60

SCENES IN INDIA.

second chapter contains a minute description of dif-
ferent vinas, with rules for playing on them."*

" I tried in vain," says the author just quoted,
" to discover any difference in practice between the
Indian scale and that of our own; but knowing my
ear to be very insufficiently exercised, I requested a
German professor to accompany with his violin a
Hindoo lutanist, who sang by note some popular airs
in the loves of Krishna and Ra'dhi. He assured me
that the scales were the same, and Mr. Shore t after-
wards informed me, that when the voice of a native
singer was in tune with his harpsichord, he found the
Hindoo series of seven notes transcend like ours by a
sharp third."

From these extracts it will appear that the Hindoos
at an early period of their very remote history, cul-
tivated music as a science, and that they were, more-
over, deeply cognizant in the theory of sounds. Their
music, if we examine its modes, appears to have the
same origin as that of the Greeks, and also that of
the Arabs under the Caliphs, although but few frag-
ments of the latter remain. There is, however, one
peculiarity in the music of the Hindoos; every melody
is in correct measure, and may be barred like an
ordinary European air. The Arabs, on the contrary,
had no fixed measure, the length and brevity of their
notes being, like the modern recitative, subordinate
to the performer's taste. The lyric music of the
Greeks was measured by the prosody of the poetry to

* On the musical modes of the Hindoos, see Asiatic Re-
searches, vol. iii.

t The late Lord Teignmouth.