AIM In spite of a reasonably extensive literature in English' and Indian
vernaculars, there are extremely few books on Indian music that can be
considered of a scientific standard. I found, when I took up an interest
in Indian music in 1967, that even protracted reading of the studies in
English was not conducive to an understanding of the principles of
performance. Most of my study and research have been devoted to the
gradual refinement of this very understanding. In the course of time it
also became obvious that different scholars and different musicians held
divergent views on many basic concepts of Indian music. Therefore, one
of my tasks was to assess the degree of variability in Indian music. As
a corollary I wanted to know how this variability could manifest itself
as change in a relatively short and well-documented period. It is often
assumed that traditional cultures, as e. g. in India, are rather inert
and that the art forms hardly ever change. This study proves the
contrary: Indian music has a strong vitality. If we examine the
different treatises through the centuries this vitality would appear to
be a basic characteristic. I felt that at least an effort to discover
the roots of such change would be valuable as a contribution to the
study of art history and possibly to the sociology of culture.