Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c8.1

c8.1

One of the characteristic peculiarities of Indian melodies is their traditional association with particular seasons of the year, and with particular hours (watches) of the day and night. According to the Indian theory, there is some inherent quality in some rāgas which allocate them to particular season, and attune them to the peculiar atmosphere of nature prevailing during a given season, the melody interpreting the spirit of the season, and the seasonal atmosphere echoing sympathetically to the character and essence of that melody.) Very antagonistic views have been held by Indian musicians and theorists as to the validity or scientific basis of the so-called relationship between the spirit of a season and its appropriate melodic interpretation, but the theory has been handed down from a period of respectable antiquity. Curiously the earliest texts throw no light on the subject. The works of Dattila, Bharata, and Mataṅga offer no clue for this tradition. And it is not until we come to Nārada’s Saṅgīta-makaranda (a Northern text, probably datable about the 8th-9th centuries) that we come across written authority for this traditional association of melodies with particular seasons and hours of the day. It is quite possible that the assignation of rāgas to particular seasons may be older than the Saṅgīta-makaranda. The seasonal festivities are of great antiquity. The Spring Festival (with its variations for festivals assigned to special flowers e.g. Kaumudīmahotsava—the great festival of the Kumuda flower) is, as we know from ancient dramatic literature, very ancient and was accompanied by gambols at the swing (hindola), very picturesquely described by Rājaśekhara (circa 9th century) in his Karpūramañjarī (ii. 30). It is quite possible that the Vasanta and the Hindola rāgas were melodies specially associated with the spring festivals. The Hindola is the earlier melody, from which the Vasanta has been derived.¹ Some of the texts identify the two melodies as one.² The Solstice-feasts had their appropriate rituals and festivals, with appropriate music, lute-playing, the dramatic appearance of loose women, and the turn of the sun dramatized by discus-play and by mounting of the swing. “Each of the two solstice-festivities had its proper divinity and melody, and the melody of the summer solstice was accompanied by drums, to imitate thunder, while that of the shortest day was accompanied by the rattle of war-cars, representing an attack on the evil spirits of winter. The dancing girls round fire, with full water-jugs, and their singing (‘a joyous song’) were additional popular elements.”³ In this way, the Megha-rāga may have become the ‘proper melody’ of the rainy season, the Vasanta probably became the ‘proper melody’ of spring. Hindola, which, literally, means ‘the swing’, was, probably, associated with, the primæval non-Aryan ‘Festival of Swing’, and, was, later, appropriated by, and affiliated with, the ‘Dolotsava’, or ‘Dola-yātrā’, or the Jhūlana festival of the Kṛṣṇa-Rādhā cult, one of the most popular religious festivals in the North-west. Bhairava (Bhairon) was, probably, related to some festival connected with the worship of Śiva, formerly held in the month of Āsvina (September-October) but now amalgamated with the worship of Durgā (Śāradīyā Pūjā, literally the Autumnal Festival). Śrī-rāga (lit. meaning Lakṣmī, beauty, riches, the presiding deity of the harvest) may easily be connected with the harvesting season in the winter when the crop is cut, raised, and garnared. In most places in Northern India, the worship of Lakṣmī (Śrī) is timed to synchronise with the collection of the harvest in early winter. Śrī-rāga may, therefore, have been the ‘proper melody’ associated with the harvest festivals in winter. The melodies Bhairava, Hindola, Vasanta and Śrī-rāga must have