“On the clangor of conch shells”: the sound of war in Mahabharata

• Autor(a) principal: Braatz, João Gomes
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Dias, Carolina Barcellos
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Classica (Sociedade Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revista.classica.org.br/classica/article/view/953
• topic: som; guerra; ritual; Mahabharata; shankhas; sound; war; ritual; Mahabharata; shankhas

This paper intends to analyze sound as a fundamental process of the war rites, focusing on the Indian warrior society described in Mahabharata, an Indian epic poem that has a war of great proportions as its background. By analyzing selected excerpts from the poem that detail the warrior’s actions during the battle, we focus on understanding the importance of the sound of war for the Indian Antiquity by drawing parallels with other contexts, especially examples of the classic Greek culture has given the similarity for the use of the music in military activities. In Mahabharata we also can perceive the importance of the sound as a rite, a way of being in contact with the sacred before and after combats. The sound operates as a mean of frightening the enemies: the loud sound of conch shells blown by the heroes, the beating of the drums and the war cries demonstrate the dimensions of a powerful army preparing itself for the beginning of action and foreseeks its success in combat.