Sa, Ri, Ga, Pa, Ni, Sa

If we used Sa, Ri, Ga, Pa, Ni, Sa then we get Ragam Hamsadhwani.
If we used Sa, Ri, Ma, Pa, Dha, Sa then we get Ragam Suddha Saveri. (The Hindustani equivalent for this scale is Rag Durga)
If you have a keyboard try to play just these keys and see if you can get a feel for the identities of these Ragams. For example, in Mohanam, the jump from Ga to Pa or for that matter Dha to upper Sa is quite characteristic. Besides Karnatic and Hindustani music, a lot of Oriental tunes are based on the scale of Mohanam!
(3) The five note scale, such as Mohanam, is called a Pentatonic Ragam. The Indian equivalent term is 'Oudava Ragam'. Similary, the six note Ragam is called Shadva Ragam in India or Sextatonic in Western terminology. And the seven note Ragam is called Septatonic or Sampoorna. While the Ragam Mohanam is pentatonic with an implicit assumption that Arohanam and Avarohanam are reverses of each other, other asymmetric possibilities are allowed.
A ragam can have five notes on the way up (in Arohanam) and seven on the way down. (Avarohanam) For example, you can have a ragam which is exactly Mohanam in terms of Arohanam (Sa ri ga pa dha sa) but is Kalyani (Sa ni dha pa ma 2 ga ri sa) on the way down. This oudava - sampoorna Ragam is called Mohanakalyani. So you can have oudava-oudava, oudava-sampoorna, sampoorna-shadva etc. combinations. (Melakarta Ragams are of course, Sampoorna-Sampoorna) Also, the Avarohanam need not be the reverse of the Arohanam. For example, you can have a ragam that goes Sa-ri1-ma1-dha1-ni2-Sa (Arohanam) and Sa-ni1-dha2-pa-ma2-ga2-Sa. (Avarohanam) A good lot of ragams are however symmetric. (The same keys used to go up the octave or down the octave)
Once you have chosen the keys, you are restricted to play only those keys, however you can play them any way you want. You can compose a phrase that goes Sa-ma1-ma1-dha1-Sa-dha2-dha2-ga2. You can skip notes if you wish.

This brings out...

This brings out another interesting aspect of the Melakarta Scheme. The names of the ragams are not arbitrary. The names contain mnemonics which spell out which keys are used in the ragam. From the name DhheeraShankarabharanam, we could figure out that it is all white keys ! (Venkatamakhin was lucky that most of the 72 ragams were not known then, so he could assign names to them or add a prefix to the existing ones. Imagine if all the ragams were to exist first and then you try to group them, you may not have such mnemonics possible) In fact, in Hindustani music, such schemes were not invented and now we have hundreds of ragams which are tough to classify using such simple mnemonics. Of course, the absence of such a comprehensive scheme is by no means a negative or a deficiency on the Hindustani musical system. In music, like in most things in life, we don't (and should not) want to make value judgements !
Let me now explain you the mnemonic or the Katayapadi System. (Thanks to R. Pichumani for the notes in this section) A look-up table is created, given in Table V that assigns syllables to numbers.

Table III-22 Sruti scheme

Sruti Frequency Frequency

ratio (Hertz)



Sa 1 240



Ri 1 32/31 252.8

Ri 2 16/15 256


Ri 3 10/9 266.6


Ri 4 9/8 270


Ga 1 32/27 284.4


Ga 2 6/5 288

Ga 3 5/4 300


Ga 4 81/64 303.7

Ma 1 4/3 320

Ma 2 27/20 324

Ma 3 45/32 337.5

Ma 4 64/45 341.3

Pa 3/2 360


Dha 1 128/81 379

Dha 2 8/5 384

Dha 3 5/3 400


Dha 4 27/16 405


Ni 1 16/9 426.6

Ni 2 9/5 432

Ni 3 15/8 450


Ni 4 31/16 465