The principal characteristics in modern Hindu music are a seemingly instinctive sense of harmony; and although the actual chords are absent, the melodic formation of the songs plainly indicates a feeling for modern harmony, and even form. The actual scale resembles our European scale of twelve semitones (twenty-two _s'rutis_, quarter-tones), but the modal development of these sounds has been extraordinary. Now a "mode" is the manner in which the notes of a scale are arranged. For instance, in our major mode the scale is arranged as follows: tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. In India there are at present seventy-two modes in use which are produced by making seventy-two different arrangements of the scale by means of sharps and flats, the only rule being that each degree of the scale must be represented; for instance, one of the modes _Dehrasan-Karabharna_ corresponds to our major scale. Our minor (harmonic) scale figures as _Kyravani_. _Tanarupi_ corresponds to the following succession of notes, [G: c' d-' e--' f' g' a+' b' c''] _Gavambodi_, to [G: c' d-' e-' f+' g' a-' b--' c''] _Maya-Malavagaula_, to [G: c' d' e-' f' g-' a' b-' c''] It can thus easily be seen how the seventy-two modes are possible and practicable. Observe that the seven degrees of the scale are all represented in these modes, the difference between them being in the placing of half-tones by means of sharps or flats. Not content with the complexity that this modal system brought into their music, the Hindus have increased it still more by inventing a number of formulae called _ragas_ (not to be confounded with those rhapsodical songs, the modern descendant of the magic chants, previously mentioned).