Bhankora
Bhankora is a long straight natural trumpet made of copper , which is mainly played in religious and secular ceremonial music in the Garhwal region in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand . The rare bhankora one of a series of straight metal trumpets that in India, among others, as karna , in Tibet as Dungchen and Nepal as ponga are known and are used exclusively ceremonial. In ancient Indian times, Sanskrit bakura probably referred to a snail horn that was blown during war and religious rituals. In the Mughal period , straight metal trumpets from Arab-Persian military music were among the representative palace orchestras.
Origin and Distribution
Old Indian time
In ancient Indian illustrations, wind instruments mainly show transverse flutes, a few lengthways flutes and individual double wind instruments with reeds ( corresponding to the Greek aulos ), pan flutes , snail horns (Sanskrit shankha ) and long trumpets , probably imported from the West . Of these, a large number of transverse flutes ( bansuri , murli, venu ), some double flutes (such as the alghoza ) in regional North Indian folk music, snail horns used in religious ritual music and some natural trumpets of different sizes and shapes have survived to this day.
Already in the Rigveda , which presumably dates back to the 2nd millennium BC. The oldest part of the Veda , which originated in BC , occurs twice the Sanskrit word bakura with the presumed meaning "wind instrument", restricted to "trumpet" or "horn". The meaning is derived from the context: In one text passage bákura is connected with the verb dhmā , "to blow". The Ashvins , who appear as twins , youthful sky gods in the Vedic religion , blow the bakura so that there will be light for the people (Aryans). In the other place, bákurá is an adjective for the noun drti , "skin", "pocket". The gods blow the Bakura -Tasche and mix the protective against enemies miracle drink Soma .
Curt Sachs (1913) summarizes both text passages: "With the Bakura blowing on the enemy, they (the Açvin) gave the Aryan people great shine" and reproduces the verb and noun translation of bakura as " bagpipe ". This, although repeated by some authors, is considered implausible. In any case, the bakura seems to have been a loud wind instrument used in war. In The History of Musical Instruments (1940), Sachs lists the four instrument names mentioned in Rigveda: aghati (probably cymbals ), gargara (string instrument, probably the bow harp called vina ), vana (probably a flute because it was blown by the storm deities Marut ) and bakura . Sachs is now opening up the meaning of Sanskrit bakura by creating a connection to Malagasy bakora for "snail horn". Malagasy is the westernmost Austronesian language spoken in Madagascar and is more closely related to some languages in the Malay Islands . A conceivable connection is given by the cultural influence of Indian settlers and traders who reached the Malay Islands in the first centuries AD. From there, Malay sailors brought their language and material culture, enriched with Sanskrit words by the Indians, to Madagascar in the second half of the 1st millennium. Reliable evidence for this hypothetical derivation of bakora can hardly be found.
Independently of this, Walter Kaufmann (1981) and other musicologists translate bakura as "snail horn", which has been known under the Sanskrit name shankha since the Middle Vedic period (beginning of the 1st millennium BC) . Snail horns are on reliefs on the stupas of Bharhut (2nd - 1st century BC, blown by a monkey), Sanchi (2nd - 1st century BC) and Amaravati (2nd century AD). ) shown. According to the ancient Indian texts, snail horns were mainly used for religious rituals, they appear as an attribute of Vishnu and other gods and also served as signaling instruments in war, where they drowned out the noise and the war cries during the battles. They did this in the battle of the divine heroes, which is portrayed in the great Indian epic Mahabharata . Each of the heroes blew their own individual horn. The Mahabharata shows that drum and snail horn playing musicians were present in battles, but enjoyed a special status and were not allowed to be killed in battle. In the music-theoretical work Natyashastra, which was written around the turn of the century, shankha appears alongside the trumpet tundakini . All over India, Brahmin priests blow snail horns in Hindu temples, and snail horns are traditionally used in wedding ceremonies.
In the Rigveda, red and dark metals ( ayas ) are mentioned several times , which probably meant copper and iron, from which the metal founders made weapons, cult vessels, jewelry and, very probably, at the time Sanchi's Stupa I was made, musical instruments - idiophones and trumpets. On this stupa (on the western pillar of the northern Torana ) there is a relief from the 1st century BC. With a group of musicians and visitors who have come to worship the stupa. On the left edge of the lower row, two musicians are apparently blowing long straight metal trumpets, which they hold up almost vertically with their heads tilted backwards. The trumpets do not end in a bell, but, as in the Celtic Carnyx, in a strongly curved animal head with an open mouth. The other musicians play a double wind instrument, a double cone drum , an hourglass drum , a frame drum and perhaps a bow harp.
Parallel developments to the ancient Indian straight metal trumpets with or without a relationship to one another include the carnyx, slender trumpet types from the ancient Mediterranean, including the Roman lituus , the oldest known illustration of which dates from the beginning of the 5th century BC. BC, the Roman tuba and the Greek salpinx . The oldest known trumpet image and thus the presumed origin of the trumpet, long before the ancient Egyptian , gold and silver trumpet originals from the tomb of Tutankhamun (14th century BC), can be found on a fragment of a Mesopotamian limestone stele from Ḫafāǧī , around 2600 v. Is dated. The shown trumpet with a conical tube without a bell should have been around 50 centimeters long. In texts from the original III period (around 2000 BC) there is a wind instrument made of gold, silver or bronze with the Sumerian name gigid , which translates as "long pipe". Little trumpets made of the same metals that were excavated on the Iranian highlands (one of the sites: Tepe Hissar , 2200–1750 BC) are a little younger . According to Iranian mythology , the god Ahura Mazda gave the first king Yima a golden trumpet ( sufrā ) and a gold-plated whip ( ashtrā ) as an aid to bring people, animals and plants to a sheltered place before the onset of a cold winter . The story thus marks the beginning of the widespread mythical connection between the trumpet or horn and the divine, which makes the Jewish shofar a cult instrument, and the later use of a wind instrument as a magical aid in hunting animals.
Islamic times to the present
It is not known whether the ancient Indian metal trumpets are forerunners of the straight metal trumpets, which are rare in India today, such as the bhankora or the more common semicircular or S-shaped curved trumpets, called kombu in the south and shringa , in Garhwal ranshringa , in the north on the edge of the Himalayas become. War trumpets, cone oboes and drums from the Arab-Persian region reached India sometime after the first Muslim conquest of Sindh in 712. In early Islamic times, according to Henry George Farmer (1929) , the Arab military bands did not yet have long trumpets in their military music. In the 10th century, military bands belonged to the caliph's insignia and, in addition to kettle drums ( tabl , dabdab and qasa ), were set with long metal trumpets būq an-nafīr and cone oboes surnay .
The subsequently most important war drum of the Muslim armies was the pair of kettle drums nagārā , the Arabic name of which was introduced in India when the Sultanate of Delhi came to power in 1206. The military bands soon became representative orchestras at the rulers' palaces, which were referred to by the name derived from the drum as naqqārakhāna or naubat . According to the list in the court chronicle Ain-i-Akbari of the Mughal Mughal Akbar , his naqqārakhāna consisted of 63 instruments. Two thirds of them were different drum types. In addition there were 3 pairs of hand cymbals (Arabic / Persian sanj ), 4 straight long trumpets karnā made of "gold, silver, brass or another metal", long trumpets, three further metal trumpets nafīr and 9 cone oboes surnay (now in India shehnai ).
The names common in India for the long trumpets used exclusively in religious and ceremonial music, including Sanskrit karanā , Hindi kaha, qarnā , Tamil karnā, are connected, like Arabic karnā, with Latin cornu , Celtic corn (yx) and English horn . Curt Sachs (1923) considers the straight trumpets to be even more important sacred instruments in India than the single-winded trumpets with bell, which are also used in religious cults, which are known by names such as turya, tuturi, and bhuri and the European signal trumpet ( Clairon ) correspond. One such Clairon instrument is the bronze trumpet bankia played in processions in Rajasthan .
Among the straight Indian long trumpets, the tirucinnam used in Hindu temple ceremonies in Tamil Nadu is of particular importance, because the 75 centimeter long trumpet is not only blown individually but also in pairs by a musician with a difficult playing technique. A longer metal trumpet, cylindrical except for the bell , is the ekkalam in Tamil Nadu , while the gowri kalam there has a conical tube made of three parts. The bhenr is a cylindrical trumpet made of copper, almost 105 centimeters long, by the Oraon, an Adivasi group in Bihar . In Rajasthan, the two-part straight bronze trumpet bhungal and the similar turhi are played in processions, especially at weddings. The two-part karna in Rajasthan has a wider, plate-shaped bell , like the one-part karnat in Gujarat . Indian long trumpets ( kaha ) in particular came to Java in the Middle Ages , where they are depicted on reliefs at the Candi Jawi (Jawi Temple) from the 13th century.
On the southern edge of the Himalayas in the state of Himachal Pradesh and Nepal, the karnal is a long two-part brass trumpet with a mouthpiece and a funnel-shaped bell that is used in folk music, temple rituals and processions. The dungchen or thunchen is an artistically decorated ceremonial trumpet made of copper and silver with a length of 160 to almost 200 centimeters with a wide bell, which is usually played in pairs in Ladakh , Bhutan and in religious Tibetan music . Some dungchen are so long that the lama needs the help of an assistant while playing or places the front end on a wooden stand. In some regions in Nepal the long straight trumpet ponga ( pãytā or pvangā ), also karnal , made of copper or brass, is used for religious chants and dances . During special religious festivals, the Newar perform a ritual dance that is accompanied by several drums, cymbals and five pairs of ponga .
Two more, compared to the S-shaped curved ranshringa and bhankora even rarer natural trumpets in Uttarakhand hot turhi and nagpani . The turhi of this region consists of a cylindrical, oval-curved tube. The nagpani ( naghpani , "snake face", cf. Naga ) is a short, snake-shaped trumpet with a snake-head-shaped bell.
Design
The bhankora is closely related to the karnal , but has a somewhat narrower one-piece tube made of copper that merges into a funnel-shaped bell. The tube, which is around 150 centimeters long in most specimens, is cylindrical for most of its length and only gradually becomes conical at the lower end. There is a firmly attached mouthpiece at the upper end . The wind instrument is not in tune with a fixed pitch.
In contrast to the ranshringa , which occurs more frequently in Uttarakhand, the tube of the bhankora does not have any bulge- shaped connection points, but is seamless and smooth over its entire length. Bhankora are played almost exclusively in pairs, as in general the West and South Asian trumpets, which is why they can only be bought in stores as a pair.
Style of play
The tube is flushed with water before use. The player holds the instrument with one hand on the mouthpiece and with the other hand approximately in the middle of the tube. He only uses two or three overtones of the natural series . The bhankora is therefore not suitable for playing melodies or accompanying a singing voice. The bhankora is held at the game, first down to the ground and then pulled into a fast swing upwards, as if the sound should be thrown out.
Garhwal traditional musical instruments are divided into two groups according to their use for outdoor or indoor events. In both groups there are always instruments played together in pairs. The instrument pairs daunr (hourglass drum) and thali (brass plate ) or hurka (another hourglass drum) and thali are used for possession ceremonies in private rooms , while public theater performances in the village squares as well as wedding ceremonies and processions of the drum pair dhol (large barrel drum) and damau (small kettle drum) ) to be accompanied. The musical instruments have more or less three social tasks to fulfill in every context: They should (at weddings and dance theaters with religious-mythological content) have a beneficial and auspicious effect, enable the connection to the invoked deities in obsession rituals and also serve for entertainment.
The musicians in Garhwal either belong to a certain professional cast or they are specialists from other castes. What they have in common is their low social status, regardless of the importance of their music for the cultural life of the higher castes. The drums dhol and damau used outdoors , the occasional large kettle drum nagara and the wind instruments mashak (bagpipe), ransingha and bhankora are played by the Bajgis musicians.
At the multi-day wedding celebrations, the drum pair dhol-damau is an indispensable element not only for entertainment, but primarily for structuring the complex process with special drum rhythms depending on the situation. Ransingha and bhankora fulfill an additional ceremonial and sacred function. In the course of the 20th century, the use of these natural trumpets declined. The bagpipe mashak has often taken its place as a melody instrument that complements the drum beats.
In addition to wedding processions , ransingha or bhankora can be played during the worship of the gods ( puja ) at the temple. The Scottish painter and war correspondent William Simpson (1823–1899), who stayed in the high altitude town of Kalpa in the north of Himachal Pradesh in the summer of 1860 , mentions a ritual in which the figure of the god was removed from a Devi temple. Behind the procession went - with the participation of the village population - musicians who played trumpets 1.2 to 1.5 meters long. Simpson compares these trumpets with the ones he saw on the relief at the Sanchi stupa.
literature
- Andrew Alter: Bhaṅkorā. In: Grove Music Online. May 28, 2015.
- Andrew Alter: Dancing with Devtās: Drums, Power and Possession in the Music of Garhwal, North India. (2008) Routledge, Abingdon / New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-138-09241-9 .
- Walter Kaufmann : Old India. Music history in pictures. Volume 2: Ancient Music . Delivery 8, Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981.
Web links
- Uttarakhand traditional Dhol and bhankora . Youtube video ( dhol-damau group and three bhankora at a family celebration)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alastair Dick: Bákura. In: Grove Music Online. 3rd September 2014.
- ^ Curt Sachs : Real Lexicon of Musical Instruments. Julius Bard, Berlin 1913, p. 27b, sv "Bákura"
- ^ Curt Sachs: The History of Musical Instruments . WW Norton & Co., New York 1940, p. 152.
- ↑ Jeremy Montagu: The Conch Horn. Shell Trumpets of the World from Prehistory to Today. Hataf Segol Publications, 2018, p. 55.
- ↑ Walter Kaufmann, 1981, pp. 34, 76.
- ↑ Alastair Dick: Śaṅkh. In: Grove Music Online. 20th January 2016.
- ↑ Walter Kaufmann, 1981, p. 64.
- ↑ James W. McKinnon: Lituus. In: Grove Music Online. 2001.
- ^ Subhi Anwar Rashid: Mesopotamia. (Werner Bachmann (Hrsg.): Music history in pictures . Volume II: Music of antiquity. Delivery 2) Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1984, p. 60.
- ↑ Bo Lawergren: Iran. I. Pre-Islamic. 2nd 3rd millennium bce. (iii) Trumpets. In: Grove Music Online. 2001.
- ↑ Alastair Dick: Nagara. In: Grove Music Online. 2001.
- ^ Henry George Farmer : A History of Arabian Music to the XIIIth Century. Luzac & Co., London 1929, p. 154.
- ^ Reis Flora: Styles of the Śahnāī in Recent Decades: From naubat to gāyakī ang. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music. Vol. 27, 1995, pp. 52-75, here p. 56.
- ^ Curt Sachs: The musical instruments of India and Indonesia. At the same time an introduction to instrument science. (2nd edition 1923) Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1983, p. 171.
- ↑ M. Lalitha, M. Nandini: Hear the sound of tiruchinnam. The Hindu, March 24, 2016.
- ^ S. Krishnaswami: Musical Instruments of India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, New Delhi 1965, p. 90.
- ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments of India. Their History and Development . KLM Private Limited, Calcutta 1978, p. 111f.
- ^ Jaap Art : Hindu-Javanese Musical Instruments. (1927 in Dutch) Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1968, p. 32.
- ↑ Richard Widdess, Gert-Matthias Wegner: Nepal, Kingdom of. I. Music in the Kathmandu Valley. 2. Newar music. (ii) Castes, genres and instruments. In: Grove Music Online. 2001.
- ↑ Naghpani. Metropolitan Museum of Art (illustration)
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse : A Survey of Musical Instruments. Harper & Row, New York 1975, p. 787.
- ^ Andrew Alter, 2016, p. 71.
- ^ Anoop Chandola: Folk Drumming in the Himalayas. A Linguistic Approach to Music . AMS Press, New York 1977, p. 8.
- ↑ Andrew Alter, 2016, pp. 39f.
- ↑ William Simpson : Pujahs in the Sutlej Valley, Himalayas. In: The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. New Series. Vol. 16, No. 1, January 1884, pp. 13-30, here p. 17.