Books › The story of the violin, 1904 › scan 41
Scan 41
The story of the violin, 1904
9 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Story of the Violin
3played with a bow which after him was called the ravanastron." Here our scholar showed surprise and wanted to interrupt, but Tradition tapped him lightly with her fan, and, smiling triumphantly though sweetly, she drew from the folds of her mantle a strange-looking object and said: "This, oh scholar, is the ravanastron, behold it well; you may hear it played by many of my humble servants in the land; seek out the beggars and pandarons;¹ and now, good-bye, —begone." Our scholar would have liked to ask another question or two about that king Ravana, but he knew it was of no avail. Tradition never tells what you ask, but what she chooses. So he bowed silently and went.
5In the ethnographical department at the British Museum, among the exhibits from the hill tribes of Eastern Assam, you may see an instrument which tallies exactly with the description of the ravanastron given by Fétis in his work Stradivarius.² A small hollow cylinder of sycamore wood, open on one side, on the other covered with a piece of boa skin (the latter forming the sound-board), is traversed by a long rod of deal—flat on top and rounded underneath—which serves as neck and finger-board, and is slightly bent towards the end where the pegs are inserted. Two strings are fastened at the lower end and stretched over a tiny bridge, which rests on the sound-board, and is cut sloping on top. A
7¹ A kind of wandering hermit.
8² Notice of Stradivarius, by F. J. Fétis; translated by John Bishop. London, 1864.
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