Indian music has a very long, continuous tradition, which has accumulated its heritage over the centuries. The rich history of Indian music unveils the fact that the divine sage Narada introduced the art of music to the Earth from heaven. The origin of music can be traced back to Vedic ages, nearly two thousand years ago. According to the Vedic concept, ‘Nadabrahma’ is the sound that pervades the whole universe and itself represents the divinity. Samaveda is the mother of organized Indian music. The primitive sound ‘Om’ gave origin to all other sounds and music.

In accord to the annals of Indian music, the Veda consists of all the seven notes of the raga ‘Karaharpriya’ in the descending order. The earliest Raga owes its origin to the Samaveda. The first reference to music was made by Panini in 500 BC and first reference to the musical theory was found in ‘Rikpratisakhya’ in 400 BC. Bharata Natyasashtra, which was written on 4th century AD, contains several chapters on Music, which was probably the first clear written work on music that has divided the music into octave and twenty-two keys. The next important work on music was ‘Dathilan’ that also mentions the existence of twenty-two srutis per octave. According to ancient notion, these twenty-two srutis are the only keys that can be made by the human being. Saranga Deva, the renowned musicologist in his famous work Sangeeta Ratnakara supported this fact. Saranga Deva defined almost two hundred and sixty four ragas, which includes both north Indian and south Indian ragas. He also described the various kinds of microtones and also classified them into various categories.

There are many written works, which reveals the history of Indian Music. Among them ‘Brihaddesi’ written by Matanga on 9th AD, attempts to define Raga; ‘Sangeeta Makaranda; written by Narada on eleventh century AD, which enumerates ninety-three Ragas and the Ragas are classified into masculine and feminine species; ‘Swaramela Kalanidhi’ written by Ramamatya in sixteenth AD and ‘Chaturdandi Prakssika’ written by Venkata Makhhi in seventeenth AD.

History of Indian music unfolds the verity that music gradually changed in shape and form. In the beginning the music was devotional in content and was restricted to religious and ritualistic purposes and was purely used in temples only. During the late Vedic Period i.e. from three thousand to twelve hundred BC music was prevailed in the form called Samgana, which was purely chanting of the verses in the musical patterns. After that music changed its course a little bit. The epics were narrated in musical tones called ‘Jatigan’. Between second to seventh century AD, a form of music called ‘Prabandh Sangeet’, written in Sanskrit became very popular. This form gave rise to a simpler form called Dhruvapad, which used Hindi as the medium. The Gupta period is considered as the golden era in the development of Indian Music. Also, in this period all the music treatises like Natya Shastra and Brihaddeshi were written during this period.

The Indian music also changed its shape by the external influence. One of the strongest and significant influences on Indian Music was perhaps the Persian music, which brought a substantial change in the Northern style of Indian music. The music at this time started getting royal patronage. In the fifteenth century AD, the devotional Dhruvapad transformed into the Dhrupad or classical form of singing. The classical Indian music was mainly divided into two forms- the North Indian Hindustani classical and South Indian Carnatic music. The Khayal developed as a new form of singing in the eighteenth century AD. The Indian classical music developed from the ritualistic music in association with folk music and other musical forms of India and gradually derived its own musical characteristics. Historical roots of both Hindustani classical and Carnatic music have the same stem- Bharata’s Natyashastra. This two traditions of music started to diverge only around 14th century AD. Carnatic classical or kriti is mainly based on the Saahitya or lyric oriented, while Hindustani music emphasizes on the musical structure. Hindustani music adopted a scale of Shudha Swara Saptaka or Octave of natural notes while carnatic music retains the style of traditional octave. Both Hindustani and Carnatic music express great assimilative power, also absorbing folk tunes and regional characteristics as well as elevating many of these tunes to the status of ragas. Thus, these two systems of music have mutually influenced each other.

The significance of Indian Classical music is that it is monophonic and is based around a single melody line. When a composition is performed, it melodically bases on one particular raga and rhythmically on one ‘tala’. The performer comes in with a ritualize order-the drone instruments, then the soloist, then accompanists and percussionists. The Indian musical instruments used in classical music include veena, mridangam, tabla, kanjira, tambura, flute, sitar, violin, sarangi etc.

Carnatic music is largely devotional and most of the songs are addressed to Hindu deities. There are a lot of songs emphasizing love and other social issues. The two main components of Carnatic music are Raga, the melodic pattern and tala, the rhythmic pattern. The foundation of Carnatic music lies back to two thousand BC, which began as a spiritual ritual of early Hinduism. The Sama Veda tradition gave origin to Carnatic classical music also, and flourished until the Islamic invasion in twelfth and thirteenth century. Though the northern style of classical music was greatly influenced by Persian Music, still it was divided into Hindu and Muslim songs.

The rich traditional Indian classical music later gave birth to the lighter kind of music like Khayal, Ghazal, Geet, Thumri, Kawali etc. There is a separate stream of religious song named as Bhajan and Kirtan.

The history of Indian music thus murmurs the rich saga of the journey of changing ritualism in India.