302 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [July, 1913. 
to do with the artist’s will. It is true the greatness of a com- 
poser consists also in Europe in that he finds new combina- 
tions of sound; but every great composer, who does so, acts 
naturally could not refrain from expressing his own will, has 
been called by the musical authorities of his time a musical 
‘**pig.’’ And the more a composer dares to evade the laws 
of acoustics, the more do the musical authorities endeavour 
to resist him. I need not remind you of the musical history 
of Europe: it will suffice to mention, for instance, the works 
of Monteverdi, or Gluck, or Debussy. 
here is nothing of all that acoustic unmusicality in India. 
The Indian theory of sound relation is the before-mentioned 
theory of ‘‘ Ragas.’’ The ragas are melodies which have no 
harmonic obligation whatever. They are melodies expressing 
feeling freely and frankly. It is true that the composers of 
India are in a certain sense officially bound to keep to the tradi- 
tional ragas as European composers are bound to keep to con- 
even been taken into consideration in European music, and 
which now, so to speak, exists no longer in Europe, that free- 
dom, called improvisation, is the foundation of Indian artistic 
musical theory. Will new Europe—that Euorpe which tries to 
get rid as well of Christianity as of commercialism—will that 
sionally also upon the third part of the European bar. This 
accent of the bar is actually disappearing, and European music 
of to-day has, so to speak, no | 
The accent of the barred measure was its last remnant. In- 
stead of pointing out the predominance of certain sounds of the 
sures the time which has nothing to do with the sounds them- 
