Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c6.9

c6.9

they may have evolved, though not known and recognized by definite names or associated with any cult, season, or particular areas of culture. In the musical data of the Nāṭyaśāstra (chapter 38) we have definite evidence of the theory of the consonance of notes (samavāditya) in the terminology used viz., vādī, saṃvādī, anuvādī, vivādī,—words which are indeed as old as the second century A.D., for, they occur in the Mahābhārata (XIV, 14, 19), which is believed to have taken their present form some time between 400 B.C. and 200 A.D. In the Nāṭyaśāstra (ch. 38, śloka 23) we have not only a recognition of the relationship between the consonant, assonant, dissonant notes, but also an allusion to a theory of the relative values of initial and terminal notes graha, nyāsa and apanyāsa (ch. 28, ślokas 80, 81).