Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c9: Deification and Visualization of Melodies

Rāgas and Rāginīs: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c9

Language: English

c9.19 — 4 parts

Deification and Visualization of Melodies

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There is a doctrine inherent in the Indian theory of melodies which helps one to understand the fundamental psychic values of rāgas, and to apply them to requirements of particular emotional situations, or interpretations. It is believed that each rāga, or rāgiṇī has its peculiar psychic form, corresponding to its sonal body over which the former presides as the nymph, deity, or the devatā (presiding genius, or god) of that particular melody. This deity, or image-formed dwells in the super-terrestrial regions,—the world of musical symphonies,—from which it can be invoked and induced to descend to earth through the prayers of the musical performer with the aid of a definite symphonic formula peculiar to each melody. This idea is, evidently, coloured with the doctrine of image-worship as known in the Hindu-Brahmanical religious thought. By the earnest prayers and spiritual exercises (sādhanā) of the worshipper (sādhaka), the divinity comes down and incarnates in the form of the image for the benefit of the worshipper. Each image has its definite means of approach, the vīja-mantra, a method of prayer through the ‘seed-formula’, and the deity only answers to prayers couched in the mystic words, or letters prescribed for each, each letter-formula having the mysterious power,—the inherent quality of invoking a particular deity. The application to the theory of Indian music, this doctrine of image-worship, i.e. the idea of invoking the presiding deity, or the spirit of the divinity by means of a dhyāna-formula,—an evocative scheme of prayers for contemplation,—has led to the conception of the forms of rāgas and rāgiṇīs in dual aspects viz., as audible Sound-Forms, and as visible Image-Forms—nāda-maya rūpa and devatā-maya rūpa. This doctrine, inherent in the theory of rāgas, is casually alluded to in the earlier texts, but is not clearly enunciated in any text before the *Rāga-vivodha* (Pañcama viveka), where, after indicating the appropriate hours of melodies, the author describes the two-fold forms (*rūpa*) of melodies¹:—"That is called *rūpa* which by being embellished with sweet flourishes of *svaras* (notes) brings a rāga vividly before one's mind. It is of two kinds—*Nādātma* (one whose soul or essence is sound), and *Devamaya* (=*devatā-deha-mayam*, one whose soul, or essence is an image incarnating the deity), of which the former has many phases, and the latter has only one" (M. S. R. Aiyar's translation; the words in bracket have been added for elucidation). The author then describes his symbols (*sanketa*) for his notations, and describes the melodies in terms thereof, and thereafter remarks:² "Having (already) expounded the many sound-forms of those rāgas, we will now proceed to relate in proper sequence, the image-forms of each and every one of them."

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According to one text³ 'the images (*vigraha*) of the melodies emanate from the Supreme Deity (Brahma) and their function is to worship the Supreme Deity.'

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According to the doctrine, it is believed that the presiding deity,—the spirit⁴, or ethos of a rāga or rāgiṇī can be induced to come down and incarnate (*avatīrṇa*—lit. 'made to descend') in its physical sound-form (*nāda-maya-rūpa*). If the presiding spirit cannot be induced 'to descend', the rendering, or interpreting of that particular melody cannot be pronounced to have been successfully achieved. A successful interpreter of a particular melody is complimented with the phrase that he has succeeded in persuading the deity of the rāga or rāgiṇī to descend (*avatīrṇa*) and to reveal its visual image or picture (*tasvīr*), and to live in his vocal song, or his instrument of performance. No amount of

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(1) "*Su-svara-varna-viśesam rūpam rāgasya vodhakam dvedhā| Nādātmam deva-mayam tatkramato'-nekamekam ca*"|| 11 *Rāga-vivodha*, Pañcamo Vivekah.

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(2) "*Uktam rūpamanekam tattadrāgasya nāda-mayamevam| Atha devatā mayamiha kramatah kathaye tadaikam*"|| 168 Ibid.

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(3) "*Rāgāh sadatha rāginyah sattriṃśaccāru-vigrahāh| Āgatā Brahma-sadanāt Brahmānam samūpāte*"|| *Saṅgīta-Dāmodara* [quoting Pañcama-saṃhitā].

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mechanical reproduction of its symphonic structure can put life into the melody and make it alive. And unless it is alive in the song, or instrument, it does not fulfil its purpose. A rāga or rāgiṇī is something more than its physical form,—its symphonic structure,—its ‘body’. It has a ‘soul’ which comes to dwell and inhabit in the ‘body’. In the language of Indian poetics, this ‘soul’—this principle is known as the rasa, flavour, sentiment, impassioned feeling, or simply, passion, or aesthetic emotion. It is this emotive principle, the presiding sentiment, or passion, which is evoked by the peculiar combination of the notes, the svaras. For, according to the Indian theory, each svara, or note has a peculiar emotive value, symbolised by its presiding deity (svarāṇām devatā), and has its interpretive seer, sage, or expounder (ṛṣi).¹ Particular notes (svaras) have peculiar quality of interpreting particular emotions. Thus, the notes ‘sā’ and ‘ri’ (c and d) are said to be appropriate for interpreting the emotions of heroism, wonder, and resentment; the note ‘dha’ (a) is suitable for emotions of disgust, and terror; the notes ‘ga’ and ‘ni’ (e and b) are suitable for emotions of sorrow, and the notes ‘ma’ and ‘pa’ (f and g) are suitable for emotions of humour and love.² And it is the vādī-svara, the speaking or the dominant note which determines the character of the rasa, or the flavour or the emotion of the melody. The devatā or the image-form is the svarūpa, or the incarnation of the rasa of the rāga. A successful performer (sādhaka) must be familiar with the image-form as well as the sound-form. The one is the means to the achievement of the other. And educated interpreter makes the spirit of the melodies live, while an untrained one is

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¹ “Dakṣotriḥ Kapilaścaiva Vasiṣṭho Bhārgavastathā|

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¹ Nāradas Tumburścaiva ṣaḍjādīnām ṛṣīśvarāḥ|| 37 ||

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¹ Vahnir-Brahmā Śaradā ca Sarva-Śrī-nātha-Bhāskarah|

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¹ Gaṇeśvarādayo devāḥ ṣaḍjādīnām tu devatāḥ||38||

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¹ Nārada’s: Saṅgita-makaranda (G. O. S. p. 4).

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¹ Another version of this enumeration of svara-devatās and rṣis is given in Saṅgita-darpaṇa (Calcutta Edition, p. 381, verses 88_89).

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² Sa-rī vīre’dh-bhūte raudre dho-vibhatse bhayānake|

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² Kāryyauga-nī tu karuṇe hāsya-śṛṅgārayor-ma-pau”|| 91 ||

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² Saṅgita-darpaṇa, p. 38.

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(1) “Dakṣotriḥ Kapilaścaiva Vasiṣṭho Bhārgavastathā|
Nāradas Tumburścaiva ṣaḍjādīnām ṛṣīśvarāḥ|| 37 ||
Vahnir-Brahmā Śaradā ca Sarva-Śrī-nātha-Bhāskarah|
Gaṇeśvarādayo devāḥ ṣaḍjādīnām tu devatāḥ||38||
Nārada’s: Saṅgita-makaranda (G. O. S. p. 4).
Another version of this enumeration of svara-devatās and rṣis is given in Saṅgita-darpaṇa (Calcutta Edition, p. 381, verses 88_89).
(2) Sa-rī vīre’dh-bhūte raudre dho-vibhatse bhayānake|
Kāryyauga-nī tu karuṇe hāsya-śṛṅgārayor-ma-pau”|| 91 ||
Saṅgita-darpaṇa, p. 38.

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supposed to kill, or slaughter it. A perfect mastery of the technique is necessary to call up the picture in all its characteristic outlines, features, and limbs, its shades, and colour-schemes. An indifferent technician is apt to distort the features and limbs of the deities of the melodies. This is well illustrated in the legend of Nārada, the great mythic interpreter of Indian music. During his early practices of the science, when Kṛṣṇa wished to convince him that the former's musical practices had not yet given him the necessary technical perfection, Nārada was taken to a celestial region where he found several wounded nymphs and angels, weeping in great misery, for, their limbs had been distorted and mangled. When Nārada enquired of the reason of the pitiable plight of the nymphs,—he was informed that they were the melodies (rāgas and rāgiṇīs) whose limbs have been broken by Nārada's unskilful attempt to render their true and accurate forms, in the course of his clumsy practices. The suggestion was that if one desires to invoke the spirit of the rāgiṇīs to descend from their celestial abode and live in their physical sound-forms, the latter must be delineated with loving tenderness, scrupulous care, reverence, and devotion,—with all the accuracy of technical performance, as well as of spiritual vision. As the Kinnara (fairy) in one of the old tales of the Jātakas says: "To sing ill is a crime."

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It has already been indicated that the sound-form of a rāga is the medium—its kernel, or, body, so to speak, through which the spirit of the rāga manifests itself. The objective of the rāga is the rasa—the aesthetic emotion, the theme, the subject-matter,—the motif of the melody. As the soul must inhabit a body, so every rasa is incarnated in the rūpa (form) of particular rāga or rāgiṇī. To invoke the rasa, one must mediate upon the rūpa. Each particular form of rāga—is suitable for the expression of a particular type of rasa, that is to say, each rāga is associated with and is the medium of a particular sentiment, or emotion—its characteristic and definite ethos. A musician should, therefore, have a knowledge of the relation of the rāgas to their associated rasas—the form of a rāga being a perfected vocabulary, or phrase to express in a significant and an impressive manner a particular class of emotion. From very early times, a knowledge of this form and its contents, was considered a sine quo non of musical education. It is necessary to realise what the *Devatā*, or the image of the deity of a rāga stands for. Unlike the conception of the innumerable divinities in the Hindu Brahmınic or Buddhist-tantric (Mahāyānist) pantheons, the musical divinities—the presiding genuises of the rāgas are not conceived and symbolised in individual image-forms or icons.

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The *devatās*, no doubt, stand as the symbols or the personifications of the essential *rasa*—the theme, or objective of each rāga. But their plastic representation invariably takes a dramatic rather than an iconic form, a dynamic as opposed to a static visualisation. In the iconography of images, it was necessary to distinguish the bewildering conceptions of Brahmanic gods—by devising differentiating features of heads, arms, weapons (*āyudha*), vehicles (*vāhanas*), and poses (*mudrās*). In describing, or symbolising the character of a *rasa*, it was possible to suggest the same by an individual icon, or image. *Rasa* is a state of the mind—its expression can only be effective and adequate in a dramatic form,—it lives in an environment and in relation to other realities,—in moods and in phenomena. The *rasa* of the presiding principle of a rāga is rendered through actions—rather than in images through symbolised icons. The *Devatās* of the world of music—have also their *dhyānas*—contemplative prayer-formulas,—but they usually take a dramatic pattern,—rather than the static iconic phrase—of the religious images. They are the picturization of emotions in a concrete and plastic form answering to, rather than symbolising, the abstract states of the mind. They are depicted in an appropriate dramatic and emotional setting—the surrounding circumstances which give rise to the various emotion. In a general sense, music is the universal language of emotions.

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Music of all races and countries is made the vehicle of human feeling. The Indian system cannot claim a special feature in this respect. All systems of music have evolved, according to each racial temperament, different melodies connoting joyous, sad, or heroic feelings. All phases of Western music have airs or "tunes" answering to various moods of the mind. The Indian melodies have similar connotations. The Vasanta rāga is the human reaction to the joy of life in Spring, Megha-rāga, to the advent of the rains,—with all the exuberance of desire and opportunity for enjoyment. Puravī, —the evening melody, is the lamentation of nature for the parting day. Āsāvarī is the melancholy pleading of a grievance for a just redress. Bhairavī—is the melody of love and devotion. Madhumādhavī bespeaks the peace of love and contentment. Lalita stands for unsatiated love, and the sorrow of separation at day-break. Toḍī—is the surrender of animal life to the magic and enchantment of the beauty of nature. Naṭa—is the symbol of the heroic or martial spirit in man. And so on. We have a complete vocabulary in terms of significant melodies—to express the whole gamut of human feeling in all shades and varieties of moods, skilfully woven with the moods of nature.

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The special feature of the Indian system of melodies arises from the fact that while in Western music—there is room for more than one moods in the same composition,—each Indian melody has for its theme one definite mood—which must not be departed from, or variegated, or tinctured by the shade, or colour of any other feeling. Each melody is, as it were, —dedicated to its own theme,—its ethos, its presiding genius, —its devatā. And it is by the prayer of the musician,—the singer, or the interpreter,—who has to immerse and identify himself in the theme,—that the devatā—the spirit of the melody is made visible (mūrtimanta) in the symphonic form,—the nādamaya rūpa. Before he can call up the devatā of any rāga—by his prayers,—the interpreter (the worshipper of the rāga) has to visualise the image in his mind. For this purpose,—the dhyānas for contemplations appear to have been formulated.

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These dhyāna-formulas in the shape of Sanskrit verses and quatrains represent the devatā-maya-rūpa, the image-forms of the rāgas and rāgiṇīs. They are the sources and the bases of all pictorial representations of the Indian melodies—the well-known ‘Rāga-mālā’ pictures. In these verbal descriptions—the essential character,—the spirit,—the rasa,—the emotional objective of each rāga, or rāgiṇī is indicated. Very often symbolistic details of the colour of the dress,¹ the nature of the complexion of the dramatis

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¹ It was at one time believed that the scheme of colours—in the distinct varieties of the colour-notes of the different parts of

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(1) It was at one time believed that the scheme of colours—in the distinct varieties of the colour-notes of the different parts of personae of each representation are significantly indicated. In many of these personifications,—particularly those which have the many phrases of human love for their theme,—the principles of old Indian love-lore, and erotics, (*rasa-śāstra*) have been applied—and the personages have been conceived in terms of the classic conventions of ‘love-heroes’ and ‘love-heroines’ (*nāyakas* and *nāyikās*)—in all the rich variety of their moods and types. The introduction of these poetical ideas has not only enriched the significance of the musical expressions,—but has, also, helped to achieve a happy and a subtle unification of literary and musical ideas. It is a profoundly expressed truth—that music begins where the language of words fails. It is equally true that in some sense, music is a much more definite language than the language of words. And very properly, music has jealously guarded the frontier of its kingdom from the attack, or intrusion of the language of words. There is an interminable controversy—as to what extent the words of a song embarrass the expression of pure musical values. The intrusion of literary ideas in the world of music cannot but be disastrous to musical expression, and, as is well-known, the literary criticism of music is one of the most tragic things of life. The imageries and ideas borrowed from Indian poetics and love-lore and incorporated in the contemplative verses (*dhyānas*) describing the Indian rāgas, stand, however, on a very different footing. They are, by no means, a description of the musical values but an indication of the *rasa*—the nature of the emotions for which the melodies stand. They are not, strictly speaking, literary explanations but a co-relation and a paralellism with imageries which arose out of the experiences of life common to musicians and poets. It is really in the pictorial versions

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a rāginī picture had a significant correspondence to the distinctive notes which made up the structure of the particular melody, the seven colours answering to the seven notes of the musical scale. The theory is very tempting, particularly with reference to the limited palettes of the early rāginī ‘primitives’, but it is impossible to demonstrate that the artists of the rāginī pictures were guided in their choice of particular colours used by any consideration of the structural, or sonal composition of the melodies they illustrated.

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that an attempt has been made to interpret the presiding rasa of every rāga in elaborate forms in appropriate environment and atmosphere, with illuminating vision and sympathetic intuition. To those educated in the language of music—and the significance of a musical vocabulary,—these literary, or plastic aids might appear redundant, or useless. At any rate, these dhyānas and their pictorial illustrations must be taken to date from a period later than that in which the melodies were discovered, or revealed and were understood by contemporary culture in their fullest significance through the medium of the musical language itself without any adventitious aids from other languages. They may have become necessary for the purpose of keeping in tact—without any risk of confusion—the individual entity of each rāga, and for the purpose of systematising them in a graphic form for educational purposes. It is a notorious fact that from the time musical practitioners neglected the rasa or emotive aspect of melodies,—indicated in the iconology and the pictorial illustrations, there has been considerable confusion in interpreting the peculiar genius of each rāga—in terms of its characteristic symphonic values. The psychology of rāgas—being the very basic of Indian music, an understanding of the emotive significance of each rāga was an essential part of the education of an Indian musician, from very early times.

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It is not possible to indicate, in the present state of our knowledge, when the iconography of the rāgas was first evolved and the prayer-verses formulated. All the Sanskrit verses surviving to-day, appear to be very late compositions. The existing body of dhyāna texts show that they were composed at the time when all the three schools of Brahmā, Nārada and Hanumāna were known and practised. For we have different verse-formulas for all the rāgas according to the three schools. Where the conception of a particular rāga in any two schools is identical,—a similar or closely analogous iconographic formula is used. The verses relating to the original six classic rāgas and 36 rāgiṇīs may be very old,—but as new rāgas came into vogue, Sanskrit verses indicating their character were composed at very late times. For instance, the Turuṣka-Gauḍa—which is very well known to have been introduced after Āmīr Khusrau (14th century)

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has been honoured by a contemplative verse in Sanskrit.¹ The fashion of composing these verse-formulas appears to have survived much later.

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There is no doubt that the two phases of a melody, the sound-form, and its corresponding image-form, were recognised from early times, though we have not yet come across any reference to this dual aspect in the texts earlier than the Rāga-vivodha. The devatā, the presiding genius of each rāga is, indeed, referred to in many of the old legends, and also indicated in earlier texts, though the images, or pictures of the melodies are not described in any of the earlier texts.

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(1) “Vire ca raudre ca Turuska-Gauḍo Nisāda-jāmśo ri-pa-varjitaśca| mūrtistu nivandhāntare| Turuska-Gauḍa āruhya haya-prṣṭhe’ runa-dyutih| Saṅkha-kaṇṭhopanītaśca soṣṇīṣaḥ kavacā-vritaḥ|| S. N. Tagore, “Saṅgīta-sāra-samgraha,” p. 106. Translation: Turuska-Gauḍa is employed in heroic and martial sentiments. The expressive note is ni, and the antiphonic notes are ri & pa. The image is thus described: ‘Turuska-Gauḍa has a complexion rosy as the dawn, He is mounted on a horse, clad in armour and carries a turban.’ The corresponding Hindī verse furnished by Harivallabha does not agree with the above in iconographic conception: [Turuska-Gauḍa is a melody different from Turuska-Toḍi]: “Aṅga lasai bhukhana vasana Turakhāneki rīt| Kahe Turaka-Toḍi hai pive surā kari prīt”|| Translation: ‘Bedecked with jewelleries and dressed in Turkish modes (he) drinks with great zest. Such, it is said, is Turaka-Toḍi.’

Linked texts (7)

Jātaka — Pāli
Lalitā — Sanskrit
Saṅgītasamayasāra — Pārśvadeva, Sanskrit
Saṅgītamakaranda — Nārada, Sanskrit
Saṅgītadāmodara — Śubhaṅkara, Sanskrit
Rāgavibodha — Somanātha 1584, Sanskrit
Vasant — Kabīr, Hindi

Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c9: Deification and Visualization of Melodies

Contents

Deification and Visualization of Melodies

Linked texts (7)