Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c5.18

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.