CHAPTER VII
THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF INDIA
The musical instruments of India present a wonderful variety. As might be expected they are meant mostly for individual use, and there is very little suggestion of an orchestra. The Indian Rajas maintain a number of fine musicians, but it is rare to hear orchestral music in India. It is not, however, unknown, and one may sometimes hear orchestral pieces at the concerts of the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in Bombay and also in Baroda. In order to see all the different musical instruments of India one has to journey to many different places. There is a good collection at the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in Bombay; but the Indian Museum, Calcutta, has probably the finest collection of both ancient and modern instruments. One does not however, as a rule, find them in a band or concert party, as one does in the West, though Baroda is attempting to do this under the guidance of Mr. Fredilis, the Principal of the Music School and an accomplished western musician. The greatest variety is found in stringed instruments and in instruments of percussion. Probably India excels most other countries in these two. The following quotation from the monumental work by Captain Day on The Musical Instruments of Southern India will give a good idea of the condition of things when he wrote fifty years ago:—
'Most of the early musical instruments remain still in use. Since the time of the Muhammadan invasion, about a thousand years ago, some Arabian and Persian instruments have been adopted, and have become almost naturalized ; but their use has never become universal, and is mostly confined to the North of India or to Mussulman musicians.
'The people of India have always been conservative in their tastes, and in nothing do we find this more evident than in their music and musical instruments. Descriptions of them are found m many of the old Sanskrit treatises, and show that the forms of the instruments now in use have altered hardly at all during the last two thousand
