Sangita Ratnakara
Sanskrit musicological text
The Sangita-Ratnakara, संगीतरत्नाकर, (IAST: Saṃgītaratnākara), literally "Ocean of Music
", is one of the most important musicological texts from India. Composed by Śārṅgadeva (शार्ङ्गदेव) in Sanskrit during the 13th century, both Carnatic music and Hindustani music traditions of Indian classical music regard it as a definitive text. The author was a part of the court of King Simhana (r. 1210–1247) of the Yādava dynasty whose capital was Devagiri, Maharashtra.
The text is divided into seven chapters. The first six chapters, Svaragatadhyaya, Ragavivekadhyaya, Prakirnakadhyaya, Prabandhadhyaya, Taladhyaya and Vadyadhyaya deal with the various aspects of music and musical instruments, while the last chapter Nartanadhyaya deals with dance. The medieval era text is one of the most complete historical Indian treatises on the structure, technique, and reasoning on music theory that has survived into the modern era, and is a comprehensive voluminous text on ragas (chapter 2) and talas (chapter 5).
The text is comprehensive synthesis of ancient and medieval musical knowledge of India. The text has been frequently quoted by later Indian musicologists in their music and dance-related literature. Significant commentaries on the text include the Sangitasudhakara of Simhabhupala (c. 1330) and the Kalanidhi of Kallinatha (c. 1430).
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This entry incorporates text from “Sangita Ratnakara” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.