From: cco.caltech.edu!vidya (Vidyasankar Sundaresan)
Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.classical
Subject: Melakarta system (was Re: Koteeswara Iyer's krithis in all melakarta) ragams
Date: 9 Nov 1992 21:01:14 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: pooh.caltech.edu
Originator: vidya@pooh

In article <BxF8Mq.Dqw.1@cs.cmu.edu> pjn+@cs.cmu.edu (P J Narayanan)  
writes:
- 
- One lives to learn endlessly, doesn't one? The first tape of the above
- includes a few words of introduction by T. S. Parthasarathy. TSP
- sketches the development of structure in the form of mELakartA rAgams
- very briefly. He said that though VenkaTamakhi devised the current set
- of 72 MKRagas, his mELams were not complete or "sampUrNam," they were
- mere scales. Later, one Govinda made the current 72 sampUrNa mELas.
- 
- This is completely new to me. Does anyone have any information on
- this?  Who was this Govinda and when did he live? What were the
- structure of VenkaTamakhi's mELams?
- 
- Also, can someone post biographical/historical and/or anything else
- they have on Koteeswara Iyer? How about Koteeswara Iyer for the
- Great Masters series? :-)
- 
- PJN
- 
- -- 
- ---
- Robotics Institute, CMU			pjn@cs.cmu.edu
- Pittsburgh, PA 15213
- ---


The introduction by TSP is correct. Though the Melakarta system is  
popularly attributed to Venkatamakhi, it was Govinda Dikshita who refined  
the structure and made the system in use today. (Something like  
Mendeleev's periodic table in chemistry!)

Venkatamakhi was a contemporary of Pachimiriam Adiappayya, the composer of  
the famous Ata tala varnam Viriboni in Bhairavi. He was the first to make  
a set of 72 ragas as parent scales by the process of Graha Bheda from  
existing scales. But the ragas in his system do not have a  
sampoorna-sampoorna structure and so it is also known as the Asampoorna  
Mela Paddhati. This was the system followed by Muthuswami Dikshitar. For  
example, in this system Mela no. 22 is not Kharaharapriya, but Sri which  
was more famous then. The aroha-avaroha krama of Sri in this system was

s r2 m1 p n2 s^
s^ n2 p d2 n2 p m1 r2 g2 r2 s .

Thus you will find the conspicuous use of the prayoga pdnpm in Dikshitar's  
kritis in Sri, whereas the dhaivata is totally absent in Thyagaraja's  
kritis. Venkatamakhi's names for the mela ragas were also different e.g.  
Kanakambari, Phenadyuti etc. The aroha-avaroha kramas in this system admit  
of vakra usages, the only absolute requirement being that all seven notes  
must find usage somewhere in the raga, not necessarily in order. 

The arbitrariness that was thus introduced in the choice of mela ragas was  
sought to be removed by Govinda Dikshita. He put down the requirement that  
the aroha-avaroha krama of every mela raga should follow the order
srgmpdns^ - s^ndpmgrs. This is the system followed today and is thus  
actually Govinda's though Venkatamakhi usually gets the credit for it.  
Govinda's system of nomenclature was Kanakangi, Ratnangi etc. He followed  
the katapayadi sankhya rigorously in naming ragas, while Venkatamakhi used  
the katapayadi sankhya only for newly derived parent scales and continued  
with the old names for the famous ragas like Sri. 

Thus "it almost amounts to this - the sampoorna sampoorna Kharaharapriya  
which was derived from Sri to meet the melakarta requirement is today the  
parent and Sri is a janya" - ( quote from S. Balachander's Raga Yagam  
tapes ).

Thyagaraja seems to have followed the Govinda system as seen by his kritis  
in these melas. Some other famous ragas where the names in the two systems  
are different are (in some the arohana and avarohana are also different) -

Venkatamakhi           Govinda Dikshita

Kamavardhani           Pantuvarali
Sumadyuti              Simhendramadhyamam
Chamaram               Shanmukhapriya
Hamsasimharavam        Hemavati
Vegavahini             Chakravakam 



S.Vidyasankar