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11.Offshoot raga

As per Wim Van Der Meer’s quote: "we then include many variants which the great masters would rarely recognize as independent manifestations. Some minor deviations and hybrids of main ragas have only a temporary existence. In other case one and the same ragas in interpreted differently according to style and school. In principle every raga should stand for a definite and independent musical idea, though in some cases two minor shades of one raga can grow into two distinct ragas", ragas change and multiply like living creatures.

・Raga named Misra
 36 ragas named Misra are listed in Table-25. They are relatively easy to understand how original ragas can change into offshoot ragas. Misra means "mixed, united, integrated" in Hindi.

Table-25

　Let us see an example of Misra ragas. Raga Kafi is one of them and its scale is as follows. It is close to the minor scale in Western music.
　Sa Ri ga Ma Pa Dha ni Sa' (C D E♭ F G A B♭)
　Musicians play a raga keeping the pitch strict. Once another note is inserted, the audience judges the performance as inappropriate. However a master musician sometimes inserts the note like Ga(E) on raga Kafi which is not usually allowed. The audience who is accustomed to a position of stability gets tense and feels relieved when a musician returns to the original raga Kafi again. In this manner musicians try to change the mood slightly using unexpected notes consciously. Ga(E) is not expected to be inserted in Kafi. If it happens accidently, it is recognized as a different raga. However if a musician inserts other notes such as Ga (E) carefully without destroying the mood of Kafi, the raga can be changed to Misra Kafi. What notes can be inserted depends on the musician's subjective view. Inserting notes are chosen as surrounding notes to key notes (vadi or samvadi) and this decides the character of a raga. As the scale constitution of Misra Kafi cannot be fixed, it cannot be written down in raga collection books.
 Table-26 shows Misra ragas on DHKM and IDisc. Number of Misra ragas in IDisc is more than DHKM. It may be said that "Misra" ragas increased with time.

Table-26

・Other offshoot ragas

Table-27
　Table-27 shows names of ragas from which offshoot ragas are derived and number of offshoot ragas as more than five. Name of each offshoot raga more than twice is shown in Table-28. Total number of offshoot ragas is 543. Offshoot ragas which have two raga names are given priority over a name which basically comes later.
　Including 36 "Misra" raga, there are considerable offshoot ragas. It may suggest how musicians have tried to create a new raga from a conventional one for their new expression.

　Ragas marked "*"  are especially called Ragang Raga which make a new derived raga by mixing with another raga. They are Bhairav, Bilaval, Todi, Sarang, Kanhra, Malhar, Bahar and Gauri.(Kanada Ke Prakar)。