Dattilam

The Dattilam is a remarkable treatise from the earliest known period of organized, systematic writing on music in India. The work can be placed in the same period as the Natyasastra (the beginning of the Christian era) and it presents to us a well-developed sastra, composed at the end of a long tradition of analytic thinking on music. It is devoted to the description of gandharva, a sacred corpus of music, derived from the still more ancient sama, sacred Vedic form. Gandharva was also the parent of later forms from which our own present forms have descended. But the importance of the Dattilam is not a merely historical one. It articulates a framework and approach in musicology with which our understanding of musical forms is still impregnated. The present edition of the Dattilam contains the text with variant readings, and English translation facing the original and a commentary on the text to facilitate its comprehension.