Shastras | Hindustani Raga Index | Rāga Junglism

Lakshanagranthas: A chronological overview of raga writings spanning the past 3600 years – with summaries, extracts, and multilingual links to the original source material. The intention of this page is to open up the field of raga history to scholars and students – I encourage you to browse the texts yourself, and get in touch with the most interesting insights you uncover!

• Search | Megalist | Tags •

[under construction]

• Raga Index: Home •

—Shastras: Full List (100+)—

Listed by shastra name, other than when one author produced multiple significant works (e.g. Pundarika Vitthala). Also note that the ‘Narada’ and ‘Vyasa’ pseudonyms has been adopted by many scholars over time!

Vedas (~1600-800 BCE; Vyasa/anon.)
Ramayana (~600 BCE-200 CE; Valmiki/anon.)
Pratisakhyas (~500-150 BCE; anon.)
Chanda Sutra (~200 BCE; Pingala)
Naradiya Shiksha (~C1st BCE; anon.)
Natyashastra (~200 BCE-200 CE; Bharata Muni)
Mahabharata (~200 BCE–300 CE; Vyasa/anon.)
Dattilam (~C1st-3rd; Datilla)
Amara Kosha (C2nd-4th; Amara Simha)
Yajnavalkya Smrti (~C3rd-C5th; Yajnavalkya)
Silappadikaram (~C5th-6th; Ilango Adigal)
Brihaddeshi (~C6th-8th; Matanga)
Kudumiyanmalai inscriptions (~C7th; anon.)
Sangita Makaranda (~C7th-9th; Narada)
Raga Sagara (C8th?; Narada/Dattila)
Gitalamkara (~C9th-12th; Bharata)
Sangita Samarasya (~C10th-13th; Prasavadeva)
Abhinavabharati (~980-1020; Abhinavagupta)
Sarasvati Hridayalankara (~1097; Nanyadeva)
Manasollasa (~1129; Someshwara)
Sangita Chudamani (1138-51; Jagadekamalla)
Aparajita Pracca (1144-74; Bhuvanadeva Charya)
Sangita Samaya Sara (C12th; Parsha Deva)
Bhava Prakash (C12th; Sharadatanaya)
Gita Govinda (C12th; Jayadeva)
Sangita Ratnakara (1210-47; Sarngadeva)
Sangita Sudhakara (~1330; Haripala)
Sangitopanishat Saroddhara (~1350; Sudhakalasa)
Sangita Sara (1386/1320-80; Vidyaranya)
Ghunyat-ul Munya (1375; Gujarat court)
Sangita Siromani (1428; Ibrahim Shah)
Chatura Kalanidhi (~1450; Chatura Kallinatha)
Nridtyadhyaya (C15th; Ashokamalla)
Sangita Raja (1456; Kumbhakarna)
Man Kautuhal (1486-1516; Raja Man Singh)
Lahjat-i Sikandar Shahi (1489-1517; Nazir Ahmed)
Bhakti Padas (early C16th; Swami Haridas)
Mirigavati (1503; Qutban Suhravardi)
Mesakarna Ragmala (1509/1570; Mesakarna)
Raga Tarangini (~C15th-C17th; Locana Kavi)
Swaramela Kalanidhi (~1550; Ramamatya)
Caurasi Pada (C16th; Hita Harivamsa)
Raga Nirupanam (~1551; Narada)
Raga Manjari (~1560-90; Pundarika Vitthala)
Rasakaumudi (~1575; Shrikantha)
Kitab-i Nauras (1582-1626; Ibrahim Adil Shah)
Madhavanal Kamakandala (1582; Alam)
Ain-i-Akbari (1593; Abul Fazl)
Sangita Damodara (late C16th; Shubhankara)
Vina Lakshana (C16th-18th; Parameshvara)
Guru Granth Sahib (1604; Guru Arjan)
Raga Vibodha (1609; Somanatha)
Sangita Sudha (1614; Govinda Dikshita)
Hazar Dhrupad (~1628-58?; Nayak Bakshu)
Javahir al-Musiqat Muhammadi (~1630-40; Abd al-Karim)
Hridayaprakasa / Hridayakautaka (~1660; Hridaya Narayana)
Abhinava Sangita Anushka (C17th; Bhava Batta)
Sangita Darpana (~1625; Damodara Misra)
Chaturdandi Prakashika (1660; Venkatamakhim)
Miftah-al-Sarud (1664; Qazi Hasan)
Sangit Parijat (~1665; Pandit Ahobal)
Raga Darpan (~1666; Faqirullah)
Tarjuma-i Parijatak (1666; Mirza Raushan Zamir)
Bayan-i-Thate Ya’Ni Navakhtan-i Sazha (1668; Kamilkhani)
Anupa Sangitaratnakara (1674-1701; Bhavabhatta)
Tuhfat-al-Hind (1675; Mirza Khan)
Nishatara (~1680-1722; Salih Qawwal Dehlavi)
Shams-al-Aswat (1698; Ras Baras Khan)
Shiva Tattva Ratnakara (~1700; Basava Raja)
Sangita Saramritam (1729-35; Tulajendra Bhonsale)
Risala-e-Zikr-e-Mughannian-e-Hindustan (1735; Inayat Khan)
Usul Un-Naghmat-i Asafi (1792-1813; Muhammed Raza Khan)
On the Musical Modes of the Hindus (1792; William Jones)
Sangit Sar (~1800; Pratap Singh Dev)
Sangita Taranga (1813; Radha Mohan Sen)
A Treatise on the Music of Hindusthan (1834; N.A. Willard)
Raga Kalpadruma (1842; Krishnananda Vyasa)
Gita Sutra Sara (1855; K. Banaiji)
Madan al-Musiqi (1856; Muhammad Karam Imam Khan)
History of Indian Music (1894; Bhavanrav A. Pingle)
Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati (1909-31; V.N. Bhatkhande)
The Hindu Scale and the 22 Shrutees (1910; K.B. Deval)
Raga Pravesh (1911-21; V.D. Paluskar)
The Music of Hindostan (1914; Arthur Henry Fox Strangways)
129 Skeleton Melodies in 79 Ragas (1918; PSWI)
The Ragas of Indian Music (1913-23; Ernest Clements)
The Music of India (1921; Herbert Arthur Popley)
Researches in Indian Music and Folklore (1933; A.A. Baké)
Ragas and Raginis (1935/58?; O.C. Ganguly)
Problems of Hindustani Music (1937; Hemendra Lal Roy)
Sangeet Kalaprakash (1938; Ramkrishnabuwa Vaze)
Sangeetanjali (1938-62; Omkarnath Thakur)
Aprakashit Raga (1955-56; J.D. Patki)
Raga Nidhi (1956-65; B. Subbha Rao)
Melodic Types of Hindustan (1960; Narendra Kumar Bose)
Historical Development of Indian Music (1960; Swami)
Raga Vijnana (1961-74; Vinayak Patwadhan)
Essays on History of Indo-Pak Music (1962; Abdul Halim)
The Ragas of North India (1968; Walter Kaufmann)
The Ragas of Northern Indian Music (1969; Alain Daniélou)
The Rags of North Indian Music (1971; Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy)
Ragmala Painting (1973; Klaus Ebeling)
Indian Music (1974; B.C. Deva)
Indian Music: History and Structure (1974; te Nijenhuis)
Hindustani Music in the 20th Century (1980; v.d. Meer)
Rag Vyakaran (1981; V.M. Chaudhury)
A Comparative Study of Selected Ragas (1991; Moutal)
The Ragas of Early Indian Music (1995; Richard Widdess)
Indian Music and the West (1997; Gerry Farrell)
Nad: Understanding Raga Music (1998; Sandeep Bagchee)
The Raga Guide (1999; Joep Bor)
Tanarang website (2000-; V.R. Ringe)
Parrikar website (2001; Rajan Parrikar)
The Raga-ness of Ragas & more (2015; Deepak Raja)

“Ustad Faiyaz Khan was singing in a mehfil, when a scholar interrupted him and said, ‘You are not singing correctly; this raga is described differently in the shastras’. Khansaheb asked the scholar show him the shastra. When he produced it, Khan put the book to his ear and said ‘I can hear nothing, it is silent’. The scholar asked Khansaheb to read it. Khansaheb’s reply was that ‘I don’t care what is written in the shastras – whatever you are singing, sing it.’ Indian music cannot be explained by just writing…” (RICMP)

—ALL SHASTRAS—

Brief summaries & further links

• Vedas •

Vyasa/anon. (~16th-9th century BCE)

—Rigveda (‘Knowledge of Praise’)—
—Samaveda (‘Knowledge of Songs’)—
—Yajurveda (‘Knowledge of Worship’)—
—Atharvaveda (‘Knowledge of the Priests’)—

[ALL VEDAS: SANSKRIT & ENGLISH]

Vital to Indian cultural history, the Vedas comprises four volumes: the Rigveda (‘Knowledge of Praise’; c.1500-1100 BCE), Samaveda (‘Knowledge of Songs’; c.1200-900 BCE), Yajurveda (‘Knowledge of Worship’; c.1100-800 BCE), and Atharvaveda (‘Knowledge of the Priests’; c.1100-800 BCE). Musically, the Samaveda is the most important, setting over 1500 mantras from the Rig Veda into chant form, classified according to rhythm, associated deities, and suitability for yajna (priestly fire rituals). The work presents two main formats – gramageya (songs for public performance) and aranyageya (songs for personal recitation) – with each verse set to one or more ganas (melodic frameworks), encompassing numerical pitch notation as well as instructions on emphasis, embellishment, and syllabic extension. These ganas represent the first documented use of a seven-swara system (named ‘Prathama, Dvitiya, Trtiya, Caturtha, Pancama, Sastha, Antya’) – although debate persists as to their tunings, with different Brahmanic traditions employing distinct approaches, and most chants being restricted to varying 3-to-5 note subsets of the whole (see Howard 1977 and Vasudev 2018, as well as recreations such as Ravi Shankar’ Bairagi and Lalmani Mishra’s Sameshwari). Among the world’s oldest surviving works of sonic literature, the Samaveda represents the earliest known documentation of raga’s roots – although its rich conceptual depth proves that the music of the Vedic era was already a complex, highly-developed phenomenon.

“The soma has been pressed for you, O Indra: the bold one, the mightiest; May you be filled with Indra-vigour, as Surya fills the sky with rays…Let us glorify pure Indra with the pure Sama hymns…” (Samaveda 2; 1:6)

• Ramayana •

Valmiki/anon. (~400 BCE)

[SANSKRIT] [ENGLISH]

The Ramayana is an epic narration of the life of Rama, Vishnu’s seventh avatar – recounting foundational Hindu tales including his exile to the forest, Ravana’s kidnapping of his wife Sita, and his eventual return to become King of Ayodhya. Presented in the form of 24,000 shlokas (couplet-verses), the work is not a musical textbook, but nevertheless contains a wealth of sonic information – describing in vivid detail the sounds of palace ceremonies, battlefield rituals, poetic plays, wedding festivities, street corners, taverns, and much more (Rao 2015: “The epic itself mentions that Rama’s tale was rendered in song by two minstrels Kusi and Lava to the accompaniment of a veena…The poetry, of abiding beauty, melts into music like molten gold”). Various instruments are mentioned, including the vipanchi (9-string fretted veena), vallaki (multi-stringed harp), shankh (sacred conch shell), vamsa (venu-like flute), singa (deer-horn trumpet), mrudanga (ancestral mridangam), and bhumi-dundubhi (a giant war drum, half-buried in the ground and struck to rouse warriors for battle). Dramatic song-poem recitations seem to have been particularly popular, with the term sangita used for dance (nritya) as well as vocal and instrumental music (gana/vadya). The work also discusses other foundational ingredients of raga – including regular tala cycles, seven swaras across three octaves, and string-accompanied vocal music, as well as rasa theory (“sringara, karuna, hasya, raudra, bhayanka, and veera”), the role of state-sponsored court musicians, and more.

“Hanuman, while silently wandering at night through Lanka, heard sweet songs, adorned with swara…He came upon sleeping groups of women, adorned with rich, sparkling ornaments. Skilled in dance and music, lying in various postures, each held a different musical instrument. A lady of the court clutched her veena like a cluster of lotuses…A woman with black eyes holds her madduka drum like an infant child…A woman of beauty hugs her pataha drum as if embracing her lover…” (Ramayana 5:10-37)

• Pratisakhyas •

Anon. (~500-150 BCE)

[SANSKRIT] [ENGLISH]

A loose collection of Vedic-era manuals covering Sanskrit pronunciation and grammar (vyakarana) – predominantly focused on the phonetics of single syllables and words from the Vedas (this syllabic study is one of the shiksha vedangas: six ‘limbs’ of Vedic knowledge). While not explicitly musical in nature, the works discuss the use of seven notes (yama) across three registers (sthana), as well as laying conceptual foundations for the precise, poetic lyricism of Indian devotional music. The title translates as ‘Instructions of the Branches’.

• Chanda Sutra •

Pingala (~200 BCE)

[SANSKRIT] [BENGALI]

The Chanda Sutra (‘Treatise on Prosody‘), composed by the renowned poet-mathematician Pingala, lays out an intricate, combinatorics-based approach to syllabic prosody, intended to guide the practice of Sanskrit recitation. Its rich conceptual landscape overlaps with several aspects of music theory: featuring algorithmic permutations of long and short syllables, discussion of matras (time-units), and binary meter-length notations which touch on ideas such as zero and the Fibonacci sequence. While not primarily focused on melody, the work foreshadows the detailed mathematical ethos which would later permeate ideas such as melakarta, talam, and tihai.

• Naradiya Shiksha •

Narada/anon. (~1st century BCE)

[SANSKRIT] [ENGLISH] [HINDI]

The Naradiya Shiksha (‘Instructions of Narada’) is an influential textbook covering the singing and pronunciation of Sama chants. Generally thought to predate the Natyashastra, the work is highly significant as the first clear elucidation of the swara system we recognise today – reordering the seven tones of Sama music into an ascending Sa-to-Ni scale, relating them to positions on the venu flute, and associating each with deities, seasons, colours, animals, and physical mnemonics (see list below). It also discusses the use of three fundamental gramas (generative base-modes): Shadja-Grama, Madhya-Grama, and Gandhara-Grama, each of which had 7 murchanas (offshoot scales: named below). Tantalisingly, these terms mostly go unexplained (Banerji 1983: “The Naradiya Shiksha states that Narada has defined the characteristics of tana, raga, swara, grama, and murchana…presupposing an earlier treatise containing the definitions, or that the terms were too familiar to need any new definition…”) – although there is discussion of accompaniment practices for the veena-like gatra and daravi. Aside from its swara-system innovations, the work demonstrates the deep Subcontinental impulse to connect melodic frameworks to varied cultural, natural, and spiritual phenomena.

Swara associations (summarised from Rao 2015):

Shadja (Sa): Delights the Heavens; sung by Agni, God of Fire; home of the birds and ancestors; connected to the cry of the peacock; with the colour of a red lotus; situated in the throat and on the ring finger; arising from six organs of the body (chest, throat, palate, tongue, teeth, nose: shadja indicates ‘six’)
Rishabha (Re): Delights the prophets; sung by Brahma; home of the gandharvas and apsaras (celestial beings); connected to the roar of the bull (rishabha: ‘bull’); with a red-yellow colour like a parrot; situated in the head and on the middle finger; arising from the the air as it rises into the throat and head
Gandhara (Ga): Delights the ancestral spirits; sung by Soma the Moon God; home of the cattle; connected to the bleating of sheep and goats; with a golden colour; situated on the nose and the index finger; arising from the sweet-smelling air
Madhyama (Ma): Delights the gandharvas (celestial musicians); sung by Vishnu; home of the humans; connected to the cry of the heron; with the colour of jasmine; situated in the chest and along the thumb; arising from the air as it is drawn to the heart and centre of the body (madhyama: ‘middle’)
Panchama (Pa): Sung by Narada the Great; home to the gods; connected to the song of the koel bird; with a blue-black colour; situated in the upper chest and the tip of the thumb; arising from the air rising from the navel to the chest, heart, throat, and head (pancham: ‘five’)
Dhaivata (Dha): Delights the praninam (living beings); sung by Tumburu, leader of the Gandharvas; home to the pisachas, asuras, and rakshanas (malevolent spirits); connected to the neighing of horses; with a yellow colour; situated on the forehead and along the little finger
Nishadha (Ni): Delights the yakshas (nature spirits); sung by Tumburu; home to all other beings; connected to the cry of the elephant; combining all the colours; situated on the tip of the little finger; and arising from the union of the entire body

Gramas and Murchanas (base modes & derived forms):

Shadja-Grama (for the sages; arising from the earth): Uttaramandra, Abhirudgata, Asvakranta, Uttarayata, Rajani, Sauvira, Hrsyaka
Madhya-Grama (for the ancestors; arising from the atmosphere): Apayini, Visvabhrta, Chandra, Hema, Kapardini, Maitri, Barhati/Chandramasi
Gandhara-Grama (for the gods; arising from heaven): Nandi, Visala, Sumukhi, Chitra, Chitravati, Sukha, Balaya