Indian music history and musicology

In short

Indian music history and musicology is the study of how Indian art music developed — from Vedic chant and Bharata's *Natyashastra* through medieval Sanskrit treatises to the modern Hindustani and Carnatic systems — together with the scholarly methods used to analyse it: textual study (*lakshana* and *lakshya*), acoustics and tuning theory, organology, notation and ethnomusicology. It is the theory paper that carries the largest share of written marks in BPA and BA Music degrees, because performance is assessed separately in the viva and recital. It is examined in university theory papers, UGC NET/JRF Music, SET/CUET-PG entrances, and in interviews for Akashvani (All India Radio) and Doordarshan audition panels, music teaching posts in schools and colleges, Sangeet Natak Akademi and ICCR projects, and archive, publishing and arts-administration roles. Employers also expect working knowledge of the Copyright Act, 1957 (as amended in 2012) because performers and teachers deal with royalties and licensing.

Explained

Sources, periods and the basic vocabulary of the discipline

• Sangita classically means the triad *gita* (vocal), *vadya* (instrumental) and *nritta* (dance); the modern narrowing of "music" to sound alone is late.
• Lakshana (codified theory in texts) versus lakshya (what performers actually do). Indian musicology is the continuous attempt to reconcile the two; where a treatise and practice disagree, the examiner expects you to say so, not to hide it.
• Marga / gandharva (ancient ritual-bound, rule-governed music) versus desi (regional, popular, changing). The *desi* stream is what produced raga.
• Nibaddha (bound by text, tala and structure, e.g. *prabandha*) versus anibaddha (unbound, e.g. *alapa*).
• Source types: Sanskrit and vernacular treatises; inscriptions (Kudumiyamalai 7th-century musical inscription in Tamil Nadu); sculpture and painting (instruments at Sanchi, Bharhut, Hampi, ragamala paintings); colonial-era accounts; and from the 20th century, sound recordings (the Gramophone Company's first Indian recordings, Gauhar Jaan, 1902) and field archives.
• Periodisation used in Indian syllabi: Vedic; classical/*Natyashastra* (c. 200 BCE–200 CE); post-classical raga age (6th–12th c.); medieval (13th–17th c., bifurcation); modern (18th c. onward, courts, reform, institutions).

Ancient period: Vedic chant to the Natyashastra

• Samaveda is the musical Veda: *Rigvedic* verses set to melody (*saman*). Vedic chant used three accents (*udatta*, *anudatta*, *svarita*) expanding to a descending set of notes named by ordinal (*prathama*, *dvitiya*, ... *saptama*), the ancestor of the seven *svaras*.
• Natyashastra, attributed to Bharata (c. 200 BCE–200 CE), 36 chapters; chapters 28–33 are the music core — *svara* and *jati*, stringed instruments, wind instruments, *tala*, *dhruva* songs, percussion. It is the foundation document of both systems and the most-asked text in exams.
• Shruti: the smallest perceptible melodic interval; Bharata fixes 22 shrutis in an octave, distributed in the *Shadja grama* as Sa 4, Re 3, Ga 2, Ma 4, Pa 4, Dha 3, Ni 2 (total 22). Four-shruti intervals are *chatushruti*, then *trishruti*, *dvishruti*, and the smallest *pramana shruti*.
• Sarana chatushtaya (the four-fold experiment): two identically tuned *veenas*; on one, *Pañchama* is lowered by one *pramana shruti* and the other notes retuned to it. After four such steps every note has shifted by four shrutis and coincides with the note below, empirically demonstrating a 22-shruti octave. This is Indian music's earliest recorded tuning experiment and a favourite long-answer question.
• Grama (parent note-collection): *Shadja grama*, *Madhyama grama* (differing in the shruti value of Pa), and the disputed *Gandhara grama*. Murchana: the seven modal rotations of a *grama* (14 in all from the two gramas) — the direct ancestor of the modal idea. Jati: 18 melodic types (7 *shuddha*, 11 *vikrita*) with defined *amsa* (predominant note), *nyasa* (final), *graha* (start), *alpatva/bahutva* (sparing/frequent use) — the structural grammar later inherited by raga.
• Dattilam (Dattila) is a compact parallel text; Naradiya Shiksha links Vedic *saman* notes to the seven *svaras*.

Post-classical and medieval treatises: the rise of raga

• Matanga's Brihaddeshi (c. 6th–9th c.) gives the first clear definition of raga — a *svara*-and-*varna* complex that "colours" the mind (*ranjayati iti ragah*) — and treats *desi* ragas alongside the older *jatis*.
• Narada's Sangita Makaranda, Parshvadeva's Sangita Samayasara (Jaina, 12th c.), Nanyadeva's Bharata Bhashya, Jayadeva's Gita Govinda (12th c.; *ashtapadis*, sung to this day).
• Sharngadeva's Sangita Ratnakara (13th c., Yadava court of Devagiri/Daulatabad) — the great watershed and the single most cited medieval text. Seven chapters (*Saptadhyayi*): *Svaragata*, *Ragaviveka*, *Prakirnaka*, *Prabandha*, *Tala*, *Vadya*, *Nartana*. Lists 264 ragas and is the bridge text quoted as authority by both Hindustani and Carnatic scholars.
• Shift of melodic classification: *jati* → *grama-raga* → *raga* grouped under *mela/thaat*. Ramamatya's Svaramelakalanidhi (1550, Vijayanagara) introduces *mela* as a scale-class and discusses the *shuddha*/*vikrita* note positions on the fretted veena; Pundarika Vitthala's Sadragachandrodaya carries Southern theory north; Somanatha's Ragavibodha (1609), Damodara's Sangita Darpana, Lochana's Ragatarangini (Mithila; an early *thaat*-like grouping), Ahobala's Sangita Parijata (defines *svaras* by string lengths, i.e. by ratio — an important move towards acoustic musicology), **Hridaya Narayana Deva's Hridaya Kautuka*.
• Venkatamakhin's Chaturdandi Prakashika (c. 1620, Thanjavur) systematises the 72-mela scheme (the *chaturdandi* being *gita, thaya, prabandha, alapa*); the later Sangraha Chudamani (Govinda) supplies the familiar mela names and *sampurna* raga forms.

Bifurcation, courts and the two traditions

• Political separation after the 13th century, and Persian-Central Asian contact in the north, separated a northern Hindustani stream from a southern Carnatic stream; theory diverged decisively with Ramamatya and Venkatamakhin in the south and Lochana/Bhatkhande in the north.
• North: Amir Khusrau (1253–1325) — poet-musician associated with *qawwali* and with Persian-Indian synthesis (the common claim that he invented the sitar and tabla is a later attribution, not documented in his own writing). Raja Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior (r. 1486–1516) and the *Man Kutuhal* — dhrupad's consolidation in a vernacular, court-patronised form. Tansen at Akbar's court. Khayal rose to dominance in the 18th century, with Niyamat Khan "Sadarang" and Adarang at Muhammad Shah's Delhi court. Decline of court patronage after 1857 moved music to princely states (Gwalior, Jaipur, Rampur, Baroda, Mysore, Travancore), then to the public concert and the recording industry; teaching lineages hardened into gharanas (Gwalior, Agra, Kirana, Jaipur-Atrauli, Patiala, Rampur-Sahaswan, Mewati, Indore and others) defined by *guru-shishya parampara*, repertoire and voice-production style.
• South: Purandara Dasa (1484–1564), "Sangita Pitamaha", credited with the graded pedagogy (*sarali*, *janta*, *alankara varisai*, *gita*) still used in every Carnatic beginner's class. The *Haridasa* and *Bhakti* movements (Annamacharya, Bhadrachala Ramadas, Kshetrayya) made devotional song the carrier of art music. The Trinity — Syama Sastri (1762–1827), Tyagaraja (1767–1847), Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775–1835), all born in Tiruvarur — fixed the *kriti* as the central form. Swati Tirunal (1813–1846) of Travancore composed in both idioms. Nineteenth-century Thanjavur, Mysore and Travancore courts, then the Madras Music Academy (1928) and the Margazhi season, carried patronage into the modern public sphere.
• Bhakti and regional streams feeding both: Haveli sangeet, Sopana sangeet and Sopanam in Kerala, Vaishnava kirtan in Bengal and Assam (Borgeet, Sankaradeva), Abhangas in Maharashtra, Shabad kirtan in the Sikh tradition with its own 31 *raga* order in the Guru Granth Sahib.

Modern musicology: reform, notation and documentation

• V. N. Bhatkhande (1860–1936): surveyed practice across India, classified Hindustani ragas under ten thaats, wrote *Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati* (Marathi, 4 vols) and *Kramik Pustak Malika* (notated compositions), devised a notation, and organised the All India Music Conferences from Baroda (1916). Founded what became the Marris College, Lucknow (1926), today Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya.
• V. D. Paluskar (1872–1931): founded Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, Lahore (1901) — music education outside hereditary families, with examinations, a rival notation and printed textbooks; made music respectable for the middle class and the freedom movement.
• Subbarama Dikshitar's Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini (1904, Telugu) — the monumental notated anthology of Carnatic repertoire and biographies; indispensable primary source.
• Early comparative work: Sir William Jones, *On the Musical Modes of the Hindus* (1792); C. R. Day, *The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan* (1891); A. H. Fox Strangways, *The Music of Hindostan* (1914); E. Clements on shruti and harmonium tempering; later K. V. Ramachandran, P. Sambamoorthy, S. Ramanathan, B. C. Deva (acoustics), Ashok Ranade and Bonnie Wade (ethnomusicology), Sumati Mutatkar, V. Premlata Sharma.
• Branches of musicology as examined: historical musicology (textual/chronological), systematic musicology (acoustics, psychoacoustics, aesthetics — *rasa* theory), organology (instruments), ethnomusicology (fieldwork on folk and tribal music), comparative musicology, notation and transcription studies, and music archiving.
• Organology: Bharata's four-fold scheme — tata (stringed: veena, sitar, sarangi), sushira (hollow/wind: bansuri, nadaswaram, shehnai), avanaddha (covered/membrane: mridangam, tabla, pakhawaj) and ghana (solid/struck: jalra, ghatam, manjira). The international Hornbostel–Sachs classification (1914) maps onto it as chordophone, aerophone, membranophone, idiophone (electrophone added later) — the comparison is a standard exam question.
• Notation debate: Indian notation is prescriptive and skeletal (sargam letters, *matra* dots, *meend* and *kan* signs) because *gamaka* and *alankara* cannot be fully written; Western staff notation is comparatively prescriptive of pitch and duration but foreign to microtonal inflection. Bhatkhande's and Paluskar's systems differ in symbols, not principle.

Institutions, law and current Indian practice

• Sangeet Natak Akademi (New Delhi, established by Government of India resolution, inaugurated 1953) — the national academy for music, dance and drama; Akademi Awards and Fellowships (*Ratna*), documentation and archives; under the Ministry of Culture, as are the Zonal Cultural Centres and the National Mission on Cultural Mapping; ICCR (cultural diplomacy) is an autonomous body under the Ministry of External Affairs.
• Universities and institutions: Indira Kala Sangeet Vishwavidyalaya, Khairagarh (1956, first university in Asia devoted to music); Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya, Lucknow; Faculty of Performing Arts, BHU; Rabindra Bharati University (1962); Departments of Music at Delhi, Madras, Annamalai, Mysore, Kerala and Hyderabad; ITC Sangeet Research Academy, Kolkata (1977, *guru-shishya* residential model); Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) and the Akashvani (AIR) sound archives.
• Qualifications and grading: UGC NET/JRF Music for college teaching; Akashvani auditions graded B, B-High, A and Top Grade; Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal and Prayag Sangit Samiti examinations (*Praveshika* to *Sangeet Alankar*) are widely used for school certification; CBSE and state boards offer music at Classes X and XII.
• Copyright Act, 1957 (amended 2012): a song involves three rights — the musical work and literary work (author/composer/lyricist), the sound recording (producer) and the performer's right. Performers' rights were strengthened in 2012 (moral and economic rights of the performer; right to royalty for commercial use). Terms: literary, dramatic and musical works, author's life plus 60 years; sound recordings 60 years from publication; performers' rights 50 years. Section 31D provides a statutory licence for broadcasting. Collecting societies: IPRS (musical and literary works), Recorded Music Performance Ltd / PPL (sound recordings) and ISRA (performers). A musician's festival or restaurant performance of others' works needs the relevant licences.
• Instruments and crafts: Thanjavur veena and Bobbili veena carry registrations under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999. GST on goods now runs on 5%, 18% and 40% slabs after the 22 September 2025 restructure; handmade Indian musical instruments have traditionally sat at the exempt/lowest end of the schedule, so check the current rate entry for the specific instrument rather than assuming.
• Safeguarding: UNESCO Representative List inscriptions of Indian music-related traditions include Vedic chanting, Kutiyattam, Ramlila, Mudiyettu, Chhau, Kalbelia, Sankirtana of Manipur, Durga Puja in Kolkata and Garba of Gujarat (2023).

Key points

• Sangita - the classical triad of vocal music, instrumental music and dance, not sound alone.
• Samaveda - earliest musical source; three accents expanding to seven ordinal notes.
• Natyashastra - Bharata, c. 200 BCE–200 CE, 36 chapters; music in chapters 28–33; defines shruti, grama, murchana, jati, tala.
• 22 shrutis - Shadja grama distribution 4-3-2-4-4-3-2; demonstrated by *sarana chatushtaya*.
• Grama / murchana / jati - parent collection, its modal rotations, and the 18 melodic types that preceded raga.
• Brihaddeshi - Matanga; first clear definition of *raga* (*ranjayati iti ragah*) and of *desi* music.
• Sangita Ratnakara - Sharngadeva, 13th c., 7 chapters, 264 ragas; the common authority for both systems.
• Ramamatya - *Svaramelakalanidhi* (1550), *mela* as scale-class; Venkatamakhin - *Chaturdandi Prakashika* (c. 1620), 72 melas.
• Ahobala - *Sangita Parijata*, svaras defined by string lengths, the start of ratio-based Indian acoustics.
• Purandara Dasa - *Sangita Pitamaha*; created graded Carnatic exercises still used today.
• Carnatic Trinity - Syama Sastri, Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar; all born at Tiruvarur; the *kriti* becomes central.
• Bhatkhande - ten thaats, *Kramik Pustak Malika*, All India Music Conferences from 1916; Paluskar - Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, 1901, institutional music education.
• Subbarama Dikshitar - *Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini* (1904), the great notated Carnatic anthology.
• Gharana / sampradaya - lineage-based style in the north; *bani* and *sishya parampara* in the south.
• Organology - tata, sushira, avanaddha, ghana; maps to Hornbostel–Sachs chordophone, aerophone, membranophone, idiophone.
• Pramana shruti - the syntonic comma 81/80, about 21.5 cents, the smallest interval of the theory.
• Lakshana vs lakshya - text versus practice; musicology exists to reconcile them.
• Copyright Act, 1957 (2012 amendment) - separate rights in work, recording and performance; IPRS, PPL/RMPL and ISRA administer them.

Formulas and examples

Example 1 — cents of the standard consonances.

• Pa (3/2): 1200 × log₂1.5 = 1200 × 0.584963 = 701.96 cents.
• Ma (4/3): 1200 × 0.415037 = 498.04 cents.
• Shuddha Ga (5/4): 1200 × 0.321928 = 386.31 cents.
• Chatushruti Re (9/8): 1200 × 0.169925 = 203.91 cents.
• Pramana shruti (81/80): 1200 × 0.017922 = 21.51 cents.

Check: 701.96 + 498.04 = 1200.00, so Sa–Pa and Pa–upper Sa are exact complements (3/2 × 4/3 = 2).

Example 2 — a tanpura tuned with Sa = 240 Hz (just intervals).

Reading: the just major third is 13.69 cents flatter than the tempered third and the just fifth 1.96 cents sharper than the tempered fifth — which is why a harmonium (12-tone tempered) can never match a tanpura's Ga and Dha exactly. This single table answers most "shruti versus tempered scale" questions.

Example 3 — where to stop the string for Pa. A veena string sounds Sa with a vibrating length of 90 cm. Pa needs f × 3/2, so L₂ = 90 × 2/3 = 60 cm of vibrating length; the fret/stop lies 30 cm from the far end. For Ma (4/3): L = 90 × 3/4 = 67.5 cm. For the upper Sa (2/1): L = 45 cm, exactly half — the physical proof of the octave.

Example 4 — sonometer measurement in a musicology lab. L = 0.65 m, T = 60 N, μ = 4.0 × 10⁻⁴ kg/m.

• T/μ = 60 / 0.0004 = 150 000 m²/s²; √ = 387.30 m/s.
• f = 387.30 / (2 × 0.65) = 387.30 / 1.30 = 297.9 Hz.

If the tension is raised to 90 N with L and μ unchanged, f rises by √(90/60) = √1.5 = 1.2247, giving 364.9 Hz — an interval of 1200 × log₂1.2247 = 351.0 cents, a neutral third, roughly midway between the tempered minor (300) and major (400) thirds.

Example 5 — shruti arithmetic in the Shadja grama. With 22 shrutis to the octave and Sa 4, Re 3, Ga 2, Ma 4, Pa 4, Dha 3, Ni 2: Sa to Ma spans 4 + 3 + 2 = 9 shrutis and Sa to Pa spans 9 + 4 = 13 shrutis; the remainder 4 + 3 + 2 = 9 completes 22. Lowering Pa by one *pramana shruti* (81/80, 21.5 cents) turns the *Shadja grama* into the *Madhyama grama*, in which Sa–Pa is 12 shrutis — the textbook distinction between the two gramas.

Where it is used

• Teaching: school music teacher posts (CBSE, KVS, Navodaya), college and university assistant professor posts via UGC NET; the theory paper is almost entirely history and musicology.
• Broadcasting and recording: Akashvani and Doordarshan audition panels and programme production; archival cataloguing of raga, tala, composer and lineage metadata for labels and streaming platforms.
• Cultural institutions: Sangeet Natak Akademi, Zonal Cultural Centres, ICCR, IGNCA, state academies — documentation, festival curation, grant assessment and fieldwork on folk and tribal traditions.
• Archiving and research: ARCE, university archives, museum organology collections (instrument identification, dating, conservation); digital humanities projects on raga analysis and transcription.
• Music industry and law: royalty and licensing work with IPRS, RMPL/PPL and ISRA; sync licensing for film and advertising; GI and craft documentation for instrument makers in Thanjavur, Bobbili, Miraj and Kolkata.
• Writing and criticism: sleeve notes, festival brochures, reviews for *Sruti*, newspapers and journals; content and research roles with music apps and edtech.

Interview questions

• Q: Which text first defines *raga* clearly? A: Matanga's *Brihaddeshi* (c. 6th–9th century), with the etymological definition *ranjayati iti ragah* — that which colours or delights the mind.
• Q: How many shrutis in an octave and how are they distributed in the *Shadja grama*? A: Twenty-two, distributed as Sa 4, Re 3, Ga 2, Ma 4, Pa 4, Dha 3, Ni 2.
• Q: What is *sarana chatushtaya*? A: Bharata's four-step retuning experiment on two identical veenas, lowering Pañchama by one *pramana shruti* each time, which after four steps demonstrates that the octave contains 22 shrutis.
• Q: Difference between *grama*, *murchana* and *jati*? A: *Grama* is the parent note-collection, *murchana* its modal rotation beginning on each successive note, and *jati* a melodic type with rules of *amsa*, *nyasa* and *graha* — the precursor of raga.
• Q: Why is *Sangita Ratnakara* called a watershed? A: Written just before the north–south split, it records the older *marga* theory and the newer *desi* ragas together, so both Hindustani and Carnatic scholars cite it as authority.
• Q: Who introduced *mela*, and who the 72-melakarta scheme? A: Ramamatya in *Svaramelakalanidhi* (1550) introduced *mela*; Venkatamakhin's *Chaturdandi Prakashika* (c. 1620) systematised 72 melas, named later in *Sangraha Chudamani*.
• Q: What exactly did Bhatkhande and Paluskar contribute? A: Bhatkhande classified Hindustani ragas into ten *thaats*, notated repertoire and convened the All India Music Conferences; Paluskar built institutional, examination-based music education open to all through the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya.
• Q: Why is Purandara Dasa called *Sangita Pitamaha*? A: He is credited with the graded teaching sequence — *sarali*, *janta* and *alankara varisai* and *gita* — that still begins every Carnatic student's training.
• Q: Compare Bharata's instrument classification with Hornbostel–Sachs. A: *Tata*, *sushira*, *avanaddha* and *ghana* correspond to chordophone, aerophone, membranophone and idiophone; Bharata's scheme is about two millennia older and omits the later electrophone category.
• Q: Why can a harmonium not reproduce shrutis exactly? A: It is tuned in 12 equal semitones of 100 cents each, while shrutis are just ratios — the just major third (386.3 cents) and sixth (884.4 cents) differ from tempered values by about 14 and 16 cents.
• Q: A performer sings another composer's song at a ticketed concert — whose rights are involved? A: The composer's and lyricist's rights in the musical and literary works (licensed through IPRS), the producer's right if a recording is used (RMPL/PPL), and the performer's own rights under the Copyright Act, 1957 as amended in 2012.
• Q: Is it accurate to say Amir Khusrau invented the sitar and tabla? A: No — those attributions are later traditions; what is documented is his role in Persian-Indian poetic and musical synthesis and his association with *qawwali*.

Common mistakes

• Dating the *Natyashastra* to a single year, or calling Bharata a historical individual with certainty — it is a compiled text of c. 200 BCE–200 CE.
• Treating *jati* and *raga* as the same thing, or *thaat* and *mela* as interchangeable; they belong to different stages and different systems.
• Writing the 22-shruti distribution wrongly so it does not add to 22, or quoting the *Madhyama grama* figures for the *Shadja grama*.
• Repeating undocumented attributions as fact (sitar and tabla to Amir Khusrau, every medieval raga to Tansen) instead of marking them as tradition.
• Using "Hindustani" and "Carnatic" as if they were always separate; the split is post-13th century and both cite *Sangita Ratnakara*.
• Equating a shruti with a Western semitone, or converting a ratio to cents with log₁₀ instead of log₂ — the factor is 1200 × log₂, i.e. 3986.31 × log₁₀.
• Naming composers' dates and birthplaces loosely in vivas: the Trinity were all born at Tiruvarur, and Tyagaraja (1767–1847), Dikshitar (1775–1835) and Syama Sastri (1762–1827) are commonly asked.

Related topics

Hindustani music: raga, tala and forms · Carnatic music: raga, tala and compositions · Western music theory and graded exams · Acoustics and the physics of musical sound · Indian aesthetics and rasa theory · Folk and tribal music traditions of India