The shêng (described on [p. 42]) is also popular in Japan. The Japanese name for it is shō. The general name in Japanese for the drum is taiko (= Chinese ta ku, “large drum"). The Japanese have a great variety of drums, some of which are used at religious ceremonies in the temples. The shime-daiko is a shallow drum hung obliquely before the player in a low wooden frame. It is beaten with two plain sticks, and is used to accompany singers. The tsudzumi is a small hand-drum with hour-glass-shaped body.
The Japanese have different kinds of gongs (dora = Chinese t’ung-lo, “copper gong"), which are used in the service of the temple, in processions, at funerals, and on several other solemn occasions. The dōhachi (= Chinese t’ung po, “copper bowl") resembles a copper basin. Another consists of two metal basins suspended by cords on a frame composed of a pole and two cross-sticks.
The Japanese, as well as the Chinese, possess superbly ornamented gongs (kei) raised on a stand. Those of the former are perhaps the more magnificent.
The Japanese employ large bells (kane or tsuri-gane = Chinese chung) in their Buddhist worship. There is a famous bell, richly decorated, near the Daibutsu at Kiōto, which is struck, at different hours of the day, with a heavy wooden mallet; and its sound is said to be particularly sonorous, mellow, and far-reaching. Another celebrated Japanese bell is placed on a high hill near the town of Nara. It is suspended in a wooden shed, close to the Tōdaiji Temple. A thick pole, affixed to the rafters, is drawn backwards, and then, by being let loose, is made to rebound so as to hit the bell sideways in the usual manner. This bell is admired throughout the country, and pictures representing it are sold on the spot to the visitors, who have to ascend a long flight of narrow steps before they reach its station on the summit of the hill. Small bells (rin) are used by the Buddhist priests in Japan while officiating in the temple, just as is the case in China, Thibet and other districts of the Asiatic continent.
The Hindus.
In the Brahmin mythology of the Hindus the demi-god Nareda is the inventor of the vina, the principal national instrument of Hindustan. His mother, Saraswati, the consort of Brahma, may be regarded as the Minerva of the Hindus. She is the goddess of music as well as of speech. To her is attributed the invention of the systematic arrangement of the sounds into a musical scale. She is represented seated on a peacock and playing either on the southern vina or the bîn, stringed instruments of the lute kind. Brahma himself we occasionally find depicted as a vigorous man with four handsome heads, beating with his hands upon a small drum; and Vishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is represented as a beautiful youth playing upon a flute. The Hindus
construct a peculiar kind of flute, the bansi, which they consider as the favourite instrument of Krishna.
The sankha, or conch-shell trumpet of victory, one of the important attributes of Vishnu the preserver, and his consort Lakshmi, is occasionally represented in the possession of Siva, and other deities. Siva the destroyer, and his consort Parvati, also carry the budbudika, or damaru, a rattle-drum shaped like an hour-glass.
It is a suggestive fact that we find among several nations in different parts of the world an ancient tradition, according to which their most popular stringed instrument was originally derived from the water. Thus with Nareda and the vina, the latter has also the name kach’-hapi, signifying a tortoise (testudo), whilst nara denotes in Sanskrit water, and narada, or nareda, the giver of water. Like Nareda, Nereus and his fifty daughters, the Nereïdes, were much renowned for their musical accomplishments; and Hermes (it will be remembered) made his lyre, the chelys, of a tortoise-shell. The Scandinavian god Odin, the originator of magic songs, is mentioned as the ruler of the sea, and as such he had the name of Nikarr. In the depth of the sea he played the harp with his subordinate spirits, who occasionally came up to the surface of the water to teach some favoured human being their wonderful instrument. Wäinämöinen, the divine player on the Finnish kantele (according to the Kalewala, the old national epic of the Finns) constructed his instrument of fish-bones. The frame he made out of the bones of the pike; and the teeth of the pike he used for the tuning-pegs.
Jacob Grimm in his work on German mythology points out an old tradition, preserved in Swedish and Scotch national ballads, of a skilful harper who constructs his instrument out of the bones of a young girl drowned by a wicked woman. Her fingers he uses for the tuning screws, and her golden