Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c10.223

c10.223

The most important and authenticated evidence is provided by the unique Persian rāga-mālā album, three pages from which are cited in Volume II (Plate LXXIII-B, Śyām Gujarī, Plate CXII-A, Dīpak rāga, and B, Khokkar rāginī). The album consists of 84 paintings together with descriptions in excellent Persian verses, explaining the illustrations opposite to the text.¹ The colophon, in prose, states that the work was executed under the command of His Imperial Majesty Muhammad Shah and completed at the city of Kabul in the year 1150 Hejiera (1737 A.D.) and presented to the Emperor. The demand for rāga-mālā pictures, appears to have continued unabated to the middle of the 18th century, and also very much later. If we study the text of the Persian versions of the pictures of rāga-mālā, we find that though the identity of the characteristics of each rāga is adhered to in the interpretations, a good deal of the romantic atmosphere and mystical significance inherent in Hindī love-poetry, derived from the rasa-śāstra (the canons of erotics) have evaporated in the Persian translation, though the illustrative pictures still retain some of the glamour and naiveté of the pictorial concepts. Śyām Gujarī (Plate LXXIII B) perhaps carries the sweetest memory of the fragrance of the best prototypes. The illustrations have no original merit in their