Musical Instruments—Mud and Mridanga

The drum name Mridanga naturally excites one's curiosity and one desires to know its significance and how the percussion instrument is called "an important part (anga) of whose makeup is mud (mrd)". The first explanation which jumps to one's mind is that at one time Mrdanga was a drum variety whose body was a mud pot or cylinder which had leather stretched over its face.

* Puskara-traya would normally mean the three drums namely Payava, My danga and Dardera. :

18 78 Indeed, such mud-drums are in vogue among folks in some parts of the country. Both Panava and Mrdanga were mud-made: But a close investigation of ancient Sanskrit texts would show the real meaning of mrd-anga, and give us the information what exactly this ingredient 'mrd' was and where it was. The name Mrdanga was originally applied by Bharata to the drum called Puskara. Sarangadeva says panavo mrdpatahah murajo mardalah mrdanga mrnmayah sa eva | proktam mrdanga sabdena munina puskaratrayam || Sangita Ratnakara VI - 1025 The Puskara, which was quite in vogue in Kalidasa's time but not in Sarangadeva's, was more fully called, as found in the above quoted ←★ * line, 'Puskara-traya' - a three-faced drum. Its three faces - the right side, the left side and upward one in the middle were tuned to different svaras in the three different 'marjanas': mayuri, ardhamayuri and karmaravi (Natyasastra, Kavyamala edition XXXIV, pp. 416, 421). This drum was also called the Bhanda-vadya and a small but very good sculpture of this three-faced vessel-like drum, with two faces on either side and one on top, with the divine player, is found straight in front of the shrine of Nataraja at Chidambaram, at the centre of the series on the high basement of the shrine having the Urdhva Tandava figure of Nataraja. The inquiry on hand is Bharata's description of the make-up of this tri- Puskara. In Natyasastra, Bharata goes on to describe the mrittika or mud. We are now familiar with the dark material, called "soru", and made of powder of kitta-stone and gum of cooked rice applied in a disc form on the right side of the Mrdanga.

79 10 In Sarangadeva's time too, some such material was applied but in Bharata's time this was really 'mud', mrt, the fine bluish mud deposited at the water brink of rivers. It is this mud-application that really gives the sound to the drum-face and hence is the drum named after this essential ingredient mrt, the Mrdanga.