In the classroom our music flows
unhindered a weekly cycle it follows
and sometimes musical theory too
engenders debates on topics old and new
Today, it was time to discuss the Janya raagams and how they are categorized into the known mELakarta system. This is a topic worthy of indepth research and I would not be surprised if there are many people who have already done so. Not having access to such information at this time, I am laying out the key points that were discussed.
Before going into various facets of this discussion, it is pertinent to note that a majority of raagas have very well known parent-child relationship. Parent in this case is one of the 72 mELakarta sampoorNa raagas, and the child then is one that has lesser than 7 swaras in aarOhaNam or avarOhaNam. Many parent-child relationships are widely accepted without any debate based on the collective knowledge that has been carried over from one generation to the next for many centuries and has thus reached us. The point of debate is about only those that have some confusion or the other.
First one in the list rule: This came up as a point delineated by a musical exponent recently. For example, if you are trying to find out where Mohana falls, then the question would be either hari kAmbhOji (28) or dheera SankarAbharaNam (29). This rule expostulates that the raagam with lesser meLakarta number should be chosen in such case. So, going by this rule Mohana raagam becomes a child of hari kAmbhOji.
This rule might appear simplistic if we consider the following points.
Raaga swaroopam: Each raagam whether a mELakarta or a janya has a swaroopam, an identity. While a part of this identity is influenced by the notes that are present in this raagam, a bigger influence probably would be the parent raagam. It is likely and happens in many cases that the child raagam explores areas that a parent actively does not, but I would think it is rare to find a child raagam that would go into the domain of another mELakarta raagam prominently. On this point, I would like to find out if any exponents have a differing view.
If we agree on this point, then Raaga swaroopam forms a big factor in deciding the parentage.
Nomenclature: There are two known naming systems - one that Sri Muttuswami Deekshita followed and the other that is being widely used these days. I will focus on the latter. It is known that the latter has a mathematical basis on the kaTapayaadi sankhya. Using that it becomes easy for a person to arrive at the Raaga's name if the notes in aarOhaNam and avarOhaNam are known. Work has been done by earlier luminaries in Carnatic music to align the names to this system by adding prefixes where there was no complete alignment. Hence we have "hari", "dheera", "mEcha" and such prefixes for kAmbhOji, SankarAbharaNam, kalyANi raagas. It is quite likely that when this system was develped all known raagas till that point would have been classified using rules that would probabaly consider the following factors
- Raaga swaroopam (as mentioned above)
- Parental name
- Axiomatic relationship
The three points above are a cautious conjecture on my part which partly is also due to lack of access to any authoritative treatises on this subject. If anyone can point me to prior work in this area, I would be grateful. The idea is based on the thought that any classification system while taking care of the known elements would also make a provision for the ones that are not yet known and would be invented or discovered (as the case may be) in the future. Periodic table of elements is a good example.
Raaga swaroopam is already covered, so let us focus on Parental name and Axiomatic relationship theories.
Parental names: We know that the names of the raagas have a basis and follow a mathematical principle. It is not necessary to go into details of that because many have expounded this theory and you can simply search and find a lot of information. For the purposes of this post, I will include a link from Wikipedia (please see
here) and move on. If the parental names are not based on whim, then it behooves us to believe that the names of the child raagas are not accidentally chosen. While there would be exceptions like in any system, there would be rules a majority have to follow. In this case, I am wonder is this the rule that would make Saraswati raagam a child of Vaachaspati as opposed to Hemavathi?
Axiomatic relationships: These would be those that would have existed prior to the imposition of the classifiction systems and thus would be fit into the requiremetns laid out by the system or otherwise noted as exceptions. In any case, I believe these would have been widely accepted at that time that preempts any debate.
Another point to note is that new janya raagas are not not just born, someone creates them and popularizes them by writing and composing swarajatis, varnams or kritis using them. The most recent vAggEyakAra we all know is Sri M BalamuraLikrishna who is credit with many new raagas. In some cases like lavangi which comes only with 4 notes, where will you place it in mELakarta system?
Well, there might be many open questions than answered ones in what I wrote. Some of these, no doubt be answered if and when I get a chance to explore the theoretical side of Carnatic music.
To that extent this is a work in progress article.
