thaats

Thaat is a theoretical framework used in Hindustani classical music to categorize ragas by their melodic parent scale. The concept was developed by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande in the early 20th century as a practical tool for pedagogy and repertoire management. A thaat defines a seven-note scale built from shuddha (natural), komal (flat), and teevra (sharp) versions of the swaras: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni. Teevra Ma is the only raised note commonly used in thaats; some thaats also incorporate komal varieties of other notes. The aim is to group hundreds of ragas under common scalar templates, making it easier to study and compare different tonal landscapes.

There are ten principal thaats in the traditional system, though some schools recognize variations. A raga is assigned to a thaat if its aroha and avaroha predominantly use notes from that thaat; many ragas, however, are vakra (nonlinear) and may employ notes outside a single thaat. Consequently, thaat serves as a convenient starting point for classification, not an immutable rule, and ragas are often described as belonging to more than one thaat depending on interpretation.

Historically, Bhatkhande's classifications, published in the early 1900s, helped standardize methods of instruction and repertoire across North Indian music schools. Today, the thaat system remains a common educational tool and a reference for performers, composers, and scholars, though practitioners emphasize raga-specific rules, ornamentation, and mood alongside any thaat assignment.