The raga is an Indian scale which utilises varying ascending and descending patterns – certain notes on the way up and certain notes on the way down – but always in the set sequence. The raga never has less than five notes – the minimum required for a tune.

We can ascribe to a raga certain meta-characteristics that define a Raga:
<> Every raga is said to be born of a Thaat which is its parent.

<> Every Raga is composed of notes

<> A simple combination of notes is not a raga unless it sounds good.As mentioned earlier though, it is difficult to accurately define what sounds good. In another article we will attempt to describe what this means in terms of harmonics and melodics.

<> A minimum of five notes are necessary in a Raga. Therefore a Raga can have five, six or seven notes.

<> There cannot be to notes that are adjacent on the octave in the same raga. But this is not strictly true as we shall see in case of certain ragas like Lalit where there are two madhyamas together.

<> Every Raga has a Aaroh and a Avaroh. An aaroh is an ascension and an avaroh is the descension.

<> The base note Sa cannot be absent from a Raga

<> The notes Ma and Pa cannot be absent from a Raga at the same time

<> A raga is also identified by a Vadi ( main note ) and a Samvadi ( second note ). The Vadi is a note that is stressed the most in the raga. The Samvadi is stressed after that. Two Ragas can have the same set of notes but differing vadis and samvadis which then make them different ragas. For instance both the ragas Bhupali and Deshkar have the same set of notes and the same aaroh and avaroh but they have differing pakads and also different vadis and samvadis which make them different ragas.Bhupali has a vadi ga and samvadi da but deshkar has a vadi da and samvadi ga.

<> Every Raga has a Pakad which is a set of notes that uniquely identify that Raga.

<> A raga is born from a Thaat. A Thaat is simply a set of seven notes in a certain order. There is much more to the thaat than what is given in the simplistic description above. More on this in another article. Every Raga is said to be born of a thaat in that an aaroh and a avaroh is composed from the seven notes of the thaat. Five, six or seven notes can be picked from the seven notes of the thaat for both the aaroh and the avaroh of raga. But that is not enough. Now a vadi , samvadi and a pakad have to be given to the raga to uniquely identify that raga. It is also important to make sure that the raga does not clash with a previously existing raga. It is also very important that the Raga sounds sweet to the ears.

<> It has been said earlier that a Raga can have five, six or seven notes in the aaroh and the avaroh. Based upon this a raga can be classified in to catgories. A Raga sequence ( aaroh or avaroh ) with five notes is said to be Audav ( sanskrit for five ). A Raga sequence with six notes is called Shadav ( sanskrit for six ) and a rag sequence with seven notes is called Sampoorna ( sanskrit for complete ) since seven notes is the maximum number that the raga sequence can have. Now to another point of confusion. There are twelve notes in the chromatic scale. The seven notes that make up the thaat are picked from these twelve notes.

Since a Raga is composed of two raga sequences: an aaroh and a avaroh, a Raga can fall in to any one of the nine categories listed below. The first part of the category name describes the category that the aaroh falls in to and the second is the category that the avaroh falls in to.Thus a raga that has seven notes in the aaroh and five notes in the avaroh would fall in to the class Sampoorna-Audav.

1. Audav-Audav
2. Audav-Shadav
3. Audav-Sampoorna
4. Shadav-Audav
5. Shadav-Shadav
6. Shadav-Sampoorna
7. Sampoorna-Audav
8. Sampoorna-Shadav
9. Sampoorna-Sampoorna

A fairly common and interesting question that arises is whether there is an upper limit to the number of ragas that can be created from a maximum of seven notes using these rules given above. Some basic combinatorial mathematics gives us a reasonable upper bound. The trick lies in figuring out how many combinations of five, six and seven notes one can choose from seven notes with the additional condition that one note( Sa ) always has to be there. If you consider that Sa always has to be chosen, then one can select a combination of five notes from seven notes in six choose five ways which is 15. Similarly it is not very difficult to figure out that there are 6 ways of selecting six notes from seven given that Sa always has to be selected and there is only one combination of all seven notes. This gives rise to the table below:

This table gives us an upper bound on the number of ragas ( 484 all in all ) that can be created simply by combinations of the seven notes in the aaroh and avaroh. We have not taken in to consideration rules such as the one where there cannot be two adjacent notes in the octave in the same raga. There is also no attempt to impose the rule that the combination should sound sweet to the ears as mentioned earlier.

Now in addition to the above count if we take in to consideration that there are presently 10 recognised thaats in hindusthani music there are 4840 ragas that can be created. In Carnatic music on the other hand there are 72 thaats that are delineated by Pandit VyankataMuhki which implies that there can be a maximum of 34848 ragas.

WHAT IS A RAGA? | ITS STRUCTURAL FEATURES | ITS CLASSIFICATION | RAGAMALA | RAGAS IN PERFORMANCE | TALAS IN PERFORMANCE |
RAGA THERAPY | RAGA NOTATIONS | RAGA TIMINGS |
HINDI FILM SONGS based on ragas | DICTIONARY