Many South Asian musics of modern popular tradition are of such distinctive character that it is difficult to imagine that they were not identical in the region's remotest past. Certainly, familiar types of instrument appear in ancient manuscript art and still earlier relief sculptures.
Scenes of musical life figure prominently in the art of the Borobudur Temple, Java, in the 8th century AD and, a thousand years earlier in the 2nd century BC, in the dance and music scenes shown on the walls of the Bharat Temple, India.
Instruments, stringed, wind and percussion, illustrate stages in their long and complex evolution through to the forms we recognize today. Harps, lutes, flutes and drums are special favourites.
But clearly processes of change in design denote changes in musical character too: the earliest flutes, which archaeological research shows to have been already in use well before 1500 BC, may have sounded little like any single modern flute tradition 3,500 years on.
The instruments themselves, coupled with documentary records such as the sixth-century BC treatise Natya Shastra of Bharata provide the raw materials for current research.
