Description

About the Book

This book Music in the Ancient World is an attempt to trace the origin of music from the days of ‘pre-literate cult’ (known as pre-historic music). Author has traced the development of the music in the ancient world meticulously with the help of the writings of the best of the authorities, without interposing himself anywhere This book is classified into nine chapters. The very first chapter presents the origin of ancient music based upon the studies of scholars from all over the world. Second chapter deals with the music of Sumeria, Arcadia, Babylonia and Assyria from the period of the earliest surviving evidence in third millennium B.C until antiquity. Third chapter discusses history of pre-Islamic music of Arabia, Persia and Syria and its continuing folk traditions, while fourth chapter presents the knowledge of the music and the musical instruments of ancient Israel as described in the bible. Fifth chapter traces origin and development of pre-Islamic music in Arabia while sixth chapter describes the Islamic influence of music in India. Seventh chapter describes Chinese music and musical instruments of Yin and Yang school. Eighth chapter covers philosophy of music in ancient India viz. the tantric philosophy of music, Shiva and shakti and the characteristic traits of Narada while the last chapter covers history of music in ancient India describing  bharata’s Natyasastra, Buddhist music, Gandharva Sangit Sastra, and the Vaishnavite music.

About the Author

Santosh Ghosh -An amateur actor, dramatist and musician who rubbed shoulders in drama with many veterans of the Bengali Film world including Mr Soumitra Chatterjee (Satyajit Roy’s ‘Feluda’), Mr Ghosh was a Telecom technician in real life and worked with DOT/BSNL. Mr Ghosh has a keen interest in music and his book Music in the Ancient World is a testimony to his abiding interest in that art. Though Mr Ghosh has written several books in Bengali, Sepoy Mutiny from Telegraph Messages (Calcutta, 2008) in English broke new grounds on that subject.