[Buddha-l] Questions on the vidyas, music in Buddhism, etc.

[Richard Nance]

Joanna wrote:

> On sabdavidya, I found: In ancient Indian Buddhism, there was the well known
> five courses of study (vidyas), which includes sabdavidya...silpasthanavidya... cikitsadvidya...hetuvidya...and adhyatmavidya.

This is the usual classification. If you're interested in pursuing
this line of inquiry, David Ruegg has done some useful work on these
topics. See his "Ordre spirituel et ordre temporel dans la pensée
bouddhique de l'Inde et du Tibet : quatre conférences au Collège de
France" (Paris : Collège de France : Dépositaire exclusif,
Edition-Diuffusion de Boccard, 1995).
 
> My first question: is sabdavidya one of the five original vidyas, or a
> branch of one of them? 

I'm not sure where one would look to find a list of "original"
vidyaas, since the Buddhist notion of the vidyaas seems heavily
indebted to non-Buddhist ideas regarding 'saastric knowledge as
categorizable according to vedaa"ngas, vidyaasthaanas and the like. 
On the latter, see:

Pollock, S. "The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory in
Indian Intellectual History" Journal of the American Oriental Society,
Vol. 105, No. 3 (1985), pp. 499-519.

Pollock, S. "The Idea of 'Saastra in Traditional India"  in A.L.
Dallapicolla, ed, _Shastric Traditions in Indian Arts_ (Stuttgart: 
Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH, 1989), pp. 17-26.
 
Non-Buddhist authors set things out very differently than Buddhist
authors, and Buddhist authors themselves have different takes on the
particular role that each vidyaa should be assumed to play on the path
(on this issue, see e.g. David Jackson's "The Status of Pramaa.na 
Doctrine According to Sa Skya Pandita and Other Tibetan Masters:
Theoretical Discipline or Doctrine of Liberation?"  Buddhist Forum 3,
(1991) pp.  85-129.))

>In the original Sanskrit texts, is music discussed as
> part of this topic?

I haven't encountered a discussion of music as a discrete topic
categorized under this heading (come to think of it, I don't recall
encountering a discussion of music as a discrete topic in Buddhist
'saastric texts, period -- but then again, I may be reading the wrong
sort of texts; it's quite possible that Indian Buddhist tantric
literature deals with the subject in depth). I'd check the Ruegg
volume for you, but I don't currently have it ready to hand.

> Or any other evidence that indicates an early as opposed to later (after the
> Buddha dharma appears in Central Asia, gets to China, and/or reached Tibet)
> appearance of praise (instead of abjection) for music?

Regarding Tibet, I can tell you that Bu-ston understood 'sabdavidyaa
as comprising prosody (sdeb sbyor = chandas); lexicography (mngon
brjod = abhidhaana), and poetics (snyan dngags (kyi rgyan) =
kaavya(ala.mkaara)). Nowhere does he explicitly mention music,
although it's possible that he understood it to be a subcategory of
one of these three. (The above assessment is to be found in the first
part of Bu-ston's "Chos-'byung gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod," composed
in the early 14th century. For a slightly earlier Tibetan assessment,
you might want to have a look at the first section of Sa skya
pa.ndita's Mkhas-'jug, recently translated into English by Jonathan
Gold. The work hasn't been published yet, but the dissertation in
which it's embedded is available via ProQuest; it's from 2003 and is
entitled "Intellectual Gatekeeper.")
 
> Music in ancient India, Brahmanical or otherwise --natya shilpa-- was not
> music per se as we understand it today--it was performed narrative, poetry,
> singing, and dance. I'd expect to find it as a performance art among the
> vidyas under shilpasthanavidya. So the glossing of whatever terms are
> relevant in Mahayana texts as "music" strikes me as peculiar.

Me too. 

Best wishes,

R. Nance