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Scan 194
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 180. See the scan on archive.org.
1least, the naming of the latter instrument, to a king of Ceylon, called Ravana, who is supposed to have reigned at a time dating five thousand years before Christ. The Ravanastron is by no means an imperfect instrument, considering the early period of its fabrication. The barrel, which serves as the sounding case, consists of plane tree or sycamore, and is about 4 1/2 in. long, with a diameter of 2 in. Over one end of this barrel is stretched a piece of serpent skin, representing the upper table; into the barrel is inserted, somewhat after the fashion of the handle of a wooden mallet, a stem or stick, whose free upper length is about 22 in., and which, of a round form nearest the case, becomes flat at the top, and is slightly bent backward. This handle is made of pine, and its head, pierced by two holes of about half-an-inch in diameter, admits from the back two large pegs, 4 in. long, to which two gut strings are fastened, after being stretched over a small bridge resting on the serpent skin. The bow is a piece of thin bamboo, bent by the tress of hair which communicates friction to the string. Such is the typical Ravanastron, still used, it is said, by the lower orders of the people in India. After this instrument came the Omerti, which looks almost like a retrograde step in the direction of the gourd, since its sounding case consists of a cocoanut with about a third of the shell cut off in the direction of its longest diameter, and the remainder thinned away inside to about 1/16 of an inch in thickness, and pierced with elliptical sound holes.
3Other instruments of similar type, to refer to which is beyond the scope of this book, have been noticed from time to time as existing for long periods among
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