56 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
half a dozen of those mentioned by Ward are repre- 
sented, so that the number, I should think, if all were 
enumerated, would not fall far short of a hundred. 
Not only are these instruments formed upon scien- 
tific principles, but many of them are made with great 
intricacy of construction, and are capable of a nicety of 
adaptation in the developement of choral effects, little 
imagined by the fastidious in the more perfect art 
of Europe, where music has attained to a state of 
the proudest preeminence. Most of these instru- 
ments may be used with considerable advantage 
in orchestral combinations, and from some of them 
tones of much more than ordinary sweetness are occa- 
sionally produced when touched by the hand of a 
skilful performer. 
It appears that the exercise of music was very early 
practised among the Hindoos, and carried to a high 
pitch of excellence, if we consider the low state of 
musical science in every part of the world at the 
period when it was understood on the banks of the 
Indus and the Ganges, and cultivated with consider- 
able success. There are several old treatises in 
Sanscrit upon this interesting subject, in which it is 
handled with a degree of intelligence now rarely to be 
found among native professors; indeed, it seems to 
be the prevailing opinion among the learned natives 
that the moderns are much behind their forefathers in 
musical knowledge. This is not to be wondered at 
in a people whom perpetual conquests have, for the 
last four centuries especially, reduced to a state of 
bitter dependency ; and whose science and literature 
are, obviously, from this very cause, in a state of gene- 
