legend and story supplies both North and South with heroes and sages; and agriculture and trade, the village and the home, and all the arts, are filled with the same spirit and use practically the same methods throughout India.
It will be seen as we study this subject that, in the same way, there is an underlying unity in the music of India, revealing itself in qualities which mark it off from the music of the West and which exhibit its common heart.
The two schools tend to-day to coalesce into one unified system, a tendency which is fostered by the all-India music conferences which now meet annually, and also by the very considerable borrowing which is taking place in each system from the other.
It may be well to give at the outset brief definitions of a few fundamental terms which must be used in our exposition from the very beginning. Fuller explanations of these will be found in the body of the work and a Glossary of all the musical words and phrases which occur in the book will be found among the Appendices.
Svara ... ... One of the seven notes of the gamut.
Sruti ... ... An interval smaller than the semi-tone.
Suddha Svara ... The fundamental variety of each of the seven notes.
Vikrit ... ... A variety of the Suddha note.
Raga ... ... The melody-types which are the bases of Indian musical compositions.
Tala ... ... Time measure.
Grama ... ... An ancient mode or scale.
Jati ... ... The old name for melody-types.
The wide differences between Indian and western music on the one hand, and the variant terminology which distinguishes northern from southern musical teaching in India on the other, create so many minor difficulties even in simple matters, that it has been thought well to use in this book a modified notation, based on the Indian tonic sol-fa, so that all musical items may be exhibited in one way and the reader may not have to carry several schemes in his head. Its relations and detailed use are set forth in the following tables : —
