The Ragas of Early Indian Music: Modes, Melodies and Musical Notations from the Gupta Period to c. 1250.

• Author: Kippen, James R.

The classical music of India is undoubtedly one of the subcontinent's greatest cultural achievements, and arguably its most significant cultural export to the rest of the world. Yet whilst it is widely assumed that both Hindustani (North Indian) and Karnatak (South Indian) musical systems are ancient, they are in fact relatively recent phenomena whose forms probably crystallized within the past four to five hundred years. Their common heritage lies in a musical system that has hitherto only been hinted at by scholars of theoretical treatises that span a thousand years from the Natyasastra (early first millennium) to the Sangitaratnakara (circa 1240). However, for all the speculation about the nature of microtones, tunings, and scales in ancient times, the modern student of Indian music has rarely been offered either insight into the philosophical, aesthetic, or social underpinning of the music or clues as to how its performance was organized in terms of structure and sound. Lewis Rowell's Music and Musical Thought in Early India (1992)(1) was the first comprehensive analysis of the philosophy and aesthetics of Indian music up to the thirteenth century; now Richard Widdess' magnificent and painstaking study provides us with details of the emergence and metamorphosis of the raga system, and offers transcriptions of musical ideas that, as the era progresses, seem increasingly to have a connection with and relevance to the raga system in use today. In short, Widdess' Ragas of Early Indian Music may be viewed as a huge and indispensable piece of the puzzle.

Widdess sets out to reconstruct the history, theory, and practice of early Indian music from surviving examples of notated melody and from modal theory as explained in several important treatises. Raga is clearly indebted to the jati (mode-class) classification system for organizing melody, as outlined in early treatises...