k of a
6th-century artist. Orpheus is holding an instrument, which appears to
be a rebab, against his chin, in the act of bowing and stopping the
strings. The bow is similar in shape to one shown in the Psalter of
Labeo Notker, Leipzig, 10th century, mentioned farther on. On Indian
sculptures of the first centuries of our era, such as the Buddhist
_stupas_ of Amaravati, the risers of the topes of Jamal-Garhi, in the
Yusafzai district of Afghanistan (both in the British Museum), on which
stringed instruments abound, there is no bow. The bow has remained a
primitive instrument in India to this day; a Hindu tradition assigns its
invention to Ravanon, a king of Ceylon, and the instrument for which it
was invented was called _ravanastron_; a primitive instrument of that
name is still in use in Hindustan[10]. F.J. Fetis[11], Antoine
Vidal[12], Edward Heron-Allen[13], and others have given the question
some consideration, and readers who wish to pursue the matter farther
are referred to their works.

There is thus no absolute proof of the existence of the bow in primitive
times. The earliest bow known in Europe was associated with the rebab
(q.v.), the most widely used bowed instrument until the 12th century.
The development of this instrument can be traced with some degree of
certainty, but it is quite impossible to decide at what date or in what
place the use of the bow was introduced. The bow developed very slowly
in Europe and remained a crude instrument as long as it was applied to
the rebab and its hybrids. Its progress became marked only from the time
when it was applied to the almost perfect guitar (q.v.), which then
became the guitar fiddle (q.v.), the immediate forerunner of the viols.

[Illustration: Drawn from the ivory cover of the _Lothair Psalter_, by
permission of Sir Thomas Brooke.

FIG. 1.--Earliest Bow of the Cremaillere Type (c. 11th century).]

The first improvement on the primitive arched bow was to provide some
sort of handle in a straight line with the hair or string of the bow,
such as is shown in the MS. translation of the Psalms by Labeo Notker,
late 10th century, in the University library, Leipzig.[14] The length of
the handle was often greatly exaggerated, perhaps by the fancy of the
artist. Another handle (see Bodleian Library MS., N.E.D. 2, 12th
century) was in the form of a hilt with a knob, possibly a screw-nut, in
which the arched stick and the hair were both fixed. The first
development o