Makoto Kitada

The Body of the Musician: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Pindotpatti-prakarana of Sarngadeva's Sangitaratnakara - Welten Sued- und Zentralasiens / Worlds of South and Inner Asia / Mondes de l'Asie du Sud et de l'Asie centrale Makoto Kitada New edition

The Sang?taratn?kara («The Ocean of Music») written by ??rngadeva in the 13th century is the most important theoretical work on Indian classical music. Its prologue, the Pindotpatti-prakarana («The Section of the Arising of the Human Body»), deals with the Indian science of the human body, i.e. embryology, anatomy, and the Hathayogic heory of Cakras. The sources of this work are found in the classical medical texts (?yurveda) such as Caraka, Su?ruta and V?gbhata, the Hathayogic texts as well as in the encyclopaedic texts (Pur?na). After philologically analyzing the mutual relation and background of these texts, the author demonstrates the reasons why the human body is described in this musicological work. His investigation reveals the Indian mystic thought of body and sound. This study, although an Indological one, is an attempt to answer the universal question what music is, i.e. how music is created in the human body, what the effect of music on the human body is, and what music aims at. The second half of the book consists of a translation of the original text of the Pindotpatti-prakarana, including commentaries, with plenty of annotations.