Hi Asha
In India, Alankar or Alankara means ornaments or adornments. In the context of Indian classical music, the application of an alankar is essentially to embellish or enhance the inherent beauty of the genre. The earliest reference to the term Alankar has been found in Bharata’s Natyashastra written sometime between 200 BC and 200 AD. This treatise on dramaturgy mentions 33 types of Alankars. Subsequent musical treatises like Sharangdev’s Sangeet Ratnakar in the thirteenth century and Ahobal’s Sangeet Parijat in the seventeenth century mention 63 and 68 types of Alankars respectively.
The Shastras or ancient texts have categorized alankars into two broad groups – Varnalankar and Shabdalankar. The former comprised the varna based alankars of earlier times. The four Varnas, sthayi, arohi, avarohi, and sanchari were arrangements of notes in a particular sequence or four kinds of movements among notes. Sthayi refers to halting at a single note, arohi to an upward movement, avarohi to a downward movement and sanchari is a mixed (upward and downward) movement. This classification of alankars related to the structural aspect of a raga. The latter classification, Shabdalankar, comprised the aesthetic aspect. It referred to the sound production technique utilised by either the human voice or on an instrument. Shabdalankar had a wide connotation and would actually include everything that a performer wove both melodically and rhythmically outside the periphery of the fixed composition. In other words, all the extempore variations that a performer created during a performance within the raga and tala limits could be termed as alankar, because these variations embellished and enhanced the beauty of the raga, the tala and the composition. Source site: www.itcsra.org/alankar/alankar.html
Thanks n regards
Suparn@
Answered by
Suparna
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11:06 PM on October 21, 2008
