The Music of Hindostan c5.23

c5.23

The size of a country is to be reckoned not in square miles but by its travelling facilities or their absence. The Norwegian valleys of Helgedal and Lejra Elv are ten miles distant at their nearest point; but as far apart practically, and as different linguistically, as Devon and York. Indian dialects have been variously computed at 141 and 183; it is probably within the mark to say that India comprises 50 peoples, each ranging from thousands to millions, who are mutually unintelligible. If it cannot at present be shown that music and language follow geographically the same lines, it is patent that in each the means of expression is based upon the same general principles of phonetic decay, antithesis, exegesis, and so on, and that both deepen in secluded communities and broaden upon the stream of a universal currency. And the hundreds of names of Indian Rāgs, and many more if we count all the variants which, coming from different parts of the country, are included under the same name, are there to show that ‘mood’ behaves in all respects like dialect. This isolation of the village or the tribe has been repeated in the isolation of the court. The method of Gwalior has been firmly marked off from that of Lucknow or Indore, and these from the methods of Mysore and Tanjore and Trivandrum. Such places formed centres in which local usages were summed up and tabulated; and music that was born in secluded valleys and in trackless deserts was there nursed by royal patronage. If it is too soon to say that the patronage is withdrawn, there are signs that it is rapidly diminishing; and, as for the seclusion upon which this reflective music has so largely thriven, there can be little pride in his profession left to a singer when gramophone records of his best songs can be bought in any large town. In spite of all this it is difficult to believe that Music will lose heart and depart from the earth, least of all from so poetical a race. *Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae vehat Argo Delectos heroas.*