nventors of the lyre and
cithara (guitar); that the invention of the flute was attributed to
Minerva, and that Pan is said to have invented the syrinx. More worthy
of our attention are some similar records of the Hindoos, because they
have hitherto scarcely been noticed in any work on music.

"In the mythology of the Hindoos, the god Nareda is the inventor of the
_vina_, the principal musical instrument of Hindoostan. Saraswati, the
consort of Brahma, may be said to be considered as the Minerva of the
Hindoos. She is the goddess of music as well as of speech. To her is
attributed the invention of the systematic arrangement of the sounds
into a musical scale. She is represented seated on a peacock and playing
a stringed instrument of the guitar kind. Brahma, himself, we find
depicted as a vigorous man with four handsome heads, beating with his
hands upon a small drum. Arid Vishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is
represented as a beautiful youth playing upon a flute. The Hindoos still
possess a peculiar kind of flute which they consider as the favorite
instrument of Krishna. Furthermore, they have the divinity of Genesa,
the god of wisdom, who is represented as a man with the head of an
elephant holding in his hands a _tamboura_, a kind of lute with a long
neck.

"Among the Chinese, we meet with a tradition according to which they
obtained their musical scale from a miraculous bird called Foung-hoang,
which appears to have been a sort of phoenix. As regards the invention
of musical instruments, the Chinese have various traditions. In one of
these we are told that the origin of some of their most popular
instruments dates from the period when China was under the 'dominion of
the heavenly spirits called Ki. Another assigns the invention of several
of their stringed instruments to the great Fohi, called the "Son of
Heaven," who was, it is said, the founder of the Chinese Empire, and who
is stated to have lived about B.C. 3000, which was long after the
dominion of the Ki, or spirits. Again, another tradition holds that the
most important Chinese musical instruments, and the systematic
arrangement of the tones, are an invention of Niuva, a supernatural
female, who lived at the time of Fohi, and who was a virgin-mother. When
Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, happened to hear, on a certain
occasion, some divine music, he became so greatly enraptured that he
could not take any food for three months. The music which pro