experience of Swara Sadhana. He cannot be mere novice in Swara without sentimentalising the whole thrust and the power of Sikh worship and making it maudlin.

The result of Swara Sadhana is not the same as having a good voice or being perfectly surel. The result of Swara Sadhana lies beyond the stage of being surel and is irrelevant to the knowledge of Raga. Without prior Swara Sadhana which involves devotion, the Sikh hymnody has no more spiritual value as worship than singing a purab-ang Bhajan.

When Prabhu Nanak Guru opened the eyes of Sajjan Thug, it was the power of Nanak Guru's Swara that cleansed the soul of the bandit. The same power brought rain and fire and stopped marauding elephants mid-step when Tan-Sen sang. The letter used his Swara Sadhana in the service of music and Guru Nanak for the soul. The power that dissolves egos, opens the narrowing arteries of a dying soul, the awakens from their spiritual deaths the walking cadavers of the cities and the towns like Duzdan, is the power of Swara Sadhana, the practice and the attainment of which gives all the qualities of soul and faith that makes a good Sikh Kirtan singer--the Ragi.

But Swara Sadhana is no easy task. One of the reasons why so few if any, make Kirtan, singing into the baptism of understanding and awareness which it is supposed to be. It is solitary, pulverising work on the swaras if the musical scale and it is enters your utterance. This is able to transform the listener by removing the Vibhakti from the heart and letting the Bhakti shine through. Let us not make any mistake about it; the power of the swara is the secret of the Kirtan, its mind-splitting power and the holiness about which we have heard so much and so often. The swara hides within the musical note. By single minded Sadhana on the notes of the scale, the captured swara engulfs the being of the singer and his utterance thereafter is able to melt, according to Tyagaraja, the hardest substance in creation, which is the human heart. A melted heart is the clue that tells the musical sleuth that a Kirtan singer who is a Sadhak of the swara had passed that way.

Swara sadhana is not esoteric nor hidden. It is only as difficult as the common music-practice that makes a great musician, except that it is not the same kind of work and people do not practise it for the same reason. There are two irreducible minimum requirements for Swara Sadhana. The first condition is the total absence of personal ambition in the Sadhak. The Sadhak of the Swara is not asking to be a musician. It is swara he is after and not music. The second condition is that he should want nothing while he is engaged in working for the swara, beyond the secret of the swara he is seeking. This state of mind frees him from a limiting time-frame. His life then becomes his time. He will never therefore be in a hurry to reach his goal and he will know without having to reason that if he reached a certain level in Sara Sadhana, everything else will come to him naturally, without his wanting or trying for them. He must know this as a truth. Finally his work on the scales must be kept completely free from the slightest trace of Bhava or Rasa. Consequently he cannot acquire the swara through Raga.

There is enough evidence to show that Indian society feared and distrusted the swara's utterance. The reasons are obvious if we recognise that the purpose of religion is not merely to show man the place of God in his life but also to protect and threat to society. A swara-obsessed singer has always been a threat to social stability, to the common daily concerns of life. For such a man, song will distract the tiller from the fields, the girl from her proper love of the trivial, of gold, baubles and luxuries, her need for a man and a home, will distract the crafty usurer from his money, the children from obedience and respect for the old. Is there any wonder then that music was almost outlawed in the North at a time when perhaps there were too many swara-maddened singers in the country and why Tyagaraja's compositions bristle with clever Sangathis and brilliant musicals gymnastics. Nothing could be More devastating if swara were pursued by the many rather than by the very few and only at long intervals in man's history on earth.

This is one reason why music does not play a key role in religious worship of the formal kind. Hidden away in the raga and the tala and served up by merely surel Bhajans and Kirtans, these efforts become safe for daily use. There is no danger of our present-day Bhajans doing to people what was done to Sajjan Thug. The outlaws and highway men of our society will come to no harm. Spirituality thus has become a safe bet. Dr. Mansukhani's book is a very important one. For the first time Sikhism's heart-rending music has been discussed between the covers of a formal book on Indian Classical Music. To the perceptive reader, this directly and lucidly written work should be a clarifying and edifying experience. I would like this book to go forth and perform its very vital task for those who have some experience of worship and some of music, but have not known where they meet.

(PROF.) RAGHAVA R. MENON

India House, Lagos, Nigeria.

experience of Swara Sadhana. He cannot be mere novice in Swara without sentimentalising the whole thrust and the power of Sikh worship and making it maudlin.

The result of Swara Sadhana is not the same as having a good voice or being perfectly surel. The result of Swara Sadhana lies beyond the stage of being surel and is irrelevant to the knowledge of Raga. Without prior Swara Sadhana which involves devotion, the Sikh hymnody has no more spiritual value as worship than singing a purab-ang Bhajan.

When Prabhu Nanak Guru opened the eyes of Sajjan Thug, it was the power of Nanak Guru's Swara that cleansed the soul of the bandit. The same power brought rain and fire and stopped marauding elephants mid-step when Tan-Sen sang. The letter used his Swara Sadhana in the service of music and Guru Nanak for the soul. The power that dissolves egos, opens the narrowing arteries of a dying soul, the awakens from their spiritual deaths the walking cadavers of the cities and the towns like Duzdan, is the power of Swara Sadhana, the practice and the attainment of which gives all the qualities of soul and faith that makes a good Sikh Kirtan singer--the Ragi.

But Swara Sadhana is no easy task. One of the reasons why so few if any, make Kirtan, singing into the baptism of understanding and awareness which it is supposed to be. It is solitary, pulverising work on the swaras if the musical scale and it is enters your utterance. This is able to transform the listener by removing the Vibhakti from the heart and letting the Bhakti shine through. Let us not make any mistake about it; the power of the swara is the secret of the Kirtan, its mind-splitting power and the holiness about which we have heard so much and so often. The swara hides within the musical note. By single minded Sadhana on the notes of the scale, the captured swara engulfs the being of the singer and his utterance thereafter is able to melt, according to Tyagaraja, the hardest substance in creation, which is the human heart. A melted heart is the clue that tells the musical sleuth that a Kirtan singer who is a Sadhak of the swara had passed that way.

Swara sadhana is not esoteric nor hidden. It is only as difficult as the common music-practice that makes a great musician, except that it is not the same kind of work and people do not practise it for the same reason. There are two irreducible minimum requirements for Swara Sadhana. The first condition is the total absence of personal ambition in the Sadhak. The Sadhak of the Swara is not asking to be a musician. It is swara he is after and not music. The second condition is that he should want nothing while he is engaged in working for the swara, beyond the secret of the swara he is seeking. This state of mind frees him from a limiting time-frame. His life then becomes his time. He will never therefore be in a hurry to reach his goal and he will know without having to reason that if he reached a certain level in Sara Sadhana, everything else will come to him naturally, without his wanting or trying for them. He must know this as a truth. Finally his work on the scales must be kept completely free from the slightest trace of Bhava or Rasa. Consequently he cannot acquire the swara through Raga.

There is enough evidence to show that Indian society feared and distrusted the swara's utterance. The reasons are obvious if we recognise that the purpose of religion is not merely to show man the place of God in his life but also to protect and threat to society. A swara-obsessed singer has always been a threat to social stability, to the common daily concerns of life. For such a man, song will distract the tiller from the fields, the girl from her proper love of the trivial, of gold, baubles and luxuries, her need for a man and a home, will distract the crafty usurer from his money, the children from obedience and respect for the old. Is there any wonder then that music was almost outlawed in the North at a time when perhaps there were too many swara-maddened singers in the country and why Tyagaraja's compositions bristle with clever Sangathis and brilliant musicals gymnastics. Nothing could be More devastating if swara were pursued by the many rather than by the very few and only at long intervals in man's history on earth.

This is one reason why music does not play a key role in religious worship of the formal kind. Hidden away in the raga and the tala and served up by merely surel Bhajans and Kirtans, these efforts become safe for daily use. There is no danger of our present-day Bhajans doing to people what was done to Sajjan Thug. The outlaws and highway men of our society will come to no harm. Spirituality thus has become a safe bet. Dr. Mansukhani's book is a very important one. For the first time Sikhism's heart-rending music has been discussed between the covers of a formal book on Indian Classical Music. To the perceptive reader, this directly and lucidly written work should be a clarifying and edifying experience. I would like this book to go forth and perform its very vital task for those who have some experience of worship and some of music, but have not known where they meet.

(PROF.) RAGHAVA R. MENON

India House, Lagos, Nigeria.