The tasselled end of the instrument, it should be observed, is placed to the right hand of the player.
| Assyrian Harp with Plectrum. |
Fig. 42.
Why tassels? Well, these Asiatic people have a great fondness for such ornaments. My two Japanese flutes have heavy crimson silk tassels quite eighteen inches long. Curiously, too, we find in very early Assyrian representation of hand harps on monumental slabs in the British Museum, exactly the same set of tassels—seven or eight in a series—depending from the bar upon which the strings are tied: knotted in fact to the tassels. And thereupon we wonder what community of intercourse was there between the ancient Assyrians and the Chinese that this same custom should be adhered to by both people, in times so very far back: for Fu Hsi, the inventor, ruled 4746 years ago, and the instrument, bespeaks a very high civilization as then existing, and a refined state of learning and philosophy. It is worth reflecting upon; a simple fancy such as that perpetuated for well nigh fifty centuries.
The Assyrians have passed away utterly, and the Chinese crowd the earth, to this day reproducing the old traditional forms, the veritable instruments decorated after inherited customs, the music limited to the simplicity of primitive aims. No great nation was ever so barren of monuments as the Chinese. But what monuments need they? They themselves are the permanent archaic, and livingly represent their ancestors.
