The Music of Hindostan c11.49

c11.49

Meanwhile the philosopher has been at work upon the psychology of the music, and, without any special theories as to the emotional value or the ‘mental effect’ of this or that note or combination, determines on general grounds the *ēthos* of the *Rāg*, its appropriateness to occasion or to circumstance, or its effect upon the body, or its affinities with the various affections of the spirit or aspirations of the soul. These views linger in some of the names of the *Rāgs*: *Dīn-ka-(pūria)*, ‘of the day’, *Shām-(kaliān)*, ‘evening’, *Basant*, ‘spring’, *(Gaurī-)mano-hāri*, ‘pleasing to the mind’; or in the legends about them, as of *Dīpak* (= *Māravā*, No. 49), which enflamed not only the mind, but the body of the singer so that even the Jumna could not put out the fire. Descriptive names of this kind were commoner and more elaborate in old days. The famous *Mahā-vyut-patti* (Sanskrit-Tibetan vocabulary, seventh century or later) has a list of sixty *Rāgs*, the translations of a few of which are—‘with a voice like the thunder-cloud’, ‘like the trumpeting of the elephant’, ‘like a sparrow’, ‘like the serpent king’, ‘like Indra’, or again, ‘smooth’, ‘refined’, ‘making fully to comprehend’, ‘not puffed up’, ‘delighting every organ’, ‘having the chief voice in all sorts of sounds’, and so forth.