The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c5.2

c5.2

AMONG the many arts and industries of India gradually decaying from want of patronage, but which, since the accession of the British Government, have again been fostered and encouraged, that of music has hitherto found no place. To Europeans it is certainly the least known of all Indian arts. Almost every traveller in India comes away with the idea that the music of the country consists of mere noise and nasal drawling of the most repulsive kind, often accompanied by contortions and gestures of the most ludicrous description. Perhaps the traveller may have fancied that he has seen a nautch—he has possibly been asked to some such entertainment at the house of a wealthy native; or, more likely, he has possessed a treasure of a “boy,” who has been able to make the necessary arrangements with the “nautchnees” for a performance of the kind. But in certainly two-thirds of such cases the singing and dancing witnessed has been of the commonest, and the performers of the most abandoned and depraved of the city—and the traveller has therefore received a false impression, which may abide through life, or impede the progress of a more correct appreciation of the real value of Indian music. But it is hardly fair that an art so little really understood, even among the natives of India themselves, should be judged by such a criterion and then put aside as worthless because solitary individuals have been deceived by parties of outcast charlatans whose object is mere gain. For that Indian music is an art, and a very intricate and difficult one too, can hardly be denied. But to appreciate it one must first put away all thought of European music, and then judge of it by an Indian standard, and impartially upon its own merits—of the ingenuity of the performer—the peculiar rhythm of the music—the extraordinary scales used—the recitatives—the amount of imitation—the wonderful execution and memory of the performer—and his skill in employing small intervals as grace. Then when we hear old “Slokes” and “Ghuzals,” songs written hundreds of years ago, sung with the same sweet dreamy cadences, the same wild melody, to the same soft beats of little hands, and the same soft tinkle of the silver cymbals, we shall perhaps begin to feel that music of this kind can be as welcome and tasteful to ears accustomed to it as the music of the West, with its exaggerated sonorousness, is to us; and so our contempt will gradually give way to wonder, and, upon acquaintance, possibly to love. For this music, let us remember, daily gives pleasure to as many thousands as its more cultivated European sister gives to hundreds. There is hardly any festivity in India in which some part is not assigned to music—and for religious ceremonies its use is universal. Since the Vedic times it has been cultivated as an art. The hymns of the Rig and Yagur Vedas were set and sung to music ages ago. The Vedic chant, composed in the simple Sanskrit spoken three thousand years ago, and handed down from generation to generation for more than thirty centuries, has a thrilling effect upon a cultivated Hindu mind. The Vedic chant is to Hindus what plain song is to us. For this ancient chant—like plain song—is bound up with the sacred ceremonials, and is wedded to language alike sonorous and dignified. And the place where it is heard, for it is only heard in the temple, is considered so holy, and the strain itself is so simple and devotional, that all who hear it cannot fail to be impressed.¹