Sangitdamodar

Sangitdamodar a sanskrit book of musical performance ascribed generally to Shubhankara, variously described as Assamese, Bihari, and Bengali. Subhankara is believed to have lived during fifteenth century AD.

The book was very popular among the Vaisvavas of Bengal. Written in five chapters (stavakas), it deals, though not very coherently, with the rules of song, instrumental music, dance and drama. The topics, chapterwise, are: i. Feeling or emotion as the basis of rasa, suggestive and attractive gestures of the heroine, the time and place for trysts, the moods of the lover, messengers, etc; ii. Heroine, female friends, hero, sound, song; iii. Notes, shaking of tones, groups of three letters each, indicated by letters MA (all three long vowels), NA (all three letters short), etc, ascent and descent of the seven notes in succession, groups of five letters each, indicated by KA, CHA, etc, note-series, groups of tones forming the basis of ascent and descent of notes, melody, beating time; iv. Subtle notes, attendants of a hero, arts, instrumental music, graceful movements of body, dance, drama, stage, worship of Jarjara pillar, preliminaries of a dramatic performance, benedictory verse, stage-manager, prologue, a dramatic device before an act for connecting past with coming events, entr'acte, elements of plot, dramatic styles, dialects, modes of address in a drama, excellences in a drama, major dramas, minor dramas, junctures; v. Defects of songs, parts of songs, pause, nine sentiments (rasa), comic, etc including the quietistic. The author refers to some opinions according to which Prema (love) is the tenth Rasa; Bhoja includes Udatta and Uddhata as two more Rasas. According to the author, the erotic is the predominant sentiment. [Suresh Chandra Banerjee]