modern Hindu, music. But, in
the first instance, the idea of melody is perfectly arbitrary; and, in
the second, there is a good deal of difference between the technical
knowledge of music, and the creation of melodies fit to please the
educated, as well as the uneducated, ear. According to technical theory,
a musical piece may be perfect, but the melody, nevertheless, may be
above the understanding of an untrained taste, or simply unpleasant.
Your most renowned operas sound for us like a wild chaos, like a rush of
strident, entangled sounds, in which we do not see any meaning at all,
and which give us headaches. I have visited the London and the Paris
opera; I have heard Rossini and Meyer-beer; I was resolved to render
myself an account of my impressions, and listened with the greatest
attention. But I own I prefer the simplest of our native melodies to the
productions of the best European composers. Our popular songs speak to
me, whereas they fail to produce any emotion in you. But leaving the
tunes and songs out of question, I can assure you that our ancestors,
as well as the ancestors of the Chinese, were far from inferior to the
modern Europeans, if not in technical instrumentation, at least in their
abstract notions of music."

"The Aryan nations of antiquity, perhaps; but I hardly believe this in
the case of the Turanian Chinese!" said our president doubtfully.

"But the music of nature has been everywhere the first step to the
music of art. This is a universal rule. But there are different ways of
following it. Our musical system is the greatest art, if--pardon me this
seeming paradox--avoiding all artificiality is art. We do not allow in
our melodies any sounds that cannot be classified amongst the living
voices of nature; whereas the modern Chinese tendencies are quite
different. The Chinese system comprises eight chief tones, which serve
as a tuning-fork to all derivatives; which are accordingly classified
under the names of their generators. These eight sounds are: the notes
metal, stone, silk, bamboo, pumpkin, earthenware, leather and wood. So
that they have metallic sounds, wooden sounds, silk sounds, and so on.
Of course, under these conditions they cannot produce any melody; their
music consists of an entangled series of separate notes. Their imperial
hymn, for instance, is a series of endless unisons. But we Hindus owe
our music only to living nature, and in nowise to inanimate objects. In
a higher sens