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Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University by Edward MacDowell
page 42 of 285 (14%)
hath no covering. He hangeth the earth upon nothing
and the pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished
at His reproof. Though He slay me, yet will I trust
in Him. For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and at
the last day He shall stand upon the earth.

As with the Hebrews, music among the Hindus was closely
bound to religion. When, 3000 years before the Christian era,
that wonderful, tall, white Aryan race of men descended upon
India from the north, its poets already sang of the gods,
and the Aryan gods were of a different order from those known
to that part of the world; for they were beautiful in shape,
and friendly to man, in great contrast to the gods of the
Davidians, the pre-Aryan race and stock of the Deccan. These
songs formed the _Rig-Veda_, and are the nucleus from which
all Hindu religion and art emanate.

We already know that when the auxiliary speech which we call
music was first discovered, or, to use the language of all
primitive nations, when it was first bestowed on man by the
gods, it retained much of the supernatural potency that its
origin would suggest. In India, music was invested with divine
power, and certain hymns--especially the prayer or chant of
Vashishtha--were, according to the _Rig-Veda_, all powerful in
battle. Such a magic song, or chant, was called a _brahma_,
and he who sang it a _brahmin_. Thus the very foundation of
Brahminism, from which rose Buddhism in the sixth century
B.C., can be traced back to the music of the sacred songs of
the _Rig-Veda_ of India. The priestly or Brahmin caste grew
therefore from the singers of the Vedic hymns. The Brahmins
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