of land, so that they came to his court from the whole of India, and Tanjore became one of the most important musical centres in India. This king was also the author of an important treatise entitled Sangita Saramritam.
The Nagmat-e-Asaphi, written in A.D. 1813 by Muhammmad Rezza, a nobleman of Patna, is a critical work on northern music. He pronounces the various northern systems of classification to be out of date and has no use for the raga-ragini-putra basis upon which they build. He gives a new system of his own which brings together into groups ragas which have similar features. This work is the first authority to take the Bilaval scale (similar to the European major mode) as its suddha scale. This is the suddha scale of the north to-day. The author tells us that he wrote the book after consulting the best artists available in his day. It is said that his raga lakshanas (definitions) are still of use for Hindusthani musicians.
About this time Maharaja Pratap Singh of Jaipur (A.D. 1779-1804) called together a conference of musical experts and artists in Jaipur in order to arrange for a standard work on Hindusthani music. The book which resulted was called Sahgita Sara or 'Epitome of Music.' The literary talent available does not seem to have been of a very high order, but it preserves for future reference the opinions of a body of musicians upon current thought and practice. Here also the suddha scale is Bilaval, which by then seems to have been recognized as the regular Hindusthani suddha scale.
Sangita Ragakalpadruma written by Krishnananda Vyasa and published in Calcutta in 1842 collects together all the masterpieces then available of Hindi composition.
It should be remembered that all these authors use some form or other of the Sanskrit sol-fa notation which is the basis of the notation adopted in this book. (See Introduction).
While the northern system was thus trying to find a new basis of classification, the south was going ahead in musical composition. Tanjore was for many years one of the most important musical centres of India. It was here that
