One of the central concepts of classical Indian music is raga, the melodic formulas that make
up the material for every classical performance. A raga is usually performed in a series of
pieces, some composed and some extemporized, within a highly structured framework.
Modern North Indian (Hindustani) and South Indian (Karnatak) music are distinct systems in
practice, but they both share the basic principles of raga.Richard Widdess's The Ragas of
Early Indian Music is a major contribution to the scholarly literature on Indian music. This …

If recent ethnomusicological coverage in Music Analysis (Nattiez 1993, Stock 1993, Halliwell
1994) indicates an upsurge in interest in musical concepts and structures from beyond the
Western art-music tradition then readers will seize upon this exceptional study. The jacket-
blurb alone should arrest the attention of browsing music historians and theoreticians: it tells
us that in written documents (treatises, literary works and musical notations) from the pre-
Islamic period in India, Richard Widdess traces the historical origins and early development …

The classical music of India is undoubtedly one of the subcontinent's greatest cultural
achievements, and arguably its most significant cultural export to the rest of the world. Yet
whilst it is widely assumed that both Hindustani (North Indian) and Karnatak (South Indian)
musical systems are ancient, they are in fact relatively recent phenomena whose forms
probably crystallized within the past four to five hundred years. Their common heritage lies
in a musical system that has hitherto only been hinted at by scholars of theoretical treatises …

This reviewer was a litde disappointed that the section on the novel did not contain any
extracts from Nazir Ahmad, and also that the Suggestions for Further Reading did not
contain a brief bibliography of some of the important secondary sources of Urdu literature.
Such a bibliography might have helped the committed English reader to develop his or her
interest in Urdu literature, an interest which this volume is more than capable of inciting.

Richard Widdess: The rāgas of early Indian music: modes, melodies and musical notations
from the Gupta period to c. 1250 (Oxfo Page 1 164 REVIEWS in central Karnataka, among the
greatest masterpieces of twelfth-century South Indian architecture. That the stylistic complexity
of the Dambal and Ittagi temples has rarely been equalled can be judged from the photographs
(pis. 574-98) that show basement mouldings, wall niches with temple-like towered pediments,
and columns with polygonal and lathe-turned shafts, all fashioned with astounding precision …

The companion compact disc includes 23 musical examples, all of which are discussed in
the book, but the sequence does not match the order in which they are discussed in the text.
Rather, the songs are grouped into genres or styles. I was immediately attracted to the
compact disc, listening to each example first, then turning to the page for a discussion of the
example. In this way, I did things backwards and on my first listening, missed the overall
discussion of the context of the circumstances of the recording and missed the background …

James R. Kippen & Richard Widdess, The Rāgas of Early Indian Music: Modes, Melodies and
Musical Notations from the Gupta Period to c. 1250The Ragas of Early Indian Music: Modes,
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