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seven words (the first excepted) the initial letters are used in writ- 

 ing music to represent the notes. Instead of the initial of the first 

 or lowest, kau,rcdge, that of the word sur is used: which signifies 

 emphatically the vote, being as it were the foundation of the 

 others; and named swara, or the sound, from the important office 

 which it bears in the scale. 



" On the subject of those ancient and extraordinary melodies, 

 which the Hindoos call raugs and rauginees, the popular traditions 

 are as numerous and romantic, as the powers ascribed to them 

 are miraculous. Of the six rungs, the five first owe their origin to 

 the god Mahadew, who produced them from his five heads. Par- 

 buttee, his wife, constructed the sixth; and the thirty rauginees 

 were composed by Brimha. Thus, of celestial invention, these 

 melodies are of a peculiar genus ; and of the three ancient genera 

 of the Greeks resemble most the enharmonic-, the more modern 

 compositions are of that species termed diatonic." 



" A considerable difficulty is found in setting to music the 

 rauos and rauginees; as our system does not supply notes, or 

 signs, sufficiently expressive of the almost imperceptible eleva- 

 tions and depressions of the voice in these melodies; of which the 

 time is broken and irregular, the modulations frequent and very 

 wild. Whatever magic was in the touch when Orpheus swept his 

 lyre, or Timotheus filled his softly-breathing flute, the effects said 

 to have been produced by two of the six raugs, are even more 

 extraordinary than any of those ascribed to the modes of the an- 

 cients. Mia Tousine, a wonderful musician in the time of the 

 emperor Akber, sung one of the night raugs at mid-day: the 

 powers of his music were such that it instantly became night: and 



