of the Hindus. 75 



Let us proceed to the fecond artifice of the Hindu muficians, in giving 

 their modes a diftintf: character and a very agreeable diveriity of expreffion. 

 A curious paffage from Plutarch's treatife on Mufick is tranflated and 

 explained by Dr. Burney, and ftands as the text of the mod interefting 

 .chapter in his dinertation : fmce I cannot procure the original, I exhibit a 

 paraphrafe of his tranflation, on the correctnefs of which I can rdy ; but I 

 have avoided, as much as poffible, the technical words of the Greeks, 

 which it might be neceffary to explain at fome length. " We are inform- 

 *' ed, fays Plutarch, by Aristoxenus, that muficians afcribe to 

 " Olympus of Myjia the invention of 'enharmonick melody, and conjecture, 

 «' that, when he was playing diatonically on his flute, and frequently 

 *' paned from the highejft of four founds to the loweft but one, orconverfe- 

 " ly, fkipping over the fecond in defcent, or the third in afcent, of that 

 " feries, he perceived a fingular beauty of expreffion, which induced him 

 " to difpofe the whole feries of feven or eight founds by fimilar (kips, and 

 4C to frame by tjie fame analogy his Dorian mode, omitting every found 

 " peculiar to the diatonick and chromatick melodies then in ufe, but with- 

 " out adding any that have fmce been made effential to the new enharmo- 

 " nick: in this genus, they fay, he compofed the Nome, or ftrain, cal- 

 ■'• led Spondean, becaufe it was ufed in temples at the time of religious 

 " libations. Thofe, it feems, were the firft enharmonick melodies; and 

 " are flill retained by fomc, who play on the flute in the antique ftyle 

 Al without any divifion of a femitone ; for it was after the age of Olympus, 

 " that the quarter of a tone was admitted into the Lydian and Phrygian 

 4< modes ; and it was he, therefore, who, by introducing an exquifite me- 

 " lody before unknown in Greece, became the author and parent of the 

 /" mod beautiful and affecting mufick." 



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