Writing Out a Khamaj Bandish: Meend, Kan and a Syllable That Will Not Fit
A candidate is writing a Raag Khamaj bandish in Teentaal for the theory paper, and the draft has come back for correction. As taught, the composition has four features. The sthai begins on matra 9, the khali vibhag, and closes on sam. The text "pā – ni ko – re" carries five syllables. The third phrase takes a meend from upper Sa down to Ga across two matras. A kan of Dha is touched before Pa in the fourth phrase, and the final note is held from matra 15 through sam. The candidate's draft is one continuous line of plain swara letters with matra numbers above them: there are no vibhag bars, no khali mark, no symbol for the meend, and no indication of the kan. The five syllables have been squeezed into four matras, with the last syllable written twice to fill the gap. The paper is marked both for correctness of the raga phrase and for notation conventions.
1. Which errors in this draft actually damage the musical information, and which are merely untidy? Show how the meend and the kan should be written in the Bhatkhande system the syllabus prescribes.
Read the worked answer
Rank the errors by what they destroy.
Damaging: (a) absence of vibhag bars and the khali mark - without them the reader cannot see that the sthai starts on matra 9 and resolves on sam, which is the whole rhythmic point of the composition; (b) no time allocated to the meend - a glide written as two adjacent letters reads as two separate notes; (c) the kan written as an ordinary note would be sung on the beat, changing the raga phrase.
Merely untidy: crowded spacing, uneven matra numerals, the repeated final syllable (though this one also misleads about the text).
Writing conventions (Bhatkhande layout).
- Vertical bar after matras 4, 8 and 12; double bar at sam; the vibhag number and khali/tali symbol written at the start of each vibhag (0 at matra 9 in Teentaal).
- Meend: a curved line drawn from the upper Sa to Ga, with the two letters placed in the matras where the glide begins and ends; the intervening matras are covered by the line, not by extra letters.
- Kan: the grace note written small, or in brackets, immediately before the main swara, taking its time from the preceding note and never given a matra of its own.
The candidate should redraw the whole sthai as a matra grid rather than patch the single line.
2. The teacher must decide whether to keep the composition starting on matra 9 and how to resolve the five-syllables-in-four-matras problem. What is the defensible decision, and what would you write on the script?
Read the worked answer
Decision 1: keep matra 9. A bandish beginning on khali is entirely legitimate in Teentaal; khali is a point of departure, not an error, provided sam remains the resolution. Shifting the sthai to matra 1 to make the notation look tidy would falsify the composition the candidate was taught and would break the word–matra alignment he actually sings. What must be corrected is the marking, not the music.
Decision 2: the text. Five syllables in four matras usually means one syllable is sustained, not that a syllable is duplicated. The candidate should write the syllables under the swara line, one per matra, and use a dash to show a held vowel - for example the final "re" beginning on matra 12 and carried by a dash through matra 15 to sam, matching the instruction that the last note is held from 15.
Comment on the script: "Vibhag bars and 0 at matra 9 added; meend drawn from Ṡ to G; kan of Dha bracketed before Pa; delete the duplicate syllable and show the held note with a dash. Composition itself correct."
Finally, remind the candidate that the syllabus marks in the Bhatkhande tabular layout throughout; mixing in a running, Paluskar-style single line costs marks on consistency alone.