62 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
no nation upon the face of the earth to whom it is 
not familiar. It is, so to speak, the vernacular idiom 
of nature, and may be considered to be almost 
coeval with the creation ; for man, soon perceiving 
that his voice was susceptible of most expressive mo- 
dulations, of producing an innumerable variety of 
tones, and of modifying its inflexions in endless 
changes, would naturally employ the power with 
which his Creator had gifted him, in embodying that 
music which he felt himself to have the power of 
expressing. He perceived that there was, more or 
less, a vocal melody in everything which God had 
created, capable of emitting voluntary sound. 
Music is supposed by some learned men to have 
been invented by the Egyptians, from whom it circu- 
lated through Greece, and thence through India, proba- 
bly in the age of Pythagoras, who visited Hindostan 
and brought with him from that country the philoso- 
phy of the Eastern sages ; but music was no doubt 
among the sciences then cultivated by the Hindoos, as 
the essay of Soma, already alluded to, is imagined 
to have existed at that period. Those writers who 
ascribe the invention of music to the Egyptians, de- 
rive its name from a word primitive in the Egyptian 
language; but such descriptions of proof are at all 
times extremely unsatisfactory ; for to what strange 
conclusions the fanciful tracings of etymologies fre- 
quently lead, may be seen in a note of the learned 
Dr. Adam Clarke on the temptation in Paradise, where 
by an elaborate process of etymological induction, 
he proves, apparently to his own satisfaction, that the 
serpent which tempted Eve was a huge comely baboon. 
