the eyes of the Kashmir
weavers, men and women, are able to distinguish three hundred shades
more than the eye of a European.... The force of habit, the law of
atavism, if you like. But things of this kind practically solve the
apparent difficulty. You have come all the way from America to study the
Hindus and their religion; but you will never understand the latter if
you do not realize how closely all our sciences are related, not to
the modern ignorant Brahmanism, of course, but to the philosophy of our
primitive Vedic religion."

"I see. You mean that your music has something to do with the Vedas?"

"Exactly. It has a good deal--almost everything--to do with the Vedas.
All the sounds of nature, and, in consequence, of music, are directly
allied to astronomy and mathematics; that is to say, to the planets,
the signs of the zodiac, the sun and moon, and to rotation and numbers.
Above all, they depend on the Akasha, the ether of space, of the
existence of which your scientists have not made perfectly sure as yet.
This was the teaching of the ancient Chinese and Egyptians, as well as
of ancient Aryans. The doctrine of the 'music of the spheres' first
saw the light here in India, and not in Greece or Italy, whither it
was brought by Pythagoras after he had studied under the Indian
Gymnosophists. And most certainly this great philosopher--who revealed
to the world the heliocentric system before Copernicus and Galileo--knew
better than anyone else how dependent are the least sounds in nature
on Akasha and its interrelations. One of the four Vedas, namely, the
Sama-Veda, entirely consists of hymns. This is a collection of mantrams
sung during the sacrifices to the gods, that is to say, to the elements.
Our ancient priests were hardly acquainted with the modern methods of
chemistry and physics; but, to make up for it, they knew a good deal
which has not as yet been thought of by modern scientists. So it is not
to be wondered at that, sometimes, our priests, so perfectly acquainted
with natural sciences as they were, forced the elementary gods, or
rather the blind forces of nature, to answer their prayers by various
portents. Every sound of these mantrams has its meaning, its importance,
and stands exactly where it ought to stand; and, having a raison d'etre,
it does not fail to produce its effect. Remember Professor Leslie, who
says that the science of sound is the most subtle, the most unseizable
and the most complicated