Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c10.16

c10.16

and Dattila.¹ It is not possible to assign the development of the iconography of rāgas to the time of Dattila, whose name is apparently invoked here for lending an air of antiquity to these dhyāna-formulas given in this text, under the chapter rāga-dhyāna-vidhānam. Whether Dattila is the author of this text or not, there is no doubt, from the raga-system given in the text and the classification of the melodies into eight major rāgas with 3 derivative rāginīs for each (See Appendix 11), that the text indicates quite an early stage in the classification of the rāgas. This system is certainly earlier than all the systems with six major rāgas, with five, or six rāginīs each.