Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c9.23

c9.23

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.