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(i) History of music theory in the modern period.
Beginning in 1550 a great many new treatises appeared, attempting to rationalize aspects of current practice and sometimes to reconcile it with inherited doctrine. In most cases these works come to terms with the Sangīta-ratnākara. As a rule, much of the old material is retained, often in the old seven-chapter format (see §2(i)(a) above). The novelties in the new works are largely confined to the general categories of tonal system, rāga (melody-type) and instruments. Many of the works in fact deal only with rāga, touching on the tonal system and on the vīnā as an instrument of reference only to the extent necessary to elucidate their rāgas.
There are three diagnostic variables for the new theoretical works: first, whether they introduce a new tonal system based on the fretted stick zither (vīnā) and try to reconcile it with the tonal material of the Sangīta-ratnākara, or merely reproduce it; second, whether the classifications of the rāgas are open-ended and based on scale-type, or closed and symmetrical and not based on any clearly discernible musical criteria; and third, whether individual rāgas are associated with iconographic verses describing people in poetic situations, or are discussed only as musical entities.
Looked at in this way, it can be said that treatises clearly associated both geographically and in terms of content with the modern Karnatak tradition introduce a new tonal system, classify rāgas by scale-type and treat them as purely musical entities: Rāmāmātya’s Svaramelakalānidhi (c1550) belongs to this tradition. Treatises most closely connected with Hindustani music, above all Dāmodara’s Sangīta-darpana (c1625), do not concern themselves with precise tonal relationships in practice but classify rāgas according to symmetrical schemes based on a fixed number of main rāgas (usually six), each with the same number and patterning of subordinate types, and attempt to correlate the classification with traditional poetic icons for each individual rāga.
There are also treatises that combine features of both groups: scale-type classifications with verse iconographies (Somanātha’s Rāga-vibodha of 1609) and symmetrical rāga systems whose rāga scales are clearly described (Pundarīka Vitthala’s Rāga-mālā in the late 16th century). These originated in north-west peninsular India or in western India. Finally, there is one main treatise, the Sangīta-pārijāta by Ahobala Pandita, in which a tonal system is uniquely described (by string divisions) but whose rāgas are merely listed, neither classified nor associated with poetic icons.
India, Subcontinent of, §II, 3: History of classical music, Music and theory after the 16th century.
(ii) South Indian sources for mela (scale-type).
The oldest surviving treatise of the modern period is Rāmāmātya’s Svaramelakalānidhi, composed around 1550 in the court of Vijayanagar, 15 years before the capital was destroyed. This is the only independent theoretical work surviving from the Vijayanagar period and at the same time the first of the modern southern treatises. Its distinguishing theoretical feature is the description and grouping of rāgas according to the number of scale-types necessary to accommodate the varying intervallic structure of rāgas in current practice. This feature appears for the first time in the Svaramelakalānidhi and is still central to the purely southern group of treatises and to theory in Karnatak music. Scale-type description and classification could not have been newly invented by Rāmāmātya, however, and in the first of a series of later treatises from Thanjavur, the scale-type approach is credited to the sage Vidyāranya (the brother of the Vedic commentator Sāyana), who is traditionally associated with the foundation of Vijayanagar itself in the mid-14th century. This first Thanjavur treatise is Govinda Dīksitar’s Sangīta-sudhā, produced in the early 17th century by the great chief minister of Raghunātha Nāyaka of Thanjavur. It follows the seven-chapter plan of the Sangīta-ratnākara, although the last three chapters are lost. It chiefly recasts the material of the Sangīta-ratnākara in a different metre, but in the last two-thirds of the rāga chapter new rāgas and scale-types are presented, the doctrine being attributed to Vidyāranya, and there are several passing criticisms of Rāmāmātya’s Svaramelakalānidhi.
A treatise developing scale-types into a closed system is the Caturdandī-prakāśikā by Govinda Dīksitar’s son Venkatamakhin, who showed how the semitonal scale of pitches produced by the Vīnā with fixed frets could be systematically permuted to produce 72 seven-degree scale-types with fixed tonic and 5th and five variable degrees. Included among these 72 were the 19 that Venkatamakhin recognized as necessary for the rāgas of his time. However, any rāgas with new scales that might develop in the future could readily find a scale-type available in the system.
The third of the ‘Thanjavur treatises’ is Sangīta-sārāmrta composed under the direction of Tukojī II (reigned 1728–36). This work is based to some extent on its predecessors, yet its musical substance is quite recognizably a predecessor of the Karnatak music of today. After this, no significant new treatise on Karnatak music appeared in south India until the publication of Subbarāma Dīksitar’s monumental Telugu work, Sangīta-sampradāya-pradarśinī, in 1904. This includes hundreds of kīrtanam and other compositions in letter notation (mostly from the Dīksitar family tradition), as well as biographical sketches of many important 18th- and 19th-century musicians; it is a basic historical source. Dīksitar also dealt seriously and fundamentally with the problem of notation and ornamentation in Karnatak music. In this he was influenced by his friend and adviser A.M. Chinnaswamy Mudaliar, compiler of Oriental Music in Staff Notation (Madras, 1892).
India, Subcontinent of, §II, 3: History of classical music, Music and theory after the 16th century.
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