Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c10.151

c10.151

Particular interest attaches to an incomplete series of six rāgiṇī pictures in the British Museum (Add. 21934, Blumhardt, *Catalogue*, 95, p. 62). In the first place, these miniatures are signed by artists of whom we get the following names: Pañcama (the 4th rāgiṇī of Vasanta rāg) by Sītaldās (Plates LXXVIII, D); Gaurī (the 4th rāgiṇī of Śrī-rāg) Girdhārī Lāl (Plates XXIII, A); Devagāndhārī (the 1st rāgiṇī of Śrī-rāg) by Sītal Dās (Plates LXLI, D); Śrī-rāga (the 3rd rāga) by Bāhādur Singh (Plates LII, C); Hindola (the 5th rāga) by Bāhādur Singh (Plate XXXI, A); Megha-mallār (the 2nd rāga) by Sītal Dās (Plate LXLI, D); Śrī-rāga (the 3rd rāga) by Bāhādur Singh (Plate LII, C); Hindola (the 5th rāga) by Bāhādur Singh (Plate XXXI, A); Megha-mallār (the 2nd rāga) by the Sītal Dās (Plate LXV, B). The versions of these melodies as illustrated in these miniatures are peculiar conceptions different from their usual types, and they offer very valuable examples of these peculiar versions. In the second place, each of these six miniatures bears on the top in a rectangular space allotted for the purpose, a Hindī verse, descriptive of the rāgiṇī, composed by a poet named Peāray Raṅgalāl, whose name is given in the last line. In the quatrain for Gaurī cited on Plate XXIII—A, he signs his name, simply, as ‘Raṅgalāl’. If he is the same poet as is noticed in *Miśra-vandhu-vinode* (p. 762) he lived about Saṃvat 1807 (1754 A.D.) and wrote his poems under the patronage of Surajamul Raja of Bharatpur.¹ The style of the pictures which follows the