In Hindustani music, one is very particular about the time of the day in which a raga is performed, whereas in Carnatic music, there is generally no such restrictions. However, I just learnt that certain Carnatic ragas are also said to be suited for particular times of the day, for example Bauli is for the morning, Bilahari after the sun rises and so on. There are also ragas like Kambhoji and Arabhi that were classified traditionally as Sarvakalika ragas, meaning they can be sung at all times. I was surprised initially when I knew that about Bauli, because my first impression was that it's something nice to listen to deep in the night. But they say it's best performed just before the sun rises, I guess that is also quite close . I don't know many songs in Bauli actually, the main thing is Sreeman Narayana by Annamacharya. He was a composer from the 15th century, who lived half a century earlier than the man known as father of Carnatic music, Purandaradasa. That makes the song about 500 years old.

What really amazes me now is to read that the raga Bauli apparently existed already about 2000 years ago. It was mentioned in the 2nd-century Tamil epic Silappadikaram as the pan Nodiram, 'pan' being the Tamil word for raga then. In one passage of Silappadikaram, the bees are said to be humming the pan Nodiram melodiously at daybreak. So Bauli as a morning raga is really a long tradition! By the way, Silappadikaram also contains plenty of other information on music, for example on how to play the instrument called yazh which predates what we identify as the veena today. It also gives the names of the seven swaras in ancient Tamil music, in other words the Tamil words which correspond to our Sa Re Ga Ma today which are taken from Sanskrit. Incidentally, the animals associated with the seven swaras in the past were also different from what music teachers now teach - the shrill of the peacock being Sa, bellowing of cow being Re and so on, that is just from the Sanskrit tradition. Well this is not to talk as if one should replace all the Sanskrit words with Tamil now like people replacing Sanskrit prayers with Tamil, all that stuff about Brahmins using Sanskrit to dominate and so on. Culture is something that keeps evolving, there is no need to revise things to inconvenience oneself. But history is something that is always interesting to know.