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International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanities ISSN 2277 – 9809 (online) ISSN 2348 - 9359 (Print) An Internationally Indexed Peer Reviewed & Refereed Journal Shri Param Hans Education & Research Foundation Trust www.IRJMSH.com www.SPHERT.org Published by iSaRa Solutions IRJMSH Vol 10 Issue 6 [Year 2019] ISSN 2277 – 9809 (0nline) 2348–9359 (Print) Music in Indian Sculpture & Ragmala Paintings Dr. Richa Assistant Professor (Music Vocal) Sh. Lal Nath Hindu College, Rohtak, Haryana – 124001 E-mail : [email protected] ABSTRACT India occupies an exalted position in the realm of art of the ancient world. If greeks excelled in the portrayal of the physical charm of the human body; the Indian were unsurpassed in transmitting the spiritual contents to their plastic forms embodying the high ideal and the common beliefs of the people. Indian art & music is deeply rooted in the religion. India is the birth place of three, of the world's great religions Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism and these faiths have inspired most of our Indian art. Art & Music is very well connected to each other. Raagmala painting & music has interconnected to each other. The pictorial representation of the ragas of Indian music are essential for formulating the imaginative impulse which is responsible for transforming the notes of music into concert a forms or images. The pictorial representation of the ragas is necessary for visualizing the aesthetic or emotive essence of the ragas. In India as well other countries painting was a pin to literature and abstraction that was achieved by the painting and by music in India, there are appropriate melodies for the various seasons, there are paintings of musical modes and there are also Bramasi or seasonal lyrical poems. With their simplicity of line skillful orgnaisations of masses by mean of deep colours. Music is essentially an abstract art, allied to painting, it helps the letter to achieve a degree of a abstraction that is normal to music, directing the human soul of being, which is behind all patterns of sounds, shapes and colours. Ragmala painting shows the whole mood of Indian Classical ragas. Keywords : Music, Ragmala paintings, interconnection sculpture In an age, when reading and writing are rare accomplishments, the art of painting, and sculpture plays a part in national Indian art which are reviewing. Art, religion and education had no existence apart from each other as they have in this age of specialization thought and culture. And like all true artists, they were keen observes and lovers of nature. Their art was glowing with spontaneous warmth and fantasy like the nature, which inspired it. The main sources of our knowledge of our Indian music and its history are manuscripts, epigraphs, sculpture and painting. A proper recognition of the value of these sources provide a counter check to eliminates, obscure episode, correct wrong concepts, or identification and produce finally a clear and authentic narration. Sculptures, paintings, stones are our historical sources as we are linked with our oral tradition. Sculpture is almost as old as mankind. For uncounted years, men evolution is marked International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity ( IRJMSH ) Page 96 www.irjmsh.com IRJMSH Vol 10 Issue 6 [Year 2019] ISSN 2277 – 9809 (0nline) 2348–9359 (Print) by false starts and dead ends. His first significant step forward was a man the "tool maker". The second and more significant step marked his emergence as man the "image maker". The dark galleries of pre-historic caves show our ancestors preoccupation with the concrete image. In his painting & sculpture, early man was trying not to copy nature but originated in his mind and therefore depicted things not just as they were, but as he desired them to be. Art serves much purpose, but fundamentally it deals not with the actual but with the ideal. For centuries, man had shaped stone and softer materials like wood, bone and horn to serve his practical ends. When he become sure that the image in his mind could be given concrete form, he already possessed the technology to do so.1 Sculpture and music have played a prominent part in cultural development. Sculpture illustration may be treated as visual document of the different periods to which, they belong. The figures of dancers discovered in Mohan- Jodaro are full of swing and movement. This miniature creation of art reveals to us that dancing was not unknown say 3000 years back. Even as early as the stone age, a rock drawing portrays a masked dancer dressed in wild beast skin, playing a flute, a crude specimen with a rough and uneven surface. A survey of Indian sculpture found mainly in our temple in large stock and variety will bring our notice to many factors relating to music. Music has been a hand made to religion through the ages and therefore any place of worship as the temple, the church, the Vihara can be objects of our study. From the representation of the dynamic art of music and dancing on stone, it is possible for us to acquire knowledge of the type of music and dance practiced at different period, and in the study of the history and evolution of music in general and musical instruments in particular. They give us an idea of the construction and shape of the instrument, the manner in which they are held and played, the type of concert and number of people taking part and instruments used by them. The fact that our artist and philosopher of long ago could give much highly aesthetically and beautiful plastic form to the imagination of a dancing 'Nataraja'. Expressing the highest reaches of human thought and feeling, proves that dancing as art had fully developed in ancient India and the spiritual significance of dancing had been well realized. According to hindu tradition, Indra and the other gods be sought Brahma and the creator for a pestune to be heard and seems by all. Brahma these upon distilled the essence of the four Vedas, taking words from the 'Rig' music from the 'sama', the art of gesticulation from the 'Yajura' and aesthetic elements Rasa from the 'Atharva veda' and compounded them in masterly was into one. This goes by the popular term the Natya or Natya Sastra"2. There are several references to ritualistic dances in the Vedas and puranas. At the end of 'Aswamedha Yagya' women are mentioned as dancing round the sacred fire, with water pots on their heads beating the ground with their feet and singing. International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity ( IRJMSH ) Page 97 www.irjmsh.com IRJMSH Vol 10 Issue 6 [Year 2019] ISSN 2277 – 9809 (0nline) 2348–9359 (Print) The tradition of miniature painting in India is one which spans many centuries, beginning in the 11th centuries and coming right upto the 19th cent and cover large parts of North India from Gujarat and deserts of Rajasthan, upto the snowing mountains of Jammu and Himachal Pradesh. The 'Rajput paintings' or its variety 'Rajasthani miniature' is a part mention term. Rajput painter who had worked for a time at the mugal court and learnt some of the science of miniature painting, must have returned to their homes and these produced such work as illustration to : Rasikpriya. Indian painting under the began with different ideologies and an entirely new outlook and technique. In the technique of mugal painting, paper was made generally of cotton, Jute or bamboo Mugal painting of the ragas of that time were influenced by Rajasthani paintings. Regarding the Rajput portrait of the Indigenous school Prof. O.C. Ganguly has said that "After the development of mugal school of portrait in the early 16th cent. The two schools, the earlier Indigencus Indian and the later Mugal, got entangled and influenced each other. It is now, therefore, difficult from the products of the fusion of the two to recover the outlines of the earlier. Hindu tradition and the few surviving examples seem to prove that the pure Rajasthani idiom has been practiced side by side the mixed mugal style.3 The representation of love scenes erotic sentiments of heroes and heroines, ballads and romantic poems, the visualization of the dramatic atmosphere suggested by the ragas suggested and raginis are other subjects of these paintings. For example a charming woman standing in an open landscape under the brilliant noon day sun generally represents 'Todi' ragini. In her hands, she holds the veena and the deer in the neighbouring postures stand entranced as the plays. Similarly 'Megh' raga is represented by a group of musician playing outside during the rainy season. The clouds hovering overhead and there is Joyous expectancy of rain everywhere. It is a raga suggesting hope and new life 'Bilawal' typifies the heroine who gets conscious of the pangs of love by a vision of her own beauty in the mirror. These and similar pictures of visualised music pulsate with life as only a great piece of art could. The inventors talents of the greeeks never suggested a more charming allergory then the lovely families of the six ragas named in the order of seasons - Bhairava, Malva, Shrirag, hindola, vasant, Dipaka and Megha. Each of whom is wedded to five raginins or nymphs of harmony presenting wonderfully diversified images for the play of artists genius. In the ragmala series of Rasika Priya dated 1634 A.D. for example it represent the 'Megh Raja'. This miniature shows the blue complexioned raga dancing with a lady to the of music played by three female musicians. The scene is laid against blue background. The sky is overcast with dark clouds with a streak of lightening and rain indicated by white dotted lines.