Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c5.38

c5.38

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.