'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎310] (355/714)

PERSIA
been an Oriental attribute of royalty; and, in a letter from the
French traveller, Bernier, written in 1G63 from the Court of the
Great Mogul at Delhi, where there neither was, nor, so far as we
know, ever had been, fire-worship, I have come across the following
passage, describing the practice as it prevailed there and then, in
terms which exactly fit the sonorous and portentous discord which
is evoked every evening by the band of brazen-lunged youths to
whom I used to listen with a sort of horrified fascination at
Teheran:—
Over the great gate there is a large raised place which is called
Nagar Kanay, because that is the place where the Trumpets are, or
rather the Hoboys and Timbals that play together in consort at certain
hours of the day and night. But this is a very odd consort in the ears
of an European that is a new comer, not yet accustomed to it; for
sometimes there are ten or twelve of these Hoboys, and as many Timbals
that sound all at once together ; and there is a Hoboy which is called
Karna, a fathom and a half long, and of half a foot aperture below;
as there are Timbals of brass or iron that have no less than a fathom
in diameter, whence it is easie to judge what a noise they must needs
make.
Bernier goes on to say that at first he found this royal music
quite insufferable ; but that afterwards it was very pleasing in the
night time, when it seemed ' to carry with it something that is
grave, majestical. and very melodious.' Verily de gustibus non est
disputandum. The same practice is still kept up by some of the
native princes in India.
From the Tup Meidan, as I have indicated, two streets run in
a northerly direction towards the outer walls. These streets or
British avenues—for they are planted with poplars—are regarded
Legation ag |] le crowning glory of modern, being, in fact, the
nucleus of European, Teheran. The more westerly of the two,
known to the Persians as Khiaban-i-Dowlet, has been sometimes
described as the Boulevard des Ambassadeurs, from the fact
that the representatives of several foreign Powers have acquired
residences upon it. Of these, by far the most spacious and
imposing is the Legation which shelters the representative of
Her Britannic Majesty. At the distance of nearly half a mile
from the great square, a fine gateway, upon which Her Majesty s
initials are carved in stone, conducts on the left hand into a
large wooded enclosure, where nothing at first is visible but a
dense growth of trees, interspersed with winding pathways and