The Music of Hindostan c16.69

c16.69

The commonest type is the *Khyāl*, a later form of *Dhrūpad*, supposed to emanate from Mahmud Sharqi of Jaunpur (1401–40). It is a song (*Chija*) or an instrumental piece (*Gati*) constructed of variations on, or rather episodes relieving, a short phrase; a Rondo in fact. The *Khyāl* ranges from a very simple little song to the following, which with its compass of three octaves probably represents the extreme of elaboration. Its highest development belongs to the Mohammedan period; this, *Kaba ho kapī*, is from the Panjab, where there are few but Mohammedan singers. The theme is variously treated on its three or four dozen appearances, and is not so monotonous to listen to as it is to write or to read, and the playful sweep of the episodes (*tāna*, ‘divisions’ in our eighteenth-century sense of the word) has nothing clumsy about it. The *Khyāl* is generally a love-tale and supposed to be sung by a woman; the procedure of love-making is in India, as so many other things are, the reverse of ours. It is the typically pathetic form of song.