Page:The Music of India.djvu/90

 importance of time-measure in Indian music. The westerner often finds these time-measures far more difficult to master than the melodies, strange though those often are. The varieties of time-measure may be somewhat imperfectly realized by listening to the rythmical beats of the drum in some distant village on a quiet moonlight night, when all other sounds are stilled and one can get the full benefit of this one sound. Sometimes one hears beats arranged in bars like this :

or agam, or agam, or agam, 2.1.1. 1.2. 2. 1.1. 1.2. i 1. 2. 2. 3. 2. 3. 2. 3. 2. 1.1. I 2. 1. 1 I 1. 2. j 1. 2. 2. 3. I 2. 3. 7.1.2. i 7.1. 2. 7. 1.2. 7. 1.2

Such an exercise will not only help one to appreciate the rhythmic soul of India and the intricacy of Indian time, but will also help to pass the hours when one is forced to lie awake.

Though the nomenclature varies, as might be expected, the theory of tala (as time-measure is called) in the north and south is more uniform than that of raga. As usual, a fanciful origin must be found for tala. It is said that Bharata discovered the thirty-two kinds of tala in the song of the lark. Raja S. M. Tagore says that the word tala refers to the beating of time by the clapping of hands. Sometimes it is also done by means of small hand-cymbals, which are called tala or kaitala or kartell (hand-cymbals). It may be that, as has been suggested, the main difficulty for westerners in realizing and enjoying the nice distinctions of Indian rhythm is that they have not acquired the habit of resolving mentally every unit into its constituent elements, so that they could sing them at a moment's notice.