Damaru

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The Tibetan wooden damaru is called gcod-dar.

Damaru ( Sanskrit : डमरु , ḍamaru ; also damru ) is an old hand drum or rattle drum from India and Tibet and an attribute of several deities, which, according to its shape, belongs to the hourglass drums . Other names in regional folk music are dambru, oggu and in southern India kudukuduppai, budbudke and budbudukalu .

etymology

According to the Sanskrit word, Bengali means ḍamaru , Hindi ḍamrū and Marathi ḍámru “drum” and also “pumpkin-like”. Similar names in Indian languages ​​can be found for a tree ( Ficus racemosa ) belonging to the cucurbit family and its fruits, which is called udumbara in Sanskrit . There is an attempt to relate the Marathi word tamburā for a long-necked lute (in India vina ) to the udumbara fruit because of the two resonators from pumpkins on this instrument, i.e. to assume the same origin for ḍamaru and tamburā .

Usually, the string instruments in the word context tambura ( tanpura ) in Persian ṭanbur and tunbūr are traced back to the Arabic plural tanābur and Ottoman tunbur , where they used to mean drums (cf. tambourine ). It is only from the Middle Indian languages ​​onwards that derivatives of instrument names from Persian can be found in India. However, hourglass drums and their Sanskrit name are older. A derivation of ḍamaru not from Persian, but an Indian origin in connection with the pumpkin fruit is therefore more likely.

Design

The length of the damaru varies between 10 and 25 centimeters, it has a diameter of about 7 to 20 centimeters. The sound of damaru consists of wood , clay or bronze . The old Tibetan hourglass drum chang teu consists of two skullcaps connected with a piece of wood.

The two eardrums are made from animal skin and, on larger instruments, are connected by a zigzag lacing. The membranes of small Tibetan hourglass drums are glued on. The damaru has two drumstones (clay balls), each tied to the end of a cotton cord that hangs from the drum. The cord is wrapped around the body in the middle. When the wrist is turned accordingly, the stones hit the eardrums and generate a rattling noise. The rattle drum seems to be the older instrument; larger hourglass drums have no rattles and are beaten by hand.

Mythological meaning and use

India

Dancing Shiva as Nataraja with the damaru in the upper right hand
Vaghya, a temple servant consecrated to the family god Khandoba in Maharashtra with damaru and bell ( gante ). Its female counterpart is the dance girl Murali, a kind of Devadasi .

In Hindu mythology, the damaru is an attribute of numerous deities. As a symbol of both life and death, the hourglass drum is held in the hand by the goddess of wisdom Sarasvati ; next to the attributes skull garland ( mala ) and trident in the hand of Bhadrakali, a heroic form of the death goddess Kali ; from Aghora, the 14-armed anger aspect of Shiva ; from Shiva himself; the Ganas , that are little companions of Shiva; and from the Dakinis , skeletal witches. The best known is the hourglass drum in Shiva's right hand in its appearance as Nataraja , when he performs the cosmic dance ( Tandava ) , with which he lets the new world emerge from the fire (in one left hand). The rattle of the damaru represents the sound of the universe immediately after its creation. Legend has it that the Sanskrit language originated from Shiva's drumbeat.

In the Asthadhayi of Panini (around the 4th century BC), in the Amarakosha , a Sanskrit thesaurus from the beginning of the 5th century AD, in the Mahasutasoma Jataka and in other classical texts, the damaru (also dhakka, dimdima ) mentioned. The name damarukam appears in ancient Tamil literature , and other hourglass drums or rattles were sometimes referred to accordingly.

In Indian mythology , the hourglass has significance as a musical instrument is to be found in India only occasionally in folk music. By 1900 it had sunk to an instrument of "criers, beggars and snake-tamers". This group of people, which also includes fortune tellers, still uses them today. An example of this is the Kurubas caste in Andhra Pradesh , Tamil Nadu and Karnataka , whose members used to be shepherds and for whose patron deity the annual Mailara Jaatre festival is held in Karnataka . At this and other festivals the Goravayyalu, followers of the religious sect belonging to the Kurubas, perform round dances, otherwise they go around singing ballads in praise of Shiva, begging and blessing believers. The clothes of the Goravayyalu are strikingly colorful, they wear black triangular bearskin hats on their heads, and bell chains on their ankles. You hold a damaru in your right hand and a flute in your left. Part of their ritualized behavior is that they bark like dogs and consider themselves the same.

Tibet

Folk chanting by three Tibetan monks in Lhasa , who move two hourglass drums with hammer stones and a prayer wheel.

In Tibet, the hourglass drum and a tubular bone trumpet (of the human thigh) rkang dung from the pre-Buddhist spirit religion of Bon entered Buddhist mythology . The skulls used as corpus often come from important religious teachers. The game of these damaru is reserved for high-ranking monks.

Hourglass drums (regional nga-chung ) are only used in ritual music in honor of the Dharmapalas (protective deities) in the Tibetan Buddhist cultural area . The rituals include walking around the stupa and dances in which the dancer wants to call the dakinis with the damaru in hand. The Dakinis ( Tibetan Khadoma, skywalkers) are shown dancing and naked. Her attributes include blood-filled skull shells, cleaver (kartrika) , trident ( trishula ) , thunderbolt or scepter ( rod-rje, Sanskrit vajra ) and damaru . Shiva in his wrathful manifestation as Mahakala appears in the Tibetan world of gods with the same attributes. The legendary founder of Tibetan Buddhism in the 8th century, Padmasambhava , is shown in his manifestation as Guru Pema Gyalpo (lotus king) with a mirror and the skull drum thod-nga . Hourglass drums also mark the breaks between ceremonies. In addition to the damaru , the hand bell dril-bu (Sanskrit ghanta ) and the thunderbolt as the symbolic couple 'female - male' are also used as ritual devices in Tibet .

Southern edge of the Himalayas

In the regions of Garhwal and Kumaon in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand , a somewhat larger hourglass drum is known as the hurka ; the songs she accompanies are called hurkiya bol ("words of the hurkiya "). They are part of an old epic tradition, the performance of which alternates short prose recitations with long sections in verse form. Hurkiya are the names of the professional singers who perform; they mostly, but not necessarily, come from the social group of the same name, which belongs to the lowest caste of the cathedral. The singer plays the drum himself, occasionally two men called hewar support him , who add a sung drone and thus fill in the pauses between two musical units. If the narrative is heading for a dramatic climax, viewers sometimes improvise dances with economical movements. Another hourglass drum in Garhwal is the daunr , which, like the hurka , is reserved for music in closed rooms. Both drums are struck with one hand and a stick and usually played together with a sheet metal plate thali .

More Indian hourglass drums

A slightly larger hourglass drum with an average length of 25 centimeters is called hurukka (also huruka, hudukka, udukkai, deru ). Its body is also made of wood, it is struck with sticks or fingers. In Punjab , the little dhadd is in the tradition of epic folk poetry and is part of the religious music of the Sikhs .

In the rural folk music of Karnataka and Kerala , the small hourglass drum is played tudi . In the villages of Kerala it used to be the custom to uncover a thief with the help of a tudi player. The player gathered the entire village population on the square, beat his drum and cursed the thief so loudly with swear words that he gave himself an answer.

The idakka (also eddakka ) from Kerala and elsewhere in South India consists of a 25 centimeter long wooden body. The eardrums are pulled over sliding metal rings and clamped together. The player strikes with a bent wooden stick in one hand while pulling a string wound around the middle with the other hand and thus can change the skin tension and thus the pitch within narrow limits. The drum, which is difficult to play, is used in dances, folk theaters and, like the timila, in religious ceremonies.

The hourglass drums that came to East Asia through the spread of Buddhism have long since been out of use. The two-skinned stem drum ji wu of the national Chinese minority Qiang belongs to the Tibetan culture . It also has two striking stones attached to strings and is used as a shaman's drum . A similar stem drum of the Naxi in China derives its name dtâ-bbêr-lèr (pronounced "damberlor") from damaru .

The bandaw in Thailand goes back to an ancient Indian cultural influence . The small hourglass-shaped rattle drum is about 16 centimeters long and both heads are 14 centimeters in diameter. The bandaw is not played with the hands. Instead, a single ball, which is attached to a string at the end of a centrally placed handle, hits both membranes alternately when it is turned quickly and jerkily. The handle is 13 centimeters long and has the shape of a chedi . The player moves two bandaws simultaneously with both hands . The instrument is only used in rare royal ceremonies.

literature

Web links

Commons : Damaru  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Knüppel: Once again on the possible origin of osm. tambur (a) ~ dambur (a) ~ damur (a) etc. In: Marek Stachowski (Ed.): Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia. Vol. 14. (PDF; 1.6 MB) Krakau 2003, pp. 219–226
  2. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva, Josef Kuckertz : Bharud, Vaghya-murali and the Daff-gan of the Deccan. Studies in the regional folk music of South India. (Ngoma. Studies on Folk Music and Non-European Art Music, Volume 6) Musikverlag Emil Katzbichler, Munich / Salzburg 1981, pp. 128f
  3. ^ Curt Sachs, p. 75
  4. ↑ Sneha Nanda Gopal: Folk Forms of Karnataka. Govara Kunitha. ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.2 MB) Drishti Magazine, No. 9, pp. 10–13 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.businessonlineindia.net
  5. ↑ Anneliese and Peter Keilhauer: Ladakh and Zanskar. Lamaistic monastic culture in the land between Tibet and India. DuMont, Cologne 1980, p. 173
  6. ^ Alain Daniélou : South Asia. Indian music and its traditions. Music history in pictures. Volume 1: Ethnic Music. Delivery 1. Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1978, pp. 86, 88
  7. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments. National Book Trust, New Delhi 1977, pp. 41f
  8. ^ Michael Oppitz: Ethnology Ritual Objects of the Qiang Shamans. In: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 45, spring 2004, p. 25
  9. ↑ Bandaw. tkapp.tkpark.or.th (English description, images and audio sample)
  10. ↑ Bandaw. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 214