Music and Time Annotation << Back Musical Culture of South Asia: Music and Painting in Oncoming Traffic T.V. Kartashova, V.D. Kartashov In South Asian musical culture there is a phenomenon called ragamala. The term «ragamala» consists of two Sanskrit words – «raga» and «mala» and is translated as «garland of ragas». From the point of view of the classical theory of India, raga is a system of techniques for the development of sound tissue, as a result of which a person is immersed in a certain psychoemotional state (rasa), which is originally embedded in any composition. In music ragamala is interpreted as the use of several ragas in a single composition. Another meaning of the term is the genre of medieval Indian miniature painting, which became widespread around the XV century. This is a kind of iconography of raga, embodying its mental essence in the pictorial form of ragamala. Each such «portrait» of raga is not just a picture: it is the embodiment of its psychophysiological essence (dhyana murti) – a kind of form for meditation, through which the musician establishes multi-sided contacts with the type of expression he embodies in the genre being performed. A typical ragamala consists of 36 miniatures, which represent all the members of their raga «families» – parivars: raga (head of the family), ragini (wives), Putra (sons), kanya (daughters-in-law). This classifi cation system, which took into account the peculiarities of the dram’s aesthetics, led to the creation of verbal and poetic descriptions of ragas, often accompanying miniatures of ragamala. Written descriptions of rag (ramadhyan) preserved in various sanskrit treatises. The genre of medieval miniature ragamala reached its apogee by the 17th century. This painting was created in limited quantities to order in the workshops at the courts of feudal rulers who patronized the fine arts. Ragamala is one of the pearls of the unique artistic heritage of the great Indian culture. Keywords: India, ragamala, iconography, painting, dhyana murti, miniature, raag, rasa, raagdhyana, parivar. Pp. 06-11.