From "A Writer's notebook" by Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham here talks of the great vina vidwan of Travancore, Sri. Parameswara Bhagavatar

p. 242

The vina-player. He was a stoutish man of forty, clean-shaven, with all his front part of his head shaven too; his hair, long at the back, was tied in a knot. He was dressed in a dhoty and a collarless shirt. He sat on the floor to play. His instrument was highly decorated, carved in low relief and ending in a dragon's head. He played for a couple of hours, now and then breaking into a few bars of song, music hundreds of years old, but some much less, music of the last century when under a Maharajah of Travancore, himself was an accomplished musician, there was great enthusiasm for the art. It is elaborate music, which requires all your attention, and I do not think I could have followed it at all if I hadn't had some acquintance with modern music. It is slowly rhythmical and when your ear gets accustomed to it various and tuneful. Of late years the composers have been not a little influenced by modern music, European music, and it is queer in these Eastern melodies to discern a faint recollection of the bag-pipes or the martial din of a military band.

p. 243

The first courtyard at night would surely lose its dusty neglected aspect, and under the moon and the stars, cool and silent, form a romantic setting. I should have liked to listen there to the vina-player, his absorbed and serious face lit by the smoky flame of a brass lamp, its wick floating in coconut oil.