The oldest preserved style, the classical Sino-Japanese Bugaku dances […are…] of Indian origin, and Chinese and Japanese music on the whole were unde… - Curt Sachs

[And here is what Sachs has to say about Bharata's ancient text the Natya-Shastra, which he agrees could be as early as the 4th century BCE and about which he tells us that it] "testifies to a well-established system of music in ancient India, with an elaborate theory of intervals, consonances, modes, melodic and rhythmic patterns". ... "Bharata's text was probably rehandled as early as antiquity, and it may confirm the idea that Bharata himself wrote his treatise much earlier" ... [He also tells us that this text establishes that it represents a stage where the] "slow transition from folk-song to art-song, from hundreds of tribal styles to one all-embracing music of India […] had long ago come to an end".

[In Burmese music,] "These penetrant oboes, which lead the melody instead of the tinkling gongs of Java and Bali, are definitely Indian. But still more Indian is the unparalleled drum chime of, normally, twenty-four carefully tuned drums, suspended inside the walls of a circular pen, which the player, squatting in the center, strikes with his bare hands in swift, toccata like melodies with stupendous technique and delicacy"

The first iconographic record of the hand bell or ghaṇṭā is not conclusive. As late as the seventh century it is depicted in one of the caves at Aurangabad; yet five hundred years earlier, the greco-Syrian philosopher, Bardesanes, had related that while the Hindu priest prayed, he sounded the bell. It was small and tulip-shaped, with a thick clapper. As it was exclusively used by priests in the worship of Hindu divinities, the handle was finely decorated with religious symbols, such as Siva's trident, Vishnu's eagle or Hanuman, the king of the apes.