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Page 15
Besides the sacred songs of the Brahmins and Buddhists, the
Hindus had many others, some of which partook of the occult
powers of the hymns, occult powers that were as strongly marked
as those of Hebrew music. For while the latter are revealed in
the playing of David before Saul, in the influence of music on
prophecy, the falling of the walls of Jericho at the sound of
the trumpets of Joshua, etc., in India the same supernatural
power was ascribed to certain songs. For instance, there were
songs that could be sung only by the gods, and one of them, so
the legend runs, if sung by a mortal, would envelop the singer
in flames. The last instance of the singing of this song was
during the reign of Akbar, the great Mogul emperor (about 1575
A.D.). At his command the singer sang it standing up to his
neck in the river Djaumna, which, however, did not save him,
for, according to the account, the water around him boiled,
and he was finally consumed by a flame of fire. Another of
Akbar's singers caused the palace to be wrapped in darkness
by means of one of these magic songs, and another averted a
famine by causing rain to fall when the country was threatened
by drought. Animals were also tamed by means of certain songs,
the only relic of which is found in the serpent charmers'
melodies, which, played on a kind of pipe, seem to possess the
power of controlling cobras and the other snakes exhibited by
the Indian fakirs.
Many years before Gautama's time, the brahmas or singers of
sacred songs of ancient India formed themselves into a caste or
priesthood; and the word "Brahma," from meaning a sacred singer,
became the name of the supreme deity; in time, as the nation
grew, other gods were taken into the religion. Thus we find in
pre-Buddha times the trinity of gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva,
with their wives, Sarasvati or learning, Lakshmi or beauty,
and Paravati, who was also called Kali, Durga, and Mahadevi,
and was practically the goddess of evil. Of these gods Brahma's
consort, Sarasvati, the goddess of speech and learning, brought
to earth the art of music, and gave to mankind the _Vina_.
This instrument is still in use and may be called the national
instrument of India. It is composed of a cylindrical pipe,
often bamboo, about three and a half feet long, at each end
of which is fixed a hollow gourd to increase the tone. It is
strung lengthwise with seven metal wires held up by nineteen
wooden bridges, just as the violin strings are supported by a
bridge. The scale of the instrument proceeds in half tones from
[F: a,] to [G: b''] The tones are produced by plucking the
strings with the fingers (which are covered with a kind of
metal thimble), and the instrument is held so that one of
the gourds hangs over the left shoulder, just as one would
hold a very long-necked banjo.
It is to the Krishna incarnation of Vishnu that the Hindu scale
is ascribed. According to the legend, Krishna or Vishnu came to
earth and took the form of a shepherd, and the nymphs sang to
him in many thousand different keys, of which from twenty-four
to thirty-six are known and form the basis of Hindu music. To
be sure these keys, being formed by different successions of
quarter-tones, are practically inexhaustible, and the 16,000
keys of Krishna are quite practicable. The differences in tone,
however, were so very slight that only a few, of them have
been retained to the present time.
The Hindus get their flute from the god Indra, who, from being
originally the all-powerful deity, was relegated by Brahminism
to the chief place among the minor gods--from being the god
of light and air he came to be the god of music. His retinue
consisted of the _gandharvas_, and _apsaras_, or celestial
musicians and nymphs, who sang magic songs. After the rise and
downfall of Buddhism in India the term _raga_ degenerated to
a name for a merely improvised chant to which no occult power
was ascribed.
The principal characteristics in modern Hindu music are a
seemingly instinctive sense of harmony; and although the actual
chords are absent, the melodic formation of the songs plainly
indicates a feeling for modern harmony, and even form. The
actual scale resembles our European scale of twelve semitones
(twenty-two _s'rutis_, quarter-tones), but the modal development
of these sounds has been extraordinary. Now a "mode" is the
manner in which the notes of a scale are arranged. For instance,
in our major mode the scale is arranged as follows: tone,
tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. In India there
are at present seventy-two modes in use which are produced by
making seventy-two different arrangements of the scale by means
of sharps and flats, the only rule being that each degree of
the scale must be represented; for instance, one of the modes
_Dehr�san-Karabh�rna_ corresponds to our major scale. Our minor
(harmonic) scale figures as _Kyrav�ni_. _T�narupi_ corresponds
to the following succession of notes,
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