Thaat

A thāt (Hindi: ठाट; Marathi: थाट; Bengali: ঠাট; Urdu: ٹھاٹھ‎; also transliterated as thaat) is a mode in northern Indian or Hindustani music. Thāts always have seven different pitches (called swara) and are a basis for the organization and classification of ragas in North Indian classical music.

The modern thāt system was created by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936), one of the most influential musicologists in the field of North Indian classical music in the early decades of the twentieth century. Bhatkhande modeled his system after the Carnatic melakarta classification, devised around 1640 A.D. by the musicologist Venkatamakhin. Bhatkhande visited many of the gharanas (schools) of North Indian classical music, conducting a detailed analysis of Indian raga. His research led him to a system of thirty-two thāts, each named after a prominent raga associated with it. Out of those thirty-two thāts, more than a dozen thāts were popular during his time; however, he chose to highlight only ten such thāts.

According to Bhatkhande, each one of the several traditional ragas is based on, or is a variation of, ten basic thāts, or musical scales or frameworks. The ten thāts are Bilawal, Kalyan, Khamaj, Bhairav, Poorvi, Marwa, Kafi, Asavari, Bhairavi and Todi; if one were to pick a raga at random, it should be possible to find that it is based on one or the other of these thāts. For instance, the ragas Shri and Puriya Dhanashri are based on the Poorvi thāts, Malkauns on the Bhairavi, and Darbari Kanada on the Asvari thāts. It is important to point out that Bhatkande's thāts-raga theory is not very accurate, but it is nevertheless an important classification device with which to order, and make sense of, a bewildering array of ragas; and it is also a useful tool in the dissemination of the music to students.

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