The instruments most commonly used, besides the Sítar and its relative the Vina, are the Manda, a horizontal harp somewhat resembling the Tyrolese zither; the Sigara, a small clarinet; a bamboo flageolet, which has a very sweet and mellow tone; the Tabala, a small kettledrum; and the Taus, a four-stringed fiddle played with a bow. This last is a very curious instrument. Beneath the four main strings are stretched a number of other fine wires, which by their vibration lightly reinforce and sustain the notes played. The effect when not played too fast is very graceful and clinging, with subtle harmonics; and I have heard some most bewitching phrasing on this instrument—a dialogue one might say between it and the voice—with accompaniment of the little Tabala. The Tabala itself is very charming, with its gurgling and bell-like sounds and sudden explosions and chattering accompaniments, executed by the fingers and the butt end of the hand on two drums simultaneously. The great effect of the sítar, whose tone on the whole is thin, is undoubtedly the side tension of the strings, which gives much expression to it.

At its best the Indian music seems to me to produce a powerful impression—though generally either plaintive or frenzied. On the deep background of the drone are wrought these (Wagnerian) phrases, which are perfectly fluent and variable according to the subject conveyed, which are extraordinarily subtle in expression, and which generally rise in intensity and complexity as the piece progresses, till the hearers are worked into a state of cumulated excitement. When there are several instruments and voices thus figuring together over the same bass, the effect is fine. The little tambours with their gurgling notes record the time in a kind of unconscious way and keep the musicians together. The big drums and the lower strings of the vina give the required basses, the taus and sítars and voices fly up and down in delightful intricacy, quarter notes touched here and there create a plaintive discord, and even the slur judiciously used adds a weird effect as of the wind in the forest.

When not at its very best however it is certainly (to me) damnably rambling, monotonous and wearisome—notwithstanding chromatic effects of admitted elegance and occasional passages of great tenderness. What the music most seems to want is distinct form and contrast, and the ruder rockier elements—nor is their time-system sufficiently developed to allow change of accent in successive bars, etc. They all say however that the art is not cultivated to-day, and indeed is greatly decadent and to some extent actually lost. Like all branches of learning in India, and the caste-system itself, it has been subject to intense pedantry and formalism, and has become nearly stifled amid the otiose rules which cumber it. On the other hand it is interesting to find that the Hindus call our music not only monotonous (as we call theirs, and which may be accounted for by mere unfamiliarity—as a town-bred man thinks all sheep alike), but also coarse and rude—by which I fancy they mean that our intervals are all very obvious and commonplace, and the time-system rigid—while probably our sequences of harmony are lost upon them. Panna Lall, I find, picks up our tunes quite easily; and seems to like them fairly, but always adds a lot of little kinks and twanks of his own.

After all, though the vaguely-floating subtle recitative style of the Indian music has its drawbacks and makes one crave for a little more definition and articulateness, it presses upon one as possible that our music might gain something by the adoption and incorporation of some of these more subtle Eastern elements—if only at times, and as an enhancement of our range of expression by contrast with our own generic style.

CHAPTER XIV.
BENARES.

The great plains of the Ganges are very impressive; so vast—with a stretch, roughly speaking, of a thousand miles, and breadth from 200 to 300 miles—so populous,[5] yet with such an ancient world-old village life; and dominated always by these tremendous powers of sun and sky. All the way from Calcutta to Delhi (and beyond) this immense plain, absolutely flat, spreads in every direction, as far as eye can see the same, dotted park-like with trees (mangos many of them), which thickening here and there into a clump of palmyra palms indicate the presence of a village. The long stretches of bare land with hardly a blade of grass, shimmering in the noonday heat; oases of barley and dhol (a shrub-like lentil) looking green at this time of year, but soon to be reaped and stowed away; patches of potatos, castor-oil plant, poppy in white flower, small guava trees, indigo, etc.; here and there a muddy pool or irrigation channel; a herd of slow ungainly buffalos or the more elegant humped cow’s, browsing miraculously on invisible herbage; a woman following them, barefoot and barehead, singing a sad-toned refrain, picking up the precious dung (for fuel) and storing it in a basket; long expanses of mere sand with a few scrubby trees, brown crop-lands without a crop, straggling natural roads or tracks going to the horizon—not a hedge for hundreds of miles—strings of peasants passing from distant village to village, donkeys laden with produce, and now and then a great solid-wheeled cart labouring and creaking by over the unbroken land. The villages themselves are mostly mere collections of mud huts, looking when partially broken down very like anthills; and some villages are surrounded by rude mud walls dating from older and less settled times, and having a very primitive appearance. The people on the whole (after Southern India) look rather dirty in their unbleached cotton, but here and there one meets with bright colors and animated scenes.

[5] With an average density of population of 500 per square mile, or nearly double that of the United Kingdom!

Here are two peasants drawing water all day from the well to irrigate their rice-field; one guides the bucket down to the water, the other runs out on the long lever arm of a horizontal pole—holding on to the branches of a neighboring tree as he does so—and so brings the bucket up again. And thus they continue from earliest dawn to latest dusk, with a few hours’ rest at midday.

Here is one watering his fields by hand, carrying pots and emptying them over the thirsty plants—a fearful toil!

Here again is the classical picture—the two mild-eyed cows harnessed at the well mouth. The rope passes over a pulley and draws up a huge skin full of water as the cows recede from the well; then, as they remount the slight slope, the skin again falls to the water. To and fro go the cows; one man guides them, another empties the skins into the water channel; and so day-long the work continues.