Module 4: Raga fundamentals · Lesson 4

Parent and derived ragas

● Confidence: high Last verified: 12 Oct 2026

Families of ragas

There are many hundreds of ragas in use. To keep them organised, Carnatic theory arranges them in families. At the top are 72 parent ragas, the melakartas (also called janaka ragas ). Every other raga is a derived raga, a Janya raga , that takes its notes from one parent. That parent is its Parent scale .

What makes a melakarta

A melakarta is a raga with all seven notes, in straight order, both going up and coming down, with no zigzags. The only differences between the 72 are which variants of the notes they use.

Why exactly 72?

Sa and Pa are fixed. The other five notes vary, but not freely. Remember that some note names share a pitch, so a Ga can never be lower than the Ri before it. That leaves these allowed pairs of (Ri, Ga):

(R1, G1), (R1, G2), (R1, G3), (R2, G2), (R2, G3), (R3, G3)

That is 6 pairs. The Dha and Ni follow the same rule, giving 6 pairs of (Dha, Ni). Ma has 2 forms. So the number of melakartas is 2 × 6 × 6 = 72.

Chakras: six at a time

The 72 are arranged in a fixed order, in groups of six called chakras , and there are 12 chakras (named Indu, Netra, Agni, Veda, Bana, Rutu, Rishi, Vasu, Brahma, Disi, Rudra and Aditya). The first 36 ragas use the lower Ma (Shuddha Madhyama (M1) , M1) and the second 36 use the higher Ma (Prati Madhyama (M2) , M2).

• Inside each half, the chakra decides the (Ri, Ga) pair, running through the six pairs above in order.
• Inside each chakra, the position decides the (Dha, Ni) pair, again in the same order of six.

A worked example: number 29

Take melakarta number 29, Dheerasankarabharanam.

1. 29 is within the first 36, so Ma is M1.
2. Counting 6 per chakra, it is in the 5th chakra (Bana), which uses the 5th (Ri, Ga) pair: R2, G3.
3. It is the 5th raga within that chakra (numbers 25 to 30), so it uses the 5th (Dha, Ni) pair: D2, N3.

The same method gives every scale in the melakarta chart on this site. This is how the 72 are generated in the site’s data, and a program checks the result.

Try the rule yourself: type any number from 1 to 72 and see which notes it fixes, then play the scale.

The katapayadi code

The 72 ragas have names designed so that the name tells you the number. This is the katapayadi code, in which each consonant stands for a digit, and you read the first two consonant-syllables of the name and reverse the digits.

• Harikambhoji: ha is 8 and ri is 2; reversed, 28.
• Dheerasankarabharanam: dha is 9 and ra is 2; reversed, 29.
• Mechakalyani: ma is 5 and cha is 6; reversed, 65.

Derived ragas

A janya raga starts from the notes of its parent and changes them: it may leave notes out (Varjya ), take a zigzag path (Vakra ), or even borrow an outside note (Bhashanga ). A janya which keeps strictly to its parent’s notes is Upanga .