MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS - online book

The History And Development Of Musical Instruments From The Earliest Times.

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	46                       MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. a moustache and an imperial, playing the pcpa, a kind of lute with four silken strings. Perhaps some interesting information respecting the ancient Chinese musical instruments may be gathered from the famous ruins of the Buddhist temples Ongcor-Wat and Ongcor-Thom, in Cam­bodia. These splendid ruins are supposed to be above two thousand years old : and, at any rate, the circumstance of their age not being known to the Cambodians sug­gests a high antiquity. On the bas-reliefs with which the temples were enriched are figured musical instruments, which European travellers describe as " flutes, organs, trumpets, and drums, resembling those of the Chinese." Faithful sketches of these representations might, very likely, afford valuable hints to the student of musical history. The Hindus. In the Brahmin mythology of the Hindus the god Nareda is the inventor of the viiia, the principal national in­strument of Hindustan. Saraswati, the consort of Brahma, may be regarded as the Minerva of the Hindus. She is the goddess of music as well as of speech ; to her is attributed the invention of the systematic arrangement of the sounds into a musical scale. She is represented seated on a peacock and playing on a stringed instrument of the lute kind. Brahma himself we find depicted as a vigorous man with four handsome heads, beating with his hands upon a small drum ; and Vishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is represented as a beautiful youth playing upon a flute. The Hindus construct a peculiar kind of flute,

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