120 



Sa, or A, is its principal note, with Pa, or E, diminished by one " sruti ^ 

 or part of a note. Thus, we find that this mode represents the ordinary 

 scale, ut, re, mi, sol, fa, la, si, ut, with a minor tone, or three srutis, 

 between the fifth and sixth notes. 



I have mentioned in my descriptions of the instruments, that chro- 

 matic and enharmonic passages of great intricacy can be executed upon 

 several of them — the vina, the sarungi, &c. This will be accounted 

 for by the fact of the system of music prescribing twenty-two srutis, 

 or divisions of notes, to each whole octave; or furnishing each note, or 

 those which according to the requirements of the particular mode may 

 need it, or the particular melody in the mode, with semitones, thirds, 

 and quarters of notes, as may be necessary. It would seem, however, 

 as if more than "twenty- two srutis" to an octave were inadmissible; 

 and the notes to which any number of srutis is admissible is deter- 

 mined by the key note, or primary. 



" Semitones," says Sir William Jones, " are placed as in our own 

 diatonic scales, the intervals between the fourth and fifth and first and 

 second are major tones; but that between fifth and sixth, which is 

 minor in our scale, is major in theirs. The two scales are made to 

 coincide by taking a ' sruti' from Pa, or E, and adding it to Dha, or E ; 

 or, in Indian terms, by raising Savaretna to the class of ' Santa,' and 

 her sisters. Every sruti is a little nymph ; and these nymphs, or srutis, 

 or quarter notes of the fifth note, Pa, or E, are called, Malini, Chapala, 

 Sola, and Savaretna." 



In like manner, every note has its fairy attendants attached to it ; 

 and these being furnished with names, the separate portions of each are 

 known at once, in their proper order, and without confusion, to scien- 

 tific Hindu musicians. 



There are many Sanscrit, as well as Teloogoo, Canarese, and Tamul 

 works on music, still in existence. Indeed, in the south of India music 

 appears to have been maintained, and cultivated as a science, long after 

 it had ceased as such in the north. Mahomedan historians of the period 

 relate, that when the Dekhan was invaded by Alla-oo-deen Togluk, in 

 A. D. 1 294, and the conquest of the south of India completed by the 

 Mogul general, Mullik Kafoor, several years afterwards, the profession 

 of music was found to be in a condition so far advanced of the north, 

 that singers, male and female, musicians, and their Brahmin instruc- 

 tors, were taken with the royal armies and settled in the north. The 

 works that remain on the subject have been examined by competent 

 Oriental scholars, who have discovered that music as a science held a high 

 place among ancient Hindus, and became the subject of learned, though 

 pedantic, treatises on doctrines of sound, variations of scales, accord of 

 musical instruments, divisions of modes, singing, and instrumenta- 

 tion ; but no where does it appear that the laws of harmony had ever 

 been discovered or invented; and, as a consequence, all Indian music is 

 wanting in this most essential particular. This, and the pedantic divi- 

 sions into modes, so jealously guarded from infringement, have pre- 

 vented Hindu music and its science from that improvement and ex- 



