(fl c1550). South Indian musician and musical scholar. He was probably the grandson of the court poet and commentator Kallinātha. His Sanskrit music-theoretical treatise Svaramelakalānidhi (‘Treasury of Musical Scales’, c1550), composed at the court of Vijayanagar shortly before the fall of the capital, was the first to present a scheme of rāga classification in which the basic modes (jāti) are no longer used but rather a system of scale-types (mela), into which the rāga in current practice can all be accommodated. In so doing he laid the foundation of the modern Karnatic melodic system and, though he may not have invented the mela notion, his treatise may be counted the earliest work of the modern period. It was expressly written with a view to ‘reconciling the conflicting views of theory’, and the author was at pains to explain the actual musical practice of his time in terms of theoretical language derived from the traditional Sanskrit sources such as Śārngadeva's Sangīta-ratnākara. The Svaramelakalānidhi is in five chapters, dealing only with the melodic component of music. Ancient notions of intervals and tonality are simplified and modified to account for what appears to have been in effect a scale of 12 semitones, some of which could have been microtonally adjusted, when required, in playing technique. The positions of notes are explained with reference to the fixed fret positions on a vīnā (stick-zither). Information is thereby also given about various types of plucked string instruments of the author's day.
See also India, §III, 1(ii)(c).
Svaramelakalānidhi, ed. and trans. M.S. Ramaswami Aiyar (Cidambaram, 1932)
Svaramelakalānidhi, ed. V.N. Bhatta (Hathras, 1963) [with Hindi translation from the Marathi of Bhāradvāja Śarmā]
S. Ramamurti Pantulu: ‘Thoughts on Svaramelakalānidhi’, Journal of the Music Academy, Madras, iv (1933), 2–6
E. te Nijenhuis: Musicological Literature (Wiesbaden, 1977), 20–22
N. Ramanathan: ‘Influence of Śāstra on Prayoga: the Svara System in the Post-Sangītaratnākara Period with Special Reference to South Indian Music’, The Traditional Indian Theory and Practice of Music and Dance, ed. J.B. Katz (Leiden, 1992), 75–102
JONATHAN KATZ