Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c15.s29.3

c15.s29.3

Unless Bharata is taken to be some later musical authority other than the author of the *Nāṭya-śāstra*, the system of classification ascribed to him must be purely apocryphal. For, it is well-known, that at the time of Bharata, the rāgas, as understood in later times, had not evolved. The list ascribed to him by legend, must be a very late classification, attributed to him by way of courtesy, in order to acquire authority by association with a great name famous in musical history. The School of Bharata is referred to in Dāmodara's *Sangīta-Darpana* (Ch. I, verse 2). The system set out below is borrowed from Radha Mohan Sen's *Sangīta-Taranga*. (Calcutta, 1818, Reprinted by Vangavāsî Press, 1203, at pp. 123-125.)