Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c8.75

c8.75

When we come to Nārada’s Saṅgīta Makaranda, we have the beginning of the Northern system, in which the major rāgas are treated as ‘masculine’ melodies and minor melodies are treated as ‘feminine’ melodies, affianced, or affiliated to the major melodies. Thus Nārada gives two different schemes, in the first of which he enumerates eight major melodies with three minor melodies assigned to each, and in the second, he enumerates six major melodies with six minor melodies (female rāgas) assigned to each, the earliest enumeration of the traditional “thirty-six rāgiṇīs.”