The Japanese employ large bells (_kane_ or _tsuri-gane_ = Chinese _chung_) in their Buddhist worship. There is a famous bell, richly decorated, near the Daibutsu at Kiōto, which is struck, at different hours of the day, with a heavy wooden mallet; and its sound is said to be particularly sonorous, mellow, and far-reaching. Another celebrated Japanese bell is placed on a high hill near the town of Nara. It is suspended in a wooden shed, close to the Tōdaiji Temple. A thick pole, affixed to the rafters, is drawn backwards, and then, by being let loose, is made to rebound so as to hit the bell sideways in the usual manner. This bell is admired throughout the country, and pictures representing it are sold on the spot to the visitors, who have to ascend a long flight of narrow steps before they reach its station on the summit of the hill. Small bells (_rin_) are used by the Buddhist priests in Japan while officiating in the temple, just as is the case in China, Thibet and other districts of the Asiatic continent. THE HINDUS. In the Brahmin mythology of the Hindus the demi-god Nareda is the inventor of the _vina_, the principal national instrument of Hindustan. His mother, Saraswati, the consort of Brahma, may be regarded as the Minerva of the Hindus. 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 either on the southern _vina_ or the _bîn_, stringed instruments of the lute kind. Brahma himself we occasionally find depicted as a vigorous man with four handsome heads, beating with his hands upon a small drum; and Vishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is represented as a beautiful youth playing upon a flute. The Hindus construct a peculiar kind of flute, the _bansi_, which they consider as the favourite instrument of Krishna. The _sankha_, or conch-shell trumpet of victory, one of the important attributes of Vishnu the preserver, and his consort Lakshmi, is occasionally represented in the possession of Siva, and other deities. Siva the destroyer, and his consort Parvati, also carry the _budbudika_, or _damaru_, a rattle-drum shaped like an hour-glass.