52.--H. C.]

NOTE 2.--This circumstance is mentioned in the extract below from Gaubil.
He _may_ have taken it from Polo, as it is not in Pauthier's Chinese
extracts; but Gaubil has other facts not noticed in these.

[Elephants came from the Indo-Chinese Kingdoms, Burma, Siam, Ciampa.
--H. C.]

NOTE 3.--The specification of the Tartar instrument of two strings is
peculiar to Pauthier's texts. It was no doubt what Dr. Clarke calls "the
_balalaika_ or two-stringed lyre," the most common instrument among the
Kalmaks.

The sounding of the Nakkara as the signal of action is an old Pan-Asiatic
custom, but I cannot find that this very striking circumstance of the
whole host of Tartars playing and singing in chorus, when ordered for
battle and waiting the signal from the boom of the Big Drum, is mentioned
by any other author.

The _Nakkarah_ or _Nagarah_ was a great kettledrum, formed like a brazen
caldron, tapering to the bottom and covered with buffalo-hide--at least
3-1/2 or 4 feet in diameter. Bernier, indeed, tells of _Nakkaras_ in use at
the Court of Delhi that were not less than a fathom across; and Tod speaks
of them in Rajputana as "about 8 or 10 feet in diameter." The Tartar
Nakkarahs were usually, I presume, carried on a camel; but as Kublai had
begun to use elephants, his may have been carried on an elephant, as is
sometimes the case in India. Thus, too, P. della Valle describes those of
an Indian Embassy at Ispahan: "The Indian Ambassador was also accompanied
by a variety of warlike instruments of music of strange kinds, and
particularly by certain Naccheras of such immense size that each pair had
an elephant to carry them, whilst an Indian astride upon the elephant
between the two Naccheras played upon them with both hands, dealing strong
blows on this one and on that; what a din was made by these vast drums, and
what a spectacle it was, I leave you to imagine."

Joinville also speaks of the Nakkara as the signal for action: "So he was
setting his host in array till noon, and then he made those drums of
theirs to sound that they call _Nacaires_, and then they set upon us horse
and foot." The Great Nakkara of the Tartars appears from several Oriental
histories to have been called _Kurkah_. I cannot find this word in any
dictionary accessible to me, but it is in the _Ain Akbari_ (_Kawargah_) as
distinct from the _Nakkarah_. Abulfazl tells us that Akbar not only had a
rare knowledge of the science of music, but