it to be--the Eastern view of our subject would be singularly
clear and defined. A declaration, however, resting on tradition,
necessarily makes the gathering of evidence in support of it a task
both dubious and difficult.[3]

[Footnote 2: M. Sonnerat, "Voyage aux Indes Orientales," 1806.]

[Footnote 3: In Mr. Engel's "Researches into the Early History of the
Violin Family," 1883--a book containing much valuable evidence on the
subject--the author rightly remarks: "Now, this may be true; still it
is likewise true that most of the Asiatic nations are gifted with a
remarkably powerful imagination, which evidently induces them
sometimes to assign a fabulously high age to any antiquity of theirs
the origin of which dates back to a period where history merges in
myth. At the present day the Hindoos possess, among their numerous
rude instruments of the Fiddle class, an extraordinarily primitive
contrivance, which they believe to be the instrument invented by
Ravanon. Their opinion has actually been adopted by some of our modern
musical historians as if it were a well established truth."]

It is said that Sanscrit scholars have met with names for the bow in
Sanscrit writings dating back nearly two thousand years. If this
information could be supplemented by reliable monumental evidence of
the existence of a bow of some rude kind among the nations of the East
about the commencement of the Christian era, its value would
necessarily be complete. In the absence of such evidence we are left
in doubt as to what was intended to be understood by the reported
references to a bow in ancient Sanscrit literature. The difficulty of
understanding what Greek and Roman authors meant, in reference to the
same subject, must be greatly intensified in the works of ancient
Eastern writers.[4]

[Footnote 4: In the "Reflections" at the end of Vol. I., "Burney's
History of Music," we read, "The ancients had instead of a bow, the
Plectrum." "It appears too clumsy to produce from the strings tones
that had either the sweetness or brilliancy of such as are drawn from
them by means of the bow or quill. But, notwithstanding it is
represented so massive, I should rather suppose it to have been a
quill, or piece of ivory in imitation of one, than a stick or blunt
piece of wood or ivory."]

The inquiry is simplified from the point of view of a Violinist if we
reject all bow-progenitors but those which have been strung with
fibre, silk, hair, or other