Dattilam (दत्तिलम्) is an ancient
Indian
Indian or Indians may refer to:
Peoples South Asia
* Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor
** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country
* South Asia ...
musical text ascribed to the sage (muni)
Dattila. It is believed to have been composed shortly after the
Natya Shastra of
Bharata, and is dated between the 1st and 4th
The Chronology : 300AD-600AD
/ref> century AD. But Bharathamuni had given reference of the treatise " Dattilam" in his celebrated work "Natyashastra"(1-26) so there is a belief that Dattilam may be a work composed before Bharata Muni.
Written in 244 verses, Dattilam claims to be a synthesis of earlier works on music. The text marks the transition from the ''sama-gayan'' (ritual chants as in the Samaveda), to what is known as gandharva music, after the gandharva
A gandharva () is a member of a class of celestial beings in Dharmic religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, whose males are divine performers such as musicians and singers, and the females are divine dancers. In Hinduism, they are ...
s, musically adept spirits who are first mentioned in the Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the s ...
. Dattilam discusses scales (swara
Svara or swara (Devanagari: स्वर, generally pronounced as ''swar'') is a Sanskrit word that connotes simultaneously a breath, a vowel, the sound of a musical note corresponding to its name, and the successive steps of the octave or '' ...
), the base note (''sthana''), and defines a tonal framework called ''grama'' in terms of 22 micro-tonal intervals (''sruti'') comprising one octave. It also discusses various arrangements of the notes (''murchhana''), the permutations and combinations of note-sequences (''tanas''), and ''alankara'' or elaboration.
The melodic structure is categorized into 18 groups called ''jati'', which are the fundamental melodic structures pre-dating the concept of the raga.
The names of the jatis reflect regional origins, e.g. ''andhri'' (Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
), ''oudichya'' (Orissa
Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of S ...
).
(Note that many modern raga names are also after regions - e.g. Khamaj, Kanada, Gauda, Multani, Jaunpuri, etc.). Ten characteristics are mentioned for each jati, which resemble the structuring and elaboration of the contemporary raga in Hindustani music.
Dattila (between the 4th century BCE and the 2nd century CE) is an early India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n musicologist, who refined the melodic structures, scales and other aspects of Indian Classical Music in his work Dattilam. Nothing is known of Dattila beyond the work Dattilam. In Bharata's Natya Shastra, Bharata gives a list of a hundred sons who will put the knowledge of performances (''Natyaveda'') to use. One of these sons is named Dattila,[
p. 8; "Dattila was either a predecessor or a contemporary (p.115)."] which had led to some speculation that Dattila may be
a little later or contemporary to Bharata. However, today it is mostly felt, given the lack of ''Natyashastra'' elements in Dattilam, that he may have been a little earlier or a contemporary.[ Of course, the date of Bharata is itself not known; usually he is dated somewhere between 400BC to 200AD.
]
References
Nijenhuis, Emmie te (1970). Dattilam: a compendium of ancient Indian music
Hindu texts
Indian classical music
Indian music history
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