By music minds an equal temper know, nor swell too high nor sink too low; Warriors she fires with animated sounds,
Pours balms into the bleeding lover's wounds-Pore.
Poets themselves must fall, like those they rung.
Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.-Porz.
A general view of the plan and contents of the work.
A TREATISE on the Music of Hindoostan is a desi deratum which has not yet been supplied. Although several eminent Orientalists have endeavoured to penetrate this elegant branch of Indian science, scarcely any part of it has been elucidated or rendered familiar to Europeans. It is this chasm which I have endeavoured to fill; how far I have succeeded in an undertaking so difficult (for reasons which shall presently appear), it is for the public to determine.
It is impossible to convey an accurate idea of music by words or written language; that is, the various degrees of acuteness or gravity of sounds, together with the precise quantity of the duration of each, cannot be expressed by common language, o as to be of any use to performers, and as the musical characters now in use, which alone can express musle in the manner that could be desired, is a modern invention, of course all attempts to define music anterior to the invention of this elegant and concise method must have necessarily pored abortive.
How far the ancient philosophers of this country ad- Yauced towards the perfection of this science will appear in the course of this work; but as they were some. Thing similar to the awkward attempts made in Europe previous to the invention of the system now in use, they were insufficient for practice. The musical scale, invented by Magister Franco, and the time table, were both known here, and it only required a trifling degree of Ingenuity to connect the one with the other, so that one individual character might instantly express both. This step was waiting, and it is this which has rendered all their treatises on music an unintelligible and almost useless jargon.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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