Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c6.343

c6.343

During the early part of the nineteenth century an important Persian text offers a new development in the classification of rāgas. This is a Persian text compiled in 1813 A.D. by Muhammad Rezza, a Prince of Patna. It is known as Nagmat-e-Asaphi and appears to survive in manuscripts. This eminent connoisseur of music had the courage to call into question the classification of the northern system, based on a picturesque divisions of the melodies into ‘wives’ and ‘sons’ of rāgas. He devised a new system based on a study of the structural similarities of the rāgas. He based his classification by accepting the Vilāval scale as the standard of Śuddha scale. He built up his system after consulting the best practising artists of his time.