Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c6.250

c6.250

The most important contribution of Rāmāmātya was in the formulation of a scientific principle of classification of the rāgas, on the basis of the common elements of their characteristic note structures. This was certainly a great improvement on the system of classification recorded in *Sangīta-ratnākara*, which Mr. Aiyar characterises as nothing more than a mere catalogue. Śārangadeva’s classification, though not exactly an enumeration of a catalogue, was more an historical presentation of the older and current systems of classification, rather than an attempt to classify the melodies on a new system on any empirical basis. Following the precedent of Yāṣṭika, whom he cites, he merely enumerates the fifteen major melodies, but he also indicates that these fifteen melodies are the father (janaka), that is to say, the genus of the minor melodies (bhāṣās).¹ This old janya-janaka system (corresponding to the rāga-rāgiṇī-putra system of the North) is replaced by Rāmāmātya by an independent analysis of the melodies and by a scientific classification based on a study of the common elements of the note compositions of the different varieties of melodies, unified (mela) by a recognition of their basic structural unity of the groups tabulated under a common genus. As Mr. Aiyar concedes, "doubtless the germ of the idea of the genus-species system may be found long before Rāmāmātya." But "he was the first to introduce a chapter on mela called Mela-prakaraṇa." In this chapter, he enumerates, the melakas (unifiers) and then explains their characteristics. As Pandit Bhatkhande has pointed out, the mela corresponds to what is called in the North, the ṭhāṭ, (the array or moulds of particular types under which a group of minor melodies can be classified on the basis of their unity). Following an older precedent, Rāmāmātya takes the Mukhārī mela, as the śuddha scale and gives it the place of precedence.² "Of all the melas Mukhārī is the first. Other melas are as follows: Mālava-gaula, Śrī-rāga, Śāraṅga-nāṭa, Hindola, Śuddha-rāma-kriyā, Deśākṣī, Kannaḍa-gaula, Śuddha-nāṭa, Ahīrī, Nāda-rāma-kriyā, Śuddha-varālī, Rīti-gaula, Vasanta-Bhairavī Kedāra-Gauḍa, Hejujjī, Sāma-varālī, Reva-gupta, Sāmanta, Kāmbhojī. Thus there are twenty melas." (Appendix 17).