The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c11.3

c11.3

The people of India have always been conservative in their tastes, and in nothing do we find this more evident than in their music and musical instruments. Descriptions of them all are found in many of the old Sanskrit treatises, and show that the forms of the instruments now in use have altered hardly at all during the last two thousand years; old paintings and sculptures, such as those of Ajanta, prove this even more conclusively.¹ There are many musical instruments to be found among the sculptures existing upon various old temples, cave temples, and ancient Buddhist topes and stupas in different parts of India. Those at Amravati and Sanchi are especially interesting.² For in the Amravati sculptures, which were visited by the traveller, Hiouen Thsang, and called by him Dhanakacheka, about the year 640 of our era, we find several representations of musical instruments. One of peculiar interest shows a group of eighteen women playing upon drums, a shell trumpet or s'ankha, one much like a surnai, and two instruments, apparently quanūns, of a shape very similar to the Assyrian harps. But there is another instrument represented that would seem to have been especially popular, but which is never met with in India now, nor can descriptions of it be found in the Sanskrit treatises upon instruments. This again figures in Assyrian and Egyptian sculptures and paintings. It is somewhat like a harp, and much like an African instrument called Sancho, and still used in some parts of that continent. Mr. James Fergusson notices strong Bactrian influences in this monument at Amravati, and is of opinion that the expression of the traveller Hiouen Thsang that this tope was ornamented with all the art of the palaces of Bactria is borne out to its fullest extent. This peculiar harp is again found amongst the sculptures at Sanchi; where also is seen an instrument resembling the Roman tibiæ pares. But the tibiæ pares are there shown without the capistrum or cheek bandage, and it is known that this instrument was also used by the Greeks. It is worthy of note that a form of the tibiæ pares is still common in Northern India, where it consists of a pair of flutes-à-bec. At Sanchi, too, is found a figure of a man blowing a kind of trumpet—the s'ringa—of much the same shape as that now employed in Bengal.