No single date marks the moment Hindustani ragas acquired fixed times of day. The evidence points to a gradual development: older texts linked music to seasons and to divisions of the day, and a more systematic scheme came later. That scheme is most closely associated with Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860–1936), whose classification work in the early twentieth century organized ragas by time and by the thāṭ framework. Earlier ideas were not invented from nothing, and Bhatkhande’s achievement was to codify and teach them.
The layers, in order
The question is easier to answer once the different kinds of evidence are separated. Sources often mention time in the same breath, but they describe different things: a season, a part of the day, or a regular performance slot for a named raga.
| Layer | Date given in the sources cited | What it links | What it does not prove |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seasonal prescriptions | Not stated | A musical form to a season; one example is attributed through Abhinavagupta to Kashyapa, as reported in Scroll.in’s 2017 historical overview | A daily schedule for ragas |
| Forms assigned to a yama or prahara | Not stated | Two gīti forms assigned to the first yama or prahara, a division of the day, per the same overview | That each raga already had a fixed hour |
| Saṅgīta-ratnākara | Early thirteenth century | Raga linked to performance time, according to Rāgs Around the Clock (Open Book Publishers, 2024) | A complete modern 24-hour scheme in that text |
| Bhatkhande’s systematization | Early twentieth century | Time assignments organized within the thāṭ framework | That the practice began with him |
Earlier precedents: seasons and divisions of the day
The oldest evidence is not a timetable. It is a set of prescriptions that tie a musical form to a season, and references to particular periods of the day. The Scroll.in overview states the key point directly: the raga-time theory “is certainly not as old as the ragas themselves.” That sentence is the article’s own wording, not a quotation from a named musicologist, so it should be paraphrased or attributed to the article if you reuse it.
Seasonal prescriptions
Seasonal association is the earliest kind of time-linked thinking described in these accounts. A season is a broader frame than an hour, and an instruction to perform in a season does not tell a performer which hour of the day to choose. The sources reviewed do not date the seasonal example precisely, so it should be read as evidence of an early interest in timing, not as a dated rule.
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Forms assigned to a yama or prahara
The second precedent is more specific. Scroll.in’s overview mentions two gīti forms assigned to the first yama or prahara, the terms used for divisions of the day. This shows that musical forms were already being related to parts of the day. It does not show that every raga had a settled time slot, or that the division of the day used in this passage matches the modern one. For readers who want background on how Indian texts measured the day, the 2017 article “The Units of Time in Ancient and Medieval India” in History of Science in South Asia gives context on time units, though it does not address the origin of raga-time assignments.
The Saṅgīta-ratnākara and later treatises
The early-thirteenth-century Saṅgīta-ratnākara is the point at which the Open Book Publishers handbook Rāgs Around the Clock (2024) places a clear link between raga and performance time. It is a meaningful milestone, but the handbook does not present it as the beginning of the modern system. It also explains that Bhatkhande’s historical reasoning and his system-building drew on later treatises and on living performance practice, rather than copying a fully formed scheme from the earliest texts.
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Bhatkhande and the modern system
Bhatkhande’s early twentieth-century work is the turning point most accounts identify. He made raga classification more systematic and tied time theory to the thāṭ framework, so that a raga’s time was read alongside its tonal organization. Scroll.in credits him with this systematization, and the handbook treats his contribution the same way.
Systematization, not invention
The most accurate description is that Bhatkhande organized and taught a set of time associations that already circulated in part, in texts and in practice. Calling him the inventor of raga-time would claim more than the evidence supports. Calling the system older than him would blur the difference between scattered precedents and a coherent classification.
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The 1916 All-India Music Conference in Baroda
The 1916 All-India Music Conference in Baroda is a useful marker of Bhatkhande’s public effort to present Hindustani music as an independent system. It is a good date for that presentation. It is not a good date for when raga-time associations began, and it should not be cited that way.
How much the 2020 journal article can carry
K. N. Deepa’s 2020 paper “Aesthetics of Music – A Detailed Study on Raga Therapy,” published in the Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, says that the precise period when time theory entered practice is unclear. It also credits Bhatkhande with systematizing the theory from the start of the twentieth century. Because the paper is a secondary account and makes broad claims, use it to corroborate the picture above rather than as the sole authority for any date.
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What the theory explains, and what it does not prove
Modern explanations usually connect a raga’s time with its tonal organization and with the division of the day into periods. These are accounts of how the classification is taught and practiced. They do not establish a historical cause for why each raga was given its particular time. Nor do they establish a scientific or physiological mechanism behind the scheme, so any article or teacher who asserts one should be asked for separate evidence.
Keeping the claims apart
Three claims often get merged. Keep them separate when you read or repeat them:
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- A raga or musical form associated with a season.
- A musical form assigned to a yama or prahara.
- The modern practice of giving a named raga a regular time slot.
Each may come from a different period, and the first two are not evidence of the third.
Evidence limits
The main sources here are a historical overview, a scholarly handbook, and a secondary journal article. The original passages of the early treatises are described through these secondary accounts rather than quoted in full, so exact wording and dating of those passages should be checked against editions before you rely on them. The start of the modern timetable, regional variation, and the period when today’s conventions became widely taught are not settled at a fine-grained level. Any claim of an exact origin year or of a single unchanged practice across centuries goes beyond what is documented.
Further reading
For examples and a deeper reference after this history, Rāgs Around the Clock: A Handbook for North Indian Classical Music, with Online Recordings in the Khayāl Style (Open Book Publishers, 2024) is a scholarly option that pairs the explanation with recordings.
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