he great songs of the
different nations. For up to that time a song of praise meant
praise of a _King_. He was the sun that warmed men's hearts,
the being from whom all wisdom came, and to whom men looked
for mercy. If we compare the Egyptian hymns with those of the
Hebrews, the difference is very striking. On the walls of the
great temples of Luxor and the Ramesseum at Thebes, as well as
on the wall of the temple of Abydos and in the main hall of the
great rock-hewn temple of Abu-Simbel, in Nubia, is carved the
"Epic of Pentaur," the royal Egyptian scribe of Rameses II:

My king, his arms are mighty, his heart is firm. He
bends his bow and none can resist him. Mightier
than a hundred thousand men he marches forward. His
counsel is wise and when he wears the royal crown,
Alef, and declares his will, he is the protector of
his people. His heart is like a mountain of iron. Such
is King Rameses.

If we turn to the Hebrew prophets, this is their song:

The mountains melted from before the Lord and before
Him went the pestilence; burning coals went forth at
His feet. Hell is naked before Him and destruction
hath no covering. He hangeth the earth upon nothing
and the pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished
at His reproof. Though He slay me, yet will I trust
in Him. For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and at
the last day He shall stand upon the earth.

As with the Hebrews, music among the Hindus was closely
bound to religion. When, 3000 years before the Christian era,
that wonderful, tall, white Aryan race of men descended upon
India from the north, its poets already sang of the gods,
and the Aryan gods were of a different order from those known
to that part of the world; for they were beautiful in shape,
and friendly to man, in great contrast to the gods of the
Davidians, the pre-Aryan race and stock of the Deccan. These
songs formed the _Rig-Veda_, and are the nucleus from which
all Hindu religion and art emanate.

We already know that when the auxiliary speech which we call
music was first discovered, or, to use the language of all
primitive nations, when it was first bestowed on man by the
gods, it retained much of the supernatural potency that its
origin would suggest. In India, music was invested with divine
power, and certain hymns--especially the prayer or chant of
Vashishtha--were, according to the _Rig-Veda_, all powerful in
battle. Such a ma