The Vína (Plate XL.) is the characteristic Hindu stringed instrument, and has a great antiquity attributed to it. The string is theoretically said to be divided into twenty-two small intervals in the octave, of equal extent, called _s'ruti_, by which the tones and semitones are determined; but recent observation shows that the Hindus are satisfied with a division of twelve semitones in the octave--in fact, our chromatic scale. Smaller intervals are only used for grace notes, and are produced by deflecting the string. Gourd resonators have been mentioned as of probably very ancient use, and the employment of sympathetic strings, in vogue in Europe only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, may be added as also of remote origin in India. The Hindus and Persians have both used gourds attached to the Vínas and Sitárs (Plate XL.) for resonance. In Southern India, where the use of the original Hindu Vína prevails, although the scale now used is at least heptatonic, there is still a leaning towards pentatonic forms of melody. The accordances are in fourths or fifths and octaves. The Sitár of Northern India and greater use of the interval of the third may be attributed to Persian introduction; but throughout India, and more intensely in the south, music is felt as a poetic art, and has a development in its own way, that still remains unrecognised in Europe, although we now have scholars from whose researches and zeal this ignorance may be in time, at least partially, dispelled. Music is acutely felt as a means of expression in India unknown in China or among the Indo-Chinese races. The vexed question of the introduction of the bow to stringed instruments, upon which the most eminent authorities are not yet disposed to agree, is one that needs only to be mentioned here. Whether of Asiatic or European introduction, it would appear at first to have been only one of the ways by which sounds could be drawn from strings, and that it gradually became victorious over the plectrum, with instruments of the viol kind, which thereby gained a great development. It is even now permitted to use the fingers to a bowed instrument in the _pizzicato_ of the violin and violoncello.