Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c9.24

c9.24

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.