Devotional Music of India (Spreading Harmony and Peace)

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About the Book In the Vedic period (3000-1500 BC), music was solely ritualistic, Some of the major earlier forms of Indian Classical music like Prabandh Sangeet and Dhruvapada were all devotional in character. Gradually other forms of devotional music like bhajans, kirtans, shahbads, and qawwalis came into being.

Bhajan: Bhajans owe their origin to the Bhakti Movement. The word bhajan is derived from bhaj which means 'to serve' in Sanskrit. Bhajan is a popular form of devotional singing prevalent in north India. It is usually sung in temples in praise of God or is addressed as a plea to him.

Kirtan: Kirtans are another type of folk music usually sung by the Vaishnavas and are based on the love stories of Krishna and Radha. It is prevalent in Bengal. Kirtans were transformed into song and dance congregations by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (15-16th Century AD), drawing inspiration from Jayadeva's Geet Govinda.

Qawwali: Qawwali is a devotional form of music. The lyrics are in praise of Allah, Prophet Mohammad, members of the Prophet's family, or renowned Sufi saints. It is written in Persian, Urdu, and Hindi and is composed in a specific raga.

Shabad : Shabads are devotional songs of the Sikhs sung in gurdwaras on religious occasions. They are ascribed to Sikh gurus and many Bhakti saint poets.

Shabad originated as a musical composition around the 17th century AD. Guru Nanak and his disciple Mardana are credited with the development and popularity of shabad.

About the Authors Mr. Amarendra Khatun IFS is a distinguished Indian poet and Senior Diplomat. He has served both as the Indian Ambassador to Argentina and as the Indian Ambassador to Ivory Coast. A widely traveled author and culture critic, Shri Khatua has forty published collections of poetry in English, Odia, Hindi, and other Indian dialects and international languages.

Shri Khatua is a 1981 batch officer of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and has had several important assignments during his 35-year-long diplomatic career. He is considered a quiet but immensely focused diplomat and has held trade and economic positions in various Indian missions and served in different capacities in key divisions at the MEA. He has also served in the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Planning Commission, and Ministry of Industry. He has also served as DG Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and Dean Foreign Service - Institute and Ambassador of India to Argentine. He has also served as special envoy to South Sudan to broker peace between the two countries.

Ms. Mandira Ghosh is a postgraduate in English literature. She has already published works of verse to her credit. She has received many awards for her contribution to poetry in India as well as abroad.

Through this work, Mandira Ghosh has tried to arrive at a point where science meets philosophy and other branches of Humanities.

She has also tried to immortalize the folk music of the Himalayan ranges over the centuries. She has collected the various verses from different ranges of the Himalayan belt and concludes that the music unites both hearts and souls.

The exactness of science and the fantasy of poems do not usually go together. But Mandira Ghosh has experimented with both, interspersing poetic diction with mathematical terminology. She uses scientific balance and poetic language to express her thoughts.

Introduction It is the beautiful hymns that emanated as chants in the Vedas. It is the lyrical presentations in trance that soaked our heritage of Puranas. It is the magic and melancholic of our search that reverberated the whole map from one end to the other under the Bhakti Umbrella. It is the mystery and surgery of the inner feelings that woke us up into the dawn of Sufi spread. Devotional poems, both as texts or songs, or as creativity or literary domain, are our beginning and continuity, our beginning and continuity our civilization's eternal music and musing. It is the beautiful hymns that emanated as chants in the Vedas. It is the lyrical presentations in trance that soaked our heritage of Puranas. It is the magic and melancholic of our search that reverberated the whole map from one end to the other under the Bhakti Umbrella. It is the mystery and surgery of the inner feelings that woke us up into the dawn of Sufi spread. Devotional poems, both as texts or songs, or as creativity or literary domain, are our beginning and continuity, our beginning and continuity our civilization's eternal music and musing.