no occult power
was ascribed.

The principal characteristics in modern Hindu music are a
seemingly instinctive sense of harmony; and although the actual
chords are absent, the melodic formation of the songs plainly
indicates a feeling for modern harmony, and even form. The
actual scale resembles our European scale of twelve semitones
(twenty-two _s'rutis_, quarter-tones), but the modal development
of these sounds has been extraordinary. Now a "mode" is the
manner in which the notes of a scale are arranged. For instance,
in our major mode the scale is arranged as follows: tone,
tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. In India there
are at present seventy-two modes in use which are produced by
making seventy-two different arrangements of the scale by means
of sharps and flats, the only rule being that each degree of
the scale must be represented; for instance, one of the modes
_Dehrasan-Karabharna_ corresponds to our major scale. Our minor
(harmonic) scale figures as _Kyravani_. _Tanarupi_ corresponds
to the following succession of notes,

[G: c' d-' e--' f' g' a+' b' c'']

_Gavambodi_, to [G: c' d-' e-' f+' g' a-' b--' c'']

_Maya-Malavagaula_, to [G: c' d' e-' f' g-' a' b-' c'']

It can thus easily be seen how the seventy-two modes are
possible and practicable. Observe that the seven degrees of
the scale are all represented in these modes, the difference
between them being in the placing of half-tones by means of
sharps or flats. Not content with the complexity that this modal
system brought into their music, the Hindus have increased it
still more by inventing a number of formulae called _ragas_
(not to be confounded with those rhapsodical songs, the modern
descendant of the magic chants, previously mentioned).

In making a Hindu melody (which of course must be in one of
the seventy-two modes, just as in English we should say that a
melody must be in one of our two modes, either major or minor)
one would have to conform to one of the _ragas_, that is to
say, the melodic outline would have to conform to certain
rules, both in ascending and descending. These rules consist
of omitting notes of the modes, in one manner when the melody
ascends, and in another when it descends. Thus, in the _raga_
called _Mohanna_, in ascending the notes must be arranged in
the following order: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8; in descending it is 8,
7, 5, 4, 2, 1. Thus if we wished to write a melody in the mode
_Tanarupi_--_raga Mohanna