Note 31 — CHAPTER 20

Strabo says the Greeks consider music as originating from Thrace and Asia, of which countries were Orpheus, Musaeus, etc.; and that others “who regard all Asia, as far as India, as a country sacred to Dionysus (Bacchus), attribute to that country the invention of nearly all the science of music. We perceive them sometimes describing the cithara of the Asiatic, and sometimes applying to flutes the epithet of Phrygian. The names of certain instruments, such as the nabla, and others likewise, are taken from barbarous tongues.” This nabla of Strabo is possibly the tabla, the small tabor of India. If Strabo took his orthography from the Persian or Arabic, a single point would constitute the difference between the N (ن) and the T (ﺕ). [The Arabic tabl, tabla, has no connexion with Greek νάβλα, Hebrew nevel.]