S-r-g-mM-d-n-S

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A truly mysterious creation I stumbled upon in Subbha Rao’s 1965 Raga Nidhi Vol.3: “’Meladalan’ and ‘Thatavidhwamasa’ are pseudo-names which Acharya Brahaspati…has given to a raga the identity of which [he] wants to keep unpublished for certain reasons. He points out, however, that it is an ancient raga which he wants to bring into life again”. Both these titles mean ‘Destroying the Foundational Scales’: indicating Brahaspati’s boundary-pushing intentions – the raga’s SrgmMdnS swara set, which contains all five vikrit positions, is perhaps best summarised as ‘Bhairavi komal Pa’ (a ‘disallowed thaat’ in both North and South India due to the presence of ‘mM & no Pa’), or even ‘Yaman tivra Sa’ (i.e. raising Yaman’s Sa is equivalent to lowering all the other swaras). Akin to the Western Locrian Mode, the scale is also the ‘missing member’ of the Bilawal murchana set – generally ignored in Hindustani music due to the awkwardness of tivra Ma inevitably functioning more like a ‘komal Pa’ (see below for more rare congruents). Rao, who gives a vadi-samvadi of Sa–ma, notes “andolan on tivra Ma…this raga is appealing when sung in vilambit”, also adding that re is omitted in aroha, and ni in avroh. Frustratingly, I can’t track down any of Brahaspati’s own renditions (his bandish is entitled Nada Sindhu Athaha Hai) – but Ulhas Bapat’s independently-created Parijat (‘Celestial Flower’: gat transcribed below), which takes the same swaras, is an outstanding demonstration of the scale’s multidirectional possibilities: I’d describe it more as ‘decentered’ than ‘dissonant’, with his santoor’s evenly-weighted timbres allowing for murchana-shades of multiple ragas, notably including Bageshri (from ga) and Khamaj (from dha). Also see Lalit (the main ‘komal Pa’ raga) and Ahir Lalit – as well as my geometric analysis of the ‘32 sampurna thaat’ scales. Ripe for exploration!

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राग मेलादालान

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• Hindustani Raga Index •

Aroha: SrgmMdnS

Avroh: SndMmgrS

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Chalan: (variable)

—Ulhas Bapat (2003)—

(hear me play this gat on guitar!)

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[gat, e.g. 27:43] grn, dS (S)Srn Srg mMdMm grn, dS; mMdS, rS gS mS MS dSrg mMdMm grn, dS; gMdSg r (nd)M MM (d)n md d, Mmg; grn, dS…

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• More •

Histories, melodies, mythologies, etc…

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After I posted this page on the r/icm forum (Aug 2023), several intriguing suggestions came in. As per multi-instrumentalist Chris Stephens (who also contributed to my entries for Imratkauns and Shivawanti), “Kushal Das put out a record called Raga Moods back in 2001, and the fourth track is ‘Madhyam se Bhairavi‘ [Bhairavi from ma’] – which could be another candidate for ‘komal Pa‘ status. Although it sounds like a different approach to Meladalan, as what Pandit-ji is doing is shifting the Sa, therefore treating his sitar’s ma as a new Sa. The tanpura and his drone strings are tuned Sa-ma, like Bageshri or Malkauns“.

 

By treating his sitar’s open-string ma as a ‘new Sa’ – via murchana – Das summons the scale form of Meladalan if considered from the new ma (i.e. Sa’s ‘original’ position: SrgmPdnS; mPdnSrgm > SrgmMdnS: although he also seasons his take with Bhairavi’s ‘mishra‘ shuddha Re, i.e. ‘Meladalan plus Pa‘). After a little more searching, I uncovered a recording of the same concept by Nikhil Banerjee (below) – almost certainly the inspiration for Das’ rendition, given his admiration for Banerjee (“I fell in love with his style…there was a point when I tried to imitate him with all my might, and I thought it worked rather well; but then I was ticked off by well-meaning veterans, who encouraged me to evolve my own musical persona…”). Others have followed in their wake: e.g. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Indrajit Banerjee, & Josh Feinberg.

 

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—Madhyam se Bhairavi (Nikhil Banerjee)—

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And, after an extended early-2024 deep-dive into ultra-rare ragas, I found some more intriguing matches for Meladalan’s scale form. Nauhar Todi (below) brings a different spin to the same SrgmMdnS swara set, leaning into the familiarity of Todi’s rgrS catchphrase while prioritising the stability of shuddha ma (aside from Sa, the only shuddha swara on offer). Despite these differences, tivra Ma does still seem to retain an independent ‘komal Pa’ role (evident in Mashkoor Ali Khan’s refrain: rgrSm, grgMgrS).

 

This is also the case for Sadhana Shiledar’s recently-created Ritu: which (like her Anup), she describes as being “based on a folk tune from the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh”. Her rendition takes a curious path through the swaras, with both Ma variants held back in favour of slow explorations in the dnSrg range – in fact, tivra Ma doesn’t turn up until right at the end of the alap, but soon becomes vital to a refrain of S(r)g (m)M, mg(r)S. I applaud these modern ‘dhun-ugam’ experiments (and would love to hear the folk tune Ritu is based on)!

 

Multi-instrumentalist Ashish Dha also sent me his own fresh creation, Antariksh. He describes it as “a companion raga to Shivkumar Sharma’s Antardhwani [SrgmdNS]…together, they represent two paths to spiritual realisation: either you can become so humble that you become ‘nothing’, to squeeze through that tiniest of apertures known as ‘I am’ to Realisation; Or you can expand yourself to include all of existence, across space and time, smashing through all fetters into Realisation…”. Also see Trishanku, another of Dha’s inventions.

 

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—Nauhar Todi (Mashkoor Ali Khan)—

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• Experiments •

Novel interpretations of the raga’s essence…

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—Chris Stephens (sitar)—

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A beautiful 2025 rendition from Raga Index contributor Chris Stephens, inspired by Ulhas Bapat’s Parijat – in his own words, “Especially without a tanpura in the background, I feel that santoor and other instruments without constant Sa-ma drones make Parijat sound like the Major scale starting from komal re…But on sitar, it sounds much darker and more haunting, with the steady drones reminding the ear that ma>Ma is a harsh interval – whereas on his santoor it sounds quite happy, like Ga>ma…Thank you Rāga Junglism for introducing me to Parijat, his website is a wealth of information about raga music!”

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• Guitaragas •

My attempts to capture the raga on electric guitar (see more on my Insta)

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—Ulhas Bapat gat (electric guitar)—

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My brief electric guitar cover of the Ulhas Bapat Parijat gat above…

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• Classifiers •

Explore hidden inter-raga connections: swara geometries, melodic features, murchana sets, ragangas, & more (also see the Full Tag List):

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Swaras: -4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10+

Sapta: Audav | Shadav | Sampurna

Poorvang: SRGM | SRG | SRM | SGM

Uttarang: PDNS | PDS | PNS | DNS

Varjit: Re | Ga | Ma | Pa | Dha | Ni

Thaat: 10 | 32 | Enclosed | Inexact

Chal: All-shuddha | All-komal | Ma-tivra

Gaps: Anh. | Hemi. | 3-row | 4-row | 5-row

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Aroha: Audav | Shadav | Sampurna

Avroh: Audav | Shadav | Sampurna

Jati: Equal | Balanced | Av.+1 | Av.+2

Samay: Morning | Aftern. | Eve. | Night

Construction: Jod | Mishra | Oddball

Origin: Ancient | Carnatic | Modern

Dominance: Poorvang | Uttarang

Prevalence: A-list | Prachalit | Aprach.

• Prakriti: (none found)

See all shadav ragas which omit Pa

–Swara Geometries–

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• Core form: S–r–g–mM–d–n–S

• Reverse: SRGMPDNS (=Yaman)

• Complement: SRGPDNS (=Shankara)

• Imperfect: 1 (Sa)

• Detached: none

• Symmetries: mirror (g—D)

• Murchanas: Bilawal set

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• Quirks: ‘komal Pa‘ (=mMP) • ‘maximal‘ (swaras are optimally ‘spread out’)

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–Global Translations–

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• Carnatic: (~Lalitha)

S-R₁-G₂-M₁-M₂-D₁-N₂-S

• Jazz: Locrian

1-b2-b3-4-#4-b6-b7-8

• Pitch classes (‘fret-jumps’):

0-1-3-5-6-8-10-0

(1–2–2–1–2–2–2)

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o o • o • o o • o • o • o

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• Tanpura: Sa–ma

• Names: Meladalan, Thatavidhwamasa, (~Parajit, ~Antariksh, ~Ritu, Nauhar Todi, ‘Madhyam se Bhairavi‘)

• Transliterations: Hindi (मेलादालान)

—Ritu: Sadhana Shiledar (2018)—