Bare Bones Raga Guide:
The heuristic value of classification by Wim van der Meer
Introduction
Teaching is possibly the best way of learning. Teaching confronts us with our own lack of knowledge and raises questions we never thought about. For a number of years I taught a course called "raga analysis" to students of Indian music at the Rotterdam conservatory. It is a two year course, given in the third and fourth years, and aims at providing the student with a (passive) knowledge of the most important ragas of North Indian music.
We can safely say there are between 50 and 80 well known ragas. The number is vague simply because there is no standardized list and the importance of ragas is subjective.
Indian musicians grow up in an environment where they gradually acquire an immediate (in the literal sense: without intermediary) knowledge of ragas. This is comparable to our knowledge of persons. When I meet someone known to me I do not say to myself: "this person is tall, male and has red hair" and then check in my list who fits the description. Rather, I don't think at all, I immediately say "hi John" or punch him on the nose as the case might be. The description might serve a "wanted" poster though! Similarly, when we see a rose or a tulip we know it. Or do you? Well anyway, when I see a primrose I don't. But there are incredibly practical little books known as floras that ask you a few simple questions about the position and shape of the leaves and the color and structure of the flowers and pop up the right name of the little critter in a jiffy. Even though the number of ragas is nowhere comparable to the number of plants, western students get very confused in the beginning. To help them through this phase I thought of making a determination list, since the existing books on ragas have at best a list of ascending/descending scales as a basic orientation. Otherwise there are quite a few books describing the ragas, although their usefulness can be doubted. In Hindi the standard works still are Bhatkhande's Kramik Pustak Malika and Sangit Paddhati. Omkarnath Thakur's Sangitanjali is quite useful, although it is really a student's book for learning ragas. V.C. Ray Chaudhuri's Rag Vyakaran is a recent survey describing about 700 ragas, but it is hard to find what you're looking for if you don't know the name, since it is alphabetically arranged. In English there are Kaufman's The Ragas of Hindustani Music, which is very much based on Bhatkhande's work and Subba Rao's Raganidhi, which is alphabetical like the Rag Vyakaran. In 1999 Nimbus brought out our Raga Guide (again alphabetical) accompanied by four CD's recorded by master musicians giving brief outlines and a composition in 74 ragas.