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The Samaveda text contains notated melodies, which are most probably the worlds oldest surviving ones. The musical notation is usually written immediately above, sometimes within the line of Samaveda text, either in syllabic or a numerical form depending on the Samavedic Sakha. The Samaveda is the Veda of Chants, or storehouse of knowledge of chants. It is a fusion of older melodies and the Rig verses. It has far fewer verses than Rigveda, but Samaveda is textually larger because it lists all the chants and rituals related score modifications of the verses.

One of the four Vedas, it is a liturgical text whose 1,875 verses are primary derived from the Rigveda. Three recensions of the Samaveda have survived, and variant manuscripts of the Veda have been found in various parts of India. While its earliest parts are believed to date from as early as the Rigvedic period, the existing compilation dates from the post Rigvedic Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit, c. 1200 or 1000 BCE, but roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda.

Samaveda is constituted of two major portions. The first division is a collection of four melodies called Gana and the second part are a collection three-verse book called Arcika. A melody in the songbooks corresponds to a verse in the Arcika books. The collection of Gana is subdivided into Gramageya and Aranyageya, while the Arcika portion is divided into Purvarcika and Uttararcika portions.

 

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