Page:The Music of India.djvu/121

 years; old paintings and sculptures, such as those of Ajanta, prove this even more conclusively. There are many musical instruments to be found among the sculptures existing upon various old cave-temples and ancient Buddhist topes and stupas in different parts of India.

'Those at Amrfivati and Sanchi are especially interesting. For in the Amravatl sculptures, which were visited by the traveller, Hiouen Thsang, and called by him Dhananacheka, about the year 640 of our era, we find several representations of musical instruments. One of peculiar interest shows a group of eighteen women playing upon drums, a shell trumpet or sankha, one much like a siirndi, and two instruments, apparently gtianilns, of a shape very similar to the Assyrian harps. But there is another instrument represented that would seem to have been especially popular, but which is never met with in India now, nor can descriptions of it be found in the Sanskrit treatises upon instruments. This again figures in Assyrian and Egyptian sculptures and paintings. It is somewhat like a harp, and much like an African instrument called Sancho, still used in some parts of that continent.

'This peculiar harp is again found amongst the sculptures at Sanchi; where also is seen an instrument resembling the Roman tibae pares. But the tibae pares are there shown without the capistrum or cheek bandage, and it is known that this instrument was also used by the Greeks. It is worthy of note that a form of the tibae pares is still common in northern India, where it consists of a pair of flutes. At Sanchi too is found a figure of a man blowing a kind of trumpet — the sringa — of much the same shape as that now employed in Bengal.

'The materials of which musical instruments are made are for the most part those that are found readiest to hand in the country. Bamboo or some similar cane and large gourds are much employed. These gourds are used for many purposes, and the best are trained in their growth to the shape for which they are required.

'In the manufacture of certain instruments earthenware is employed; the common country blackwood is largely used ; in fact, whatever is found by the instrument makers, that from its natural shape, or the ease with which it can be worked, can be adapted with the least possible trouble to themselves, is readily seized upon, whether its acoustical properties are suitable or not, purity of tone being sacrificed to appearance. The natural consequence of this is that many instruments are badly put together in the first place ; faults in their construction are glossed over by outward ornamentation, and from want of proper material, the tone, which should be the first consideration, is frequently sadly deficient in volume and quality.

'The Persians still use an instrument called quanUn, much like that of the same name found in India — a kind of dulcimer strung with gut or wire strings, and played upon by plectra fastened to the fingers of the performers, That is a development of the Kattyayana-vTnd or satatantrl (hundred stringed) v7«(X, as it was formerly called. The Persian quanun, the prototype of the mediaeval psaltery, afterwards became the santir, which has strings of wire instead of gut, and is played with two sticks; and in the west it actually took the form of