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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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3
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340
MARCO POLO 1300K II.
;4i
elephant, as is sometimes the case in India. Thus, too, P. della Valle describes those of an Indian Embassy at Ispahan : "The Indian Ambassador was also accompanied by a variety of warlike instruments of music of strange kinds, and particularly by certain Naccheras of such immense size that each pair had an elephant to carry them, whilst an Indian astride upon the elephant between the two Naccheras played upon them with both hands, dealing strong blows on this one and on that ; what a din was made by these vast drums, and what a spectacle it was, I leave you to imagine."
Join ville also speaks of the Nakkara as the signal for action : " So he was setting his host in array till noon, and then he made those drums of theirs to sound that they call Nacaires, and then they set upon us horse and foot." The Great Nakkara of the Tartars appears from several Oriental histories to have been called Kúrkah. I cannot find this word in any dictionary accessible to me, but it is in the Ain Akbari (Kawargah) as distinct from the Nakkárah. Abulfazl tells us that Akbar not only had a rare knowledge of the science of music, but was likewise an excellent performer —especially on the Nakkárah 1
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b.*
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. The privilege of employing the Nakkara in personal state was one granted by the
sovereign as a high honour and reward.
The crusades naturalised the word in some form or other in most European languages, but in our own apparently with a transfer of meaning. For Wright defines Naker as " a cornet or horn of brass." And Chaucer's use seems to countenance this :—
" Pipes, Trompes, Nakeres, and Clariounes, That in the Bataille blowen blody sounes."
— The Knight's Tale.
On the other hand, Nacchera, in Italian, seems always to have retained the meaning of kettle-drum, with the slight exception of a local application at Siena to a metal circle or triangle struck with a rod. The fact seems to be that there is a double origin, for the Arabic dictionaries not only have Nakkárah, but Nakér, and Ná.aír, " cornu, tuba." The orchestra of Bibars Bundukdári, we are told, consisted of 4o pairs of kettle-drums, 4 drums, 4 hautbois, and 20 trumpets (/Vakír). (Sir B. Frere;
.. Della Valle, II. 21 ; Tods Rajasthan, I. 328 ; Joinville, p. 83 ; N. et E. XIV. 129,
and following note ; ßlochmann's Ain-i-Akbari, pp. 5o-5 ; Ducange, by Haenschel,
!.* s.v. ; Makrizi, I. i73.)
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Nakkaras. (From a Chinese original.)
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