■284 
VOYAGE OP THE POTOMAC. 
[March, 
consist principally of stated . religious festivals, . and occasional 
civic feasts, musical concerts, dancing, dramatic exhibitions, eques- 
trian exercises, chivalry, tilting and tournaments, tiger-fighting, 
together with a variety of games of skill and chance. 
The musical instruments of the Javans, together with the va- 
rious exhibitions which still form so essential a part of the popu- 
lar amusements, are all supposed to have been introduced by 
Panji, to whom is also attributed the introduction of the kris, as 
before mentioned. These instruments are peculiar in themselves, 
and it requires from ten to fifteen to form a band. The general 
principle on which the sounds are generated, is the vibration of 
metaUic bars, when, as manifested on a small scale in our music- 
boxes, struck- with hammers. Among the tones produced are 
some corresponding to those of the guitar, harmonica, musical 
glasses, the spinet, and other stringed instruments ; the flagelet, 
and the pandean reeds; together with tambarines, bells, trian- 
gles, and the Chinese gong. 
Many of the Javanese musical instruments, when played sep- 
arately, produce very sweet, soft, and melodious sounds ; but it is 
the unison and harmony of the whole united which gives to the 
music of Java its peculiar character among Asiatics. However 
•simple and monotonous their airs may appear when played by 
themselves, with no accompaniment, they never tire on the ear 
when performed by a full band; and it is not unusual, on some 
■occasions, for a band to continue their performances for days and 
nights in succession. They have no written music, but play alto- 
gether by the ear. The Javans say that the first music of >vhich 
they have an idea was produced by the accidental admission of 
the wind into a bamboo tube which was left hanging on a tree ; 
the idea is poetical at least. 
Dancing, with the Javans, as it is with the Asiatics in general, 
•consists principally in graceful attitudes of the .body, and in the 
■slow movement of the limbs, particularly of the arms, even to the 
hands and fingers. It is emphatically the "poetry of motion." 
Feats of agility and muscular activity form no part of a Javanese 
dance, v/hich is a total stranger to pirouettes, and every other 
caprice of the modern French school. The music is slow and 
solemn, to which every motion of the dancer exactly corresponds, 
and such movements as might become a holy oriental monarch 
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