Abstract
Comparative musicology can link together the musical traditions of distant people. For example, Kodály found interesting melodic similarities between Hungarian and Mari folksongs. Although he found no melodic similarities between Hungarian and Indian folksongs, Kodály also believed that the peacock motif in Hungarian folksongs had an Indian origin. That would imply that texts with certain motifs are preserved even more than the melodies in folksongs. In this paper we show that it is indeed the case by describing a possible Rig Vedic origin of various Hungarian folksong texts with the peacock motif.
Highlights
People have a remarkable tendency to repeat songs without much attention to the exact meaning of its words
The peacock is a native to India, which seems to be the source of most peacock motifs
The peacock motif already caught the attention of Kodály as something special in Hungarian folk music [5]
Summary
People have a remarkable tendency to repeat songs without much attention to the exact meaning of its words. It is usually difficult to tell whether in an individual folksong a particular phrase is ancient. Distinguishing between ancient and later phrases becomes easier when an original song survives in several variations because the variations can be compared with each other. We can use textual comparison in combination with word etymology developed by linguists and music history developed by musicologists to deduce the hypothetical original forms of folksongs. Using this combination method, we deduce below the hypothetical original forms of three Hungarian folksongs. We deduce below the hypothetical original forms of three Hungarian folksongs While such reconstructions cannot be expected to be precise, the reconstructed forms can be assumed to be close to the true originals.
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