structures of the chants, with their inner logic and mnemonic devices, give evidence of unbroken roots going back to ancient India, and explains some of the finer points of the diverging variants. The four Vedas are sometimes thought of in the West as Biblelike scriptures, but they were not primarily texts--they were written and printed only after centuries of orally memorized transmission. The Vedas are performance scripts composed of "tonally accented verses and hypnotic, abstruse melodies whose proper realization demands oral instead of visual transmission. They are robbed of their essence when transferred to paper, for without the human element the innumerable nuances and fine intonations--inseparable and necessary components of all four compilations--are lost completely." (p. ix) The authority for correctness in Vedic recitation is not a written rulebook, but the living Brahmar)s who carry on the tradition.
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In Gupta times (320-470 AD) there was a split: srauta Bra hmaos kept performing all the Vedic rites (sruti);smarta Brahmars, who formed the majority, kept up only some of those rites and were authorities of the smrit sastra governing Hindu law and customs. After the tenth century in South India giving land and goods to Bra hmars and temples replaced Vedic sacrifice as the preferred ritual action establishing royal authority and prestigious status. Vedic sacrifice became rarer in the North as well. In our times there are even fewer ritual Vedic reciters. "Manifestationof the Vedas in their sacrificial forms has deteriorated to such a degree that a performance of even the simplest soma ritual, the agnistoma, is today a rare event...."(p. 5) The history of Banaras,which Howard sketches, reflects the changing fortunes of Vedic expertise, from the great asvamedha or horse sacrifices of ancient times, through Muslim rule, to modernizingIndia of the present. At this time a large number of the Brahmansof Banarashave Southern roots. Howard discusses important families long associated with Vedic learning, as well as the roles of institutions, such as the Sanskrit University, and SafigavedaVidyalaya,as well as the Sanskrit College of Banaras Hindu University. In all of these institutions Southern-rootedBrahmaos make up a high percentage of the teachers. (Photographsat the back of the book show some of the more famous reciters of this century). Howard delineates the varieties of soma sacrifices which have been performed in recent years, and considers other srauta rites of the 19th and 20th century--locations, expenses, performers and sponsors--to map out some ground-level specifics of these ancientrooted rituals. Howard'sbook, like his earlier one on the Sama Veda published in 1977, is a technical resource for scholars of ritual, Vedic Sanskrit, chanting and music. (To understand why the Vedas have been so important in India, why they have been preserved for millennia through various upheavals, read J.L. Mehta's "The Hindu Tradition: The Vedic Root" in The World'sReligious Traditions edited by Frank Whaling,Edinburgh,1984). Howard explains the intellectual impact of on Maharastrians Banaras--for example, the family of NiarayaraBhatta, who belonged to the Rig Veda and whose expertise helped strengthen Vedic
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traditions in Banaras generally. Howard re-examines J.E.B. Gray's 1950s study of the Rig Vedic traditions in MahararSra.He shows why Gray's analysis found that the chanters diverged from the scheme dictated by Western preconceptions. Howard believes that a . study of Vedic recitation must always rely on the actual oral testimony of those Brahmaoswho have spent a large portion of their lives mastering the Veda to which they belong by birth, Little knowledge can be gained from mere printed text, for the accentuation presented there gives only a bare outline. The correct interpretation of this outline is left up to the specialist, who today realizes the accents by the use of musical pitches. (p. 30) A good portion of Howard'sbook presents these useful though limited "outlines"--with each syllable and note given--recording specific representative examples from each Veda. From the Rig Veda the examples are a hymn to Agni, and the famous hymn to the Indus river. Technical terms, for varieties of chants, and different "time units," for example, are discussed, as well as rules of sandhi--the patterns in which Sanskrit consonants and vowels adapt to adjacent sounds. Some confusion is cleared up by Howardon a point regarding udatta, a term which some scholars interpretedas "high pitch," when it probably referred to hand gestures. Howard also discusses the way Nambudiri Brahmars teach students to remember different tones by moving their heads to different positions (as is shown in the Agnica yana film made by J. Fritz Stahl). The ArtharvaVeda hymn which Howard recorded is known as the "Hymn for Peace" (A.V. 19.9.1). Howard compared Gujarati and Maharastrianrenderings and found them virtually identical in modus Howard contextualizes the "White" Yajur Veda, the operandi. preponderant form of the Yajur found throughout North India, exploringthe links of the main school of its recital with the geography of the Kuru-Paficala territory--the middle area between the Himalayas to the North, the Vindhya mountains to the South, the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna in the East, and the Sarasvati river in the West. Besides transcribing the Madhyandina school's distinctive recitations and characterizingthem, Howard draws on the substantial research of V. Raghavan to depict the Kalva school. Especially valuable to Vedic specialists, the analyses and
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recitations are transcribed here in Western staff notation. Ethnomusicologists, oral literature scholars, and performance analysts will find these exact and exacting representations helpful. The famous origin myth text, PuruSa Sukta (Yajur Veda, VajasaneyiSan)hita 31.1-22; Rig Veda X. 90), as sung by the Mfadhyandinaschool is one chosen for detailed analysis and notation. The Sama Veda chanters in Banaras have ancestral roots in Gujarat,Karrataka, Maharartra,and parts South. Howard points out their stylistic differences. Some of this comparison is at a level so technical that it will likely be most useful to Vedic specialists. But students of India in general are fortunate that such a resource now exists--the complex body of information found here is in greater detail than most other publications on the topic. It will serve as a model of precision for other workers in the fields of text performance. A wall of secrecy surroundsthe Sama hymn chanting of Gujra tis in Banaras-they fear a tape might reach the ears of the masses (e.g., by radio) and be heard by Suidras--it is forbidden for outcastes to hear or recite the Vedas. The sacred is protected by secrecy and the authority of the spellbinding chanters is thus preserved. Fortunately, Howard found the Southern chanters of the Sama Veda more cooperative. With all manuscripts and printed editions of Sama chants now available, scholars seeking to probe "the mysteries of the oldest musical tradition on earth" have been baffled by the lack of a clear correlation between the traditional accompanying mudra (hand positions) and the tones sung by Sama Veda chanters. But Howard has gathered enough information and tapes to present rules for the correct contextual realization of the mudra and to speculate about how the variations and the confusion arose. This is a contribution which specialists in the field will appreciate. Within this sharply-focused area of study Howard has analyzed, contextualized, and made sense of some very difficult issues, even if he has not ventured to say much about the religious meaning of it all. Used with tapes, translations and secondary sources, such as A.K. Coomaraswamy'sinterpretive essays and J. Fritz Stahl's compendium on the Agnicayana, VedicRecitation in Viranas~ will be a valuable ancillary resource. Though many Sanskrit terms are used, translations are always given and an index is provided.
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The Vedas make a great demand on those who perpetuate them. To learn them all is nearly unimaginable. The Caturvedi,"one who has mastered the four Vedas,"and carries them in his head, has existed in India's past, but his existence is increasingly hard to imagine for moderns. The great number of the hymns, incredible complexity of the sounds, the mystery of the symbolic meanings in the mythological system-these humble any serious learner. The fact that so many later Hindu developments look back to the Vedas as the original fountainhead points to the Vedas' centrality in Hindus' sense of continuity. Wayne Howard, with precision of methods and clarity of presentation, has helped us to realize further the broad scope and the minute nuances of this unbrokenancient religious art. William J. Jackson Indiana University at Indianapolis
Yuan Bingchang and Mao Jizeng, et al., ed. Zhongguo Shaoshu Minzu Yueqi Zhi (The Musical Instruments of the Chinese National Minorities: A Dictionary). Beijing: Xin Shijie ChubanShe (The New World Press), 1986. 402 pp. ill. photos, music, index. In addition to the Han people (the majority of Chinese),there are as many as 55 national minorities in China,numbering 67 million, and constituting about 6.7 percent of China'spopulation of a billion. Most of these people live in the mountainous hinterland or remote areas bordering neighboring countries. The population of these minority groups ranges from about two thousand (Luoba in Tibet) to over 13 million (Zhuangin Guangxi,and other provinces) (anon. 1984: 268-270). While some of these groups are almost assimilated into the Han culture, others still preserve their own distinctive language, custom, religion, and in many cases, physical appearance. The culture of some of them is closely related to their neighbors in bordering countries, such as the Uygur with those in Central Asia, and the Yao, Miao, and others. with those in mainland Southeast Asia...Despitethe interest in these minorities by the Han Chinese,until now the Western world has known very little about them in general, and even less about their music.
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