Vadya (
Sanskrit: वाद्य, vādya), also called vadyaka or atodya, is one of the three components of sangita (musical performance arts), and refers to "instrumental music" in the Indian traditions.[1][5][6] The other two components of sangita are gita (vocal music, song) and nritya (dance, movement).[1][7][4] In the general sense, vadya means an instrument and the characteristic music they produce, sound, or play out.[8][9]
Indian musicology
The term vadya in the sense of "music, sounded, played, uttered" appears in Vedic literature such as the Aitareya Brahmana, and in early post-Vedic era Sanskrit texts such as the Natya Shastra, Panchatantra, Malvikagnimitra, and Kathasaritsagara.[5] These texts refer to the musician or instrumental performer as vadyadhara.[5] A stringed instrument is described with proportional lengths in Jaiminiya Brahmana and Aitareya Aranyaka, and these are compared to poetical meters.[10] The 17th-century text Sangita Darpana defines sangita (musical arts) as "gītam vādyam tathā nrityam trayan sangīta muchyate", meaning sangita comprises gīta (vocal music), vādya (instrumental music), and nritya (dance).[11]
The chapter 14 of the Saṅgītaśiromaṇi describes musical ensembles based on a collective performance of vadya instruments by musicians, and it calls such a band orchestra as a kutapa.[13]
Cultural exchange
The term vadya also appears in the Buddhist Sanskrit text Sukhavativyuha, influential in the Chinese and Japanese traditions, which Luis Gomez translates as "instrumental music".[14]
^Luis Gómez (1996), The Land of Bliss: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutras, University of Hawaii Press,
ISBN978-0-8248-1760-2, page 72 (verse 28.23)
^Roger Blench (2014), Using Diverse Sources of Evidence for Reconstructing the Past History of Musical Exchanges in the Indian Ocean, African Archaeological Review, Volume 31, Issue 4 (December), pp 675–703