Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c10.124

c10.124

containing in its last line (*bhaṇitā*) the name of the poet. As will appear from the descriptive verses quoted on the plates in the second volume from the text of Harivallabha (with variant readings according to the Asiatic Society and the Nahar Mss.), the poet does not slavishly follow the original Sanskrit verses, but gives an amplified and original version of the ‘picture’ of each rāga, though following the main outlines of the Sanskrit models. The descriptive picture for each melody is preceded in the first instance by the note-structure of the melody. This is well illustrated from typical pages reproduced from the Nahar Ms. on Plates LXVI, LXXXVIII-B, LXL-B, LXLV-C, and CII-A. Considering the fact that the poet had to conform to the conventional pattern of the ‘picture’ of a rāga as laid down in the Sanskrit text, he has displayed not only great technical skill in smooth and attractive versification, but has also given proofs of considerable poetic imagination, both in ideas and diction, and his alliterations are mostly made of significant choice of musical words and not of mere mechanical assemblage of a cheap jingle of empty vocables. Harivallabha’s chapter on melodies include (over and above the thirty-six rāgiṇīs of Hanumāna) a number of saṅkīrṇa (composite melodies) and upa-rāgiṇīs (additional melodies not affiliated to the six rāgas). Some of these are cited with quotations on the Plates LXXXVIII-B, LXL-B, LXLII-B, LXLV-C, & CII-A.