Page:The Music of India.djvu/45

 music was largely improvization, the accompaniment could not be a strict following of the singer, though it is wonderful to see the way singer and player will keep close to one another all the time, even though neither has any piece of written music before him. Then also the instrument helped to register the notes and to define them. It was through the instrument that the importance of the major third, which has been called the Magna Carta of music, was realized. Further, through the instrument, the musician began to base his melody on the lower notes, as they are the louder and clearer on the instrument; whereas, when there was no instrument, he started from the higher notes and came downwards. It was also noted that the third obtained from the voice is slightly sharper than the third obtained from an instrument., eight sriitis as against seven srutis. Bharata calls this difference of one sruti a pramana sruti, — 'indicative interval', because all the other intervals can be deduced from it, a fact which the Greeks also noted. So by the co-operation of voice and instrument the scale is worked out ; and in one sense the instrument may be called 'the originator of the scale,' because it determines it.

It must, however, be remembered that a song or piece played on an instrument is a live thing and does not submit to mathematical precision. There is, it is true, only one form for each scale, and every singer and musician tries to get it right, though no one invariably manages to do so. The very fact of putting passion [rasa) into music means that a particular note will be taken rather sharper at one time than at another. The law is there of course to be obeyed as perfectly as possible. In South India the use of the term sruti for such a possible sharpening or flattening of particular notes recognizes the truth of this variability. Music after all is an art and not a mere mechanism. Nobody can sing like a machine, even if he tries, any more than a man can walk in a perfectly straight line or breathe as the clock ticks.

The correlation of the notes of the Saman chant with the notes of the secular or instrumental scale is another step in the process of this interrelationship of voice and