Art experience, which is subjective by nature, however doesn’t
prohibit objective approaches to the ‘raga-rasa’ relation in
Indian Music. The thought that the ‘rasa’ (the aesthetic taste)
is inherent to a “Raga” is the main premise on which raga-s are
termed emotive and in the sense that they evoke a definite
‘rasa’. This very premise needs to be revalidated
scientifically. The autonomy of ‘musical stimulus’ evoking
‘desired’ responses in human subjects is often accepted by
consensus. The impact and the resultant response to music by
human subjects are broadly categorized into two types namely,
Affective Response and Aesthetic Response (Lundin, 1967). Of the
two, affective response to music is objective by nature, for
‘the musical stimulus creates a definite change in the organism’
(Lundin, 1967). The convenience of having sufficient scientific
equipments for the measurement of the affective responses is the
main motivation to take up the scientific study of the nature of
response to music. Notwithstanding th