It was in a tiny fishing village near the seaside, Bombay, in 1913. The spring had donned its garment of green splendour, and the spreading beauty of the world without saturated with waves of golden light the feathery swaying palms; the sun shining on an indulgent ocean, lapping the palm-fringed silvery beach. The nightingales had burst into a flood of song. The murmur of waves, the breezes, the humming of the bees, beat in unison, creating a continual music.
Emotions were roused. It was a call of the ancient exquisite beloved Art. I sang the eternal limpid melodies. Rahamin immortalized them in a series of beautiful paintings, the Ragus and Raginis (the male and female melodies). I dashed off a few lines in explanation. We soon left for Europe, where the written text was brought out in book form, and helped to explain the symbolic significance of the Raga and Raginis.
The leading motive of Indian music is an expression of the feelings and emotions in a series of melodies; these being woven with the legends and traditions of the poetic fancies and reveries of the human soul and spirit of the country. Long ago these sounds reached far and wide, growing more lovely as appreciation increased. Then they grew fainter and fainter, diminishing gradually through the past century and a half, till they finally passed away, leaving strange discordant noises and tumultuous shouts, fore- shadowing oblivion.
However, our never-tiring efforts have proved somewhat successful, and the past five or six years point to the break of the dawn in the musical world of India. Three conferences have been held, and Pandit V. N. Bhatkhande's forty years' study of ancient manuscripts and experiences, his magnetic personality, his remarkable patience and sweet temper, gained the confidence and respect of all the Ustaads (practical experts) from whom he extracted a store of melodies and created his own Lakshan Geet (musical compositions), systematically set them to notation in a series of works invaluable to students, but they are not yet complete. Music will once more sound the never-ending melancholy, wisdom and renunciation of the East.
I have to thank the Thakur Sri Jessrajsinghji Seesodia of Udaipur for reading the manuscript and for the footnotes and appendix, also for correcting the proof sheets.
It is hoped to follow this work by another volume, giving minute details and classification of the different melodies set to notation, with charts and diagrams.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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