1. Metric cycles are found in the northern Hindustani system as well as in the southern Karnatak system, but only in the first are they articulated by a fairly fixed series of , or quasi-onomatopoeic syllables with corresponding drum strokes (e.g. etc.). When repeated cyclically these syllabic/stroke patterns are known as , meaning "support": an appropriate word in view of their essential function as supporting or accompanying patterns. Among traditional (that is, hereditary) Hindustani musicians I have found that the is the primary signifier of a , not the clapping pattern. Since no equivalent fixed pattern exists in Karnatak music the gestures dominate there, often to the extent that a knowledgeable audience joins the musicians in unerring sequences of claps, waves, and finger counts. This is rarely the case with a Hindustani concert. The difference, then, is that Hindustani meter is an internal notion that is externalized by the while Karnatak meter is an internal notion that is externalized by clapping.

  2. The notable exception in Hindustani music is , which retains much of its gestural language: in this older, and now much rarer, genre accompanied by the there was almost certainly no concept equivalent to , and the early twentieth-century scholar V.N. Bhatkhande's invented term has no currency (I have never heard it used). As is the case in Karnatak music, Hindustani singers and drummers perform compositions and improvisations simultaneously, and so rather than repeated cycles of fixed patterns it is the hand gestures that provide (i.e. externalize) the necessary temporal markers. It seems likely that both the concept and the practice of , if not the term, were borrowed by the in recent times. patterns (see Figure 1) associated with traditional (e.g. , , )1 are really adaptations or extensions of a short (composed sequence) that ends with a standard cadential figure . As markers of the internal structure of the these patterns are inconsistent, otherwise the position of the claps (X, 2, 3 etc.) and waves (0) would have more in common. (Note, in particular, that is marked by a clap and a wave in and by two claps in ). I would like to say that these patterns qua have probably become fixed by a mixture of habit and the scholarly (and/or modern didactic) practice of writing them down, but more evidence is needed.

  3. are thought to be linked to Sanskrit verse whose agogic organization is essentially an additive, or quantitative, system of short (S) and long (L) syllables: the short, marked as a clap, is half the duration of the long, marked by a clap plus a wave. In this system, though, each clap and wave in and is given its own , or subdivision. is clapped and played as 3+2+2, but is rationalized as 2+1+2+2, or LSLL. (or , a fourteen-count2 whose constituent and structure are hotly debated, is an exception that can be explained by the fact that it was borrowed from the folk music of the Mathura region (the homeland of Lord Krishna).