186 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

bride and sati; others sung by Kandyan women trans-
planting rice, include a number ofjatakas.

Music has been thought to have power even over
animals and inanimate things. How profound and intimate
has been the appeal of Eastern Music to the East, may be
guessed from stories of the influence of certain ragas over
nature that recall the legends of Orpheus and Apollo.

Indian music can best be heard, and dancing seen, in
the great Southern cities such as Madura and Tanjore, and
in the ^Native States, Mysore and Travancore. In such
places it is still studied as a science by learned Brahmans-
and patronized by princes. You may engage a dancing-
girl and her musicians, and invite your friends; seated
upon a carpet in a room bare of all furniture, your enter-
tainment is more wonderful than any that money could
"buy in any other land ; more wonderful at least for you,,
for it is one expression of that national culture of which
you too are a part; it is your love and your emotion, your
adoration for the Lord which the dancer dances and the-
singer sings. Sometimes she is to sing only for you;.
then she brings a tcmiburi or a vina, and seated, like you,,
upon the ground, pours out for as long as you will, songs-
of passionate love, or devotion moving you to tears.

Or it may be a man who plays or sings for you ; one-
who has wandered from court to court and received the
rewards of princes and kings. He plays the sa-ranc/i as-
none else can ; the Kashmir shawl he wears is the token
of a raja's favour. There ai'e no young men following in
his steps ; it is well to hear him while you may. In the-
Jforth he will be perhaps a player on the taus, the c peacock/'
He too sings a song of passionate love, something at' once-
so simple and so universal that it includes the love of God
and the love of woman ; it is part of the method of Indian-