cantation

A singing.

These words were jabbered as fast as ever tongue could utter them, and when he had finished, up he jumped, again commenced the same mad rotations, and broke into the same extravagant cantation as before.

When we have come to hear thy sweet oblation Of love and joyance from thy sylvan station, Why, in the place of musical cantation, Balk us with pratings?

Synonym of incantation.

Whether or not there was any mystic virtue in the exorcisory cantation of the previous night, I cannot determine; but it is certain, that next morning, though headaches abounded among our officers, indications of the yellow fever there were none.

This literature contained a corpus of texts, most probably one for each school of Vedic cantation (the words śakhā, 'school' or 'branch', speaks in favor of this guess).