Sangitanarayana : A Seventeenth Century Text on Music and Dance from Orissa, Vols. I and II

“Sangitanarayana is a Sanskrit text on music and dance written in the 17 century by Purusottama Misra, a minister at the court of King Gajapati Narayanadeva of Parlakimidi in Orissa and his instructor in musicology, with the assistance of the king. While the precise date of the Sangitanarayana is not known, its relationship to Purusottama Misra and Gajapati Narayanadeva prompts us to place it in the first half of the 17 century.

One of the most valuable and extensive texts on music and dance from eastern India, Sangitanarayana consists of four chapters, the first on vocal music (gitanirnaya), the second on instrumental music (vadyanirnaya), the third on dance and dramatic art (natyanirnaya), and a fourth chapter that provides examples of musical compositions (suddhaprabandhodharana).

Altogether 15 mss. of the text are known to exist. Some full and some fragmentary. An edition of the text comprising all the four chapters was published first by Orissa Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1966 under the joint editorship of Pandit Vanambaracarya, Kavichandra Kalicharan Patnaik and Shri Kedarnath Mahapatra. Present edition is the first critical edition, which also provides an English translation of the text.” (jacket)