So You Must
Forgive My Boldness, Colonel, When I Say That You Have No Right
To Judge!"
"Don't get so excited, Babu," said the Takur.
"Every one has the
right, if not to discuss, then to ask questions about a new subject.
Otherwise no one would ever get any information. If Hindu music
belonged to an epoch as little distant from us as the European -
which you seem to suggest, Babu, in your hot haste; and if, besides,
it included all the virtues of all the previous musical systems,
which the European music assimilates; then no doubt it would have
been better understood, and better appreciated than it is. But
our music belongs to prehistoric times. In one of the sarcophagi
at Thebes, Bruce found a harp with twenty strings, and, judging by
this instrument, we may safely say that the ancient inhabitants
of Egypt were well acquainted with the mysteries of harmony. But,
except the Egyptians, we were the only people possessing this art,
in the remote epochs, when the rest of mankind were still
struggling with the elements for bare existence. We possess
hundreds of Sanskrit MSS. about music, which have never been
translated, even into modern Indian dialects. Some of them are
four thousand and eight thousand years old. Whatever your
Orientalists may say to the contrary, we will persist in believing
in their antiquity, because we have read and studied them, while
the European scientists have never yet set their eyes on them.
There are many of these musical treatises, and they have been
written at different epochs; but they all, without exception,
show that in India music was known and systematized in times when
the modern civilized nations of Europe still lived like savages.
However true, all this does not give us the right to grow indignant
when Europeans say they do not like our music, as long as their
ears are not accustomed to it, and their minds cannot understand
its spirit.... To a certain extent we can explain to you its technical
character, and give you a right idea of it as a science.
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