Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 629

ANTIQUITY OF HINDU MUSIC
589
We must remember that Hindu music at the present day
and that, as in the case
the same as it has always been
of their other arts, it has undergone no alteration and has
not been improved in any way. We shall then feel obliged
to be more indulgent indeed, we may even feel astonished
that Hindu music attained such perfection at the very begin-
ning.
For it is almost certain that the scale used at present
by the Hindus has existed from the earliest times. It bears
moreover a striking resemblance to ours, being composed
of the same number of notes, arranged in the same way, as
follows
8a ri ga ma pa da ni sa
Do re mi fa sol la si do.
is
;
;
:
Are we then to deny the merit of this invention to Guy
Arezzo
And is John de Meurs, or whoever it was that
perfected the system of the learned Benedictine, to have
no other credit than that of having borrowed with discern-
ment from the same source
We know that Vossius
maintained that the Egyptians had a musical scale similar
to ours many centuries before Guy of Arezzo published his
own. This question I must leave for others to solve.
There is nothing, as I have already shown, into which
the Hindus do not introduce some superstitious notions,
and it would have been a miracle if music a diversion of
the gods themselves had not furnished them with means
of satisfying their taste in this direction.
Every note of
of
I
I
—
—
the Hindu scale has a mark characteristic of some divinity,
and includes several hidden meanings deduced from its
particular sound or from something similar to it.
There
are also notes expressing joy, sadness, sweetness, anger,
&c. And Hindu musicians take great care not to confound
notes intended to express these varying passions of the
human
soul.
who play wind instruments are taken,
as I have already remarked, from the low barber caste, the
profession being handed down from father to son.
Heathen worship being very expensive, the pries