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

Most Indian musicologists have made an effort to classify the ragas that were current during their time, so much so that from the 9th century onwards there exists a bewildering number of classification systems, which often contradict each other. Much of what the early scholars wrote about the ancient tone systems (gramas) and modes (jatis and grama ragas), and the systems in which ragas were grouped, deserves our attention, as these writers attempted to reconcile the ancient theory with contemporary practice. However, many of the ragas we hear today seem to have changed so dramatically, that it seems rather futile at this point to trace their origin beyond the 16th century.

After the early raga classification systems, which were based on the ancient jatis and grama ragas, came the numerous raga-ragini schemes. These appear in literature on music from the 14th to the 19th century. They usually consisted of six 'male' patriarchal ragas, each with five or six 'wives' (raginis) and sometimes also a number of 'sons' (putras) and 'daughters-in-law.' According to Damodara (c.1625), the system of the legendary Hanuman contained the following ragas and raginis:

Two centuries after Damodara, N. Augustus Willard observed that there was not only disagreement in the various systems about the main ragas and their raginis and putras, but that there was also "very little or no similarity between a raga and his raginis." This is probably the reason why the raga-ragini schemes had largely fallen into disuse by the beginning of the 19th century.

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Pundarika, a South Indian musicologist who migrated to the North in the second half of the 16th century, was the first to introduce the southern method of classifying Hindustani ragas according to scale types (melas). His method was adopted by contemporary and later authors, including Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936), whose monumental study on Hindustani music and compilation of hundreds of classical songs grouped by raga are undoubtedly the most influential reference works of the century. Bhatkhande's rational and pragmatic raga classification is based on ten heptatonic scale types, called thats.

A that ('framework'), as Bhatkhande used the term, is a scale using all seven notes including Sa and Pa, with either the natural or altered variety of each of the variable notes Re, Ga, Ma, Dha and Ni. In Bhatkhande's system all ragas are grouped under ten scale types, each of which is named after a prominent raga which uses the note varieties in question.

There are quite a few inconsistencies in this system, however, which Bhatkhande himself was partly aware of. For example, it cannot really accommodate important ragas such as Patdip (S R G M P D N), Ahir bhairav (S R G M P D N) and Madhuvanti (S R G M sharp P D N), since they have a scale type that does not belong to the ten-that system. Again, raga Lalit (S R G M M sharp D N) cannot be classified since it omits the fifth degree (Pa) and has both varieties of Ma. It is also hard to group other ragas with both varieties of either Re, Ga, Ma, Dha and Ni, and there are quite a few of them. In each case one has to decide between two possible thats. Furthermore, it has been argued that hexatonic and pentatonic ragas cannot be classified in the ten thats since the missing notes make the classification ambiguous.

More importantly, using scale types as the main criteria for his classification and referring to them as 'genera' from which the ragas (conceived of as melodic 'species') could be derived, Bhatkhande obscured the fact that the thats are mere skeletons, and not genera in the historical and evolutionary sense of the word. As we shall see, quite a number of ragas have different scale types but are historically and musically related (for instance, raga Bilaskhani todi is classified in Bhairavi that but raga Miyan ki todi in Todi that). In addition, many ragas grouped together in one scale type by Bhatkhande seem to have no further relationship with one another.

For these and other reasons, many musicians have challenged Bhatkhande's that system. Omkarnath Thakur (1897-1967), one of the century's influential music theoreticians and a famous khyal singer, for example, rejected the idea of classifying ragas under scale types. Yet no musicologist has so far been able to come up with a raga classification system that has been accepted as widely as Bhatkhande's. Until the history of ragas has been traced through a detailed and comparative study of both historical literature and oral traditions, it will not be possible to replace Bhatkhande's scheme with a more comprehensive and scientific system that reflects the evolutionary development of individual ragas. Needless to say, such a study is long overdue.

In contemporary music practice, there are partial alternatives, grouping some ragas but not the whole range. Ragas with different scales may share a number of characteristic melodic features and motifs. To refer to them, musicians use the term ang ('part'). Well-known examples are the Kanada ang (G M R), Malhar ang (M \ R, R / P, N \ P), Bhairav ang (M ^G \ R - S), and Todi ang (R ^/ G- ^\ R - S). The Bilaval, Kalyan and Sarang angs are more difficult to define.

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