Furthermore, they have the divinity of Genesa,
the god of wisdom, who is represented as a man with the head of an
elephant holding in his hands a _tamboura_, a kind of lute with a long
neck.
"Among the Chinese, we meet with a tradition according to which they
obtained their musical scale from a miraculous bird called Foung-hoang,
which appears to have been a sort of phoenix. As regards the invention
of musical instruments, the Chinese have various traditions. In one of
these we are told that the origin of some of their most popular
instruments dates from the period when China was under the 'dominion of
the heavenly spirits called Ki. Another assigns the invention of several
of their stringed instruments to the great Fohi, called the "Son of
Heaven," who was, it is said, the founder of the Chinese Empire, and who
is stated to have lived about B.C. 3000, which was long after the
dominion of the Ki, or spirits. Again, another tradition holds that the
most important Chinese musical instruments, and the systematic
arrangement of the tones, are an invention of Niuva, a supernatural
female, who lived at the time of Fohi, and who was a virgin-mother. When
Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, happened to hear, on a certain
occasion, some divine music, he became so greatly enraptured that he
could not take any food for three months. The music which produced the
miraculous effect was that of Kouei, the Orpheus of the Chinese, whose
performance on the _king_, a kind of harmonicon constructed of slabs of
sonorous stone, would draw wild animals around him and make them
subservient to his will.
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