frequent, though somewhat used by both Brahmins and Buddhists. The singing of poems is universal, from the old Sanscrit odes to the ballads of modern origin. Dancing to music is very popular, and professional dancing-girls are a feature at social functions. Music is often employed in pantomimes and plays having a mythical, social or fantastic subject.
The training of the Bayaderes or Nautch girls is usually managed as a
business by Buddhist priests, and is often associated with immorality.
The tone system rests upon a primary division of the octave
into seven steps, but more exactly into twenty-two nearly equal
'srutis' or quarter-steps. These latter are not all used in any
single scale, but serve to define with precision various seven-tone
scales that differ in the location of the shorter steps (as
in the mediæval modes of Europe). Theory has been so refined
as to name almost 1000 possible varieties of scale (not
to mention the 16,000 of mythical story). In practice not more
than twenty of these appear, the usage varying with locality
and tribe. Most of these scales are somewhat akin to ours, so
that melodies in them often suggest our common modes. But
the intonation is usually obscured by plentiful melodic decorations.
Many songs are pleasing and expressive to Occidental
taste, the ancient ones having much dignity, but popular singing
often runs off into weird and curious effects, probably due
to Mohammedan influence.
Triple rhythms are at least as common as duple. The metric schemes
are apt to be varied and complicated, corresponding to those of poetry.
Variations in pace and accent are frequent. Both the pitch and duration
of tones, with various points about execution, are indicated by a notation
of Sanscrit characters for notes, and signs or words for other details.
The art of making instruments has been as minutely studied
as the theory of scales. Almost every species of portable
instrument is known, and in many varieties. Native writers
indicate four classes—those with strings, those with membranes
sounded by striking, those struck together in pairs, and
those sounded by blowing. Of these the stringed group is by
far the most characteristic and admired. Percussives include
various drums, tambourines, castanets, cymbals, gongs, etc.
Wind instruments include many flutes (though not often of
the transverse kind), oboes, bagpipes, horns and trumpets.
