Historical Development of Indian Music: A Critical Study c8.35

c8.35

Regarding the heritage of the instruments, found in Mesopotamia, Ur, Sumeria, Greece and other places, Dr. Farmer says that Terpander is of opinion that the lyre had four strings until he made them seven (iii.67), which Strabo seems to confirm. ‘Whence did this inspiration come? Could it have been Babylon? If we can trust pseudo-Plutarch (De musica. iii, xviii), it would appear that the Greeks at this time were most conservative in musical matters. Boéthus says that it was the seven planets which suggested the number of strings which agrees with a Mesopotamian origin.* * Instruments of music found their way into Greece from the Orient in large numbers. Strabo says: ‘And those writers who have consecrated to whole of Asia, as far as India, to Dionysus, derive the greater part of music from there’. But it is interesting to mention that the editors of *The New Oxford History of Music* fight shy of a truth when they do not admit their debt to India’s contribution, as they say in the footnote that the term ‘India’ meant countries much nearer, vide *Cosmographia Ethici* (p. 28) with the additions by Julius Honorius (p. 7). Even the ecclesiastical historians call the Arabs ‘Indians’. However, it is a fact that some of the developed musical instruments were found in the most ancient pre-historic cities like Mahenjo-daro, Harappa and Channu-daro, and the seven notes with the heptatonic scale was known to these people. Dancing was also prevalent in the Indus Valley cities. Rāi Bahādur Dikṣit says that besides dancing, it appears that music was cultivated among the Indus people, and it seems probable that the earliest stringed instruments and drums are to be traced to the Indus civilization.