The thrust of this book (1370 pages) is the coverage of musical meters used in the predominating classical (shastriya) musical systems (Hindustani and Karnatic) as well as non-classical (ashastriya) and folk systems ( loka and desi talas). The sheer expanse of geographic coverage {from Nepal and Ladakh (UT) to Sri Lanka} and time span (2nd century CE to present day) is quite gigantic. Efforts at attempting to capture the talas have resulted in marshalling of the structures of:

• 3,000 talas of the medieval and transition period.
• 650 musical meters of the Hindustani classical mode of representation.
• 200 musical meters of the Karnatic classical system.
• 650 musical meters of the folk arena covering Assam, Bengal, Kashmir, Manipur, Khasi (Meghalaya), Kirtan-Gurmat Sangeet, Odissi, medieval Kerala folk arts, Tenkutittu Yakshagana of Karnataka, and
• 150 musical meters of folk artforms of Nepal, Ladakh (UT) and Sri Lanka.

Two critical metrical structures, historically ignored in the repertoire of the evolutionary tala system have been highlighted. One, chaturbhaaga of drutha with an assigned value of ½ a beat though not given the formal status of a tala anga, yet nevertheless quite rampantly popular in folk musical systems of the Indian sub-continent (deployed as Ti Ti Tai talas). The other anga not accorded a formal status in the Indian metrical component hierarchy is the 1½ beat chapu- the Antara drutha {as it is located in-between the anudrutha (single beat) and drutha (two beats)} or traipada drutha, which is highly popular in Karnatic and Southern folk musical systems.
The book is divided into 12 Chapters with a glossary and data bases of talas arranged alphabetically, numerically according to the matra size and numerically as per their anga size.