gor.... He
is a Mus. D., he has lots of decorations from all kinds of kings and
emperors of Europe for his book about the music of Aryans.... And, well,
this man has proved, as clear as daylight, that ancient India has every
right to be called the mother of music. Even the best musical critics of
England say so!... Every school, whether Italian, German or Aryan, saw
the light at a certain period, developed in a certain climate and in
perfectly different circumstances. Every school has its characteristics,
and its peculiar charm, at least for its followers; and our school is
no exception. You Europeans are trained in the melodies of the West, and
acquainted with Western schools of music; but our musical system, like
many other things in India, is totally unknown to you. So you must
forgive my boldness, colonel, when I say that you have no right to
judge!"

"Don't get so excited, Babu," said the Takur. "Every one has the right,
if not to discuss, then to ask questions about a new subject. Otherwise
no one would ever get any information. If Hindu music belonged to an
epoch as little distant from us as the European--which you seem to
suggest, Babu, in your hot haste; and if, besides, it included all the
virtues of all the previous musical systems, which the European music
assimilates; then no doubt it would have been better understood, and
better appreciated than it is. But our music belongs to prehistoric
times. In one of the sarcophagi at Thebes, Bruce found a harp with
twenty strings, and, judging by this instrument, we may safely say that
the ancient inhabitants of Egypt were well acquainted with the
mysteries of harmony. But, except the Egyptians, we were the only people
possessing this art, in the remote epochs, when the rest of mankind
were still struggling with the elements for bare existence. We possess
hundreds of Sanskrit MSS. about music, which have never been translated,
even into modern Indian dialects. Some of them are four thousand and
eight thousand years old. Whatever your Orientalists may say to the
contrary, we will persist in believing in their antiquity, because we
have read and studied them, while the European scientists have never yet
set their eyes on them. There are many of these musical treatises,
and they have been written at different epochs; but they all, without
exception, show that in India music was known and systematized in times
when the modern civilized nations of Europe still lived like