Authority, Critique, and Revision in the Sanskrit Music-Theoretic Tradition: Rereading the Svara-mela-kalanidhi

The influential sixteenth-century Sanskrit treatise Svara-mela-kalanidhi describes a novel system of naming tones, of organizing raga-s by pitch content, and of reckoning svara-s on 12 fret positions rather than 22 gruti-s. Contrary to its common construal as a sudden rupture in tradition, we highlight the rhetorical means by which the treatise systematically grounds its authority (and that of its ambitious patron, Ramaraya) in the canon of sangita-sastra. We also offer a new translation and a new (non-Pythagorean) interpretation of its svayambhu-based tuning system.