ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the origins of Gurudev’s notation. The trail can first be traced back through Paluskar to successively earlier methods developed in Baroda and Calcutta, then forwards again in order to determine which elements Gurudev may have borrowed and which were likely to have been of his own invention. Paluskar was keen to convince the reader that the notation of Indian music was a new idea and, moreover, his own. Maula Bakhsh (1833–96) was a musician, educator, researcher and writer of the highest order, and he was principal of Sayajirao Gaekwad’s kalavant karkhana in Baroda for roughly the final 15 years of his life. Maula Bakhsh spent a considerable amount of time in Calcutta in the early to mid 1870s. It is not known what notation systems Gurudev may have encountered before Paluskar developed and published his system in 1901 in Sangit Balbodh.
