Vadya
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Vadya (Sanskrit: वाद्य, vādya), also called vadyaka or atodya, is one of the three components of sangita (musical performance arts), and refers to "instrumental music" in the Indian traditions.[1][5][6] The other two components of sangita are gita (vocal music, song) and nritya (dance, movement).[1][7][4] In the general sense, vadya means an instrument and the characteristic music they produce, sound, or play out.[8][9]
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Indian musicology
The term vadya in the sense of "music, sounded, played, uttered" appears in Vedic literature such as the Aitareya Brahmana, and in early post-Vedic era Sanskrit texts such as the Natya Shastra, Panchatantra, Malvikagnimitra, and Kathasaritsagara.[5] These texts refer to the musician or instrumental performer as vadyadhara.[5] A stringed instrument is described with proportional lengths in Jaiminiya Brahmana and Aitareya Aranyaka, and these are compared to poetical meters.[10] The 17th-century text Sangita Darpana defines sangita (musical arts) as "gītam vādyam tathā nrityam trayan sangīta muchyate", meaning sangita comprises gīta (vocal music), vādya (instrumental music), and nritya (dance).[11]
Classification of instruments
Sanskrit literature describes four types of vadya:[4][6][12]
- Tantu: stringed musical instrument (chordophone)
- Susira: hollow musical instrument (aerophone)
- Ghana: solid musical instrument (idiophone)
- Avanaddha: covered musical instrument (membranophone)
Ensembles and orchestras
The chapter 14 of the Saṅgītaśiromaṇi describes musical ensembles based on a collective performance of vadya instruments by musicians, and it calls such a band orchestra as a kutapa.[13]
Cultural exchange
The term vadya also appears in the Buddhist Sanskrit text Sukhavativyuha, influential in the Chinese and Japanese traditions, which Luis Gomez translates as "instrumental music".[14]
In Hindu-Javanese music tradition, vadya is called vaditra.[7] According to Roger Blench, most scholars consider the term valiha (a Madagascar tube zither instrument) to be rooted in the Sanskrit term vadya, reflecting a period of cultural exchange over the Indian Ocean.[15]