The Gods Give Music to the Hindus
There had been so much conquest and battling in India, that although we know much about Hindu music it is very difficult to tell what really belonged to the Hindus and what was brought to them.
The native legends tell us that the gods gave music to the people and all through the music there are signs to show their power and influence. The literature of India can be traced back many centuries and through it we see what an important place song held. There were minstrels in the ancient courts whose duty it was to chant songs in praise of their royal masters. In their religious ceremonies, too, music held a high place. One of their holy books says: “Indra (their chief god) rejects the offering made without music.” The Hindu people are divided into many classes, which they call castes, and in ancient times the singers were members of the priest caste. The Hindus love music and have always used it for all festivities, in the drama, and in the temples.
The singing of poems from ancient time has always been popular and dancing too, and here, as among the Japanese, have grown up trained dancers called the Bayaderes or Nautch girls. (Chapter V).
Music is still used in India to appease and please the gods and to plead for rain or sunshine.
Travelers to India relate that they have heard the beating of drums, accompanied by solo voice or by a chorus, continued for several days at a time. When there has been a drought, and rain is needed, this long drawn out music is used as a means to ask the god to bring rain.
In the Temple of the Sacred Tooth in Ceylon (India) on each night of the full moon, the sacred books are chanted by relays of yellow-robed priests, following each other every two hours from dark to dawn. They chant in deep resounding voices without a pause. The Buddhist priests have repeated these sacred texts on every night of the full moon for twenty-eight centuries!
In India they have made a deep study of color and sound and things we know very little about, and to which we attach very little importance. Through their study of the laws of sound and color, the Hindus feel sure that they are related. Edward Maryon in “Marcotone” says: “Chemistry and Mathematics prove that the Natural Scales of Light and Sound in Principle are one, and therefore the Primary Colors of the Solar Spectrum, and the Primary Tones of the Musical Scale have the same ratio of speed vibrations. Therefore both Tone and Color can be scaled so that a given number of Lightspeeds (Colors), will equal a given number of Soundwaves (Tones).”
When Edward Maryon was in India he visited one of the temples and in watching the prayer wheels, noticed that a certain wheel moving at a certain speed produced a certain sound and a certain color, while another wheel moving at a different speed produced a different tone and a different color. It interested him so much that he learned from a Hindu priest about the relation of light and sound. This led to very interesting experiments and results which he has used in teaching music. The color red is supposed to correspond with the musical sound middle C, orange with D, yellow with E, green with F, blue with G, indigo with A, and violet with B. And recently in America we have been interested in seeing a color organ, the “Clavilux” invented by Thomas Wilfred which plays tones of colors instead of tones of sound.