Instruments in Indian Sculpture
THE EARLY BEGINNINGS
The polished, ivory-ornamented elegance of modern Indian musical instruments such as the veena, the sitar and the sarod affords little idea as to how primitive
were the instruments from which they are descended. In fact, the main families
of existing musical instruments can all be traced to various devices of primitive
man to make music which sounded different from his own voice.
Amongst the commonly accepted main classes of instruments, namely the
string, the wind and the percussion, the last mentioned has the earliest origin. Every
variety of percussion instrument contributes rhythm and dynamism to whatever
type of music it accompanies.
Rhythm comes naturally to man, since everything in creation moves to it.
It is manтАЩs oldest impulse. The ceremonial dancing of primitive man was a great
outlet for his emotions, both when experiencing pleasure and when appeasing the
God he feared. The basic impulse of rhythm in him led him to standardise the
various forms of emotional expression he was familiar with and to create and
design rhythmic instruments.
The simplest accompaniment of the dances of primitive man was provided
by the dancers themselves. They marked time by stamping their feet and clapping
their hands in simple rhythms. Sometimes they kept time by beating their chests,
flanks and bellies with their hands. These methods might will have been the first
pointers to a drum.
Gradually rattles came into use. They were probably first made out of
nutshellss, seeds and stones strung together or placed in a hollow gourd, and either
suspended from the waist of the dancer or tied to the ankles, so that they sounded
sharply in response to each movement. Such early beginnings resulted in the use of
cymbals, gongs, bells, ankle-bells (ghunguru), kartal, and so on.
Another rhythmic instrument used by primitive man was the stamping pit.
This was just a big hole dug in the ground and covered with bark. People stamped
on this lid with their feet and thus produced a sound somewhat like the beating of
a large drum. One variation of the stamping pit that emerged sometime later was
that instead of being covered with bark the pit in the ground was covered with hide
and beaten with long, stout sticks. Such a тАШdrumтАЩ was called bhoomi dundubhi, and
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it was used on such occasions as the Mahavrata ceremony mentioned in the Samhitas
and the Brahmanas.
A casual banging on a hollow gourd or a human skull might have suggested
to primitive man that sound could be amplified by the use of hollowed-out materials.
Hallow bamboos or large block of hollowed-out wood covered at both ends were
commonly used. The were beaten with thick sticks. It is possible that the sound
of wind-swept branches striking against the stretched membrane of a dead animal
first gave man the idea of stretching and covering up an open frame with skin. The
duff, the khanjari, the tambourine and all drums with open frames are extremely
simple in construction. The ancient instrument pataha also belongs to this category.
So does the conical drum. There the skin is stretched over a pot which serves as a
resonator. Such drums have been in common use all over India since very early
imes. Two examples are the bheri and the dundubhi. These ancient drums still
survive in the modern nagara and its variations.
Without doubt it must have been a little later that barrel-shaped wooden drums
covered with skin on both sides came into use. There are numerous varieties of
the two-sided drum; the two that are most common and incidentally most represen┬м
tative are the dhol and the mridanga. The dhol and its cousins are normally used
for weddings, festivals, processions, and other ceremonial occasions. The dholak, the
dholki and some other variations are smaller versions of the dhol, while the dhak
is a larger version.
