"Of all the numerous Samhitas of the Samaveda, which are said to have existed once, only three have come down to us. The best known of these, the Samaveda-Samhita of the Kauthumas consists of two parts, the Arcika or Purvarcika or the '(first) collection of stanzas' and the Uttararcika or 'second collection of stanzas'. Both parts consist of verses all of which recur in the Rigveda. Of the 1810 verses, which both parts contain altogether, all except 75 are also found in the Rigveda-Samhita and that largely in the VIII and IX books."...

"Both parts of the Samhita give us only the texts as they are spoken. However the melodies themselves were taught in the earliest days only by oral repetition or by playing them on instruments. Only from a later date do we have so-called Ganas or actual 'song-books' (from ga = to sing), which describe the melodies by notes and in which the texts are recorded in the form which they have while singing, i.e. with all syllable-expansions, repetitions and insertions of syllables and even of complete words - of the so-called 'Stobhas' like hoyi, huva, hoi etc.The oldest note-marking is probably the one by means of syllables like ta, co, no etc. But more common is the marking of the seven notes with the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7, to which F, E, D, C, B, A, G of our scale correspond."

"It appears that the hymn-melodies for the Soma-sacrifices performed in the village were different from those for the sacrifices of the hermits living in the forest, for an Arcika has a Grama-geya-gana ('Village song-book') and an Aranya-gana or Arayaka-gana ('Forest song-book'). The latter contained melodies which were considered as dangerous (taboo) and hence had to be learnt only in the forest. There are also two other books of songs, the Uha-gana and the Uhya-gana. These were composed for the purpose of giving the Samans in the order in which they were employed at the ritual, the Uhagana being connected with the Gramageyagana, the Uhyagana with the Aranyagana."