INDIAN MUSIC. 185

songs is very noteworthy; one sowing song begins as
follows:—" When the fields are well prepared, which lie round
Balagala-hill, right quickly then the seed is sown by the
Four Regents of the Earth. " A threshing song runs:
-"This is not our threshing floor, 'tis the Moon-god's
threshing floor; this is not our threshing floor, ' tis the
.Sun-god's threshing floor. " Such songs are the fruit of
that t pagan ' conception of all life as a sacrament, which
.gives in the East so much beauty and dignity to common
things. "What more perfect picture can be imagined of
the simple agricultural life of an Indian village, than the
bright moonlit threshing-floor, freshly cleaned and con-
.secrated, where the corn is trodden out by the feet of
bulls driven round a i bull-post' in the middle ? Even the
bulls are in the song:

0 bull-king, leader of the team,

O Veriya going next him,
And Kalata the bull-calf,

Make haste to get the threshing done !

1 will get your twin horns gilt,

Deck your pair of ears with pearln,
And eke your dew-claws,

So «hall I adorn ye 1
Ye bulls that wander by the hillside,

Yoked together by a woodbine,
Wearing pearls and coral beads,

And eating tender leaves,......

Draw the grain into thi« threshing floor!

Such are the agricultural songs. Simple as they are,
those who have heard them in their own surroundings, will
not easily forget them. But even these are less used than
formerly, and in a little time will be gone.

Women transplanting rice in the wet fieTcls of Ceylon,
sing jatakas, and other songs about the Buddha ; 8a/m-<mala
.hella (the song of Adam's Peak); Padmavati kathava—
the loveliest of Sinhalese princesses who became a Rajput