Books › The history of the violin, and other instruments played on with the bow from the remotest times to the present. Also, an account of the principal makers, English and foreign, with numerous illustrations, 1864 › scan 29
Scan 29
The history of the violin, and other instruments played on with the bow from the remotest times to the present. Also, an account of the principal makers, English and foreign, with numerous illustrations, 1864
6 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 9. See the scan on archive.org.
1tries. Captain Saris, who was at Japan in 1613, says the ladies played on an instrument like the theorbo (a species of lute), but having only four strings, which they fingered very nimbly with the left hand, having an ivory plectrum in the other.
3Several early instruments of the East are named, varying in number of strings and details, as the serinda, omerti, rouana, and ravanastron, and others; the latter, according to the exaggerated Oriental tradition, having been invented by Ravona, king of Ceylon, 5000 years before the Christian æra.
5The Indian mythology has some curious legends about music, which may be seen more at length in Creuzer's "Religions de l'Antiquité," vol. i. Hanouman, a faithful follower of Vishnu, was a skilful musician, and the inventor of one of the four systems of Indian music that keeps his name. He with his lyre, and Crichna with his flute, conducted the dance of the spheres, the stars, the months, and the seasons, accompanied by the raguinis, and other musicians of the court of India. Saraswati was the goddess of music, and her son Naesda invented the lyre. The six ragas who presided over the six musical modes were also her children, and each of these had thirteen assistants of an inferior class, so that there were eighty-four modes of the Indian mythological system of music connected with their astronomy, namely, six primitive and seventy-eight derivative. The power of these ancient modes, called the ragas, was very great, placing Orpheus quite in the background. A celebrated musician once sang that called the night raga, before the Emperor Akber at mid-day, and caused night within the sound of his voice. Another raga had the quality of destroying by fire any one who sung it; but the same emperor, notwithstanding, compelled an unfortunate
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