lptured decorations that adorn the famous
"Golden Porch" at Freiburg which represents a crwth and bow of the
twelfth century, the bow being merely a straight rod ornamented at
either end with a simple knob (Fig. 3).

[Illustration: FIG. 3.]

He also gives a drawing of a violist of the fourteenth century,
sculptured on the cathedral at Cologne, where the bow is even simpler
in form. It is, however, impossible to judge how far the sculptor's
imagination, or lack of observation, may have been responsible for
these representations, so that they can hardly be taken as reliable
evidence of the use of such primitive contrivances at so late a
period.

CHAPTER II.

ORIENTAL ORIGIN OF THE BOW--INDIAN, CHINESE AND OTHER EASTERN BOWED
INSTRUMENTS.

In attempting to trace the use of the bow to its source we are
obliged to content ourselves with the generalized statement that it
is undoubtedly of oriental origin. Thus, that it _had_ an origin is
proved beyond "all possible, probable shadow of doubt."

But whether the first form of bowed instrument became extinct
prehistorically, or whether it still survives, as some suppose, in
the Ravanastron of India, is not easily determined.

My own personal belief in the extreme antiquity of the bow is such as
almost to justify the quaint statement of Jean Jacques Rousseau that
Adam played the viol in Paradise.

Of existing bowed instruments the Ravanastron (Fig. 4) most certainly
seems to be the oldest, as its structure is more primitive than any
other.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

Concerning this instrument legend runs to the effect that it was
invented by Ravana, who was king of Ceylon some 5,000 years prior to
the Christian era. How far this is accurate is impossible to say, for
the oldest names for the bow known to Sanskrit scholars only take us
back 1,500 to 2,000 years. Of these names it is interesting to note
that the Kona was evidently no more than a "friction rod" as, judging
from the early descriptions, it would appear to have been without
hair. Whether the Garika or Parivadas approached more nearly to the
modern idea of a bow I am unfortunately not in a position to state
with any degree of certainty.

The Ravanastron was, like the violin in its earliest stages, played
only by the inferior classes of India; a fact that, as Engel clearly
points out, makes it seem highly improbable that it was a Mohammedan
importation, despite some writers' assertions to that effect