Historical Development of Indian Music: A Critical Study c8.53

c8.53

Two new and novel ideas evolved during Mataṅga's time and they were the philosophical concept of the theory of musical sound and the śastric and scientific definition of the melody. Though melody type or rāga was in practice from the pre-Christian era, yet Mataṅga for the first time determined its specific meaning and definition, in the fifth-seventh century A.D. He mentioned seventy-three types of subordinate melodies or *bhāṣā-rāgas*, and they were mostly regional and aboriginal in nature.