Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c6.171

c6.171

Śaka and Pulinda rāgas were apparently non-aryan melodies accepted by the Hindu musicians in early times. Turuṣka-Toḍī a new version of Toḍī was apparently composed in contact with some airs from Turkestan. The power of receiving new-comers and assimilating them in the forms of rāgas, bespeaks the strong vitality and living quality of the growth and development of Indian music. This interesting contact of Indian rāgas with Persian melodies at the time 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.