Raga and tala split north and south classical paths
Indian classical music—Shastriya or Marg Sangeet—rests on raga melody and tala rhythm, rooted in Vedic and Natyashastra traditions. Hindustani north favors improvisation; Carnatic south favors shorter fixed compositions, yet both cite Sarangadeva's thirteenth-century Sangeeta-Ratnakara.
Everything rests on two pillars. A raga draws on a stock of notes, microtones included, to weave an intricate melodic fabric, while a tala fixes the cycle of beats inside which rhythmic invention happens. The tradition largely sets aside Western devices such as harmony, chords, counterpoint and modulation, and performers often treat the silences between pitches as more expressive than the pitches. Alongside the northern and southern schools, eastern India has its own classical line, Odissi, said to have developed over two thousand years.
The roots reach back to Vedic literature. Early Indian thought bundled recitation, melody and dance together, and music had become an art of its own before the grammarian Yāska, around 500 BCE. The Samaveda, from about 1000 BCE, sets passages of the Rigveda to tunes and embeds note markings that work like a skeleton for each chant, even showing which tones rise and which fall. Ancient practice separated Gandharva, formal ceremonial music with divine overtones, from Gana, looser improvised entertainment, and Tamil classics point to a refined southern tradition in the final centuries before Christ.
Bharata's Natyashastra gives a chapter to each of four instrument families, sorted by how they make sound rather than what they are made of: strings, hollow winds, solid idiophones and skin-covered drums. Small bronze cymbals marked tala, a job kept distinct from drumming. Early in the thirteenth century Sarngadeva, patronised by King Sighana of the Yadava dynasty, wrote the Sangitaratnakara, which names seven tala families and sets out methods of composing and improvising that still guide musicians. Carvings of cymbal players at the fifth-century Pavaya temple near Gwalior and in the Ellora Caves show how central music was.
Until the fourteenth century the subcontinent shared one broadly unified system; turmoil in the Delhi Sultanate era then cut north off from south, and by about the sixteenth century the branches had clearly parted. Hindustani took in Persian and Arabic colour, and the Persian word Rāk is probably a borrowing of raga. Carnatic grew on native lines, and Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) of Hampi, honoured as its grandfather, devised graded exercises for students. Carnatic sorts ragas into melakartas and favours fixed compositions, brisker elaborations and prominent accompanists, with Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri as its great historic composers.
Source: Indian classical music
