Scan 127
The music and musical instruments of southern India and the Deccan, 1891
16 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 103. See the scan on archive.org.
1bow, which with bells attached to it is used as a fiddle-stick. The hollow part of this instrument is half a cocoa-nut shell polished, covered with the dried skin of a lizard, and perforated below.5
3The vinavah is rarely met with except in the hands of strolling musicians, who support themselves by means of it. Whether this is the primitive râbanastra or not it is impossible to say, but it seems extremely probable that if not absolutely identical it bears at least a very strong resemblance to it. Another very ancient instrument which resembled the râbanastra was called amrita.
5Numbers of instruments still in use in India have not altered in the smallest particular their ancient forms. The vina, the tamburi or tamburu-vina, and the kinneri still remain just as they are described in the ancient books, even down to the very details of the carving with which they are adorned, so conservative are the people who use them of all connected with the art they hold to be so sacred. The peculiar shape of instruments of the viol and violin tribe appears to have a prototype among Indian instruments; and this can be seen in the rabôb, which is made with distinct upper, lower, and middle bouts, and in a less degree in the sârangi, sarôde, and chikâra.
7The rebec, once popular in Europe, was a form of the rabôb, brought to Spain by the Moors, who in turn had derived it from Persia and Arabia. Here again the Aryan origin is evident, the rabôb being, according to old Sanskrit works, a form of vina. And it is still popular in the North of India and Afghanistan.
9The use of instruments of percussion of definite sonorousness, such as the harmonica, does not seem to have entered into Indian music at any time until quite of late years.
11But this is rather an open question, for the harmonicon of cups called Jâlatharângini is by some ascribed to a very remote origin.
13Wind instruments, although perhaps of earlier invention than those with strings, are nevertheless looked upon as of secondary importance. Possibly this may have some reason in the fact that Brahmins are not allowed by their religious laws to use them, excepting only the flute blown by the nostrils, and one or two others of the horn and trumpet kind. And so men of low castes are employed as players of wind instruments. But all unite in ascribing to wind instruments a very high antiquity. The conch shell, still used in the daily temple ritual in almost every place in India, is said to have been first used by the god Krishna, and it is mentioned in the great epic of the Ramayana, where it is called
155 "An Account of the Interior of Ceylon and its Inhabitants." J. Davy, F.R.S.
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