Talk:Raga/Archive 1

2004 request
Could somebody please add the Devanagari versions of all the words in italics? While I know the script, I do not know how to encode it into HTML. The actual words written in Devanagari would be very helpful to those who want to pronounce the words precisely. Gokul

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Changed Rag (Hindi) to Rag (Sanskrit). This is in support of NPOV. Reasoning: Rag and its Devnagari script is first found in Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, in which the concept originated. To cite it as Hindi implies that it was birthed in the Hindi language, whereas it is actually Sanskrit that later was absorbed into Hindi.


 * I was the one that mentioned Hindi as the language. It's not Raag in Sanskrit but Raagah. Why not use the Sanskrit term then? Because the Hindi word is the word that's used in Hindustani music today. IMHO, it's more important that we use prevalent terminology - in fact, the article doesn't make any claims about etymological origins. I've reverted the article. Ambarish 11:19, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Shadja, Sa, ...
These terms show up first in the sentence "In both systems, the ground (or tonic), Shadja, Sa, and a pure fifth above, Pancham, Pa, are fixed", without any explanation about their meaning. I am assuming they are names of notes, but more explanation or links would be helpful.

Mode of reference
This article says that the "basic mode of reference" in Indian music corresponds to the Ionian mode in Western music. As far as I can tell, this is not the case. If whoever wrote this intended to say that the "basic mode of reference" is &#346;a&#324;karäbhara&#326;am, let me point out that the corresponding scale in Western music is known as the Æolian mode, or more simply, the major scale. At any rate, if there is any such thing as a "mode of reference" in Indian music, it is more likely to be Mäyãmä&#316;avagau&#316;ai, which has no Western equivalent.--Siva 18:46, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Whoops. I'm wrong. The Ionian mode is &#346;a&#324;karäbhara&#326;am. But I still doubt whether this is the mode of reference, and not Mäyãmä&#316;avagau&#316;ai.--Siva 19:01, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

merging from Ragam
Merged text from Ragam, now redirecting here. ≈ jossi ≈ t &bull; @ 22:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Time of origin of ragas
When did ragas originate? I wonder how this contrasts with related modes of Persia and Arab world. Dogru144 04:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC) 04:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Ragas originates in Vedic times, to the best of my knowledge. I doubt these were connected with the modes of Persian/Arabic music, at least at first. I do know for a fact, though, that the Hindustani and Carnatic systems were borrowing ragas from each other by the 20th century. --Siva 17:44, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Would you please show the reference from Vedas (the 3 (known as thrayi) or 4 (known as chatur)Vedas)? As far as I know Raaga is not found in Vedas and it is either in Bharata's Natya Shastra (100 BCE to 200 CE) or Matanga's Brhddesi (~500 CE). I can get back with details and reference. Prior to Raaga or at least contemporarily a very similar concept was in vogue among Tamils called Pann (பண்). At least 500-600 years prior to the work of Natya Shastra, the word Pann was used in Tamil. --Aadal 23:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Apprently Bharata considered Jaati superior to Grama Raga (Jaati for Gandharvas but Grama Raga for men). However, until around 9th century CE, the idea of Raga was not much developed.--Aadal 00:04, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Spiritual Connections?
It would be greatly appreciated if anyone could expand on the spiritual significance of the raga.

Sarang - incorrect link
Could somebody do something about the link of the raga Sarang that takes one to Sarang - the helicopter formation display team of the Indian Air Force.

Whole tone scale Raga?
An anonymous editor (4.236.18.11 on 04:25, 20 March 2005) of whole tone scale wrote "Most interesting, the raga Sahera in Hindustani music uses the same intervals as the whole-tone scale. Ustad Mehdi Hassan has performed this raga." (The anonymous editor also included an external link, which gets 404'd. There's a Wikipedia article for the Ustad, and articles about (SGGS) ragas Asa thru to Todi, but nothing about a Sahera raga. I've Googled looking for more information, but couldn't find anything I understood or found useful.  Is there a Sahera raga?  And, if so, is it in what approximates to the Western whole tone scale? --Shirt58 12:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Massive Raga Project
I'd like to expand wikipedia by adding information of a lot of specific ragas. I noticed the Raga category was weak, and the number of pages on ragas are hardly representative of the tradition. If people can post on my talk, we need to put our heads together and write a lot of new pages. I have already done Malgunji, Bageshree, Bhairavi, Rageshree and some others (plus their respective alternative spelling redirects). Obviously, that isn't even 1/100,000th of the material we need to cover. Gautam Discuss 01:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Ragas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal
As I understand it, the North Indian raga system is used in pretty much exactly the same way in Pakistan and Nepal.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, has a somewhat different raga system (see the reference to John Baily's papers in the article on Klasik), sharing much in common with the North Indian system but with certain differences.

MusicScience 16:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Raga's titles indicate mood
Could someone please add a bit more on how Raga's are titled, and also how the feeling or tone of the Raga reflects a time of day, weather, location etc.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.100.226.208 (talk) 13:32, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Article title spelling
I don't know if this is intentional, but on my computer, the title of this article has a gap in the middle, and looks like this: "Ra ga". The character set for the first "a", which is accented, seems to include a gap which is not a separate character. I recently noticed that this problem is covered in Naming conventions (use English) which states: "Use the most commonly used English version of the name of the subject as the title of the article ... Names not originally in a Latin alphabet ... must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English. ... Do not use a systematically transliterated name if there is a common English form of the name ... The native spelling of a name should generally be included in the first line of the article..."

If others see the article title the same way I do, they may be misled into thinking it is two words. And they might try to search for it later as "ra ga" which comes up with no results.

Does anyone have pros and cons to renaming the article to "Raga" with no accents, but showing it with accents in the body of the article? The opening sentence could begin: "Rāga (Sanskrit, lit. "colour" or "mood"; or rāgam in Carnatic music, usually spelled raga in English)... --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 16:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes. This is an English word.  As such, it is properly spelled raga.  It has been long assimilated into English, there is no reason for using a foreign spelling in the title. It is not proper to do so under our naming conventions, as Knight has pointed out. See, for example, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, 1961:
 * raga \'rägə\ n -s [Skt rāga, lit. color, musical tone; akin to Skt rajvati it is dyed, Gk rezein to dye] 1 : one of the ancient traditional melodic patterns of Hindu music.  2 : an improvisation on the notes of a traditional raga
 * The foreign spellings, identified as such, can be used in the intro. Gene Nygaard (talk) 04:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Alternative Definition Found
In a [http:// explore.org/explore/india/films/78 short documentary], I heard a Raga specialist, named Harihar Rao, define 'raga' as "that which colors the mind." I plan to add this definition to the introduction of the Raga page.
 * This is already included in the article as a quotation. I will delete this reference, especially since it's not from a reliable source. Hekerui (talk) 22:43, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Svarantara is 4
Svarantara is 4 note scale - it is not Chathusra... VasuVR ( talk,  contribs ) 12:16, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

ragas and their seasons
It would be nice if a list of which ragas are considered to go with which season and which time of day was included or appended in a separate article, or at least if an example of each were named. 24.125.38.175 (talk) 14:06, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

No reference, no context
"Similarly, although Bilaskhani Todi is classified under the Bhairavi because of the notes it uses, it is actually closer to Todi than to Bhairavi."

There's no definition of "Bhairavi". This part makes no sense to the novice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.227.148.248 (talk) 06:01, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Raginis
I have added a sentence on raginis. I feel like more should be expounded on that matter. Feel free to add more. Gautam Discuss 00:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I have added to it further. I have also deleted one sentence "... As it did not agree with various other schemes, and the 'related' rāgas had very little or no similarity, the rāga-rāgini scheme is no longer very popular", as many peopel (includign Pandit Jasraj) teach ragas using the concept of raga and ragini. (See this interview of Pandit Jasraj) Notthebestusername (talk) 14:39, 5 September 2015 (UTC)