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Scan 47
The story of the violin, 1904
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Story of the Violin
3live orally among the people for untold generations without losing much of its original characteristics—in such a country an instrument like the ravanastron, which, tradition says, was invented very long ago, would, under certain conditions, stand the same chance of retaining its original primitive identity to the present day. At the same time, other instruments of the same kind may have been developed out of the original one and taken their place beside it in the affections of the people, or have driven it gradually into an inferior position.
5There are many instruments of the bowed kind in India to-day which show a great advance on the ravanastron. Some of these, no doubt, are importations,1 but others are not, and may have existed for ages side by side with their more primitive ancestor or elder brother (see Fig. 1).
7Granted, then, that this ravanastron of the Indian beggar and pandarons of to-day may be the ravanastron of long ago, the next question would be, how
91 The influence of Arabia and Mohammedanism generally, which is so evident everywhere in India, has been urged as a proof in support of the theory that India received all or most of her bow instruments from West Asiatic and North-East African nations on the occasions of the Mussulman conquests in India in the seventh century of our era; but that such is not the case can be demonstrated by the structural peculiarities of some of the Hindoo instruments. Besides, tradition receives here the corroborating testimony of certain Sanscrit allusions to the fiddle-bow, dating from a time long prior to the conquest of India by Mohammedans.
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