The Music and Musical instruments of Southern India and the Deccan.
By Charles Russell Day
Published by Adam Charles Black, London - 1891.

Book Extract :
WHETHER music as an attribute of man is as old as speech or not, we cannot say; for present consideration it is sufficient that both can be intensified into poetic expression with a common power in affecting the emotions, notwithstanding that there is a vast and unbridgable distance between the precision of articulate language and the vague suggestion and glamour of musical sound. There is a quality in recited poetry not inaptly
described as musical, since it has a special charm due to the choice and rhythm of
words, assisted by the personal note of the reciter. But this rhythmic euphony is only allied to the musician's art, it cannot correctly be said to be comprehended in it, owing to the absence of defined musical intervals. From whatever point of view we overlook the human race, its history and development, we can nearly alway's trace music as having some connection, however slender, with the particular form of culture, or it may even be the absence of culture, under notice. Let us for the moment turn aside from the modern European musician's standpoint, as for him Harmony, although of comparatively recent origin, is indispensable, and we shall find melody in the succession of notes and their rhythmic movement possessing a beauty and exerting a charm which have endured for ages and comprehend the whole art of Music in the older civilisations. In Egypt; in
Babylonia, Persia, and Arabia ; in Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome and in India, modern as well as ancient, for here simple melody still reigns supreme. With the exception of the Drone, apparently of Indian origin, which is literally preserved in the Bagpipe and Hurdy Gurdy, and is a characteristic feature in our modern harmonic music — conspicuous as the Pedal point — the traces of any combination of musical intervals, out of Europe, are unimportant and need not be considered in a comparison of our Western music, with its elaborate system of harmony, and that of the rest of the world, whether ancient or modern, where harmony has no place.

Among the heterogeneous populations of India much material may be found that bears upon the history of melody. There is an Aryan strain probably as old as the Vedic Sanskrit, and a Persian which has in these latter days, and especially in Northern India, considerably modified the true Hindu. There are also echoes of an indigenous music which prevails among the hill tribes, remaining in the Indian music of to-day ; but yet not so clearly heard that we can say we identify here or there a refrain of an original or pre-historic music, although we may unconsciously be very near it. In the present state of our
knowledge it is impossible to affirm that a pentatonic, or system of five notes in the octave, is of greater antiquity than a heptatonic or seven-note system ; or that a chromatic or half-tone scale preceded an enharmonic composed of quarter-
tones. All these varieties occur in our historic records, and if we argue from the analogies of speech, or consider the measurement of vibrating strings, it is no less plausible to decide for primitive narrow intervals than for primitive wide ones. In every province, go where we will, may be found some melodic or rhythmic habit or turn which it is possible to reckon as proper to it, having its peculiar scales or modes, its figures, rhythms, graces to mark its authenticity, but we mav yet be far away from its origin, even as to locality. In the native music of Africa, so far as is known, there is much that may be traced to Asiatic sources.