Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c7.35

c7.35

(1) In Persia, * * * “the modes are chiefly denominated like those of the Greeks and Hindoos, from different regions or towns; as among the pardahs (maquams=rāgas), we see Hijāz, Irāk, Isfahán and among the shóbahs, or secondary modes, Zabul, Nishapur, and the like. In a Sanskrit book, which shall soon be particularly mentioned, I find the scale of a mode, named Hijeja, specified in the following verse:—*Māmsagraha sa nyāso’ c’hilo hijejastu sāyāhne*. The name of this mode is *not Indian*; and if I am right in believing it a corruption of Hijāz, which could hardly be written otherwise in the Nagari letters, we must conclude that it was imported from Persia.” ‘On the Musical Modes of the Hindoos’ by Sir William Jones, (S. M. Tagore’s Reprint, 1882, pp. 134-135).