Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c5: Introduction
Rāgas and Rāginīs: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c5
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Introduction
c5.1
The conception of Rāgas is one of the basic principles of the system of Indian Music. A rāga (*Vulgo Rāg*) is generally mis-translated as a tune, air, or key. It is, in fact, a peculiar conception, having no exact parallel in any other system of music. Literally, rāga is something that colours, or tinges the mind with some definite feeling,—a wave of passion, or emotion.¹ In a special sense, a rāga is a sonal composition of musical notes (*svaras*) having a sequence, form, or structure of a peculiar significance. Some of its component notes stand in a significant relationship to one another to give a character to the rāga, *e.g.*, the starting, or initial note (*graha svara*), the predominant or expressive note (*amśa svara*), and the terminating, or the final note (*nyāsa svara*), has each a peculiar significance in the composition of a rāga.
c5.2
The starting note (*graha*) and the terminating note (*nyāsa*) have now almost lost their significance. But the *amśa* (predominant note) is of great importance. It is also called the *vādī* (lit. the speaker, or announcer) *i.e.* the note which indicates, manifests, or expresses the peculiar character of the rāga, and receives the greatest emphasis in the structure of the rāga. It is also called the *jīva*, or the soul of the rāga. Just as the *vādī* note determines the general character of a rāga, the *vivādī*, or the dissonant note, distinguishes and differentiates it from other forms of rāgas, by avoidance of the *vivādī* note. For, this dissonant note destroys the character of the melody. The *vivādī* note gives the negative element, and, the other three, the positive determining elements of a rāga.² Every rāga has its special
c5.3
(1) ‘*Rañjayati iti rāgaḥ*’=‘that which colours, is a rāga.’
(2) In the Sanskrit text-books on music (conveniently summarised by Sir S. M. Tagore in his *Saṅgītasaṅgraha*, p. 27), very types of a serial of notes for ascent (āroha) and descent (avaroha) which determines its structure or ṭhāṭ. The degree of insistence or importance of particular notes lends flesh, blood, colour, and life to the scale and creates a Rāga.
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Some definitions are given of the nature of rāga by ancient authorities. The earliest is that of Matanga (circa 5th century)—a fairly ancient authority, later than Bharata, but much earlier than Śārṅgadeva. His definition is repeated by all later authors. According to Matanga, ‘A rāga is called by the learned, that kind of sound composition, which is adorned with musical notes, in some peculiarly stationary, or ascending, or descending, or moving values (varṇa), which have the effect of colouring the hearts of men’¹. In this definition a technical word varṇa (value) is used. Varṇas (values) are of four kinds: ‘values of duration’
c5.5
picturesque definitions and descriptions are given of the characteristic composing notes of a rāga, viz. vādi, samvādi, anuvādi, and vivādi (sonant, consonant, assonant, dissonant) notes: “sa vādi kathyate pracuro yah prayogesu vakti rāgādiniścayam”=‘That note is called a vādi, by the abundant use of which a rāga is clearly differentiated.’
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“Samaśrutiśca samvādi pañcamasya samaḥ kvasit”=‘The samvādi note has similar quarter-tones (śruti) as the vādi note, or according to some, is equal to the fifth note.’ ‘Vivādi is a note situated at a distance of two Śrutis from the vādi note, e.g. gāndhāra (c) and nikhāda. (c). The other notes are anuvādi.
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The following verses summarise the relationship:
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“Vādi rājā svarastasya samvādi syād amātyavat|
Satrur vivādi tasy syād anuvādī ca bhṛtyavat|| [Ibid., p., 28]
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‘Of the notes, vādi is the king, sāmvādi is the minister, vivādi is the enemy, anuvādi is in the position of a vassal.’ The vādi note is translated by some as the ‘regnal’ note.
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(1) “Svara-varna-viśeṣeṇa dhvani-bhedena vā punaḥ| .Rajyate yena yah kaścit sa rāgah sammataḥ satām|| 290 Athavā: Yo’sau dhvani-viśeṣastu svara-varṇavibhūṣitaḥ| Rañjako jana-cittānām sa rāga udāhṛtaḥ||291 Ityevam rāga-śabdasya vyutpattir-abhidhīyate| Rañjanājjāyate rāgo vyutpattih smudāhṛtaḥ|| 293 Matanga-muni : ‘Bṛhaddeśī’ (Trivandrum edition, p. 81)
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(sthāyī); ‘values of ascent’ (ārohaṇa); ‘values of descent’ (avarohaṇa); and ‘values of movement’ (sañcārī). This definition of rāga may be paraphrased as a note-composition having a peculiar musical significance, in their values of duration, ascent, descent, or movement, capable of affecting the human mind with peculiar feelings.
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A secod definition ascribed to Bharata and quoted in the Saṅgīta Nārāyaṇa (circa 1750) is somewhat more subjective and vague.
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“Those are called rāgas by Bharata and other sages by which the hearts of all the beings in the three worlds are coloured and pleased.”¹
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A third version is a paraphrase of the last two. ‘By which all people are coloured, or elated as soon as they hear it, and by reason of giving pleasure to all, that is known as rāga.’² In all the three definitions, the word rāga is derived from the root ‘rañja’, “to colour,” “to tinge.”
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Rāgas are usually said to have descended from a certain parent stock which is technically known as a ṭhāṭ (lit. an ‘array’, or a ‘setting’). These ṭhāṭs represent modes, or types of some group of notes, from which distinct forms, or modes of somewhat similar texture can be derived. The difference between a ṭhāṭ and a rāga consists in the absence of any aesthetic value in the former which is only the ascent and the descent without the distinctive assonant, and consonant notes (vādī, anuvādī, or saṃvādī) and without the capacity of conveying any emotion. Ṭhāṭ is technically used in the instrumental music system of Northern India to denote the frets of string instruments (Sitār, Vīṇā, Surbahār) for the purpose of playing a given pattern of modes, for, one setting will serve for several modes of the same type,—e.g. Bhairavī ṭhāṭ, Kāfī ṭhāṭ. Thus ṭhāṭ is used in a classifying sense, the corresponding Southern or the Karnatic word is mela-kartā—the ‘union-maker,’ that is to say, the group-maker which groups together several allied rāgas.
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(1) Yaistu cetāṃsi rajyante jagattritayavarttinām|
Te rāgā iti kathyante munibhir Bharatādibhih||
(2) Yasya śravaṇa-mātreṇa rajyante sakalāḥ prajāḥ|
Sarvānurañjanād dhetos tena rāga iti smṛtaḥ||
c5.17
A rāga may, therefore, be, more correctly, rendered as a “melody-mould,” a “melody-type,” or a “musical pattern.” “Except for the primary condition that certain notes are to come in a certain way, there is no other restriction imposed on the singing of a particular rāga” (R. Śrīnivāsa).
c5.18
As Fox Strangways observes: “A Rāga gets its special flavour not so much from its being just what it is, as *from* its not being something else, closely allied to it, which is present all the time in the musician’s consciousness.”¹ [The italics are ours.] It is, however, the distinct individuality of the rāga which makes for the consciousness of the difference and not the difference which creates the individuality which seems to be suggested by the italicised expression. And it sometimes requires long education and trained connoisseurship to distinguish between two apparently identical, but subtly distinguished, rāgas, which the less trained ears of the uneducated frequently confuse.
c5.19
S. G. Kanhere² observes: “In the language of music the arrangement of notes which colour or affect certain emotion of the mind is called rāga. The definition of rāga given in Sanskrit books is “that a particular combination or relation of several notes which is pleasing to the ear is called Rāga.” Many conflicting explanations of rāga given by different scholars converge to the same centre, i.e., “the pleasant effect of the arrangements of notes.”
c5.20
Clements in his excellent study of the fundamentals of type,—e.g. Bhairavī thāt, Indian Music thus describes the rāga:³ “The name of the Rāga connotes a scale bearing a fixed relationship to the drone, with its harmonic structure determined by a Vādī and Samvādī, a chief note (“aṃśa svara”) occurring more frequently than others, a lower limit described in terms of the Mūrchanā, occasionally an upper limit also, certain characteristic turns of melody, recurring with frequency, certain rules regarding the employment of embellishments,
c5.21
(1) Fox Strangways : *The Music of Hindostan*, p. 170.
(2) S. G. Kanhere : “*Some remarks on Indian Music*,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, vol. IV, pp. 105-120.
(3) E. Clements : ‘*Introduction to the Sttudy of Indian Music*’, London 1913, pp. 3-4.
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and a stated time of the day for its performance. It is a common practice, after singing an air in a Rāga, to improvise a series of free fantasia passages each returning in due course to a characteristic snatch of the melody, only to wander off again in still more elaborate variations. The whole performance must be "within the Rāga," that is, without transgression of the elaborate rules governing its structure."
c5.23
Philippe Stern ("La Musique Hindoue", *La Revue Musicale*, Mai 1923, p. 31, 55-6) thus defines a rāga:—"It is the deepening of the idea of mode . . . . . . . that which gives not only the mode but also the choice of principal notes, the degrees to be avoided, the difference of the descending and ascending movements, the prescribed sequences, the movement, this ambient, this coloration, this peculiar physiognomy, this personality constitutes the rāga (lit. the taint). A rāga, when transcribed in notes, should include the rise, fall and often the prescribed sequences. It can be taken for a melody. Often however an actual melody is given as an example and we have there the appearance of a skeleton on account of the fact that the Indian notation does not generally indicate the ornaments. We are simply told that—it is that rāga. Indeed, but quite a different melody might also be that rāga and give that ambient. The Indian musician is in a situation which is analogous to that of the sculptor of the Middle Ages, who being a prisoner of the canons of religious iconography, tried there to specialise thoroughly in certain types, marked his personality with details so very striking for the initiated that these types remained enclosed within a limit, and he following the same rules created either a mediocre work, or a masterpiece."
c5.24
In a recent article, the same author has made another attempt to translate the idea of a rāga: "What is a rāga? It is an atmosphere, a musical colouring. This colouring is associated with a mood of feeling, a sentiment. It is often, also, associated with the time of the day, and it is quite obvious that the musical colouring should differ for dawn or dusk, for heat or for middle of the night . . . . . How is this musical colouring attained? How is the rāga to be defined in musical terms? . . . . . The rāga belongs to the realm of modes and of different scales. In modes, Indian music is extremely rich, but the rāga is not only the scale. The various explanations of the rāga have often been misleading, because they stop short or go too far. It has been sometimes said that the rāga is a mode; but the rāga is far more precise and much richer than a mode. On the same mode there are several rāgas. The rāga is therefore in that direction, but goes further. The rāga has been also likened to a skeleton of melody which is to be clothed with varied ornaments. But this goes too far; the rāga is much less fixed and much richer than a musical outline given; several melodies, all different, can be composed on the same rāga; so that the definition as regards melody is beyond the truth. The rāga is more fixed than the mode, and less fixed than the melody, beyond the mode and short of the melody, and richer both than a given mode or a given melody. It is a mode with added multiple specialities.”¹
c5.25
Mr. Fox Strangways defines rāga as “an arbitrary series of notes characterized, as far as possible as individuals, by proximity to or remoteness from the note which marks the tessitura (general level of the melody), by a special order in which they are usually taken, by the frequency or the reverse with which they occur, by grace or the absence of it, and by relation to a tonic usually reinforced by a drone.” Mr. Popley paraphrases this definition in a simplified form: “Rāgas are different series of notes within the octave, which form the basis of all Indian melodies, and are differentiated from each other by the prominence of certain fixed notes and by the sequence of particular notes. We may perhaps find in the term ‘melody-type’ the best way to transcribe rāga in English.”²
c5.26
In rendering or interpreting a rāga, it is not necessary to reproduce, or repeat slavishly, or mechanically, its component notes in a given sequence. If one keeps to the main features, or outlines of the pattern, considerable latitude is allowed by way of improvizations. Indeed no rendering of the same rāga, even by the same interpreter need be, iden-
c5.27
(1) Philippe Stern: “The Music of India and the Theory of the Rāga” (Indian Art and Letters, New series, vol. VII, no. 1 1933, p. 1-9).
(2) Herbert A. Popley: ‘The Music of India,’ 1921, p. 39.
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tically alike,—like ‘copies’ of a stereotype, or the repetitions of a gramophone. The actual form varies, according to the mood, or skill of the singer, or the response of the audience, though adhering to the main outline of the types, —so as not to call up the mental picture (*tasbīr*) of any other rāga, however, closely related. In order to keep to this identity of pattern, or mould, it is necessary to avoid notes, which will alter the individuality of the ‘picture,’ the peculiarity of the physiognomy, or in other words, will introduce dissonance, or a jarring feeling. This dissonant note to be avoided, is, as we know, the *vivādī* (the inimical note). *Saṃvādī* is, on the other hand, the consonant note. While the *anuvādī* (assonant, or subservient) note stands for all other notes which are not *vādī*, *saṃvādī*, or *vivādī*.¹
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¹ It is sometimes believed that a *vivādī* note is to be avoided, and is absent in a rāga. This is not correct. A *vivādī* note is occasionally introduced to demonstrate its dissonant character in the scheme of a particular melody.
c5.30
According to the number of notes composing them rāgas are classified as *oḍava* (pentatonic) using five notes, *ṣāḍava* or *khāḍava* (hextatonic) using six notes, and *sampūraṇa* (heptatonic) using all the seven notes. With less than five notes, no rāga can be composed.²
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² According to some authorities, the Mālava-śrī rāgiṇī is a melody of less than five notes.
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According to Matanga, an ancient authority on Music, ‘no classical melody (*mārga*) can be composed from four notes and less; melodies with notes of less than five are used by tribes such as Śavaras, Pulindas, Kāmbojas, Vaṅgas, Kirātas, Vālhīkas, Andhras, Draviḍas, and foresters.’³ An exception is made in the case of a class of stage songs known as *dhruvās*, which though regarded as classical melodies,
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³ “*Catuḥ-svarāt prabhṛti na mārgaḥ śavara-pulinda-kāmboja-vaṅga-kirāta-vālhīkāndhra-draviḍa-vanādisu prayujyate| Tathācāha Bharataḥ:—ṣat-svarasya prayogo’sti tathā pañcasvarasyaca| catuḥ-svara-proyage’pi hyavakrista-dhruvāsvapi*”|| Bṛhaddeśī by Matanga-Muni (Trivandram Sanskrit Series, 1928, no. VI, p. 59).
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(1) It is sometimes believed that a *vivādī* note is to be avoided, and is absent in a rāga. This is not correct. A *vivādī* note is occasionally introduced to demonstrate its dissonant character in the scheme of a particular melody.
c5.35
(2) According to some authorities, the Mālava-śrī rāgiṇī is a melody of less than five notes.
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(3) “*Catuḥ-svarāt prabhṛti na mārgaḥ śavara-pulinda-kāmboja-vaṅga-kirāta-vālhīkāndhra-draviḍa-vanādisu prayujyate| Tathācāha Bharataḥ:—ṣat-svarasya prayogo’sti tathā pañcasvarasyaca| catuḥ-svara-proyage’pi hyavakrista-dhruvāsvapi*”|| Bṛhaddeśī by Matanga-Muni (Trivandram Sanskrit Series, 1928, no. VI, p. 59).
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are found to be composed of four notes.
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If the combinations, growing out of the component members or elements (*svaras*) of a rāga-composition, have any significant qualities, or functions, the *ensemble* of the rāga-form must spell and express some particular states of feelings and emotions. Indeed, they are believed to represent particular moods, association, or atmosphere of the human mind, or of nature,—and to be able to call up and invoke a distinctive kind of feeling answering to the state of the mind,—or its physical environment, for the time being. Rāgas have, therefore, the power of producing certain mental effects and each is supposed to have an emotional value, or signification which may be called the *ethos* of the rāga. Rāgas may be said to stand for the language of the soul, expressing itself variously, under the stress of sorrow, or the inspiration of joy, under the storm of passion, or the thrills of the expectation, under the throes of love-longing, the pangs of separation, or the joys of union.
c5.39
the *Goths*, the *Vandals*, the *Suevi*, the *Burgundians*, the *Alani*, the *Huns*, the *Franks*, the *Saxons*, the *Thuringians*, the *Rugians*, and the *Heruli*. The names of these tribes are familiar to the reader, but their origin, their migrations, and their settlements are involved in the deepest obscurity. The most probable opinion is that they were all of German or Scythian extraction, and that they had been driven from their native seats by the pressure of the Huns, a formidable nation of Tartars, who had crossed the Volga and the Tanais, and were advancing with rapid strides towards the frontiers of the Roman empire.
c5.40
The first of these nations that crossed the Danube was the *Goths*. They were divided into two great branches, the *Visigoths* or Western Goths, and the *Ostrogoths* or Eastern Goths. The Visigoths, under the conduct of Fritigern, implored the protection of the emperor Valens, and were permitted to settle in the province of Thrace. But the perfidy of the Roman governors, and the insolence of the Roman soldiers, soon provoked them to rebellion. They defeated the imperial armies, and Valens himself perished in the battle of Hadrianople.
c5.41
The death of Valens was followed by the accession of Theodosius, who, by his wisdom and valour, restored the discipline of the Roman legions, and compelled the Goths to accept a peace, which was rather a truce than a permanent settlement. The Goths, however, remained in the heart of the empire, and their presence was a constant source of danger and alarm. They were no longer the rude barbarians who had first crossed the Danube; they had learned the arts of war and the policy of the Romans, and they were ready to take advantage of any opportunity to assert their independence.
c5.42
The reign of Theodosius was the last period of the glory of the Roman empire. After his death, the empire was divided between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius. Arcadius reigned in the East, and Honorius in the West. The division was fatal to the interests of the state. The two brothers were weak and indolent, and they were governed by their ministers and favourites. The Goths, under the command of Alaric, took advantage of the weakness of the government, and invaded Italy. They besieged and took Rome, and the eternal city, which had for so many centuries been the mistress of the world, was plundered by the barbarians.
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The fall of Rome was a shock to the whole civilized world. It was the end of an era, and the beginning of a new and darker age. The Goths, after the death of Alaric, retired from Italy, and settled in Gaul and Spain, where they founded kingdoms which were destined to last for several centuries. The Vandals, under the command of Genseric, crossed into Africa, and established a powerful kingdom, which for a time threatened the security of the Mediterranean. The Franks, under the command of Clovis, conquered Gaul, and laid the foundations of the French monarchy. The Saxons, under the command of Hengist and Horsa, invaded Britain, and established the kingdoms of the Heptarchy.
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RĀGINĪ KAKUBHĀ
Linked texts (3)
- Bṛhaddeśī — Mataṅga, Sanskrit
- Saṅgītasaṅgraha
- Saṅgītanārāyaṇa — Gajapati Vīrasrī Nārāyaṇadeva 1675, Sanskrit