Development of new Ragas is a highly creative process. In fact I tend to believe that creation of new ragas is a divine process. When a musician reaches a high level of concentration during Riyaaz and loses one’s identity; or in other words; merges with the super power, a melodious combination (never heard or thought of before) occurs to him/ her like a flash and such a moment signifies the birth of a new raga. However, it requires a high level of creativity, deep thought process and tremendous amount of efforts to discover the hidden subtleties of melody in the new combination so conceived before the new melodic structure gets acceptance as a new Raga.
Although, evolution of a new Raga is a very abstract process, an attempt can be made to understand some of the possible ways in which new ragas can be developed. Some of the ways are listed below:
Note- (i) It is not to be concluded from the illustrations given below that the ragas have actually evolved or were conceived in the manner stated. The illustrations are included purely from an academic angle and will help a viewer to understand the co-relation and subtle differences between scales of different Ragas.
(ii) It may also be noted that scale of a Raga is only the first step in learning the overall structure of the Raga.
It will be interesting to look at some of the case studies click here