Page:The Music of India.djvu/35

 of Govinda Dikshit and pupil of Tanappacharya, who is said to carry his giiriiparampara (scholastic succession) right back to Sarrigadeva himself. This work gives the basis of the present-day southern system and also of its raga classification. The ragas are arranged under seventy-two primary ragas, called Melakartas, with a large number of derivative ragas attached to each. This author makes use of the twelve semitones only in describing the ragas.

In the northern school Sahgita Darpana, or 'the mirror of music,' is a popular work written by Damodara Mi^ra about A.D. 1625, when Jahanglr was Emperor. This book has become as unintelligible as the Sangita Ratnakara, from which the author has freely copied most of his materials for the chapter on svaras. He has added a chapter on ragas which is copied from some unknown author. Various pictorial descriptions of the different ragas are given.

There were many good musicians at the court of Shah Jahan (1628-66), among them being Jagannatha, who received the title Kaviraja; and Lai Khan v/ho was a descendant of Tan Sen. We are told that on one occasion Jagannatha and another musician named Dirang Khan received from the Emperor their weight in silver, which amounted to about Rs. 4,500.

During the reign of Aurangzeb music went out of favour in the royal court. A story is told of hov/ the court musicians, desiring to draw the Emperor's attention to their distressful condition came past his balcony carrying a gaily dressed corpse upon a bier and chanting mournful funeral songs. Upon the Emperor enquiring what the matter was, they told him that music had died from neglect and that they were taking its corpse to the burial ground. He rephed at once, * Very well, make the grave deep, so that neither voice nor echo may issue from it.'

The SahgJta Parijata, one of the most important works of the northern school, was written by Ahobala Pandit in the seventeenth century. It was translated into Persian in the year 1724. Ahobala seems to have had access to both the Ragataraginl and the Ragavihodha. The stiddha scale of the Parijata is the same as that of