Once the most important drum in Hindustani music, the pakhavaj – also known as the mrdang (mridanga) – is now relatively little known and even less-well understood. Its rhythmic system, its compositions and its technique are all fundamentally different from that of the tabla, as are its function and aesthetic when used to accompany dhrupad.

There are regional pakhavaj traditions that are still linked to Hindu temples (most notably Nathdvara and its tradition of haveli sangeet), and there are folk traditions about which very little is as yet known. There are also "classical" traditions from Rajasthan, Punjab, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh/Maharashtra. The majority of pakhavaj players today trace their musical ancestry to two silsilas – or teaching lines – that are identified with two prominent figures who were active in the mid-19th century: Kudau Singh and Nana Panse.

Beginning in the late 19th century notations of pakhavaj music began to appear in India, and it is my intention to translate and transnotate these to shed more light on this most magnificent drum. One such effort is now available: click on the image below to learn more about my book Gurudev's Drumming Legacy (Ashgate 2006).

As far as information on the history and evolution of the pakhavaj are concerned, the following excerpt (translated from the French, abridged, and without full references) is taken from my article “Le rythme: Vitalité de l'Inde.” In Gloire des princes, louange des dieux: Patrimoine musical de l'Hindoustan du XIVe au Xxe siècle. Paris: Cité de la musique et Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2003, pp.152-73. It may not be reproduced in any form, electronic or otherwise, without my express written permission. For further information about the original publication, click on the image below to access the link.

THE RISE OF THE PAKHAVAJ

The Natyasastra (2nd–5th century) mentions many drums, but not the pakhavaj. In fact, there is no evidence for pakhavaj for the next one thousand years, and its name was not mentioned in the great Sangitaratnaraka (c. 1200-1247). In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, mridanga continued to be prominent, along with drums called mardala and muraja. Amir Khusrau (1315) refers to the mardala as the “Hindi mandal” which:

(…) brought forth its lament voiced by its striking artist. The unbaked flour-paste applied thin on its face gets fully baked into a hundred subtleties of the performing hand.

Mardala/mandal are etymologically related to mridanga.  

Of some help in unraveling the puzzle is the Ghunyat al-Munya of 1374-75 – the earliest known work on Indian music written in Persian – which offers interesting commentaries and fascinating drawings of instruments, including several different types of drums. Some, like the parah (Sanskrit: pataha) and the bihiri (Sanskrit: bheri) were drums mentioned in the Natyasastra; here, the bihiri/bheri looks identical to the modern dholak, and the parah/pataha seems to be the wooden counterpart to the clay mridanga.Yet the Ghunyat al-Munya is also the first manuscript to document the pakhavaj. Remarkably, and contrary to the exaggerated curvilinear barrel of the parah/pataha, the pakhavaj is shown as an hourglass-shaped drum whose two heads are wider in diameter than its middle. “One-third of the parchment is pasted with dough and black soot so as to form a circle.” Interestingly, all the drums are depicted with rings and a sling that allows them to be attached to the waist of the drummer, implying they were all played standing, or perhaps even as the players themselves danced.

The Ghunyat al-Munya lists onomatopoeic syllables for the parah/pataha as ka, kha, ta, tha, da, and din, and yet states that the pakhavaj produced six additional syllables, including dha, nah, and deen. Perhaps, therefore, the pakhavaj was more flexible and versatile in timbre than other contemporary drums, a factor that may have assisted in its subsequent rise to prominence. Indeed, by the end of the fifteenth century the three drums that received fullest attention in the Lahjat-i Sikander-Shahi were the pakhavaj, the duhl (dhol), and the naqqara.

It is unclear where the term pakhavaj originated, but it seems to derive from the Sanskrit paksa (lit. side) and avaja (lit. instrument, drum). The A’in-i Akbari (1593) describes clearly the avaj in terms similar to the Ghunyat al-Munya’s description of the pakhavaj:

The Awaj is made of a hollow piece of wood, and might be described as two kettle-drums joined at the reverse ends and their heads covered with skin and braced with thongs.

This hourglass-shaped drum is visible in the painting “Akbar receives the news of Salim’s birth” in the Akbar-nama from around 1590, and it seems also to have been called the huruk (or huduk). It was associated with a group of professional musicians called hurukiyah:

The Hurukiyah men play upon the Huruk, which is also called Awaj, and the women the Tala [cymbals], and they also sing. Formerly they chanted the Karkha, but nowadays only the Dhurpad, and the like. Many of the women add great beauty to their musical accomplishments.

The pakhavaj is also described in the A’in-i Akbari, but now its description bears a striking resemblance to its modern form.... To the following words, the only additions that need be made refer to the presence of decorative cloths wrapped round the wood, the permanent black spot on one head that uses a paste of rice glue and iron powder, and the need for a temporary spot made of dough to produce the bass sounds on the opposite head:

The Pakhawaj is made of a thick shell of wood shaped like a myrobolan and hollow. It is over a yard in length and if clasped round the middle, the fingers of the two hands will meet. The ends are a little larger in circumference than the mouth of a pitcher and are covered with skin. It is furnished with leather braces which are strained, as in the nakara or kettle-drum, and four pieces of wood, under a span in length, are inserted (between the shell and the braces) on the left side and serve to tune the instrument.

If the pakhavaj (or if at least one regional variety of it) was once hourglass-shaped, then how did it evolve into this barrel drum, or, more correctly in most cases, a double-conical drum (with its rectilinear and more angular profile)? It is likely that it emerged as a hybrid of barrel drums such as the parah/pataha (mardala?) and the hourglass-shaped avaj (huruk). We know that it was used primarily for dance accompaniment: a subsection of the Ghunyat al-Munya describes the Pakhavaji (pakhavaj player), Natawa (male dancer), Patur (female dancer), and their “parties” (i.e., their groups or performing troupes). Moreover, if the pakhavaj was as timbrally flexible as the Ghunyat al-munya implied, it must also have begun to take precedence over other drums as the dhrupad genre rose to become the preeminent form of vocal and instrumental music.

By the time of the writing of the Ragdarpana (1666) pakhavaj players were being identified individually: the “unsurpassed” Mridanga-Rai, the “flawless” Firuz Dhadhi, and the aged Surdasa who had once given accompaniment to the great singer Tansen. Ghasi Ram Pakhavaji, whose finger movements were “smooth like the sagacious thoughts of the wise", appears in the Muraqqa’-i Dehli (c. 1739-41). Although these texts associate the drums exclusively with men remarkably large number of paintings depict women playing the pakhavaj as well as other drums....

The heyday of the pakhavaj was from around 1500 to 1850, and its fortunes were intimately entwined with those of dhrupad. As dhrupad’s dominance was challenged by more popular genres of vocal music such as khyal and thumri, and by the rapid rise of the sitar in the eighteenth century, so too did the pakhavaj begin a long, slow decline. Furthermore, the nature of dance was changing too, and the upstart tabla was in turn more flexible and suitable for the new style of accompaniment needed.... In the nineteenth century many pakhavaj players, as well as naqqara and dholak players, began to switch to the tabla, which had seen its fortunes soar in the late eighteenth century....