The Music of Hindostan c11.50

c11.50

Last of all, when by these three processes the number of *Rāgs* had reached hundreds or thousands, came the mathematically-minded musician who tabulated the scales as deviations from a normal scale (*grāma*), calculated the departures in quarter-tones (*śruti*), and rung the 13678 changes (*prastāra*) on the seven notes (svara); reduced the 108 traditional ways of counting time by syllable (akṣara), i. e. a development from the longs and shorts of poetry, to thirty-five ways of counting it by time-unit (mātrā,¹ lit. syllable) which are rhythms (tāla); and provided both Rāg and Tāl with an intricate memoria technica to which not every one possesses the key.² This kind of musician is commoner in the Carnatic than in Hindostan, where theory has reared a less imposing edifice.