A Comparative Study of Some of the Leading Music Systems of the 15th, 16th, 17th & 18th Centuries c4.3

c4.3

No date is given in the book by the author, but we can fix an approximate date for the author with the help of some other works. In the Hrdaya Koutuka, the swara prakarana we find is borrowed bodily from the Raga Tarangini. That means that the work was written some time after the fifteenth century. Dr. Sukthankar, late of the Archaeological Survey, India, at my request tried to ascertain the date of Hrdaya Narain and found that the last named ruler, ruled in Gada desha about the Samvat year 1724, i.e. A.D. 1660. The great importance of Hrdayesha's works lies in the way he fixes the exact places of his shuddha and vikrita swaras. He describes these in terms of the lengths of the sounding string of his Vina The relative pitches of those notes therefore could be easily fixed with mathematical accuracy. Ahobala Pandita the author of the Sangeeta Parijata has also done it, but we are not sure whether he copied from Hrdaya's book or vice versa.