Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c6.351

c6.351

This hasty, summary, and bird's eye-view of the development of the rāgas will be imperfect, without reference to the recent innovations introduced by Dr. Rabindra Nath Tagore. His experiments are chiefly interesting for their harmonious combinations of apparently inconsistent, or temperamentally divergent, or structurally incompatible rāgas—into happy and melodious compositions. As we have seen (*ante* p. 27-28), numerous old masters of Indian music had changed the current forms of rāgas in new and attractive versions, and novel forms of interpretations. "Knowing the old rāgas perfectly well, he (Tagore) too had the right to use and change them as his own inspiration told him to do."¹