Every student of Hindustani music knows the name of Acharya Bharat. He is the father of all fathers of music, the great grandfather. It is said that Acharya Bharat learned the performing arts from Brahma himself. He was the author of Natyashastar, the most referenced source in both Indian Music systems (Hindustani and Carnatic). The depth of musical theories explained in Natyashastar gives us some hints that by the time Bharat came along, Indian music was already a fully developed art form.
Unfortunately, not many really know what is in Natyashastar.
There are two reasons for misinterpretation of Bharat’s music theory. First, Natyashastar is not available. Everything we know about Natyashastar is through other books that refer to it. Second, many writers especially in the 20th century wrote things that do not represent Bharat’s concepts. They used what they found in one place and without searching for the rest, filled the blanks on their own.
In April 1957, Acharya Brihaspati became the first man after Sarang Dev (13th century) to demonstrate Bharat’s Sharuties and Grams to an enlightened audience in Bombay. Since then a new wave of undoing the damage has started. Justifying the Thaat system with Bharat’s Grams and Moorshanas had made Indian music theory opaque. Everyone who was looking for the roots of their twelve notes in Bharat’s Grams had complicated the matter.
The explanations of Grams and Sharutis in my blog are based on Acharya Brihaspati’s research and demonstrations and my own ongoing research.
Bharat’s theory is based on three concepts:
1. Gram
2. Moorshana
3. Sharuti
In practice, a performer only uses Grams and Moorshanas. The knowledge of Sharuties is not needed to establish the Grams, it is only needed to understand them.
Here is Bharat’s Shudh Ashtak (octave):
As you can see, if one’s ears can perceive perfect third, fourth and fifth, one can tune any instrument to this Gram without the knowledge of Sharuties.
When Bharat Muni achieved this Gram, perhaps the following two questions came to his mind:
1. Why Re and Pa are not in Samvad (perfect fourth)?
2. What is the difference between current Pa (fifth in the above scale) and the Pa in Fourth Samvad with Rishav (2-5 = 1-4)?
Acharya Bharat’s Veena was an instrument not much different from modern Swar Mandal. He probably had many students and other music Acharyas in his ashram. Together they established that the difference between both of these fifths is the same difference that shows up on the ‘octave note’ when an octave is based on fifths or fourths (based on fifths, the octave notes is sharper, where based on fourths the octave notes is lower). When Pa (fifth in Shadaj Gram) was lowered to bring in the perfect fourth position with second (Rishav), it suddenly appeared to have the same relation with Ma (fourth) as Re did to Sa. In essence, the octave just shifted to the fourth. The difference between these two tunings of the fifth (pancham) was considered the most crucial in achieving a harmonic scale. Bharat Muni called it Parman Sharuti (sharuti of proof) as it was the Parman of difference between two identical scales sitting a perfect fourth apart from each other.
As he named his original scale Shadaj Gram, he named the new scale Madhyam Gram. Madhyam or Ma was the beginning note of this scale.
There are three types of Sharuties in Ancient Indian music:
1. Parman Sharuti
2. Sub-mehti Sharuti
3. Mehti Sharuti
According to Savart system devised by the French acoustician Joseph Sauveur (1653-1716) (named after the French physicist and doctor Félix Savart), if we divide the octave into approximately 301 equal parts (actually near 301.03), the approximate value of the above Sharuties is as follows:
1. Parman Sharuti = 5 Savarts
2. Sub-mehti Sharuti = 18 Savarts
3. Mehti Sharuti = sum of first and second sharuties or (18+5) = 23 Savarts
Now you can see that the Sharuties are not just unequal, their values are quite bit apart.
There are 22 sharuties in an octave. As I described earlier, sharutis are not Jananis (mothers) of notes, they are merely a way to measure and explain the phenomenon of physics of music. They are one of the ways to see how the pleasant sounding musical intervals relate to each other. In the end, it is all about pleasure.
Next time we will see how these Sharuties explain the harmonic position of notes in an octave.