This book is about a delicate and complex subject-a comparative study of the structure of ragas (modal scales intimately connected with musical forms) in the North and South India, and the modes of classifying them. The That’s (Parent Scales) of Hindustani music and seventy-two Carnatic Melakartas have studies the pitch value of each note and has also tried in a logical format, to ascribe about four thousand plus raga scales, under the fitting mela structure. Beyond the descriptive and analytical aspects of the work, the author could detect in guise of conclusion, certain laws of taxonomy common between those related to ragas with reference to the That’s/Melakartas and those currently in vogue in contemporary cognitive research. This work, it is hoped, would prove to be a boon to musicians and students of music in acquiring a thorough and systematic knowledge on the subject, and will enlighten the reader with innumerable traditional, old, obsolete rediscovered and newly-created as well as renamed ragas.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Prithwindra Mukherjee
Dr. Prithwindra Mukherjee (b. 1936), after completing his schooling and higher studies from Sri Aurobindo Internation Centre of Education in Pondicherry, taught literature and languages there for eleven years. He wrote and successfully defended two theses for his doctorate: the first one in 1970, on Sri Aurobindo, in the section ‘History of Contemporary Thought’ (Ancienne Sorbonne); the second one on the ‘Intellectual Roots of India’s pre-Gandhian Freedom Movement (1893-1918)’. His multi-dimensional deduction and practices cover a wide gamut of fields of activity: teaching Indian philosophy and history of Civilization at two universities in Paris; collaborating with Jean Filliozat (Professor of Indology at the College de France), Preparing a catalogue of Bengali manuscripts preserved at the Bibliotheque Nationale, etc. He went to the United States as a Fulbright scholar and after his return in 1981, joined the Department of Ethnomusicology at the National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris. For nearly twenty years, Dr. Prithwindra Mukherjee has worked on a project investigating ragas of Indian music. His works on Musicology have earned him an obvious reputation among specialists of Indian Musicology. There also stand to his credit about fifty books, a considerable number of papers and contributions, a dozen LPs and CDs, and a few documentary films in collaboration with Laurent Venot.
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