Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c10.112

c10.112

chapter on dancing,—the vernacular version of the essence of music by Harivallabha Saṃvat 1855 (=1798 A.D.) first Śrāvaṇ (July-August), black fortnight, the auspicious twelfth moon, Thursday, written by Brāhmaṇ Giridhāri for the benefit of Babu Meghraj in the District of Murshidabad at Azimgunge near the bank of the Ganges, copy finished.¹ The work is in five sections, or chapters: (i) Musical notes (ii) Melodies (iii) Compound melodies (iv) Musical measures and (v) Dancing. The chapter on melodies (*rāgādhyāya*) appears to be based partially on the Sanskrit text *Saṅgīta-darpaṇa* by Dāmodara Miśra (described above pp. 32, 62) and which seems to lend its name to the Hindī work, which appears to have borrowed its materials freely from other and older texts.² As the colophon at the end of each section suggests, Harivallabha gave in a vernacular version the substance of musical data abstracted from authoritative treatises.³ Any how, the date of the work cannot be earlier than 1625 A.D., when Dāmodar Miśra’s work was composed.