(fl early 13th century ce). Indian scholar and music theoretician. The name Nihśanka means ‘free from doubt’. He was the author of the Sanskrit verse work Sangīta-ratnākara (‘Ocean of Music’), perhaps the most important and influential of all treatises in the history of Indian music. Śārngadeva's grandfather Bhāskara, an Āyurvedic physician from Kashmir, moved to the Yādava court of Devagiri in the Deccan (modern Daulatabad, near Aurangabad) at a time of burgeoning patronage of scholarship and the arts towards the end of the 12th century. Śārngadeva, like his grandfather and his father Sodhala, must also have been well versed in medical scholarship as well as other branches of learning; in the first book of the Sangītar-atnākara there is a detailed preliminary account of the human anatomy as the location of vocal and musical sound production. He even refers briefly to what appears to be a medical treatise of his own authorship called Adhyātmaviveka. But we know that he served at Devagiri at the court of Singhanadeva II (ruled 1210–47) principally as royal accountant or auditor general.
The Sangīta-ratnākara sets out to provide a comprehensive account of traditional Indian musical theory. It draws on the authority of numerous earlier sources, many of which we no longer possess as independent works aside from such quotations, and aims to combine all of the material into an encyclopedic and coherent summary. Furthermore it shows a conceptually logical and rigorous approach to the ordering of topics, as was customary in the traditional śāstric (scientific) method of Indian technical scholarship. Attention is also given to current musical practice, and some divergences are noted between what is contemporary and what is obsolete. Numerous later writers, indeed well into the modern era of Indian musicological scholarship, followed the terms, arguments and classificatory ideas of the Sangītar-atnākara even when these had become remote from the reality of both musical practice and the developing discourse of musicians. Of its seven chapters the first is concerned with the fundamentals and evolution of sound, from its genesis and raw state to that which is melodically, rhythmically and affectively articulated. The second chapter deals with rāga and its classification, the third with a miscellany of topics on the practice and conditions of musical performance, and the fourth with song forms and their compositional structure (prabandha). The fifth chapter deals with metrical patterns and their application to song composition, the sixth with musical instruments (including their classification, physical and material form, and their use in music-making), and the seventh with dance, which was traditionally one of the divisions of the musical art (sangīta). The first, second and sixth chapters contain a substantial quantity of notated melodic material to illustrate structures and compositional procedures.
There is no recent critical edition from the numerous manuscripts which are to be found of the Sangīta-ratnākara or of certain chapters of it, but the whole work has been printed in two reliable editions and the first half of it in a third, with English translation. Two Sanskrit commentaries, namely those of Simhabhūpāla (14th century) and Kallinātha (15th century), who was probably the grandfather of the music theoretician Rāmāmātya, are available in print. Others are still awaiting editing and publication, and there is an early Marathi commentary also yet to be edited and studied.
Sangītaratnākara, ed. M.R. Telang (Poona, 1896–7) [Sanskrit text with the commentary of Kallihātha]
Sangītaratnākara, ed. S. Subrahmanya Sastri, i–iv (Madras, 1943–53) [Sanskrit text with the commentaries of Kallinātha and Simhabhūpāla]
Sangītaratnākara of Śārngadeva, trans. and ed. C. Kunhan Raja, i (Madras, 1945)
The Sangītaratnākara of Śārngadeva, iv: Chapter on Dancing, trans. and ed. K. Kunjunni Raja and R. Burnier (Madras, 1976)
E. te Nijenhuis: Musicological Literature (Wiesbaden, 1977), 12–13
R.K. Shringy and P.L. Sharma: Sangītaratnākara of Śārngadeva, i: Treatment of Svara (Delhi, 1978); ii, chapters 2–4 (New Delhi, 1989)
D.R. Widdess: ‘Aspects of Form in North Indian ālāp and dhrupad’, Music and Tradition: Essays Presented to Laurence Picken, ed. D.R. Widdess and R.F. Wolpert (Cambridge, 1981), 143–81
D.R. Widdess: ‘Reflections on a Medieval Melody’, The Traditional Indian Theory and Practice of Music and Dance, ed. J.B. Katz (Leiden, 1992), 53–74
M. Lath: ‘The Body as an Instrument: a Theoretical Choice Made by Śārngadeva’, Prakŗti: the Integral Vision, iii: The Āgamic Tradition and the Arts, ed. B. Baümer (New Delhi, 1995), 101–13
P.L. Sharma: ‘Mahābhūtas in Sangīta-Śāstra with Special Reference to Yoga and Āyurveda’, ibid., 87–100
R. Widdess: ‘The Sangītaratnākara of Śārngadeva’, The Rāgas of Early Indian Music (Oxford, 1995), 161–202
JONATHAN KATZ