As a foundation for all understanding and estimation of the so-called exotic systems of music we must bear in mind that beneath the differences from our own music in scale structure often as a matter of practice more apparent than real, in lack of harmony and in predominance of rhythm, lies the fundamental difference that music has never been cultivated for itself alone in China, in Hindustan, or among ancient nations to anything like the same extent as in the Occident. Though in the Mohammedan Orient, at the height of the Saracen civilization, it was highly esteemed as a social diversion, in general it figures, not as an independent art, but rather as an auxiliary one. This, of course, applies to art-music, not to popular or folk song, of which, just as in other lands, there is a rich literature in the East. On the rivers of China, in the bazaars of Hindoo cities, under the Bedouin tent-roof, the people sing their songs. But the art of music was developed by these peoples only in connection with dancing, sacred or secular, with ceremonial functions, plays or pantomimes. If this fact be borne in mind, it is perhaps easier to comprehend an art so strikingly different from our own. Exotic music, or, broadly speaking, the music of the semi-civilized races, may be considered under four heads; that of the Aztecs and Peruvians (nations whose civilizations, though they have been destroyed, are of too recent date to be classed with those of the ancients, yet the scant musical record of which should not be overlooked); the music of India; the music of the Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Chinese peoples, including the Siamese, Javabese, Cambodians, Annamites; and the music of the Mohammedan Orient. There is but little known of the music of the Aztecs or Peruvians. The fact that the Aztec language was sweet and harmonious to the ear and had no sharp or nasal sounds justified the fondness with which both lyric and dramatic poetry were cultivated in ancient Mexico. But the music of the Aztecs seems to have been unworthy of so cultivated a people. It was the only art that remained in its infancy among them. Still, the mention of ballads sung by the people, court-odes and the chants of temple choirs, show that they must have cultivated a form of vocal music distinctly above that of drums and horns, pipes and whistles. Moreover, music played an important part in connection with religious and secular dancing, as it did also in India. It has been conjectured that the Aztec tonal system resembled that of the Arabs. Their songs generally began with deep sounds, rising in pitch and accelerating with the increase of pleasurable emotion on the part of the singer. De Solis speaks of the funeral processions in which the bodies of the dead were brought to the temples to be received by the priests swinging their censers of burning copal 'to the hoarse sound of dissonant flutes and singing various hymns in a melancholy mode.’