The Rāgalakṣaṇam was composed by Mudduveṅkaṭamakhin in Tanjore in the early eighteenth century CE. It is an important text of Karnataka music and appeared in an effervescent epoch in the development of this music system of which it deals only with rāga.It collects, classifies, codifies and characterizes the entire music base of the Indian peninsula. The author was a musician, musicologist and music composer of high order. His contribution to the world of music is twofold; systematization of the theory of rāga content of his times and creating music to crystallize the character and scope of each rāga described.

The author derived his inspiration from his great-grandfather, Veṅkaṭmakhim who revolutionized the theory and practice of Indian music through his scheme of seventy-two melas. His Caturdaṇḍīprakāśīkā illustrates the four fun dam en tal components ( daṇḍī of music-gīta, ālāpa, ṭhāya and prabandha, which his paramaguro (teacher's teacher) Tanappa postulated and illustrated. His own guru was his father Govindadīkṣita who made the first daṇḍīs in practice in his Saṅgītasudhā.

Thus a line of four important musicians­ musicologists-composer of south India - Tānappā, Govindadiīkṣita, Veṅkaṭamakhin and Mudduveṅkaṭamakhin -built up or reorganized a textual tradition which supported a living dynamic tradition of performed music in which hundreds of composers, thousands of performers and countless listeners endeavoured to continuously strengthen and nourish it. The Rāgalakṣaṇam marks an important phase of this great evolution.