The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c6.114

c6.114

There exist, as will be explained later on, at present in Karnâtik music seventy-two modes or scales, all formed from seven of the twelve semitones in the octave differently disposed upon a tonic of equal pitch. If we are to understand that the râgas described by Sir W. Jones were simply such scales or modes, the only way in which it is possible to reconcile the theory to the present system is to imagine that for ascending the scale they employed a perfect fourth (or, as a Karnâtik musician would say, for Arohâna Suddha-madhyama), and for descending the augmented fourth (Práti-madhyama), or possibly the reverse, like the Chinese practice at the present day.