The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c5.43

c5.43

The ancient theory of Indian music has been comparatively little studied, except by learned Pandits, many really good performers being ignorant of anything but the modern custom. This is probably because many of the ancient treatises that remain were purposely worded so that only Brahmins skilled in sacred lore could decipher their meaning. And now the improvements and alterations introduced from time to time by musicians of the day have come to be looked upon as authentic, a fact that in some degree tends to account for the differences that apparently exist between the ancient and modern systems.