Q1.
Hindustani Classical music associates certain rāgas with specific seasons. Find out which rāgas are connected to each season with the help of your elders and teachers.
Answer
Method. This is a find-out question, so the answer must come from people and from listening, not from memory. Ask a music teacher, a grandparent, or anyone in your family who sings or plays; listen to recordings and note what the announcer or sleeve notes say about the season; and match what you learn to the six ṛtus of Table 3.2, so that your answer sits inside the chapter's own framework.
What a good answer must contain: (i) the season in the ṛtu system and its months, (ii) the name of the rāga, and (iii) one line on why the two are linked — the mood the rāga creates and the weather that mood belongs to. A list of names with nothing else is not an answer.
Sample answer:
| Ṛtu (Table 3.2) | Months | Rāgas traditionally associated | The link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vasanta | March – April | Basant, Bahār, Hindol | Spring rāgas, sung at Holi and at the turn of the season — bright and playful, like the flowering of the trees |
| Grīṣhma | May – June | Deepak, Marwa, Sarang | Rāgas of heat and of the long, glaring afternoon; Sarang is a midday rāga of the hot season |
| Varṣhā | July – August | Miyān kī Malhār, Megh, Megh Malhār, Gaud Malhār | The rain rāgas — the whole Malhār family belongs to the monsoon, and the very word megh means cloud |
| Śharad | September – October | Bhūpālī, Jaunpurī, Pahāḍī | Clear, calm rāgas for the bright skies after the monsoon has withdrawn |
| Hemanta | November – December | Bhairav, Todi | Grave morning rāgas that suit the cool, misty early winter |
| Śhiśhira | January – February | Bhairavī, Māl kauns | Deep, still rāgas of the coldest weeks of the year |
Why music and season were tied together at all: before printed calendars and forecasts, the year was lived through what could be sensed — heat, rain, cold, flowering, harvest. Music was one of the ways that experience was organised and remembered. Kālidāsa traces the path of the monsoon clouds in the Meghadūtam, Varāhamihira predicts rainfall by the nakṣhatras in the Bṛihatsaṁhitā, and singers gave each ṛtu its own rāga — three different ways of doing the same thing, which is paying close attention to the seasons.
Note for your class discussion: the associations are a living tradition, not a fixed rule, so different gharānās and different regions will give you slightly different lists. Record whom you asked along with what they told you — that difference is itself an interesting finding, and it is also good practice for handling sources.