Sir William Jones, in his curious Dissertation on the musical Modes of
the Hindus, relates the following story.
“After food, when the operations of digestion and absorption give so
much employment to the vessels, that a temporary state of mental repose
must be found, especially in hot climates, essential to health, it
seems reasonable to believe that a few agreeable airs, either heard
or played without effort, must have all the good effects of sleep, and
none of its disadvantages: _putting the soul in tune_, as Milton says,
for any subsequent exertion; an experiment often made by myself. I
have been assured by a credible eye-witness, that two wild antelopes
used often to come from their woods to the place where a more savage
beast, Sirajuddaulah, entertained himself with concerts, and that
they listened to the strains with an appearance of pleasure, till the
monster, in whose soul there was no music, shot one of them, to display
his archery. A learned native told me, that he had frequently seen
the most venomous and malignant snakes leave their holes upon hearing
tunes on a flute, which, as he supposed, gave them peculiar delight.
An intelligent Persian declared he had, more than once, been present,
when a celebrated lutanist, surnamed Bulbul, (i. e. the nightingale,)
was playing to a large company, in a grove near Schiraz, where he
distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician,
sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes fluttering from branch to
branch, as if they wished to approach the instrument, and, at length,
dropping on the ground, in a kind of ecstacy, from which they were soon
raised, he assured me, by a change of the mode.”