Shri Sangita Kaladhara; by Dahyalala Shivarama; Hindi translation by Bihari Byohara and Chetna Jyotisha Byohara

This book may well be expected to interest one and all, if only because of the diversity of its content and the way it has been presented.
It has something of value for lovers of both contemporary and traditional thinking on the arts. Essays on “Aesthetics Today”, “The Quest for Key Aesthetic Concepts” and “The Aesthetic Attitude” relate explicitly to present-day aesthetics; and the one on “Rasa Theory” may well be able to provide some new insights to those who are not averse to looking anew at this impressive foray of traditional Indian thinkers into the region of aesthetics.
However, the essay which is most likely to draw and hold readers’ attention because of the tantalizing appearance, so to say, of its very subject is the one on “Music and Silence”. Very few aestheticians have written on it so far; and nowhere, except in this book, is the reference all along to Hindustani music. Nor has our rhythm ever been written on in the way it appears in this book, in terms of the following essays: “Hindustani Rhythm and Aesthetic Theory” and “Hindustani Rhythm and an Aesthetical Issue”.
As for the essay on Attenborough’s classic film Gandhi, it may well make readers realize, in happy wonderment, how much they failed to mark when they saw it. Indeed, there is no reason why analytic writing on art should not make us ever more sensitive to the numberless creative devices it employs with delightful effect.

With its roots in the Samaveda (which treats it as a ‘divine art’), music in India has a long, splendid tradition. Over the centuries, it has absorbed fresh influences and experimented with new forms to finally evolve into two meticulously codified classical systems: Hindustani and Carnatic. In today’s growing library of writings on Hindustani music, Anjali Mittal’s research is yet another valuable addition adopting, as it does, a viewpoint which has been neglected so far, namely, the viewpoint of contemporary western aesthetics. It is for the first time that this monograph examines the concept of form in Hindustani classical music. In this context, analytic attention has been focussed on some select compositions in dhruvapada, dhamar, tarana, vilambit and drut khyal genres of Hindustani classical vocal music. A wide variety of drut tanas has also been analysed in terms of notation and linear diagrams. Such diagrams, in fact, distinguish the present volume. Analysis of some rhythm-cycles and rhythmic patterns is another feature of this book. Thoroughly documented and written in a jargon-free language, the study includes a contextual discussion of aesthetics, artistic expression, aesthetic predicates and, above all, the concept of artistic form. The work may be expected to interest all those who want an analytic understanding of what form (or bandisha) means in the region of Hindustani classical vocal music.