Raagmala presents musical names as a family. Six principal ragas stand at the centre of the arrangement, each accompanied by five raginis and eight sons. The reader encounters an ordered world of relationships rather than an unexplained succession of names.
That family structure offers an accessible way into the composition. It also creates questions. What does the number eighty-four count? Does a list of raga names explain how to perform them? Why does the order differ from the raga sections of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji? And how should we read a passage that appears to name nine sons while announcing eight?
Dr Balbir Singh addresses these questions in Ragmala Da Swal. Although the book is primarily a defence of Raagmala's place within Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, its discussions provide a useful introduction to the composition's musical language. They encourage a reader to understand the classification on its own terms before drawing conclusions from it.
What the family image helps us see
The title Raagmala conveys the idea of a garland of ragas. In the scheme described by Dr Balbir Singh, the musical names are arranged through kinship: principal ragas, their associated female forms or raginis, and their sons, called putras.
The terms make the structure memorable. A name belongs somewhere; it has an association with other names; it occupies a place within a larger grouping. That is the practical value of thinking about a family tree.
The metaphor needs to be handled carefully, however. The book does not establish that a ragini necessarily has softer phrases, more delicate ornamentation or a particular kind of microtone because it is described as female. Equally, the word son does not supply a technical recipe for generating a raga from a parent.
The family terms identify positions within this classification. To infer a performance method from them would require information beyond the naming structure. A beginner gains more by first understanding what the text actually organises than by attaching attractive but unsupported descriptions to each relationship.
The six principal ragas
In its final chapter, the book gives the six principal ragas in the following order:
| Principal raga | Associated raginis | Associated sons | Total positions in the family |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bhairau | 5 | 8 | 14 |
| Malkaus | 5 | 8 | 14 |
| Hindol | 5 | 8 | 14 |
| Deepak | 5 | 8 | 14 |
| Sri Rag | 5 | 8 | 14 |
| Megh | 5 | 8 | 14 |
Each family contains the principal raga itself as well as its associated raginis and sons. That produces fourteen positions per family and eighty-four across the six.
The spelling of a musical name can vary in English transliteration. The essential point here is the structure Dr Balbir Singh describes, rather than the suggestion that one English spelling fixes every historical form of a name.
The table also shows why the six principal ragas alone do not represent the whole scheme. They provide its main divisions. The raginis and sons supply the remaining relationships through which the classification unfolds.
What the number eighty-four means
The arithmetic is straightforward once the three levels are kept separate:
| Part of the scheme | Calculation | Number |
|---|---|---|
| Principal ragas | Six principal names | 6 |
| Raginis | Six families, each with five | 30 |
| Sons | Six families, each with eight | 48 |
| Total | 6 + 30 + 48 | 84 |
This is a count of positions in the musical family arrangement. It is not a count of eighty-four verses. It also does not establish that all music, every possible emotional state or every raga in every classification can be contained within this one number.
Dr Balbir Singh explicitly recognises that raagmalas can follow different systems. The existence of other arrangements is part of his discussion, especially when he compares the names and numbers given by different writers.
A classification can be coherent without being the only classification available. Keeping that point in mind prevents the family tree from becoming a claim that the book never demonstrates: that one arrangement exhausts the entire field of music.
Why the order differs from the scripture's raga sequence
A reader familiar with Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji may notice that its sequence of raga sections begins with Sri Rag, whereas Raagmala begins with Bhairau. The contrast formed part of the historical dispute.
Dr Balbir Singh's response begins with a familiar experience: learning letters and sounds. The accepted ordering of an alphabet and the ordering used in a pronunciation exercise can differ. The difference serves the exercise being performed.
He asks the reader to apply similar care to the two musical arrangements. The order in which a scripture presents compositions and the order in which a classification presents musical relationships need not perform the same task.
His argument is therefore directed against a particular assumption: that Raagmala must function as a contents list reproducing the scripture's arrangement. Once that requirement is questioned, a difference in sequence no longer settles the composition's status.
This helps a beginner read the family structure without forcing it into another pattern. First ask how the families are organised and what relationships the text describes. The separate question of how compositions are ordered within Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji can then be considered without treating the two arrangements as interchangeable.
A classification contains more than a list of tunes
Later in the book, Dr Balbir Singh draws a distinction between a raagmala and a raga-namavali, a list of musical names. The distinction becomes especially useful in his comparison with Alam's Madhavanal Kamakandala.
In the romance, the heroine Kamakandala performs before a royal assembly. A list of the melodies she performs could describe that particular event. A classification of ragas does something broader: it explains musical groupings and can refer to how singers in general understand or perform them.
Dr Balbir Singh notices that the shared passage contains the language of a classification. It refers to singers following their own manner and includes a first-person statement about setting out eight sons. He asks how comfortably such explanatory wording fits a scene supposedly reporting one performer's actions.
For him, the awkwardness supports the view that an existing classification was incorporated into the narrative. His literary conclusion depends on the wider argument of the book, but the musical distinction remains helpful in its own right. A text can name music while also explaining a system of relationships. Reading it only as a concert programme misses that second function.
He develops the point through another treatment of the romance, associated with Bodha. In the account he discusses, instruction about musical classification occurs in an exchange between Madhav and Kamakandala, rather than as the whole substance of her court performance. The different setting makes the teaching function easier to recognise.
Who is singing when the text says the ragas were sung?
Some arguments about Raagmala depend on interpreting its verbs as references to Kamakandala. Dr Balbir Singh examines whether that is necessary.
He compares expressions in a raagmala attributed to Tansen with those in the scriptural composition. His examples include present-tense and past-tense references to singing, statements about singers, and terms connected with sur and taan.
His explanation is that this language belongs naturally to musical description. A writer may say that a raga is sung, has been sung or is sung by knowledgeable performers while explaining its place in a system. Such wording does not automatically introduce a particular fictional character.
For the beginner, the lesson is about the reach of a sentence. A statement describing an established musical practice is broader than a statement narrating an individual performance. The surrounding genre and purpose help determine which kind of statement is being made.
This is one reason the family arrangement deserves to be read as an organised composition. Its words participate in a technical discussion of musical relationships, even where their surface form appears simple.
The puzzle of Deepak's eight sons
The book ends with a close examination of a counting objection. Raagmala identifies eight sons of Deepak, yet the relevant wording can be separated into nine names: Kalanka, Kuntal, Rama, Kamal, Kusam, Champak, Gaura, Kanra and Kalhana.
The question is whether every apparent name must be counted independently.
Dr Balbir Singh first considers a chart in Bhai Kahn Singh's Mahan Kosh. As he reproduces it, the chart reaches a total of eight by treating Kamal Kusam as one name. He then asks how that grouping is justified, since the musical works he discusses also provide grounds for distinguishing Kamal and Kusam.
His wider answer concerns compound raga names. Two terms can name one combined musical form. The number of written components and the number of musical entities are consequently different questions.
He discusses combinations such as Todi Bhairavi and Madhu Madhav, then considers the association of Kanra and Kalyan. In relation to Raagmala's wording, this supports reading Kanra Kalhana together. He also notes that a chart published by the Khalsa Tract Society uses the corresponding grouping to arrive at eight sons.
The chapter does more than offer a way of making the total work. It asks for evidence behind the grouping and compares the standards applied to different texts. If joining names is accepted when explaining Alam's list, the same interpretative possibility must be considered when reading the scriptural list.
Other classifications, he points out, also produce apparent numerical difficulties when each written term is counted separately. His reply is that the intended compound names must be understood before the arithmetic is used to declare the text defective.
This remains his explanation of the problem. The chapter does not provide a full practical demonstration of every musical combination it discusses, and a beginner should retain that distinction between interpreting a name and learning the musical form itself.
Reading the names with patience
The family tree is a useful starting point because it gives the reader a manageable structure: six principal ragas, with five raginis and eight sons associated with each. The next step is to pay attention to how the composition speaks about those relationships.
Some words are names; others explain an association or describe a singing practice. Some names can have more than one written component. Some forms differ across the texts being compared. These details determine how the structure is understood.
Dr Balbir Singh's larger defence also places music within lived Sikh experience. His opening address discusses Gurmat Sangeet as something understood through hearing, participation and devotional practice. A written classification has value, but its names belong to an art experienced in sound.
For a new reader, Raagmala can therefore be approached in two connected ways. Its family arrangement makes the composition easier to follow, while the questions raised by that arrangement encourage closer study of its language and musical purpose.
The most useful first achievement is precise understanding: know what the eighty-four counts, recognise the distinction between classification and sequence, and allow technical naming conventions to inform the reading. From that foundation, the family tree becomes a guide into the composition rather than a collection of assumptions placed over it.
Source: Dr Balbir Singh, Ragmala Da Swal, supplied 2006 edition, especially printed pp. 8-15, 169-178 and 198-204. Printed page numbers are six lower than the corresponding PDF page numbers. The musical comparisons above are those discussed within the supplied book; no external musicological material has been added.
