Bhairav or Bhairavi? Correcting a Thaat Worksheet
At a Mysuru school, four Class 10 students are preparing the theory viva for the KSEAB SSLC Hindustani Music examination. Their worksheet has five columns: raga, thaat, komal svaras, vadi–samvadi, and time of day. One student has entered Raag Bhairav as S R G M P D N, with komal Re and komal Dha, but has also put a teevra mark on Ma. A second student insists that because Bhairav and Bhairavi sound alike, both must belong to the Bhairavi thaat and use all four komal svaras (Re, Ga, Dha, Ni). The group has a 20-minute revision slot before the teacher returns. They ask you to settle the disagreement without simply giving them the answer: they want a rule they can apply to any raga on the worksheet. The worksheet also has a blank for Bhairavi’s aroha and avaroha, and the students are unsure whether every permitted svara must appear in both lines.
1. Which thaat, komal svaras, vadi–samvadi, and time should be entered for Raag Bhairav, and why is the name-similarity argument invalid? Show the reasoning a student should write in the viva.
Read the worked answer
Bhairav belongs to Bhairav thaat. The komal svaras are Re and Dha; Ma is shuddha, so the teevra mark on Ma is an error. The vadi is Dha and the samvadi is Re. The traditional time is the first prahar of the morning, around sunrise.
The name-similarity argument fails because a thaat is defined by its set of svaras, not by the name of the raga. Bhairavi thaat has four komal svaras - Re, Ga, Dha, Ni - and shuddha Ma. Bhairav has only Re and Dha komal. If the students applied the name rule, they would wrongly turn Bhairav into a different scale and lose the distinctive komal Re–Dha phrases that identify it. The rule to teach is: first write the aroha–avaroha, mark every komal or teevra svara, then match the set to a thaat. The name is only a label.
2. Complete the Bhairavi row: thaat, komal svaras, vadi–samvadi, time, and explain why aroha and avaroha need not list every svara. Give one acceptable Bhairavi aroha and avaroha.
Read the worked answer
Bhairavi belongs to Bhairavi thaat: komal Re, Ga, Dha, Ni, with shuddha Ma. The vadi is usually Ma and the samvadi Sa. It is associated with the last prahar of the morning and is also sung at the end of a concert, so the time column should not be reduced to one clock hour.
Aroha and avaroha are melodic pathways, not complete scales. A raga may skip a svara in aroha, use it only in avaroha, or approach it in a crooked (vakra) phrase. That is why examiners accept more than one line if the phrases are idiomatic. An acceptable pair is:
- Aroha: S r g M P d n S
- Avaroha: S n d P M g r S
Some traditions omit Re in the aroha, giving S g M P d n S. The important point is that the omitted Re is still part of the thaat and can appear in phrases; omission from aroha does not remove it from the raga.