MUSIC AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. 195

music; and from thinking to expressing is but a step....
now their ambition is to have a piano* and to have t'heij?
•children learn to play. 'Learning music' to them means
learning to play the piano, and so that unfortunate instru-
ment has become to them, as to the vast majority, a substi-
tute for music in the brain.... many.... think it a mark
of inferiority to confess acquaintance with their own songs
when they can have English music and a piano."t

Music, in fact, is contemplated in modern ^English*
•education in India by no means as an energy of the mind,
but essentially as an accomplishment ; and it is in the v?»at
majority of cases only as an accomplishment that European
music can be taught in India.

The introduction to India of the piano, and "Western
music generally, is sometimes defended on the plea that
both types may be l enjoyed.'!: The superficiality of this
view is evident;—as if the origin and purpose of Eonyic
were but 4 amusement.' Music and art are not amusements
invented by idle men to pass away the time of other idlesu ;•
they are expansions of personality, essential to true civili-
sation, expressions of the human spirit, confirming the
sincere conviction that man does not live by bread alone,
Music, even more than plastic art, • is a function of the
higher consciousness. The true musician is the Keltic
harper who hears the music of the fairies or the Indian
.singer who hears the voices of Gandharvas. Only such, like
•Guttila, can call angels down from heaven. I heard of one
living singer at Tanjore, who had no voice or power to ,shig
lout longed to express1 devotion to the Lord hi music : "he

* In modern India more frequently the cheap harmonium,
t Helen Hopekirk,'- Seventy Scottish Songs,' Boston, 1905,
{ The word being used ia the limited sense of gratification or
amusement.