Sowrashtram-Janya of Suryakantham.

S.Balasubramanian. · Post by **S.Balasubramanian.** » 06 Nov 2007, 07:17

Books on RagaLakshana mention this as janya of Suryakantham.But I find this is quite often referred in popular forums as a Janya of Chakravaham.Can this forum analyse and logically establish/uphold?

mohan · Post by **mohan** » 06 Nov 2007, 09:16

sourAstra is a bhAshanga rAga which admits two nishAda - N2 and N3. Which Ni you classify as the foreign note will determine the Melakartha it will fit under (16 or 17).

One must remember that the melakartha system came only after many ragas (including sourastra) were already in vogue. Music scholars later tried to fit every raga into the Melakartha classification. In ragas with bhAshanga notes, the classification system does not work very well. Take Bhairavi for example. It is usually classified as a janya of Natabhairavi (20) but it could also fall under Kharaharapriya (22).

The Melakartha scheme is very useful for classifying sampoorna ragas (all swaras in use)!

V_ANNASAMY · Post by **V_ANNASAMY** » 06 Nov 2007, 10:24

Both in Aro and AvarohaNam, there are two segments i.e. pUrvAnga and uttarAnga. For Janya rAgs, first consideration would be pUrvAnga, uttarAnga of ArOhaNam .. and the earlier number of melakartha in the sequence. This is the reason Bhairavi is placed under MK 20. Plus da (suddha) pa ma ga ri ga ma pa da (shuddha) pa usage itself gives the very flavour of Bhairavi rAg.

In Sourashtram, it explicitly highlights kAkili nishAdam in both arOhanAm[pa ma da(a leap to reach kAkili) ni SA] and avarOhaNam (initial nishAdam), only then the kaisiki nishAdam follows as alien swaram. Hence, SourAshtram should be placed under MK 17.

My simple understanding of any Melakartha rAg of CM is:

a) All the seven swaras
b) To come in both arOhaNam & avarOhaNam
c) In similar manner (without any change anywhere) - ditto as per arOhaNam.
d) In systematic manner ( no vakra prayOg)

-va-

S.Balasubramanian. · Post by **S.Balasubramanian.** » 06 Nov 2007, 13:19

THQ you both for your threadbare&derivative analysis.

g~yAnsekhar · Post by **g~yAnsekhar** » 07 Nov 2007, 10:46

VAji

Wow. A good, anyalyzed inputs about the two rAgs. Bonus was your simple, to-the-point definition of MelakarthA rAg. Thanks for sharing.

mohan · Post by **mohan** » 07 Nov 2007, 11:41

Note that there are two systems of melakartha classification. One is the sampoorna scheme by Govindacharya and the other is the asampoorna scheme by Venkatamakhi (followed by Muthuswamy Dikshitar). In the asampoorna melakartha scheme there are ragas like Sri raga included. Such ragas are not always sampoorna in both arohana and avoharana.

The definition given by VA above is more suited to the sampoorna scheme.

g~yAnsekhar · Post by **g~yAnsekhar** » 07 Nov 2007, 12:01

asampoorna has 'sampoorna' within . lol

srinidhi · Post by **srinidhi** » 28 Jan 2008, 12:20

In which prayogas does one find the kaisiki nishadam (N2)? Is there a specific rule to be followed?

vainika · Post by **vainika** » 28 Jan 2008, 20:58

I have listened to versions of saurAShTra (shrI gaNapatini) where kaishiki is all but absent and the rAga appears as a vakra version of sUryakAntam. Wherever one expects kaishiki one only finds a kampita ch.dhaivata.

To add to the confusion, Venkatamakhin, and following him Subburama Dikshitar, have placed saurAShTra within mALavagauLa. The gItam in mALavagauLa by vEnkaTamakhin 'ravi kOTi tEja' mentions it, and sUryamUrtE is the illustrative kRti in SSP. SD gives VM's shlOka translated as " In some regions the use of panchashruti dhaivatam and kaishiki niShadam is seen."

Ref. SSP English translation by PPN and Vidya (ssp-cakram1-4.pdf) on ibiblio.org

ramakriya · Post by **ramakriya** » 29 Jan 2008, 01:42

vainika wrote:I have listened to versions of saurAShTra (shrI gaNapatini) where kaishiki is all but absent and the rAga appears as a vakra version of sUryakAntam. Wherever one expects kaishiki one only finds a kampita ch.dhaivata.

On the other hand, BMK's pAThAntara of srI ganapatini has no occurence of kAkali nishAda at all, and the rAga looks almost like chakravAka with lots of 'pmdns' prayOgas

I am not sure if any other singers sing this pAthantara.

-Ramakriya

ramakriya · Post by **ramakriya** » 29 Jan 2008, 01:52

vainika wrote:To add to the confusion, Venkatamakhin, and following him Subburama Dikshitar, have placed saurAShTra within mALavagauLa. The gItam in mALavagauLa by vEnkaTamakhin 'ravi kOTi tEja' mentions it, and sUryamUrtE is the illustrative kRti in SSP. SD gives VM's shlOka translated as " In some regions the use of panchashruti dhaivatam and kaishiki niShadam is seen."

Ref. SSP English translation by PPN and Vidya (ssp-cakram1-4.pdf) on ibiblio.org

The Shloka which talks about panchashruti dahivata is by Muddu Venkata Makhi - Right? In the main body of CDP, Venkatamakhi does not talk about any anya svaras. Also, he did not have rAga ready for 17th mELa at his time. So while his scheme included a mEla at the 17th place, probably while assigning rAgas to mELas, he probably went by what was in vogue before him.

-Ramakriya

rajeshnat · Post by **rajeshnat** » 10 Feb 2010, 15:50

Serpent Wrote in the new forum, rajeshnat posting on his/her behalf:
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Postby Serpent Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â» 08 Feb 2010 03:34
Hello!

I am a rock musician overall, and I know very little about CM. There is no teacher proficient in CM in our region, so the Internet is almost the only source. I'm also new to the just intonation, started practicing it recently. So I'm full of questions, and this one is the most actual for me now:

Can anyone provide some information on Raga Sowrashtram, beside just the arohana and avarohana scheme? I am most interested in the exact swaras that make up this raga. All that I know is a mention here: http://people.rit.edu/pnveme/ragaindex.html . The combination of Ekasruti Rishabha (R1) and Chyuta Madhyama Gandhara (G4) seems very odd to me, they do not sound good in a sequence, and that's no wonder, because their frequency ratio is extremely complex, 3^9 / 2^14. I tried to find which varieties of Rishabha and Gandhara form a consonant augmented second, and found the only one pair of R2 and G3, with the ratio of 75/64 (the same for D2 and N3 in the uttarangam). The pair of R1 and G3 or its equivalent of R2 and G4 is more complex and odd-sounding, and the pair of R1 and G4 is the worst of all! I wonder what might be the reason for choosing this very pair of Rishabha and Gandhara in this raga - maybe this unusually wide spacing has to be blurred by specific gamakas? Sadly, I know only one song in Sowrashtram, and not in an authentic performance. I only noticed that the G is sung like M-R in descending phrases. Also I cannot be sure which exact swaras should take Madhyama (Suddha or Tivra Suddha) and Dhaivata. What I'm trying to reconstruct according to the mentions of R1, G4 and N4 in the link above sounds really dissonant, but it was not so while still played in the tempered scale. If anyone knows the exact swaras and the way they should be performed, that would be of much help for me!