Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c5.15

c5.15

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.