Besides the sacred songs of the Brahmins and Buddhists, the Hindus had many others, some of which partook of the occult powers of the hymns, occult powers that were as strongly marked as those of Hebrew music. For while the latter are revealed in the playing of David before Saul, in the influence of music on prophecy, the falling of the walls of Jericho at the sound of the trumpets of Joshua, etc., in India the same supernatural power was ascribed to certain songs. For instance, there were songs that could be sung only by the gods, and one of them, so the legend runs, if sung by a mortal, would envelop the singer in flames. The last instance of the singing of this song was during the reign of Akbar, the great Mogul emperor (about 1575 A.D.). At his command the singer sang it standing up to his neck in the river Djaumna, which, however, did not save him, for, according to the account, the water around him boiled, and he was finally consumed by a flame of fire. Another of Akbar's singers caused the palace to be wrapped in darkness by means of one of these magic songs, and another averted a famine by causing rain to fall when the country was threatened by drought. Animals were also tamed by means of certain songs, the only relic of which is found in the serpent charmers' melodies, which, played on a kind of pipe, seem to possess the power of controlling cobras and the other snakes exhibited by the Indian fakirs.
Many years before Gautama's time, the brahmas or singers of sacred songs of ancient India formed themselves into a caste or priesthood; and the word “Brahma,” from meaning a sacred singer, became the name of the supreme deity; in time, as the nation grew, other gods were taken into the religion. Thus we find in pre-Buddha times the trinity of gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, with their wives, Sarasvati or learning, Lakshmi or beauty, and Paravati, who was also called Kali, Durga, and Mahadevi, and was practically the goddess of evil. Of these gods Brahma's consort, Sarasvati, the goddess of speech and learning, brought to earth the art of music, and gave to mankind the Vina.
This instrument is still in use and may be called the national instrument of India. It is composed of a cylindrical pipe, often bamboo, about three and a half feet long, at each end of which is fixed a hollow gourd to increase the tone. It is strung lengthwise with seven metal wires held up by nineteen wooden bridges, just as the violin strings are supported by a bridge. The scale of the instrument proceeds in half tones from
It is to the Krishna incarnation of Vishnu that the Hindu scale is ascribed. According to the legend, Krishna or Vishnu came to earth and took the form of a shepherd, and the nymphs sang to him in many thousand different keys, of which from twenty-four to thirty-six are known and form the basis of Hindu music. To be sure these keys, being formed by different successions of quarter-tones, are practically inexhaustible, and the 16,000 keys of Krishna are quite practicable. The differences in tone, however, were so very slight that only a few, of them have been retained to the present time.
The Hindus get their flute from the god Indra, who, from being originally the all-powerful deity, was relegated by Brahminism to the chief place among the minor gods—from being the god of light and air he came to be the god of music. His retinue consisted of the gandharvas, and apsaras, or celestial musicians and nymphs, who sang magic songs. After the rise and downfall of Buddhism in India the term raga degenerated to a name for a merely improvised chant to which no occult power was ascribed.
The principal characteristics in modern Hindu music are a seemingly instinctive sense of harmony; and although the actual chords are absent, the melodic formation of the songs plainly indicates a feeling for modern harmony, and even form. The actual scale resembles our European scale of twelve semitones (twenty-two s'rutis, quarter-tones), but the modal development of these sounds has been extraordinary. Now a “mode” is the manner in which the notes of a scale are arranged. For instance, in our major mode the scale is arranged as follows: tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. In India there are at present seventy-two modes in use which are produced by making seventy-two different arrangements of the scale by means of sharps and flats, the only rule being that each degree of the scale must be represented; for instance, one of the modes Dehrásan-Karabhárna corresponds to our major scale. Our minor (harmonic) scale figures as Kyravâni. Tânarupi corresponds to the following succession of notes,
