The ''Chaturdandiprakashika'' (; "The Illuminator of the Four Pillars of Music") is a Sanskrit treatise written by the musicologist

Venkatamakhin Venkatamakhin (; ) or Venkatamakhi, was an Indian poet, musician, and musicologist of Carnatic music. He is renowned for his ''Chaturdandiprakashika'' in which he explicates the Melakarta (asampurna scheme), melakarta system of classifying rag ...

in the mid-17th century. It introduced a theoretical

melakarta Mēḷakartā is a collection of fundamental musical scales ( ragas) in Carnatic music (South Indian classical music). ''Mēḷakartā'' ragas are parent ragas (hence known as ''janaka'' ragas) from which other ragas may be derived. A ''melaka ...

system to classify and organise

raga A raga ( ; , ; ) is a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music akin to a musical mode, melodic mode. It is central to classical Indian music. Each raga consists of an array of melodic structures with musical motifs; and, fro ...

s in the

Carnatic music Carnatic music (known as or in the Dravidian languages) is a system of music commonly associated with South India, including the modern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and southern Odisha. It is o ...

tradition of India. In the 20th-century, this system would form the basis of the

thaat A ''thaat'' () is a "parent scale" in North Indian or Hindustani music. It is the Hindustani equivalent of the term '' Melakartha raga'' of Carnatic music. The concept of the ''thaat'' is not exactly equivalent to the western musical scal ...

system that is used in

Hindustani classical music Hindustani classical music is the Indian classical music, classical music of the Indian subcontinent's northern regions. It may also be called North Indian classical music or ''Uttar Bhartiya shastriya sangeet''. The term ''shastriya sangeet'' ...

today. Some portions of the ''Chaturdandiprakashika'' are now lost.

Description

In Carnatic music, a mela is a scale of

svara Swara () or svara is an Indian classical music term that connotes simultaneously a breath, a vowel, a note, the sound of a musical note corresponding to its name, and the successive steps of the octave, or ''saptanka''. More comprehensively ...

s in ascending order in a melodic unit forms the basis and gives birth to

s. While the concept of melas is said to have been introduced by

Vidyaranya Vidyaranya (IAST: Vidyāraṇya), usually identified with Mādhavācārya, was the ''jagadguru'' of the Sringeri Sharada Peetham from ca. 1374–1380 until 1386 – according to tradition, after ordination at an old age, he took the name of ...

in the 14th century, and a number of other musicologists before

had expounded on the subject, there was a lack of a standard work that systematically classified the ragas of classical music.

Vijayaraghava Nayak Vijaya Raghava Nayak (also Vijayarāghava Nāyaka, 1590s–1673) was the fourth and last king of Sevappa Nayak's line. He ruled from 1634 to 1673. In 1673, Vijaya Raghava Nayak was defeated in battle by the Madurai Nayak king Chokkanatha Nayak w ...

() commissioned Venkatamakhin to prepare such a treatise which led to the creation of the ''Chaturdandiprakashika''. The title translates to "the illuminator of the four pillars" (of music). It alludes to a system of four divisions of composition, namely (rhythmically free exposition of a

), (melodic inflection), (vocal composition in a raga) and

prabandha Prabandha is a literary genre of medieval Indian Sanskrit literature. The ''prabandha''s contain semi-historical anecdotes about the lives of famous persons. They were written primarily by Jain scholars of western India (Gujarat and Malwa) from 1 ...

(a compositional structure). The work led to the creation of the melakarta system of classification and the formulation of the 72 mela (or parent) ragas that are the foundation of the classical music of South India today. In the early 20th-century,

Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (10 August 1860 – 19 September 1936) was an Indian musicologist who wrote the first modern treatise on Hindustani classical music, an art which had been propagated for centuries mostly through oral traditions. ...

, a musicologist from

Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...

, chanced upon the ''Chaturdandiprakashika'' and used its melakarta system as the basis for the

system that is currently used to organise and classify ragas in

. Some portions of the treatise are now lost.

Notes

References

* * * * * {{cite journal , last1=Powers , first1=Harold S. , year=2001 , title=Bhatkhande, Vishnu Narayan , journal=

Grove Music Online ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and t ...

, publisher=Oxford University Press , doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.03008 , language=en 17th-century Sanskrit literature Carnatic music