AUNIQUE set of Ragamala Paintings is among the objects of art recently acquired by the Ministry of Education, Government of lndia, for the National Museum.

The relation between music, which has the power of pictorial evocation and pictures which attempt to seize the moods of melodic sequences, has created in-teresting types of art all the world over. For example, what has been called programme music in the European tradition is really the painting of scenes and narration of stories by means of melody. It is not the highest type of music. Thus, Beethoven, one of the greatest figures of the European musical tradition, in his Pastoral Symphony, goes to the countryside for inspiration and paints the advent and passing away of a thunder storm in terms of pure sound. Europe also shows the reverse tradition of visualising music. An authority on music has cited the fifteenth century Monk Adam of Fulda, who gives an account of statuaries, which were conceived as images of different musical modes.

The emphasis on the divine origin of beauty and art in lndian aesthetics led to the tendency, even in the early phase of the evolution of Indian music to the visualisation of musical modes as personified beings. "The six Ragas and the thirty-six Raginis with their beautiful bodies emanate from the abode of Brahma, the Trans-cendental Being, and sing hymns in honour of Brahma himself," says Pancham Sara Samhita, the text attributed to Narada, the Great legendary interpreter of Indian music.

Perfection in technique came only to those who clearly visualized these forms in meditation.

For meditating on the intrinsic form of the modes, the ancient texts and writers like Kohalacharya have prescribed an esoteric clue for each Raga and Ragini. Two kinds of forms emerge from this meditative discipline: an abstract, conceptual Devamaya form and a concrete sensuous Nadamaya form. The first form seems to be religious in its iconography. It has also influenced pictorial visualisation. Rag Bhairava is usually represented in the form of Siva, so-called. But in inspiring paintings, the Nadamaya form has played a far more important part, for it seems to be a more direct personification of the sensuous and emotional qualities of the melodic structure. It forms the direct basis of the treaties in Sanskrit, Hindi, and later, Persian, giving the description and visualisation of the Ragas. Even the various notes are supposed to have their specific colours and in addition to the pictures of the Ragas, there also exist visualisations of the various ‘Talas’ or time-beats.

Visualisation of musical modes in India never moved in the direction of abstraction. .This was because two parallel traditions, predominantly representational, influenced the tradition of Ragamala paintings and later mingled with it. These traditions were the Baramasa or seasonal paintings and paintings on the theme of the Nayika or idealised feminine types.

The seasonal paintings of the Rajput period were inspired by the seasonal songs in the vernaculars which began to appear from the eleventh or twelfth century onwards and which, unlike the stately stanzas on the same themes in Sanskrit poetry, were welded to melody and sung by entire groups during seasonal festivals. The Ragamala paintings tended to mingle with the tradition of seasonal paintings because the relation of music to season and hour was noticed very early by Indian writers on music. For example, Narada, in his Sangit Makarand prescribes what modes are appropriate for each season and each main division of the day. Thus the Vasant which was to be sung in honour of spring could not but be influenced in its pictorial visualisation by the seasonal paintings dealing with spring.

The Nayika lore arose as a slightly sophisticated courtly tradition giving exquisite feminine profiles in the romantic moments of expectation, union with the beloved or separation. The Hindi poets of the Nayika lore excelled in the. description of love as expressed in the six seasons. Nayika literature and paintings thus linked up with the seasonal tradition. It also coalesced with the Ragamala tradition aided by the convenient myth that one of the five consorts of all the six main Ragas is a Virahini (separated) Nayika. By the convergence of all these traditions, Ragamala paintings, in course of time, lost their earlier rigorous exactitude in symbolism and became luminous pastoral scenes, depicting nature in the gaiety of spring or in the anger of a monsoon storm, following with a sensuous eye every exquisite mood of lovely women and above all evoking as a distant echo the volatile essence of music, its limpid gaiety and profound yearning....

The set acquired by the Ministry of Education consists of eighty miniatures. The familiar themes of Rajput paintings recur here

dancing in celebration of the advent of spring, greeting the early sun rising above the rim of the hills, hailing the rain- laden monsoon clouds after the scorching heat of the summer, The handsome way-farer halts where, a pretty damsel is drawing water from a village well.