Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (10 August 1860 – 19 September 1936) was an Indian musicologist who wrote the first modern treatise on Hindustani classical music (The north Indian
variety of Indian classical music), an art which had been propagated earlier for a few centuries mostly through oral traditions. During those earlier times, the art had undergone several changes,
rendering the raga grammar documented in scant old texts outdated. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande was born in 1860 in Walkeshwar, Mumbai, Maharashtra. His father
had great passion for music which motivated him to study music. At an early age he had mastered singing, veena and flute. He was educated at Elphinstone College in Mumbai and
Deccan College in Pune. He graduated with a degree in Law in 1885 and joined the legal profession in 1887. Later he served a short stint as a lawyer in the High Court in Karachi.
During his college days, Bhatkhande began learning sitar playing from Vallabhdas. He later learned vocal music from Raojiba, a Dhrupad singer. He also trained in other aspects of classical
music under Belbagkar, Ali Hussain Khan, and Vilayat Hussain Khan. He became a member of Gayan Uttejak Mandali, a musical circle in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
Ragas used to be classified into Raga (male), Ragini (female), and Putra (children). Bhatkhande reclassified them into the currently used Thaat system. He noted that several ragas did not
conform to their description in ancient Sanskrit texts. He explained the ragas in an easy-to- understand language and composed several bandishes which explained the grammar of the
ragas.
In 1909, he published Shri Mallakshaya Sangeetam, in Sanskrit, under the pseudonym ‘Chatur-pandit’. To make this cultural heritage accessible to the common man, he published commentary on his own Sanskrit grantha in Marathi over a span of several years; it was published over four volumes bearing the title: Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati. These volumes form today the standard text on Hindustani music, an indispensable starting point for any student of Hindustani Classical Music. His disciple S N Ratanjankar, famous musician Shri. Dilip Kumar Roy,
Ratanjankar’s disciple K. G. Ginde, S.C.R.Bhatt, Ram Ashrey Jha ‘Ramrang’, Sumati Mutatkar and Krishna Kumar Kapoor are among the notable scholars who followed in the footsteps of Bhatkhande. His notation system became standard and though later scholars like Pt. V. D.
Paluskar, Pandit Vinayakrao Patwardhan and Pt. Omkarnath Thakur introduced their improved versions, it remained a publisher’s favorite. It suffered a setback with onset of desktop publishing, which found inserting marks above and below Devanagari text cumbersome; as a result, books carrying compositions yielded to theoretical texts. A recently developed notation system OmeSwarlipi follows the logical structure introduced by Pt. Bhatkhande but uses symbols instead of Devanagari alphabets.
After travelling widely and having discussions with practitioners of various schools, Bhatkhande arranged all the ragas of Hindustani classical music across 10 musical scales, called thaats.
Though the thaats do not encompass all possible ragas, they do cover the vast majority, and are a key contribution to Indian musical theory. The thaat structure corresponds to the melakarta system of raga arrangement in Carnatic music, the south Indian variety of Indian classical music.
Bhatkhande wrote all of his works under one of the two pseudonyms, Vishnu Sharma and Chaturpandit.Bhatkhande started schools and colleges in India for systematic teaching of
Hindustani music. In 1916, he reorganized the Baroda state music school, and later, with the help of the Maharaja of Gwalior, established the Madhav Music College in Gwalior.
In 1926, Rai Umanath Bali and his nephew Dr. Rai Rajeshwar Bali, then education minister of
United Provinces, established Marris College of Music in Lucknow,[3] Bhatkhande preparing the course material. The college was later renamed Bhatkhande College of Hindustani Music, and is now known as Bhatkhande Music Institute (Deemed University). Preparation of that course material was a landmark achievement of Bhatkhande since musical knowledge used to be passed on orally in earlier times from Gurus and Ustads to their disciples.
Bhatkhande prepared the Hindustani Sangeet Kramik Pustak Maalika as a series of textbooks.
He also started the tradition of the All India Music Conferences to provide a common platform for discussion between Hindustani and Carnatic classical musicians.
The Post and Telegraph Department of India paid homage to Bhatkhande by releasing on 1 September 1961 a commemorative stamp containing his portrait.
