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The indian stick zither

Historical accounts

Philippe Bruguiere
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE STICK ZITHER

1.1 Introduction l
1.2 Early evidences 2
1.3 Alapini and ekatantri vina 5
1.4 Organological features 7

,.. ,.. ,.. . ,..

2. THE FRETI'ED VINA: FROM THE KINNARI TO THE BIN
2.1 Early fretted vina and kinnari 9
2.2 A major musicological role 12
2.3 The Rudra-vina 13
2.4 Jantar and bin 15
2.5 Western descriptions 18

3. THE COURT TRADITIONS - 14TH TO 19TH C.

3.1 The Delhi Sultanates 24
3.2 The mughal patronage 25
3.3 Na'mat Khan 28
3.4 Later music centres 31
 List of illustrations

1. Ajanta cave xvii, late 5th c.

2. Mahavalipuram, detail, 7th c.

3. Ellora Kailasa temple, 2nd half of the 8th c.
4. Ellora cave xxi, late 6th, early 7th c.
5. Aihole, Durga temple, circa 7th c.
6. Abaneri, Haragauri Pratihara, late 8th, early 9th c.
7. Pala school, Balurghat, Dinajpur, Bengal, 10th c.

8. Sena school, Bengal, 12th c.

9. Halebid, Hoysalesvara temple, 12th c.
10. twnba of a bin, first half of the 20th c.
11. Badami cave i, late 6th, early 7th c.

. 12. Sarasvati, Uttar Pradesh, Heeramaneck coll., 6th c .

13. Sarasvati, Siddha Haima., palm-leaf mns., early 12th c.
14. Abaneri, detail, late 8th, early 9th c.

15. Idem

16. Belur, kinnari, first quarter of the 12th c.

17. Idem
18. Halebid, Hoysalesvara temple, early 12th c.
19. Idem
20. Srirangam, Venugopala temple, 16th c.
21. Kumbhokonam, Ramesvar temple, 16th c.
22. "A royal entertainment", attributed to Sur Das, circa
1600.
23. "The wedding procession of Prince Shah Shuja", detail,
ii attributed to Bhola, circa 1635.
24. "The weighing of Shah Jahan on his forty-second lunar
· ·birthday", detail, attributed to Bhola, circa 1635.
25. Portrait of Ibrahim Adil Shah II playing his bin, circa
1600.
26 . Hindol, detail, Northen deccan, late 16th c.
27. Gauri ~agini, detail, Northen deccan, late 16th c.
28. Yogini, Bijapur, 17th c.

29. The been, les Hindous, F. B. Solvyns, Paris 1808-12.

30. Portrait of Ali Khan Karori alias Naubat Khan Kalawant,
painted by Mansur, circa 1600.
31. Portrait of Naubat Khan Kalawant, circa 1607.
32. "Processional scene at the court of Jahangir", painted
by Manohar, circa 1605.
33. "Aurangzeb in a shaft of light", attributed to Hunhar,
circa 1660.
34. Maharaja sawai Ram Singh II playing his bin, circa 1860.
 !.Emergence and development of the stick zither

1.1 Introduction

The history of the indian stick zither 1 , unparalleled in its

evolutive process and achievement, is a fascinating and
intriguing one. From the earliest evidences and for more
than a millennium, its constant development, morphologically
untouched by foreign influences, set up in an extensive
typology probably unique in the history of musical
instruments. In spite of numerous social and political
turmoils through the centuries, the stick zither expanded
into strongly rooted religious and secular traditions. It
soon became an influential and respected symbol of art music
in indian and muslim cultures, attested by numerous
iconographical representations in various contexts all over
India since the post-buddhist period. Its fate is also an
intriging one for by the second half of the 18th c., it
unde:rwent into a complex cultural and historical period and
was slowly discarded from the musical scene in an
irreparable process. After it reached the highest musical
and social statut in the princely court-music, after it
exemplified the paradigm of raga and.alap and although it is
still today looked upon as the emblem of instrumental music,
t.
its tradition is hardly maintained.

For the last few decades, since indian music spread over its
boundaries, thoughtfully and comprehensive studies on its
L
theoretical and practical aspects have drawn new
perspectives but curiously enough, few works only have
investigated the history of musical instruments2. This fact,
not inherent to the indian musicological tradition is
nevertheless here emphased by the rich sangitasastra
heritage which was mainly devoted to theoretical and
technical matters. Numbers of musicological writings
generally reiterate the few ones which have made a landmark
and chapters on musical instruments often leave the
reseacher with speculative interrogations and frustating
conjonctures. Most of the ancient authors, literate and

1 The term stick zither is generally employed to refer indistinctly to

a cordophone which stem is either a plain stick or a tube of wood.
Whenever the instrument discussed about in this paper will feature a
hollow stem, the term tubular zither will be prefered.
2 Few general and specialised indian works are devoted to the subject,
see Coomaraswamy 1930, Deva 1978, Khotari 1968, Tarlekar 19 6 5, 197 2.
Recent detailed monographies on s arangf, sitar and sarod have revealed
the high value of new investigat ions, see Bor 1986-87 and Miner 1993 .

l
 erudite persons who lived in an educated society, were
certainly concerned with some aspects of musical practice
but left apart other important characteristics because of
their little interest for those matters 3 •
Although the stick and tube zithers are morphologically
described and technically ref ered to in musical literature,
[ the canonical and conservative tradition of the sanskrit
writers alone does not provide much informations about their
historical developments. The first part of this contribution
( is a short attempt to point out some early iconographical
and organological aspects of the stick zither. Then, the
focus will be laid out on the fretted instruments, featuring
the post medieval vina. Lastly, an outline of the bin court
[ traditions will reveal the great importance of this
instrument in the history of indian music.

[ 1. 2 Early evidences 4

[. When Claudie Marcel-Dubois attested the earliest evidence

known to her of the stick zither on a bas-relief of
Mahavalipuram temple 5 , she also mentioned in a footnote a
.- ceylonese grotesque figure playing an enigmatic musical
instrument which could be an hypothetical earlier stick
. -
zither 6 • She defined a typology of stick and tube zithers
which first prototype she noticed was the 7th
Mahavalipuram alapini vina. Played by celestian musicians
c.
I

the small and flat resonator is applied on the chest and the
,. stem is hold across the body. This playing position, also
found with several contemporaneous reliefs and sculptures of

3 J. Katz 1983: 60-61. As Katz points rightly: • • • when

11
we attempt to
l
form an idea of _the real nature of music in ancient and classical
india we cannot reasonably confine ourselves to the sastric texts
alone. The distinction between the history of music and that of
Sanskrit musical treatises has not always been adequately drawn".
4 To rely on sculpted representations, once should be of course very
careful since the musical scenes are often part of a mythological
expression and are depicted in a symbolic manner which did not
necessarily need to be realistic. It is very possible that an artist
may have reproduced an archaic morphology of a musical instrument to
suit the context. He may also have interpreted its shape and technical
details without exact knowledge of them or may just have not bothered
with the reality since indian stylized art was meaningful enough. If
so, the imagination of the sculptor may have turned out somewhere
between stylization and distortion of tangible reality. Even for an
art historian analysing the skill of the artist and the general
rendering of the scene depicted, the reliable matter may appear with
some ambiguity . When the object to be studied is out of its context
(i.e. a detail of a sculpted relief on a photography), it is generally
through a sharp sense of observation of th~ dAcopit tve setting, the
dresses and ornaments of the characters that the expe~t will recognize
a style or a school and consequently will evaluate the date of the
work. To estimate the degree of deviation of a musical instrument
needs too a close and cautious scrutiny of the object but also enough
examples of the same period to allow a necessary comparative study.
5 Marcel-Dubois 1941: 72.
6 w. Smith 1911, pl. XXIIc. This decorative figure is dated from the
lst c . A.D. by the reputed scholar

2
 I
I

Shiva - and his associated forms in central and south

[ India, is still regarded today as
perform the stick zither.
the farmer manner to

[ on one of the wall paintings of the late 5th c. buddhist

cave XVII of Aj anta, is depicted one of the probably very
first known evidence of the stick zither7 ( i 11. 1) . It is
[ shown in a different playing position than the Mahavalipuram
one since the apsara at the left-hand side of Indra upholds
the lower part of a long and thin stick in the palm of his
right hand. The upper part of · the stem is resting on his
[ right shoulder. This Ajanta scene already attests of the
important statut of the stick zither in this late buddhist
period. Naturally, this stage development of the stick
[ zither by the 6th c., throw back long before its emergence.
Most of the Pre-Bharata Sanskrit works ref erred to harps and
lutes but an al&bu vina 8 , a gourd or bottle-gourd vina is
[ mentionned in the srautasutras. Whether the minor vina
called ghosaka by Bharata was a stick zither or not, the
ghosaka ref ered to by latter writers as the oldest monochord
r type, the father (janaka) of the vina9 , could be related to
the Ajanta's one. This stick zither and its latter
developments during the Calukya, Pala and Hoysala periods
have been widely represented on temple reliefs. Those
numerous evidences from the 5th c. to the 14th c. provide an
incomparable material to study the evolution of the stick
zither and impart valuable examples of comparison with the
literary description containted in the Sastra.
An interesting detail of the Ajanta painting to be noticed
is the character himself who seems to sing while he plucks a
string with a finger of his left hand (see ill. 1). Would
this be taken as a serious ground regarding the existence of
the drone in ancient India? A detailed examination of
sculptures from slightly latter period (6th and 7th c.) does
not seem to deny the practice of drone in those times. While
several reliefs perfectly illustrate the complex melodic
playing technique of the alapini as described latter in the
Sangitaratnakara 10 , some others evidences of the same period
lead to think that the alapini type could also have been a
drone instrument. For instance, the celestial musicians of
Mahavalipuram and a representation of Shiva in Ellora's
kailasa temple are represented with the palm of the left
7 Not to be misunderstood with the latter Ajanta sculptural relief of
Shiva holding the instrument in the same way than the M.imallapuram
type. See Marcel-Dubois 1941:73. G. H. Tarlekar (1972:23) do mention a
prototype of stick zither in the Ajanta's paintings but does not say
more about it nor he locates it. This early evidence has also been
quoted by few latter scholars bat without any mention of localisation,
referinq apparently to Tarlekar•s statement ,
8 This term alabu is mentionned by Nanyadeva quoting Abhinavagupta who
differentiate three types of vina: vakra (crooked), kurma (tortoise)
and alabu (gourd) .Bharatabhasya f.369.
9 sarngadeva, Samgitaratnakara 6, 109 and Simhabhupala, 6,104-109, E.
te Nijenhuis 1970: 82. Also, Tarlekar 1972 and Deva 1978.
io SR, 6,241-256. For a detailed explanation of the fingering, see R .
widdess 1981: 730. The fig. 3 shows this technique of playing the
alapini .

3
 hand simply pressing the stick on the resonator against the
chest (ill. 2, 3). virabhadra, an aspect of Shiva in
Ellora's cave xxi (late 6th c. or early 7th c.) applies the
resonator on the breast with the left hand's forefinger,
ring and little fingers under the tube. The remaining middle
finger resting on the tube could hardly press the string on
different places to produce several notes (ill. 4) . As a
matter of fact, on the ground of the Ajanta depiction and
the sculptural evidences just above mentioned, it would be
probably fruitful to investigate on a larger scale regarding
the reality of drone music during the late Gupta period.

The authority of the Natyashastra which does not mention any

use of drone in Bharata's grama-marchana and jati systems
has been of course a strong impediment to make definitive
statements about its non-existence. As it has already been
remarked (Lath 197 8) , Bharata constantly relates music to
theatre and beside that, describes a repertoty of ritual
songs derived from the vedic hymns of the samaveda. The role
of the music played during a drama performance was also to
strengthen the dramatic effects of the scenography. Groups
of harps, flutes, drums, and choirs performed ensemble music
dedicated for theatretical purposeu but it does not dismiss
the possibility of an occasional -or even more- use of
drone, for one of those groups might well have played
intermittent or permanent ostinato to sustain the theatrical
action. Bharata is the earliest author who became a
reference for the musicological tradition and the
problematical issue lies in the lack of written sources on a
pre- natyashastra musical system which could attest of an
autonomous musical art (katz 1983:60).

The prior existence of earlier sages from whom little is

only known by latter quotations, is most often pointed out
in the Sastra to quote distinct traditions or is briefly
.... mentionned in specific contexts to argue on special aspect .
For an example, it is known from Dattila, Abhinavagupta and
Nanyadeva that an author named Visakhila was pretty well
acquainted with musical instruments for they refer to him on
instrumental discussionsu. Since the chapter on musical
instruments of Matanga•s Brhaddesi is lost, there is a gap
of about half a millennium between the earliest sculptural
evidence of the stick zither and the first known textual
depiction of different types of vina in Nanyadeva • s
sarasvatihrdayalamkara or Bharatabhasya (late 11th c., early
.... 12th c.) and Somesvara•s encyclopedic work Manasollasa
(first part of the 12th c.). A comprehensive reading and
translation of the inst:nunental section of the
abhinavabharati (early 11th c.) would be also very helpfulD
since prior to Nanyadeva and Somesvara, Abhinavagupta refers

11 N.S. XX.XIV, 214.

12 Lath 1978: 196, 440.
13 The Abhinavagupta commentary of the G.O.S. edition is a
reconstructed and difficult text of the work. It was estabished from a
very late discovery of seve ral fragments in the early 20th c. See
Emmie Te Nijenhuis 1977: 10. Also Lyne Bansat-Boudon 1992: 39-46 .

4
-
to authors - as Visakhila above mentioned - and works which
attest of an ancient and fecund musicological tradition.

The first obvious statement regarding the stick and/or the

tube zithers liee as already seen in the distinct playing
positions of the Ajanta and Mahavalipuram ones. A relief
from the first Calukya period in the Durga (fortress) temple
of Aihole (ca. 7th c.) shows two figures holding a tube on
the shoulder, the lower part resting in the palm whereas the
other hand hold a stick applied on the stem ( i 11. 5) . The
same description can be made of a personage on a Shiva and
Parvati bas-relief in Ellora's cave xiv (second half of the
6th c or early 7th c.) . Yet, once should be cautious in
interpreting these representations since scraper-like
instruments hold in a similar position are also depicted on
reliefs from the same period14 • But if this uncormnon manner
of sounding the string with a stick is only mentioned in
latter literature in the case of the ekatantri vina,
r_ Nanyadeva gives an interesting allegorical depiction of
Ravana making a vina from his own body. Pulling a gut string
from his entrails, he hits it with a stick (?) karanda while
he sings and praise Shiva 15 •

1.3 .A.lapin£ and e.katantri vina

On a Badami relief from the same period than the Ellora' s

cave xiv, the alapini vina hold by Shiva as one of his
attributes, is represented from a different perspective,
from its profile 16 • The flaring shape of the resonator, its
fastening on the tube and an important flat bridge placed on
t its kakubha (sound chamber) are easily noticeable.
Sarngadeva explain in details its construction, gives the
length of the bamboo tube (about 90 cm) and the
circumference of the tumba (22 cm). But it seems that by his
time, the alapini had gone through major modifications since
he specifies that it has no patrika (bridge) and that the
doraka (tighting and tuning system), the karpara (resonator
component) and sarika (fret) should be tied on itl7. The
sarika mentioned by Sarngadeva could be interpreted as
ligatures marks indicating the precise points to get
harmonic notes but it was probably also, as he explains for
the ekatantri, the nut from where the gut string vibrate to

14 See Walter Kaufmann 1982: 168-69. Also B.C. Deva 1989, ill. 3.8 .
15 The sanskrit word is the name of a tree used in medicinal
preparation. The word means a small box or basket (of bamboo),
a bee-hive or a sword. Bharatabhasya, f. 364-65.
The technique of playing a string with sticks in the hands is still
used in Tamil Nadu with the villu or vellipattu, a wide musical bow
1:est.i:-.g ~n a pot, Irl Andhra Pradesh, the kaddy V.::dyii.11 is a largo l'-lte
played laid on the ground. The performer plays the strings with a
stick in each hand: one to vary the pitch on the fingerboard and the
other to strike on the string.
16 Marcel-Dubois 1941, pl. XLIV/2 and Deva 1989, fig. 4.3.
17 SR, 6, 247-48. According to different editions of SR, some readings
mention frets and/or two melodic strings. See Tarlekar 1972: 41 and
Nijenhuis 1992: 27. Latter and modern writers also quote the alapini
as a fretted vina.

5
 denote the mandra svarasthana. A detail from a lintel of
Abaneri 's Haragauri Pratihara (late 8th c. , early 9th c.)
shows a musician playing an alapini with several ligatures
on the danda (stem or tube, ill. 6).

The ekatantri was looked upon in the pre-medieval period as

the musical instrument par excellence to express all the
technical elements of musical theory and practical
performance. The peculiar playing technique by mean of a
stick (kamrika) hold in the left hand fingers to stop and to
slide on the string to vary the pitcb is also described in
the Sastra as it can be distinctly seen on numbers of
sculpturesia. Nanyadeva gives different sizes of kamrika and
refers again to Matanga when he mentions its sliding on the
stringl9 . The posture of the right - hand second and third
fingers plucking the string obliquely is generaly always
represented in the same manner on sculptures, just like do
the double-bass players today. A jain palm-leaf manuscript
about Nanyadeva' s time, dated from the first half of the
12th c., shows a painting of sarasvati playing the
ekatantri20. The uncommonly long kamrika is not hold between
two fingers like explained by Sarngadeva but is seized
across the palm of the hand, the thumb resting on the stick.
A single upper tumba placed above the shoulder is attached
to a large and wide tube on which a single and thick string
is clearly visible. The rectangular bridge is typical and a
curious design on its surface is probably meant for the jiva
(ill. 13).

This jain painting and the two colored drawings realized in

the Ghunyat-ul-munya, a persian work on indian music
composed in 1374 for the governor of Gujarat, are the
earliest known pictoral description of the tube zither found
in manuscripts. The anonymous author of this text who stray
from the sanskrit tradition to observe and describe the
music practiced in his time provides valuable account of the
tube zither. The two drawings represented in Ghunyat-ul -
munya have similar shape than the alapini or ekatantri, the
only difference being that one has two resonators. The one
with a single tumba is called vallaki while the other is
named vipanchi. These two terms are mentioned in the lists
of vina given in medieval literature but they ref er to
ancient harps since the vipanchi is said to have had nine
strings and the vallaki only six 21 • It is very possible that
these two names had then enter the field of popular practice
by the time of ghunyat-ul-munya and were applied to tube
zithers. This confusing denomination would be one example

18 It sometimes occurs that organological details closely looked at,

c:.t':r:::::::~.
a sust:aiDed attention but remain uneY.[IJ.:>.in~d for- l~ck of
further information. A Khajuraho female musician from the Lakshman
Temple (before 954 A.D.), playing the ekatan trf wears on the ring
finger of the left hand a strange disc in contact with the tube while
she seems to hold a kamrika between the second and the third fingers.
19 Ib id.
20 Reis Flora 1987: plate 3.
21 Bharatabhasya, f. 369; l, 84-88; also in Lath 1978: 202 and
Abhinavabharatf commentary of Natyashastra, 29, 112 .

!! 6
among others about the variation of terminology through the
ages. that has affected the understanding of the history of
musical instr.uments.

1.4 Organological features

Until the Hoysala period, the constitutive parts of the

instr.ument underwent into various stages of elaboration. A
rich typology developed with · specific aspects as it will be
observed below on few selected examples. Some of the
components of those types had a perennial existence through
the centuries and were still alive in various areas of rural
India by the middle of the 20th c. 22 • The stem which
initially was made from bamboo or from a hollow tube of wood
became gradually thicker. This feature is already attested
from the ·9 th and 10th c. with the pre-medieval Pala art of
eastern India. While describing the ekatantri, Nanyadeva who
quotes Matanga speaks of the circumference of the tube which
should be of 12 angulas (about 23 cm.) 23 • A century latter,
his contemporaries Somesvara and Sarngadeva give the same
measurement which correspond in proportion with the tube of
the ekatantri of the Pala and Sena sculpture (ill. 7, 8).
Nanyadeva lists several kind of wood 24 to be selected with
the bamboo to make the danda. He also precise$ three length
of tube for different kind of ekatantri, and explains that
the method of stretching the gut string on the tube enables
to obtain the tunings for the two grama 25 . The process to
tense the string on this type of vina is described by
Sarngadeva who mentions a cotton rope (doraka) tied around
the tube above the twnba with a hoop (nagapasa) on which the
string is attached by a · loop. This device is distinctively
shown on a sculpture of the Halebid' s Hoysalesvara temple
(first half of the 12th c.) which also features a spherical
twnba fixed to the tube without any thongs (ill. 9). This
detail suggests that the resonator was hold tight to the
stem with an hidden device. The presence on the upper part
of the twnba of a double circular line cut in the stone and
that of a protuberance underneath the tube which links it
with the centre of the circle, indicate a fastening system
of the resonator looking like the modern one ( i 11 . 1 o) .
Sarngadeva describes the method used with the ekatantri26
noting that a half coconut wearing a hole in its center is
22 On most of the early type of stick zither, the playing position of
the right hand is the same; the palm enclose the back side of the
lower part of the stick, while the fingers being on the front side,
pluck the string. This peculiar manner is still prevalent with the
jantar of the Bhopa community in Rajasthan, with the king of Kashmir
and th A kinna.ri of Aodhra Pradesh and Karnataka. It is also noteworthy
to 1 underline the striking similarity in shape, playing position and
technical performance of the ancestral alapini as depicted on
scuptures and described by medieval authors with the tuila of Orissa.
23 Bharatabh~sya, f. 371, ibid . Also Prem Lata Sharma 1975-80: 72.
24 Ibid. Among them are: bilva, sirisa, sara, khadira, candam, nirnb,
badar and arjun trees.
25 Ibid.
26 S.R . 6, 29-64.

7
fixed with the tumba on the tube, probably to protect the
fragile resonator from the pressure exerced by the tighting
process. The string or rope is passed trough two holes on
the tube and its two ends are twisted inside the half
coconut with a wood or metal nail. Some of these vina had
the melodic string itself attached on the same knot which
fix the resonator on the tube. . .. AML Sarasvati and. the
earliest known pictoral reference of stick or tube zithers,
alapini.no bridge.

An essential characteristic of the stick zither is of course

its flat bridge. The earliest · evidence of this peculiar
feature of indian organology27 can be traced back to the
Shivaite cave i of Badami (ill. 11) . That essential and
specific part of the tube zither is noticeably represented
on various alapini, ekatantri and kinnari vina from the 6th
to the 13th c. in east, south·and central India. Among the
interesting evidences which denotes variable parameters and
sub-varieties of these three types of vina is a noteworthy
sandstone sculpture of Sarasvati from the 6th c. (ill. 12).
The careful and accurate carving of the details are
significant enough to rely on such a masterpiece. It first
reveals a fine cut rectangular and flat bridge on which a
single string is stretched. A small hole situated in the
middle of the lower extremity of the bridge seems to
indicate a fastening device. The damaged jointed right thumb
and forefinger upon the string and the position of the wrist
also suggest the use of a plectrum, a very unknown playing
technique of the tube zither. The left hand fingering is
similar to one of the positions displayed on the ekatantri
but the absence of resonator, the altered upper end of the
tube and the missing part between the two hands make this
uncommon and early evidence rather enigmatic.

Sharngadeva compares the curved surf ace of the bridge

(patrika) to the tortoise (kunna) . It is laid on a wooden
crossed sound chamber (kakubha) fitted in the lower end of
the tube and which base had latter a bird shape, a
caracteristic still prevalent nowadays. The little bamboo
fibre (jiva) placed between the string and the bridge of the
ekatantri to create a colourful sound rich of partials is
mentioned by Nanyadeva 28 as being the seat of the goddess
sarasvati. The j iva is observed on several representations
just as an another component noted by Sarngadeva, a thick
strip of ripe bambou situated on the upper part of the
danda, under the doraka, that is the nut which determines
the length and the open pitch of the string.

Z7 The etyopian lyre begana has also a wide flat wooden bridge which
support the 10 gut strings. Under each of them is placed a little
thong of leather to create a buzzling sound. The flat bridge is also
known in other regions of centra l Africa.
28 Bharatabhasya, f. 371.

8
2. The fretted vina: from the kinnari to the
bin

2.1 Early fretted vina and kinnari

Most of the scholars nowadays agree to date the appearence

of frets on the vina sometimes by the end of the first
millennium. B. c. Deva (1978:136) mention a Chalukya temple
relief in Pattadakal (mid. 8th c.) showing a strange kind of
lute with four transversal small bars placed on the sound-
table beneath the strings. One of these bars is situated
close to the bottom of the sound-box and seems to have the
fonction of a string-holder. From a technical and practical
point of view, it is hard to believe that these details are
frets since they are not displayed on the fingerboard but
also because the plucking fingers which seem to hold a
plectrum is situated upon those "frets". Moreover the left-
handed holding of the instrument is represented in a manner
which denote a defective understanding of musical practice.

More reliable early evidences of fretted tube zithers are

depicted in two musical scenes from the Harsat-Mata temple
in .Abaneri 29 (8th-9th c.). A thick tube zither without
resonator is played by a female musician seated with her
beloved under a mango tree. The left fingers press the
string on the frets, seven of which are clearly visible. The
typical kakubha and the nut at the two ends of the tube are
also distinctly represented. Considering the hidden part of
the tube by the left hand, it can be safely presumed that
this uncommon tube zither possessed two more frets which
brings the total number of nine. The instrument is sculpted
from its profile and it is thus hardly possible to have a
precise idea of the shape of those frets as to figure out if
this vina has a single or several strings. On another relief
of the same temlpe, a couple of lovers is surrounded by
dancers and musicians, one of whom plays a fretted vina of
the ekatantri type (ill. 14,15). The upper and lower parts
of this vina are damaged and keeps from unerring
identification of the resonator and sound chamber but
rectangular frets are clearly visible on the danda.

From the 8th or 9th c. onward, the fretted tube zither named
kinnari by the medieval authors became gradually a highly
sophisticated musical instrument. Like its precursors the
alapini and the ekatantri widespread over the peninsula, its
development underwent through various phases leading to
different size and specific characteristics. According to
some modern indian writers, the . first author to have
mentioned frets related to the kinnari is . Matanga3o.

29 Pupul Jayakar 1955-56: 139-144.

30 B. C. Deva 1978:136, G. H and N. Tarlekar 1972:29. In his article:
Fretted Vfna in Indian Sculpture, JMAM 36/1965: 172, Tarlekar quotes
Kumbha who mentions in his Sangf taraja three types of kinnarf as
described by Matanga. He adds: "The reference to the Brhaddesf by
Khumba makes Matanga the originator of the Kinnari vina with frets."
Also Premlata Sharma 1967: 29.

9
 Nanyadeva refers to Matanga as a citra player, a surprising
statement since the citra was a seven stringed harp of the
ancient period which had nearly become obsolete by the 9th
c31. But he also quotes the authority of Matanga for his
knowledge in the measurements of the different parts of the
vina. Someshvara precises that the fourteen frets of the
kinnari enable to reach two octaves and mentions two
varieties of it, a small one with two gourds and a large one
with three resonators.

Sarngadeva differentiates two main categories of kinnari

the ones pertaining to the marga tradition, the old and
orthodox musical system and the deshi kinnari, issued from
regional practices. The marga category is distinguished in
laghvi (small) and brihat (large) kinnari whereas the deshi
variety has one more intermediate medium size, the madhyama
·deshi kinnari 32 • The length of the danda of these different
types is comprised between 65cm and lOOcm while the
circumference of the biggest tumba is about 68cm. The frets
are said to be of the size of the little finger and made
from different materials like vulture chestbones, iron or
bronze. Thirteen or fourteen of them are fixed on the tube
with a mixture of wax and ashes of clothes.

Two centuries latter, Khurnba mentions fourteen to eighteen

frets, the latters being added to reach the upper octave
(tara saptaka). Sarngadeva also describes a tension and
fastening system of the string with a movabe and a fixed
pegs which probably prefigure the generalisation of the
device on latter vina. While describing the brihat deshi
kinnari, he mentions an another peg, situated on the lower
end of the tube, near the sound-chamber. This remark may
seem at first rather odd but some latter moghol and
provincial miniature paintings clearly display one or
several pegs close to the kakubha, a detail which could give
credit to Sarngadeva's description, specially when the
realistic depiction of the vina is unquestionably. A
vertical nut on which the string rests or pass through
before being firmly tight on the pegs, also anticipate a
common characteristic of late medieval tube zithers, a
feature which is still present in rural India33. The melodic
string of the kinnari is of gut except for the small one
which has a metal string but the main difference between the
... three types is focused on their various sizes. An accurate
measurement of the interval between each fret is also given
for each category and Sarngadeva conclude by advising that
the size of the different kinnari could be comprised
anywhere betwwen the largest and the smaller one but not
beyond those limits to preserve sweetness and delight.

The p:::-ostigiouE: Chaluh.·1ra and IIoysala tc..T.ples .of . Belur ( 1117

A.D.) and Halebid (1121 A. D.), richly ornamented of

r 31
32
Bharatabh~sya,
s . R. 6 I
f. 370-71.
39 3 - 4 02 .
3 3 The kinnari of Andhra Pradesh and the king of jammu do have a high
vertical nut.

10
 sculpted reliefs, feature detailed kinnari vina 34 • In the
Channakeshvara temple of Belur several female musicians play
fretted tube zithers. One of them hold it vertically in her
left hand; eleven wide and flat frets increasing in length
from the upper one to the last and two spherical resonators
are distinctly seen. The frets situated in the middle of the
danda were probably designed larger to allow the utmost
lateral deflection of the string more flexible in its middle
length than near the nut. The cross shaped kakubha fitted in
the lower end of the tube by meant of a wide ring is also in
concordance with the literary descriptions and its
unconunonly large surface supports the curved patrika. It is
difficult to figure out if this kinnari has one or two
strings but an unfamiliar shaped upper end of the tube with
two holes (for the pegs?) could suggest the presence of two
strings (ill.16).

An another relief shows a dancing musician who holds a

single resonator kinnari in a playing position recalling the
alapini. The upper portion of the instrument beyond the left
hand is missing but from the visible frets and the ones
which are hidden under the left hand, this kinnari had most
likely at least eleven frets (ill.17). The kinnari
represented in the Hoysaleshvara temple of Halebid have a
similar morphology and are shown in the same two different
postures . The old fastening system to tighten the string is
displayed on the kinnari hold vertically with eleven frets
and two resonators. The other one has thirteen or fourteen
frets, a single tumba and shows a cylindrical and vertical
nut above the first fret to raise the string upon the
fingerboard ( i 11 . 18 , 19 ) .

Here, the sculptural evidence do not fall in with the

• textual desciptions since apart one of them, these kinnari
have only eleven frets, sometimes a single resonator and
apparently no pegs system. A large brihat kinnari with its
• three tumba and curved frets to fit together with the tube
was sculpted on a latter period (16th c.) in Srirangam
Venugopala temple (ill. 20). From the same period a curious
• kinnari from the Rameshwar temple of Kurnbakonarn exhibit
eight small frets (movable ones?), three small half-cup
..: resonators and a lower end devoid of kakubha, the shape of
the resonator and the absence of kakubha reminding the early
• alapini. The two distinct strings are attached to a hood as
it is seen on some ancient prototypes and of which is also
borrowed the right hand fingering (il l . 21) . This last
• representation seems to be nothing else than a mix up of
various steps of development. It should be also noticed that
the reliefs of the Hoysala period, compared to the literary
contemporaneous descriptions, show a temporal alteration
[ · which has to be taken in acccunt to inte~r~t Garlie!:' d.3.ta . .

34 It would be probably fruitful to c ompare these representations with

Nany adeva and Someshvara des c riptions of kinnari since t h ey wer e
con temporaries of the construct i o n o f the s e t e mples and also becau se
Nanyadeva is said to hav e h a il e d fr om Ka r nataka (Sharma 1 975 -80: 66 ) .
Unfortunatly, no attempt has ye t be en made to edit and pub l i s h t he
c hapte r s on musical ins t r u ment s of t he two authors• wo rk s.

11
2. 2 A major musicological role

When the fretted vina appeared by the end of the first

millennium, the indian musical theory had undergone into a
slow but decisive and radical change. In early post-Gupta
period, the jati (mode types) of Bharata' s theory were
replaced by the gramaraga which, according to Matanga,
developed as an extension of the modal system of grama and
jati. Matanga describes thirty of them along with about
hundred of derivated bhasa (sub-modes), some of the latters
being of regional origin. The deshi raga briefly mentioned
in the Brhaddesi manifested a new turn in the musical
history and quickly shadowed the gramaraga system. Nanyadeva
describes numerous deshi raga, giving for each of them
melodic examples ( alapa and rupaka) which are designed for .
the "wooden svara-vina 35.11

Sarngadeva provides instructions to play alapa on the

kinnari which became, as a fretted monochord, the
instrumental reference to demonstrate the modal structure
and melodic features of the raga 36 • The synchronical
emergence of changes toward a new modal system based on a
fixed tonic and the appearance of the fretted vina is
undoubtly a mostly essential event in the history of indian
music. The pre-tuned open-stringed harps were perfectly
adapted to demonstrate Bharata's theory but once they
disappeared from India, the premise of a new concept of a
single tonic arose with the increasing importance of the
one-string tube zither. Any note played on the string had a
specific relation with the open tuning and consequently, the
strong correlation with the contemporaries theoretical
changes naturally leads to speculate on the elaboration of
this unique phenomenon37 .
Yet, it is only three centuries latter that the
musicological tradition definitively recognized and setted
up in a modern theory the changes that occured gradually
during half a millennium. In 1550, on the behalf of
Vijayanagara dignitaries, the south indian scholar Ramamatya
composed his famous work the Svaramalakalanidhi to express
his view about the musical reality of his time and to expose
a new system of theoretical and practical importance3s.
Ramamatya devotes the third chapter of his treatise to the

35 The express ion "wooden svara -vina used by Nanyadeva refers to an

11

analogy between the human body and the musical instrument stated in
the ancient tradition. The Natyashastra, the N§.radi Shiks§. and the
Dattilam differenciate the sharira vin§. ! the human voic;.e with the
d§.ravi vina, the wooden vin§.. Lath 197 8: 201. Here>. ·see · Richard
widdess 1995: 154.
36 For the concept and examples of alapa see R. Widdess 1995: 10.
37 See Harold S. Powers 1981: 79.
38 One century earlier, Kallinatha, the second commentator of
Sangitaratnakara already stated in his Kalanidhi {c.1450) the
inadequacy between the ancient theory and the musical practice he knew
in Vijayanagara.

12
fretted vina which he diff erenciates in two categories : one
with few movable frets (ekaraga mela vina) on which a single
raga can be performed after a previous defined position of
the frets and another with fixed frets (sarvaraga mela vina)
on which any raga could be played without any pre-
arrangement. Both of these two categories of vina have four
melodic strings and three side strings called sruti. He
further distinguishes three different open-tunings of the
melodic strings, one of them being still used today on the
northen bin (the shuddamela vina) while another (the
madhyamela vina) has been adopted in the south by the
sarasvati vina. The position of the fixed frets is
determined according to the ancient indian system of perfect
fourth and fifth leading to an intonation akin to the greek
temperament of twelve half tones 39.

2.3 The Rudra-vina

The term rudra vina appeared for the first time associated
with these new categories of fretted vina in Raroa.rnatya 1 s
work. His contemporary Pundarikavitthala who settled in
North India adopted the vina tunings and the tempered system
exposed by Raroa.rnatya but it is in his Ragavibodha (1609)
that Sornanatha provided for the first time valuable musical
notations for the rudra vina. The practical examples are
given with symbols for the various ornaments which are
listed and technically explained. The accurate description
of these ornaments (gamaka) and hand techniques, some of
which had already been described with a different
terminology by Sarngadeva, represent an important landmark
in the historical development of the vina tradition.
sornanatha who also. agrees with Raroa.rnatya's vina temperament,
mentions 17 · or 18 frets for the ekaraga mela vina and 23 or
24 frets for the unmovable fretted vina called akhilaraga
vina4 o. Long and short frets were used in both categories
and for the two different tunings (shuddha and madhyamela
vina) of the four melodic strings. Sornanatha points out that
the short frets were sometimes placed only under the thinner
string (mandra sadja or mandra madhyama) and also describes
the three additional sruti strings situated laterally on the
right-hand side of the tube 41 • The thicker string (noted the
first) is about the section of an elephant hair, made of
brass like the second one while the third and the fourth are
in steel.
The famous king of Tanjore Raghunata Nayaka (r. 1600-34) an
erudite musician and accomplished vina player himself,
attracted eminent scholars and artits to his court 42 .
Numerous references to music and musical instruments quoted
in his . important litera:::y work give a u:r:iqu~ acc~:mnt of the

39 see Nijenhuis 1977:21 and 1976 part I: 4-5.

40 RV 2, 47 IMJ may-june 1912: 47; Nijenhuis 1976: 6; see also
Ranganayaki Ayyangar 1978 and Karaikudi S. Subramanian 1985: 20-21 .
41 rt also happen that one of these side strings is placed on the
other lateral left hand side of the tube, RV 2, 49-50.
42 s. Seetha 1981: 31-35.

13
popularity and advanced development of the vina in Telugu
culture by the early 17th c. The Caturdandiprakasika,
attributed to Venkatamakhin was comosed in 1620 on the
request of the king. This work,inscribed in the continuity
of Ramamatya and Somanatha in the treatment of different
categories of vina, mentions eighteen different v.ina among
which twelve are used for melodic purpose43 . In his Valmiki
Cari tra, Raghunata Nayaka depicts a vina recital performed
by one of the ladies court musicians, Urvasi. He writes:

The v1na that Orvas1 played was beautiful with two

roundshaped gourds {gubbakayalu), the langer or the fastening
loops (siraji) with beads shining like diamonds, frets
(mettu) made of red pearl and the strings resembling the
creeper climbing the dandl. as it were, the finger board
(dand1) which was shining due to polish. The meru portion of
the vina dazzled like diamond and the pegs (biradai) made of
rakta candana shone in reddish colour. The neck portion that
curved down-wards (kariv~ jl.ni) was decorated with the figure
of a garuda bird ..... she removed the covering cloth, wiped
out the dust from the strings and the gourds. She began to
feel the strings gently with her finger nails (nakha) .
Applying the sandal oil (javadu) to her fingers, she plucked
the strings to ascertain the pitch of the string (sruti) and
adjusted the tension by deflecting it. She tuned it by
tightening the pegs in a graceful manner. Having tested the
output of the sound, Orvas1 started performing the
Caturdand1 viz.
I I raga, (alapa) thaya, g1ta and prabandha in
an exquisite and enthralling manner, to the graceful
accompaniment of the sweet sounds of the tala (sruti)
strings, traversing the range of mandra and tara sthayis 44 .

The details given about the tune checking of the vina by

urvasi before performing are of special interest for the
proceedings are exactly similar to the ones applied by the
present days instrumentalists prior to a recital .
Furthermore, this short description also hints that the
instrument was played solo. The fact is noteworthy for the
southern tradition of the vina was already a highly
developed one and was sustained for centuries by a lavish
royal patronage4s.

A musicological account of the rudra vina is given in a

latter Orissa text, the sangitanarayan written in the first
half of the 18 th c. by Purusottama Misra 46 . The length of
the tube is said to be about 85 cm and the two ends of it
are rirmned with bronze rings. The kakubha fitted in the
lower end of the tube has three "heads", one of which
maintaining the melodic strings which rest on a metal plate,
while two sruti strings are attached on the right "head" 47 .
The diameter of the two twnba is 34 cm and this rudra vina
. - -·
43 Ibid: 379.
44 Ibid: 39~40. Valmfki Caritra: 53 III 3 asvasa.
45 G. Kuppuswamy, M. Hariharan 1984.
46 Jonathan Katz was kind enough to provide me an english translation
of the text quoting the rudra vfna.
47 49 b. Since three "heads" are mentioned and the RV already indicate
an isolated sruti string (see above fn. 39), it may be infered that
the third "head" is intended for this single drone string.

14
---------------------------------------~

has 18 frets, eight large and ten small. The latter,

provided for the higher register, are arranged over a curved
piece of wood (padika) measuring about 23 cm firmly fixed on
the tube with beewax48 . Purusottama Misra observes that the
larger frets should be fixed straight onto the tube also
with beewax and that their position should be defined
according to the raga to be played. He conclude his
description stating that this popular rudra vi'na should be
learned under the guidance of a Southerner expert 49 •

2.4 Jantar and bin

There is no mention of the term rudra vi'na in north indian

musicological texts before Ahobala's sangi'taparijata (1665).
Yet, the fixed and movable fretted vina as depicted by
Ramamatya and his followers might have had their
contemporaneous counterparts since the imperial chronicle
A.in-i akbari completed by Abu' 1-Fazl in 1598 lists among
seven different types of tube zithers the yantra with five
strings of steel, two gourds and sixteen frets. The bin is
noted similar to the yantra but with three strings only.
Other types include the two metal strings and three gourds
kinnar which fingerboard is larger than the bin's one ; the
sar vina, identical to the bi'n but fretless; the amri ti a
monochord also described by Sarngadeva with one gourd and
which fingerboard is smaller than the sar vi'na' s one; the
adhati with two strings but one gourd and the kingara a
regional type resembling to the bin with two gut strings and
two small gourds usually played by the punjabi singers of
the dhadhi communityso.

The name jantar or jantra was already known in the 15th c.

at least as a colloquial term since Kallinatha mentions it
in his commentary of the Sangitaratnakara as a popular term
for the three strings ( tritantri) vi'na quoted by
sarngadevas1. Along with the bin, the jantar is refered to
among well known indian musical instruments in several
persian texts. Its statut as a leading musical instrument in
mughal court in the late 16th and 17th c. is understood as
it comes first in the hierarchy (before the bi'n) among the
stringed instruments (tata vadya) listed in the A.in-i akbari
as well as in the Kulliyat-i tughra of Mulla Tughra 52
written sometimes between 1605 and 1627 and Faqirullah' s

48 Ibid, 62 c, d.
49 Ibid, 66 a, b.
so Jiin-i Akbari 1970: 260-271. While travelling in India in the 9th
c., Ibn Khurdadhbish (c. 020-912) reports that M The Indians have the
kankara which, has but one string stretchP.d r.i. i::r0c:;~ <'l. aoi..u:d. And i. t-
serves them in place of ·the lute or harp ... ", see Henry George Farmer
1931: 54. The kingara cited by Abu'l-Fazl could possibly be a remanent
form of this pre-medieval kankara.
51 SR 6, 104 - 109.
52 According to Shahab Sarmadee, this author who came from Meshed
(Iran) to India sometimes towards the end of Jahangir reign dedicated
his work to the emperor but he probably spent most of his time in
Gujarat and Sind (personal communication) .

15
.F

Ragadarpana (1662-66). Abu'l-Fazl specifies that the two

resonators are made from two half-gourds and along with
Faqirullah, precise that the position of the frets (sar) on
the fingerboard determines the desired pitch 53 • Refering to
the two distincts categories of movable and fixed fretted
vina of the southern authors and on the ground of Abu'l-Fazl
and Faql.rullah last statement, there is no doubt that the
jantar and the bin with their sixteen movable frets enter
the ekaraga mela vina type.

Among the abundant production of paintings realised in the

imperial ateliers under the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and
Shahjahan, musical instruments appear in a large number of
miniatures and in various musical contexts. In some of them,
the realistic and accurate representations of nrusical scenes
depicted by remarkably talented artists provide an
unvaluable source to document the historical development of
musical instruments. The jantar and the bin are the main
indian cordophone along with central asian rabab, tanbur and
ghichak to figure in the context of performed art-music in
mughal court. A miniature entitled "A Royal Entertainment 11
attributed to the painter Sur Das (c. 1600) showing a prince
listening to nrusic under a canopy in the relaxed atmosphere
of a garden, illustrate the privileged statut of the jantar
and its close association with singing ( i 11 . 2 2) . The two
hemi- spherical resonators, the high frets and the rather
large size of the instrument seem to conf inn the
contemporary literary descriptions. Unfortunately, the half
hidden set of pegs do not permit to identify with certainty
the instrument.

A more detailed jantar is depicted on one of the 44

somptuous illustrations for a copy of the padshahnama54, a
manuscript recording the important historical events of
Shahjahan life. On this painting, "The wedding procession of
Prince Shah-Shuja'" attributed to Bhola (c. 1635), a
musician holds a jantar represented with its two wide slit
open gourds, sixteen visible frets, four main pegs and a
small red dot near the fourth fret that hints a lateral peg
for a drone string on the other side of the tube (ill.23).
The unique Windsor Castle's padshahnama paintings give other
evidences of the unrivalled position of jantar and bin in
musical ensembles to celebrate imperial festivals and
weddings. On another miniature, a delicately golden
ornamented and dark painted tube zither with five red pegs
and sixteen red frets, might also be interpreted as a
jantaz:J55. The uncommon white kakubha and upper end of the
tube are probably mean for ivory.

Another illustration depicting the annual ceremony of

shahjahan' s weighing shows a v2:ry o.ccu~ate depL::tio:u. of -C~ a ··

53 Ain-i akbhari 1978: 268. Shahab Sarmadee 1996: 123.

54 The Padshahnama manuscript is kept in the Royal Library of Windsor
castle. This copy is uncornplete but it is the only known including
illustrations. See Milo Cleveland Beach & Ebba Koch 1997: 15.
55 Ibid, ill. 26 "Shah-Jahan honoring Prince Dara-Shikoh at his
wedding", painted by Bulaqi, c . 1635.

16
bin (ill. 24). The three pegs, the high vertical string
holder and the sixteen frets are very precisely reproduced.
The white material used for them may be bone or ivory and
the peculiar shape of the frets similar to the preceding
example is to be noticed compared to the bridge like shaped
frets of the ill.25. It is also noteworthy to observe that
the large fretted rabab represented next to the bin display
the same number of movable frets. According to the
contemporary textual descriptions of southern and northen
works, this tube zither is definitely not a rudra vina but a
bin. The indistinct use of the two terms to name the same
musical instrument occured latter and sometime in the second
half of the 19th c., the term rudra vina was even applied in
Bengal to a lute of the rabab type.

The jantar was not only known and performed in the mughal
court but also in other powerful and highly cultivated
muslim kingdoms of India. Its name is mentioned in the
famous kitab-i nauras written between 1596 and 1624 by the
sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II (r. 1581-1627), ruler of Bijapur
and one of the greatest patron of the arts in those days.
Being himself an outstanding musician and composer of
dhrupad lyrics 56 , Ibrahim Adil Shah II wrote several
poetical compositions inspired by his favorite musical
instrument, a type of tanbur called Moti Khan but also
quoted the jantar in one of his songs 57 • He is himself
portrayed accompanied by four musicians on a typical deccani
painting dated c.1600, playing in a left-handed position a
bin of which two frontal pegs and twelve frets are clearly
noticeables 0 (ill. 25).

An exquisite late 16th century patanasika ragini from

Northern Deccan discloses a large jantar with its typical
resonators and about -sixteen high frets and a distinct
kakubha. ·The small known group of Northern Deccan paintings
assigned for a while either to Bijapur or Ahrnadnagar and to
which belongs the patanasika ragini, are still today an
intriguing problem for specialists 59 • Three of them, gauri
ragini, Hindola raga and sri raga exhibit an identical one
gourd monochord which tube or stick rests on the right
shoulder of the musician (ill.26,27). These three vina are
played in the same manner that recalls the earliest evidence
of Ajanta's cave xvii although the single string is plucked
with the index of the right hand which holds the danda. The
drone f onction of the vina accompaning a song is here beyond
any doubt.

The rural setting of these musical scenes and the strong

indian atmosphere which emanate from this set of Northern
Deccan paintings dated from the late 16th c., greatly
::or:t.::::-as:t ·.-.-i th., the fasts .. and somehow hie1~a~ic g:Lz.nde:ur of the

56 Nazir Ahmad 1956.

57 Ibid, song n° 19: 136. The jantar is also cited in the list of
musical instruments played in musical gatherings.
58 Lalit Kala Series 1986: Portfolio n°30, plate VI.
59 Nine of these paintings have been accredited so far and seven from
these nine are ragamala paintings. See Mark Zebrowski 1983: 40.

17
muslim courts depictions. These ragamala paintings carry a
general impression of an indigenous provincial school which
may find its origine in an artistic patronage from native
hindu princes and rajput noblemen vassals of the
neighbouring sultans 60 . The presence of this type of v.fna -
related to the ancient alapin.f and the mughal amri ti or
ambirt.f - in those northern deccani paintings might simply
indicate that within the complex and large typology
resulting from a constant organological evolution from the
earliest times, this specific musical instrument was still
in vogue at least in this area of central India. A splendid
and enigmatic yogini painted in Bijapur in the 17th c. holds
the same drone monochord (ill.28). The picture manifests a
mood of renouncement and wandering loneliness frequently
represented in indian and muslim religious allegories.

2. 5 Western descriptions

Descriptions of the indian tube-zither also appear in

western writings from the first half of the 17th c. In his
famous Harmonie Universelle published in 1636, the french
theoretician and organologist Marin Mersenne describes a two
gourds f retless v.fna which had been carried away from India
to London. The illustration of the v.fna is printed along
with Mersenne cormnents and shows five pegs of which only a
frontal one stretchs a single melodic string while the four
others are situated on each lateral side of the tube. The
v.fna is fretless and only one of the two side string of the
right-hand side is noticeable. This tube zither could be
related to the sar-v.fna or sur-b.fn and kingara or kingrah
listed among stringed instruments in Ain-i-akbar.f and
Ragadarpana but the brief informations given in those two.
texts do not allow to coroborate Mersenne short and didactic
description 61 • He only mentions black spots on the tube made
of cane, the golden ornamentation of the tumba and precises
that the instrument is plucked with metallic plectrums fixed
to the fingers. The same v.fna will be published latter in
Diderot's encyclopedie (1751-72) with a westernized
interpretation of the gourds ornamentations and the bridge
holder 62 •

A contemporary to Mersenne, the italian traveller Pietro

Della Valle described in his letters a v.fna he had seen and
heard during his stay in India 63 • Yet, he does not precise
the number of strings "which were many, partly of brass and
partly of steel", neither the number of frets, "many little
pieces of wood like so many bridges". Della Valle is
probably the first westerner to give a personal appreciation
about the sound "sufficiently pleasant" of the v.fna. The
strings are delicately plucked with m~~a:l~~ wir~D fixed en

60 Ibid: 46.
61 It should be noted that the rather loose description of the kingrah
mentioned in the Ragadarpana quotes a five stringed type with or
without frets, see Sarmadee 1996: 127.
62 D.Diderot et J. B . D'Alembert 1994: Pl. l, fig. 14.
63 G. Havers and E. Grey: 1892 . See J. Bor 1988: 52.

18
the fingers and the player stands to perform, holding the
vina across his body "by a string that went round his neck".
Della Valle adds that the performer, who had been employed
as a court musician of Ibrahim Adil Shah II, played the vina
as an accompaniment of his singing 64 •

The first western scientific account of the bin was given

one century later by the british governor of Benares,
Francis Fowke, also an amateur harpsichord player. In a
letter adressed to . William Jones, the eminent orientalist
founder of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, Fowke brings
valuable informations on the instrument, its tuning and
intonation. This report was published in 1788 in the first
volume of Asiatick Researches 65 • To provide first-hand
informations to Jones for his studies on indian music, Fowke
carefully observed and measured the bin he listened to,
played by a famous court musician Pir Khan, the brother of
the great binkar Jivan Shah. To avoid any relativity of the
tones pitch, he made a comparative tuning with his own
harpsichord:
You may absolutely depend upon the accuracy of all I have
said respecting the construction and scale of this
instrument: it has been done by measurement: and with regard
to the intervals, I would not depend upon my ear, but had the
Been tuned to the harpsichord, and compared the instruments
carefully, note by note, more than once66.

Fowke transcribed the resulting notes in western notation on

a chromatic scale and noticed : "It is very observable, that
the semitones change their names on the same semitones as in
the European scale" 67 • Yet, he notices an informative detail
about the delicacy of the instrument to provide a minute
interval an~ the manner to get it:

on the wire R [rel and S [dha] , which are those principally

used, there is an extent of two octaves, but the g natural
and b flat wanting in the second. The performer's apology
for this was, that he could easily get those notes by
pressing the string a little hard upon the frets f sharp and
a natural which is very true from the height of the frets:
but he asserted that this was no defect in his particular
instrument, but that all Beens were made so 68 .

This statement induce that the bin in the late 18th c. had
not yet acquired its definitive characteristic of a fully
chromatic instrument 69 • This unusual manner to rise the
pitch of a note, by a pressure of the string on the fret or
a slight deflection for a proper intonation, is still today

64 Bor: ibid.
65 "An Extract of a Letter from Francis Fowke, Esq. to the President",
Asiatick researches l, 1788.
66 s. M. Tagore 1965: 193 - 94.
67 Ibid: 194-95.
68 Ibid: 196.
69 similarly, two f r ets of the sftar corresponding to re and dha must
be lowered of half a tone to obtain flated re and dha.

19
part of the ancient technique to play the bin. Fowke
mentioned seven strings, five made of brass, two of steel
and described the disposition of them on the bin that is
noticeably similar to the tuning and setting adopted two
centuries earlier by Rama.matya on his shuddamela vina. The
total lengh of Pir Khan's bin was about 108 cm, the diameter
of thetumba reached 35 cm and Fowke added that the nineteen
high frets were "fixed on with wax by the performer himself,
which he does entirely by ear". He was desappointed by the
modal structure of the music but he sincerely appreciated
its dhrupad repertoire.
The style of nrusic on this instrument is in general that of
great execution. I could hardly ever discover any regular
air or subject. The nrusic seems to consist of a number of
detached passages, some very regular in their assent and
descent; and those that are played softly, are most of them
both uncommon and pleasing7o.

Captain N. Augustus Willard, an officer employed by the

Navab of Banda wrote in 1834 A Treatise on the Music of
Hindustan. Willard was himself a musician and his
contribution, still regarded today as a major work on indian
music was the first book on the subject written with a
comprehensive understanding of this musical culture71. In a
chapter devoted to the musical instruments, Willard gives a
sensitive appreciation of the bin he listened to:
It is the instrument of the greatest capacity and power; and
a really superior Veen in the hands of an expert performer is
perhaps little inferior to a fine-toned piano, and indeed,
for Hindoostanee nrusic, the best devised, and calculated to
be adapted to all practical modifications.
Although the Veen has fingerboard and frets, it is not
strictly confined in its intonation, as a guitar, a
pianoforte, or an organ is; for it is so delicate an
instrument, that the slightest difference in the pressure of
the finger, or of its distance from the frets, will cause a
sensible variation in the tone, of which a good performer
avails himself. Hence results that beautiful nicety of just
intonation in every mode which charms the musical ear. To
convey a correct idea of this beauty, we need only observe
that the superiority of the violin over most other
instruments is to be derived from this source7 2 .

Like Fowke, Willard reports the technical abilities of the

instrument to produce the right intonation and appreciated
the beautiful and intimate sound of the bin. He then
conclude his description saying that the bin has four brass
strings and three made of steel. An interesting observation
concern the plectrums "usually made with the large· scales of
fishes, and fastened on with springs, or tied down with
thread 1173 .

70 s. M. Tagore 1965 : 197.

71 see J. Bor 1988: 58-59.
72 s. M. Tagore 1965: 99.
73 Ibid: 100.

20
Fowke's measurements and the nwnber of frets are identical
with the rudra vina dimensions given in the Sangitanarayan
and it is very likely that by the second half of the 18th
c., the southern rudra vina tradition had already influenced
the development of the mughal bin. By the end of the 18th c,
the bin had nearly acquired the characteristics it still
shows today. Four more frets were added sometimes in the
19th c. as it is mentioned by s. M. Tagore in his yantra-
kosh74 and the general size of the instrument gradually
increased till about 1890. In 1891, the Captain R.C. Day
included in his Music and Musical Instruments of Southern
India and the Deccan an accurate depiction of the bin and a
portrait of the Baroda court-musician Moula Bux playing a
bin very similar in shape and size to the present
instrument7 5 • Day precises that the southern vina "is
sometimes called the Rudra vina, in distinction to the bin
or Mahati vina". He worthly notices Mersennes' s description
and gives the minutest bin measurements:
The average total length of the instrument is 3 feet 7
inches, in which case the dimensions are as follows:-
The first gourd is fixed at 10 inches from the top, and the
second about 2 feet 111/2 inches.
The gourds are usually very large, about 14 inches in
diameter, and each has a round piece cut out of the bottom to
act as a sound hole.
The finger-board is 216/8 inchesin length and about 3 inches
wide, and upon it are placed the frets, exactly in· · the same
manner as in the vina, and at the same semitonic intervals.
The frets are nineteen to twenty-two in number, that nearest
the nut usually being 1/8 inch above the finger - board, and
that at the other extremity about 7/8 inch, the decrease
gradual 76 .

Then follows a western transcription of two different

tunings of . the instrument, a mention about the seven
strings: "The strings upon the left side and the two highest
upon the finger-board are usuallu steel, the remainder brass
or silver". After a short description of the playing
technique, Day conclude saying that "The instrument is
nevertheless very popular, and when found in Southern India
is used chiefly by Hindustani musicians 11 77.

FranQois-Balthazar Solvyns, a flemish artist contemporary to

Jones and Fowke, settled in Calcutta from 1791 to 1804.
William Jones uphold him to realize 250 colored etchings of
the inhabitants of Calcutta and its surroundings10. The

74 Publised in 187 5, this book dedicated to musical instruments and

written in bengali contains several illustrations, one of which, the
drawin~ of the bin, was r8produced the same year with Fowke's letter
in Tagore 's Hindu Music. ·
75 C. R. Day 1985: 109-110.
7 6 Ibid: 110.
77 Ibid.
78 F. Balthazard Solvyns, A catalogue of 250 Coloured Etchings:
Descriptive of the Manners, Customs, Characters, Dress and Religious
Ceremonies of the Hindoos, Mirror Press, Calcutta 1799. See Hardgrave
& Slawek 1988-89: 1-92.

21
whole set of portraits was taken in a daily-life context and
thirty-six of them are dedicated to musicians. Solvyns took
a great care to provide the most genuine portraits through a
close observation and reliable informations. His permanent
concern to be an accurate observer make this work one of the
very first-hand study of popular indian life.
I have spared neither time, nor pains, nor expense, to see
and examine with my own eyes, and to delinate every object
with the most minute accuracy .. . [I] have given only what I
have seen, or what I have myself heard from the mouth of the
natives the best informed and most capable of giving me true
instructions upon the subject of my inquiries79 .

Solvyns portrayed two kind of vina one of wich, the pinak,

is a stick zither with two gourd resonator and which stem is
an iron rod. The pinak has a single string $topped with a
little stick and played with a bow. The musical scenes
reflect the ancestral and popular culture of India and the
plucked tube zither he names kuplyans or bin, does not
belongs to the fretted kinnari type but to the ekatantri one
(ill. 29). Here again, as with the pastoral atmosphere of
the Northen deccani ragini paintings theI instrument
depicted belongs to and conf irrns the survi vance of the
earlier fretless type. Solvyns precises that the bin he had
seen and listen to, was different from the one drawn in
Asiatick Researches. Solvyns was probably not aware that the
name bin had already become in Northen India a generical
term for a rich typology of tube zithers. He notes that the
bin was played by an hindu from the brahrnin cast, a
statement which also indicates the still high statut of the
instrument within the popular hindu conununity by the turn of
the 18th c. While describing the pinak, he quotes the bin to
adds:
In former times both these instruments were very much in
vogue, and I have been assured that those who excelled in
playing them where held in a certain degree of consideration,
which has lasted even to our times . The masters of the been
and the pennauck being very few, are treated with great
respect ... so

The exceedingly long wooden tube of the bin depicted by

Solvyns is not a surprising feature since it is a
characteristic of the ekatantri type from at least the pala
period. The two half-cut pumpkins mentioned in the textual
description a peculiarity already met with the mughal
jantar relate to the oldest and common wide flared
resonator of the medieval times. Sol vyns also notes two
metallic strings and two of spun and gummed coton but does
not precise which are melodic. The drawing clearly shows a
·f J:.:>n~al and a lateral pegs on the u pf.:::;: .::1:i.d of the tube
which could s uggest that the instrument had a single melodic
string, the other being a drone played occasionally with the
little f i nger of the left hand as in Fowke' s description.
Two other smaller lateral pegs are also depicted, situated

79 Har dg r a ve & Slawek 1988-8 9: 3 .

BO Ib id: 19.

22
near the middle right hand side of the tube, to tighten the
sruti - or chikari - strings.
The pictoral and textual description of Solvyns also
distinctly indicate that the strings are not stopped with
the fingers but with a stick, a feature which definitly
identify this vina with the ekatantri family. Furthermore,
we are told that the musician does not play the strings with
wired plect:rums fixed on his right hand fingers but with
• • • very long nails and of a great length". Here again, like
11

Della Valle, Fowke, Willard and others, Solvyns was pleased

by the "sweet and harmonious 11 sounds of the inst:rument and
adds "I am even persuaded that this musician would have been
heard with pleasure in an European concert". To emphasize
the uniqueness of this rare inst:rument, Solvyns explains
that unlike Fowke•s account, the bin he listened to had no
bridge and conclude that:
None of the beens which I had an opportunity of seeing during
my residence in Asia, resembled that given by the Asiatic
Society, and I was always careful to compare them. 81

was this fretless inst:rument related to the sur-bin or the

kingrah types, both listed in the A' in - i akbari and the
Ragadarpana? The fact is that apart a minimal description of
the sur-bin and the kingrah, probably played during musical
gatherings in the court, nothing is known about them. Abu 1 l
Fazl quotes the kingrah, a two strings tube zither smaller
than the bin, in association with the dhadhi, an important
class of musicians native from Punjab but neither the sur- .
bin or the kingrah are documented elsewhere 82 nor do they
appear in the large production of imperial and provincial
paintings. As a matter of fact from Akbar's times until the
end of the 17th c., the court and popular traditions
developed side by side in rather closed cultural spheres.
The avaible sources on musical history do not enable to know
more about the popular and secular existence of . the indian
tube zither, its diversity, distribution, context of
performance and importance all over the sub-continent.
Nevertheless it can be safely infered from its increasing
importance in the earlier stage and during the medieval
times, that a strong indigenous line extended firmly rooted
in the indian society, correlatively to the art music of the
royal courts. As he rightly points out, Solvyns beared
witness to a type of instrument already drawn into a process
of extinction but others varieties of regional stick and
tube zithers survived and were still alive by the mid 20th
c. in Janunu-Cashmir, Rajasthan, Orissa, central and south
India.

Bl Ibid: 15.
82 See note 43. Faq1rull~h quotes a leading mystical musician during
Aurangzeb reign who played the bfn and the amirti, a single gourd
fretless instrument smaller than the sur-bin, see Sarmadee 1996 : 191.

23
3. The court traditions 14th to 19th c.

3 .1 The Delhi sultanates

Records about court music and royal patronage are numerous

and date back to the reigns of the buddhist kings. The stick
zither certainly played a major role in musical assemblies
during the late ancient and early medieval periods but the
sole textual and iconographical sources do not provide
enough historical evidences to shed light on court
performances in those times. With the establishment by the
13th c. of a turko-persian Sultanat·e in Delhi, the city
became gradually an important islamic cultural centre where
scholars and artists from central Asia and Khurasan found
protectors and patrons. Royal chronicles written by muslim
historians from Kaiqubad Sultans onwards late 13th c-
bring valuable informations about court musicians,
performances and musical life until the 18th c.

The poet-musician Amir Khusraw who was employed in the 14th

c. by several Sultans, is said to have created new musical
forms resulting from the reciprocal influences and
experiments of the turko-persian and the indian traditions.
In his a'jaz-i khusravi 83 , he refers to numerous persian and
central Asia musical instruments played at the court of the
Sultans but he also mentions a type of vina he calls alawan.
This unusual term appears in Khusraw writings for the first
time and do not seem to have survived since it is not found
in latter musical litterature. It should be reminded that
Amir Khursaw who had close contact with suf ism and who was
familiar with the indigenous indian traditions, witnessed a
unique case of integration of popular musical elements in
the evolving new indo-persian musical culture. The alawan
might well have been one of the indian musical instrument
which participated to this phenomenon 94 • Impressed by the
high value of the indian music and the excellence of the
performers, he notes about instrumental music that
"thousands of rythmic patterns were performed on bin 118S. The
tube zither thus had already entered the muslirn royal courts
by the early 14th c.; it subsequently developed along with
persian and central Asia instruments into a distinct and
leading instrumental tradition for centuries.

After a political decline of the Delhi sultanate, several

important provinces became independant. The favor of the
muslim rulers for the bin extended from the capital since an
anectotic account reports that the king of Kashmir, Sultan
zain-ul- ' Abedin (r.1416-67) a music admirer, ordered rab&b
and bin to be decorated with gold86 . Sultan Sikandar Lodi

83 Amir Khusraw, a•j~z - i khusravi, Nawal Kishore Press, Lucknow 1876.

B4 The same thing may be stated about the vallaki, a fretless tube
zither depicted in the 1 4 th c. ghunyat ul munya. See this paper p . 8 .
85 s. N. Haidar Rizv i 194 1: 332 .
Madhu Tr ivedi, Court Patronage in the Inda-Persian Context: Evo lution
of Hindustani Music, in the p r esent publication .
86 A. Halim 1948- 49 : 109 .

24
 .,
(r.1489-1523) too was a keen music lover and a great patron
although a strict observer of the islamic laws. Among the
musicians he appointed to his closest noblemen to counteract
the orthodoxy, figured three instrumentalists playing turko-
persian instruments and a bin playerITT.

3.2 The mughal patronage

The court tradit.i on entered a new phase with the mughal

dynasty and its lavish _patrons. Numerous paintings from
imperial and provincial provenance depict court musicians
alone or in a group of performers, playing the bin in front
of their rulers. It is sometimes even possible to recognize
the face of an unknown binkar portrayed by different artists
but it is very rare to be able to identify a musician since
names were never mentioned as they were on the contrary for
the high-ranked dignitaries. Most of the vocalists and
instrumentalists depicted on paintings remained anonymous
with a very few exceptions as for the legendary court-singer
Tansen and his "son-in-law" Ali Khan Karorl. 88 , the famous
binkar who was portrayed around 1600 by the outstanding
artist Mansur 89 ( i 11 . 3 0) .

Ali Khan Karori served under Akbar and was the chief
(darogha) of the imperial music ensemble or naubat, an
orchestra composed of kettle drums, tromps, trumpets,
cymbals and oboes. The naubat performed in the music-hall
(naqarakhana) on precises occasions of the day and the night
fixed by the protocol to remind and emphasize the temporal
and solemn power of the sovereign. Akbar's son Jahangir
granted Ali Khan Karori with the title of Naubat Khan9o in
1607 and "promoted him to the rank of 500 personal and 200
horses 1191 . The prestige of Ali Khan Karori might have been
very important since another individual portrait bearing the
persian inscription Naubat Khan Kalawant and dated c .1607
depicts the binkar in a very similar composition as Mansur's
onen (ill. 31). According to the oral tradition, Naubat Khan
is said to have been the founder of an illustrious lineage
of bin players while Bilas Khan, one of Tansen's sons
initiated an equally renowned line of rab§.b players . Before

'J7 Ibid: 110.

88 later writers beleive that Tans en's daughter and son- in- law also
known under the hindu name of Misri Singh were artificial
relationships created by latter musicians to enter the courts and
justify their own pedigree. See Acharya Brahaspati 1976.
89 see Stuart c. Welch 1963: plate 18 . Also, in Sotheby•s 1987: 52-53.
90 Hakim Mohammad Karam Imam states in his Ma 1 dan al-MQsiqi that
Naubat Khan was a later name of a Rajput noble, Raja Samokhan Singh.
SHI>. l!..-1-'.>: 14.
91 A. Rogers and H. Beveridge 1978, vol. I : 111. The title of Naubat
was a highly estimeed statut which the Mughals Emperors used to confer
to distinguished nobles, cf. Blochman 1872: 262.
92 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy 1930: plate XXVIII. A drawing of Naubat Khan
also probably inspired by Mansur•s painting shows him holding his
instrument in a left-handed position. The mention Naubat Khan, son-in-
law of Tansen is inscribed in devanagari on the top of the sketch, see
Lalit Kala Akademi 1-2 : 19.

25
 -
closing his A'in -i akbari, Abu'l Fazl gives a list of the
thirty-six main musicians of Akbar's court. A third of the
musicians listed had come from Gwalior and among them two
binkar are mentioned, Shihab Khan and Purbin Khan, the
latter being the son of the singer Nanak Jarju 93 . Strang2ly
enough the edited manuscript does not include the name of
Ali Khan Karori. Does this mean that this important musician
was known in Akbar's court under an another name or had not
enter the imperial court by the time of the writing of the
A' in in 1597 ?94
Jahangir (r.1605-27) maintained a lavish patronage of arts
and musicians received keen attention and rewards. In his
memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-jahangiri, the Emperor reports that on
festive occasions such as New Year's day (nauruz) "Players
and singers of all bands and castes were gathered
together 11 9S. Brief records are given about musicians· being
offered gifts, favours or privileges (mansab) and even being
"weighed against rupees 1196 • The wealthy atmosphere prevailing
in those times and Jahangir•s generous patronage are
reflected on numerous fine paintings. Some of them, which
technical compositions and arrangements anticipate
Shahjahan's splendour and pomp of the Padshahnama
illustrations, depict processions and musical scenes during
the celebration of Jahangir coronation or the marriage of
Prince Khurram97 ( i 11 . 3 2 ) .

Like his father and grand-father, Shahjahan (r.1628-58)

cultivated a deep interest for darbari (court) music. The
indian and turco-persian musical traditions, dis~onected
from each other during the early sultanate period, went into
a slowly but continuous process of integration until Akbar's
reign. Under Shahjahan reign, the synthesis of indo-persian
music reaches a quasi-definite form and hindustani music as
it was refered to, was regarded as the quintessence of art-
music. "This stage in the development of music seems to have
been assisted by the prevalence of comparative peace and the
personal predilection and refined tastes of the emperor, who
delighted in surrounding himself with artists and men of
letters and lavishly patronised them 1198 • Shahjahan was very
fond of dhrupad, a secular musical genre which flourished in
medieval India simultaneously with the religious songs of

93 A'in -i Akbari 1989: 681-82.

9 4 One of the manuscripts of the ~'in used by x for the critical
edition mention the name of Nabat Khan in relation with Shihab Khan.
Fran~oise. Delvoye, personal communication. An anecdote carried by the
oral tradition says that Misri Singh (naubat Khan) entered Akbar• s
court after the emperor had listen to his bin in a temple where Misri
Singh racked by remorse, after he had killed his father Raja samokhan
Sinoh, had taken vow of renouncement. While in Delhi, he was used to
accompany Tansen but after a public offense to Tansen due to the
competition and rivalry that had arisen between them, Misri Singh left
Delhi for several years before he was reintegrated as the leading bin
player of the court. Kuppuswamy and Hariharan 1984:78 .
95 A. Rogers and H. Beveridge 1978 vol I: 48-49.
96 Ibid: 376.
97 Percy Brown 1924: Plates XX.XI and XLVI .
98 A. Halim 19 4 5: 354.

26
the devotional vishnuite bhakti movement. He ordered the
compilation of one thousand dhrupad songs composed in late
15th or early 16th c. by the erudite indian musician Nayaka
Bakhshu. It is during the same period that Manakutuhala was
written by eminent musicians including Nayaka Bakhshu,
assembled in Gwalior on the request of the ruler Raja Man
Singh, to redefine and standardise the many bakti cult songs
forms of which dhrupad seems to have evolved to develop
towards religious and art music. The bin repertory known
today soils its roots in this d.hrupad form.
An important account of the musical scene in Shahjahan times
is given in the Ragadarpana. Written under Aurangzeb by one
of his closest elite member Saif Khan whose pen-name was
Faql.rullah, an efficient administrator, military man and
musicologist, this major work on music compiles a persian
translation of the Manakutuhala and a personal report of
Faql.rullah's views on contemporary mughal court-music 99 .
Short biographies of influent musicians contemporaries of
Shahjahan and Aurangzeb, bring worthly informations about
singers and instrumentalists and their social statut.

The first musician mentioned by Faql.rullah is Sheikh

Bahauddl.n Barnawi1oo, a fervent adept of soufism. He was born
in a noble family and after a long journey of twenty-five
years, his spiritual achievements led him to renonce to the
world at the age of fifty. He had before mastered the art of
music in the deccani sultanates and was an outstanding
composer. Expert in playing the rabab, the bin and ambirti,
Sheikh Bahauddl.n had also invented a stringed musical
instrument called khayal "which had a strange appearance" 101.
Two of his disciples played on an instrument named bhagwan
(bin) 'which could not be wielded by anybody else 1 102. He
died in the second year of Shahjahan reign at the unconunon
old age of 117. Sheikh Bahauddl.n was not a professional
court-musician but a faqir inunersed into soufism. Having
renounced to the worldly life, he spent the largest part of
his life in his native place. Because of his exceptional and
outstanding knowledge of music he is listed first among the
vocalists although his talents as instrumentalist are duly
stressed upon.

Saras-Bin Khan binkar, first mentioned in the list of

instrumentalists was born in a family of musicians. His
father and grand-father served respectively under Jahangl.r

99 Sarmadee 1996: xxiii-iv.

100 !0i.cl: .!. 37 - 91.
101 A. Halim 1945: 356. Unfortunatly no physical description of this
instrument is given in the R.§gadarpana. Shahab Sarmadee indicates a
book named Kitab-i-Chishtiyah, written by Sheikh Alaud Din Barnawi,
the Sheikh's son and which "has so much else to say about the
practised art of the time". According to Sarmadee, the original
manuscript of this work discovered by H. M. Shirani, would be kept in
the erstwhile Public Library of Lahore . Sarmadee 1996: note 1, 290.
l0 2 Ibid.

27
and Akbar103. Faqirullah reports his musical excellence and
states that he was a favorite of Aurangzeb 104 . Another bin
player, Moharmnad Khan received the title of Ras-Bin from the
Emperor but nothing else is stated about him, except that he
had a delicate cormnand over his instrument. Aurangzeb
(r.1659-1707) is said to have banned music performances from
his court but this radical attitude towards music happened
after the eleventh years of his reign 105 , due to the pressure
of the ulama, tenants of the shari'at law. The Ragadarpana
was completed in 1666 and therefore court musicians quoted
by Faqirullah were still in favor with the Emperor who was a
real connoisseur of music and had a special attraction for
flute and pakhawajl06. A painting dated c 1660 represents
Aurangzeb unexpectedly seated in company of two musicians, a
bin laying on the floor in front of the musicians (ill. 33).
one of them could be Khushal Khan 107 , the son of Lal Khan the
premier musician of Shahjahan who conferred him the title of
Gun-Samundar (ocean of virtues or qualities) . Faqirullah
indicates that Khushal Khan inherited the title of his
father and adds: 11 The Geti-Khadev (Aurangzeb) showers his
special attention upon him 1os.
11

Muazzam Shah the eldest son of Aurangzeb succeded his father

with the title of Bahadur Shah I and patronage of darbari
music reappeared with the new Emperor. The suspension of
musical activities ordered by Aurangzeb does not mean that
music had disappear from the capital. An important musical
litterature was composed as a reaction, during the end of
the 17e c 109 . The nobility had developed a real taste for
music and number of high servants, civils and officers were
fond of private musical so1rees (mehfil) they used to
organize in their mansions. The wealthy upper class of Delhi
also encouraged the patronage of musicians and a creative
period of new trends, genres and styles blossomed in the
capital by the first-half of the 18th c. Confined for
centuries in the restricted circles of royal courtships,
art-music came in close contact with others musical forms
and met a more popular taste. A new process of mutual
integration was to prefigure the musical traditions of the
19e and 20e c.

3. 3 Na •mat Khan

It is under the short reign of Bahadur Shah I (1707-12) that

Na' mat Khan, a major binkar and composer of the 18th c

l03 Refering to Faq~rullah, Mohammad Karam Imam who quotes the same
lineage gives the name of Hayat Saras Nain. SNA 11-12: 16.
104 Sarmadee 1996: 207.
lOS Saqi Must•ad Khan, Ma'asir-i-Alamgfrf, A History of the Emperor
Aurangzib- 'Alamgiri (Reign 1658-1707 AD), transl. and annotated by
Jadunath Sarkar, Calcutta 1947; reprint New-Delhi 1986: 45.
l0 6 Ibid: 7 l.
107 The identity of Khushal Khan is proposed by Terence Mcinerney and
Ellen smart. Cf. Milo Cleveland Beach 1997: 125 and 129 fn.
108 sarmadee 1996: 199.
109 Ibid: xlii. Cf. also Ahmad 1984.

28
received his musical instruction from the appointed court
musicians11o. Bahadur Shah's successors revealed a total lack
of aptitude to govern the empire. Political turmoils,
permanent plots among the courtiers and in most of the cases
absence of efficient ruling authority weakened the power and
annexed territories gained by their illustrious ancestors.
It is in this chaotic context of a slow but irreparable
decline of the mughal dynasty that Na 'mat Khan became a
favorite musician of Jahandar Shah (r.1712-13) who showed an
irranoderate inclination toward revelry and music. According
to contemporaries chronicles quoted by the historian William
Irvine in his book Later Mughals, Na'mat Khan was a brother
of the Emperor concubine, Lal Kunwar, a female singer and a
dancer described as a descendant of Tansen111.
Lal Kunwar was dignified with the title of Mumtiaz Mahal,
chosen of the Palace, and immense treasures, the spoils ·from
Azim-ush-shan•s and Jahan Shah's camp, were made over to her.
Her whole family was ennobled, father, brothers, and
brothers-in-law. Her middle brother was the most oppresive of
all to the people. All the brothers were granted the naubat,
or the right to play music at stated intervals, and the use
of kettle-drums when on the march. Their titles were Niamat
Khan, Namdar Khan and Khanazad Khan. Some of the confiscated
mansions in the city were given to them, and as Kanwar Khan
says, "the owl dwelt in the eagle's net and the crow took the
place of the nightingale" ... Gifts were showered upon Lal
Kunwar and her friends. It is said that an allowance of two
krors of Rupees (about £2,000,000 sterling) was made for her
household expenses, exclusive of clothes and jewels. She was
allowed to display the imperial wnbrella and to march, with
drums beating, as if she had been the Emperor in personll2.

Jahandar Shah not only gave generous rewards and mansab to

musicians but also allowed his favorites to interfere with
the government affairs. Na'mat Khan is said to have used of
his influence over Jahandar Shah to incline him to give the
governorship of Ahmadabad to an administrative officer of
his friends, stepping aside the protocol and the opinion of
the powerful wazir113 • Another event, given in several
contemporary sources, recalls the pri vilegied position of
Na'mat Khan who was once appointed by the Emperor to become
the governor of the province of Multan. As the wazir
requested him a compensation of one thousand lutes instead
of money as it was usually the rule to issue the necessary
patent, he could only provide two hundred of these lutes
within one week but the wazir remained uncompromising:
Niamat Khan complained to His Majesty of the excessive bribe
demanded from him. Jahandar Shah, when next he saw the wazir,

110 ~i!'er 1993. :79 . Na•mn.t I<"h-3.n is also said to have startect his
career as court-musician employed by Bahadur Shah: "Of his · court
musicians, the name of Niamat Khan son of Narmul Khan .... composed
innumerable songs with the assistance of Niazi Qawwal and lala
Bangali, before he entered the service of Jahandar Shah and
subsequently of Mohammed Shah (1719-48)" A. Halim 1948-49:116.
111 William Irvine, Later Mughals: 1971-1:180 fn . and 192-93.
112 Ibid: 193-94.
113 Ibid: 191-92.

29
 •

asked him the reason of collecting so many guitars. The

answer was that when musicians were sent to govern provinces,
nobles must discard their weapons and learn to play on the
guitar. This remonstrance induced Jahandar Shah to cancel the
appointment 114 .

Nevertheless, whatever his opportunism and man.ceuvres may

have been, Na 'mat Khan was later remembered as an
outstanding musician who brought an important contribution
to hindustani music of the 18th c. He made a brillant
musical career as bin player and composer under the Emperor
Muhammad Shah (r.1719-48).

Dargah Quli Khan, a young nobleman from Aurangabad who spent

some times in Delhi between 1737 and 1741, hold a diary,
Risala - i Salar Jang, known as Muraqqa' -i -Dehli in which he
recorded colourful sketches of the wealthy cultural life in
Delhi. He attended a musical session given by Na'mat Khan in
his own residence and was thrilled by the music he listened
to:
His existence in Hindustan is a blessed gift. He is renowned
for his compositions of new musical notes and notations and
is on par with the nayaks of bygone days. He innovated a
variety of beautiful khayyals. The works of [Ne'mat Khan] are
in different languages and he is considered the master of all
contemporary musicians of Dehli ... . His expertise in the art
of playing the bin has no parallel in this
world .... Felicitous is that bin player, whose mere placing of
the bin · on the shoulder emanated harmonious sounds and
exhilarated the people. The gourd of his bin [sounds] is
intoxicating as wine, and the touch of the finger-nails on
the strings animates the people. The music of the bin makes
the people listless with ecstacy and the sounds of
appreciation rent the air. His playing of a new musical note
[raag) ·elicts a similar response. I t is possible that the
people would not have seen and heard an exquisite player of
bin as Ne'mat KhanllS.

Nothing is known about Na' mat Khan's bin teacher and very
little about his early days. According to the Risala-i-
Zikr-i-Mu~hannian-i-Hindustan written in 1734-35 and the
Mir'at-i-Afta.b Numa (1803-04) Na'mat Khan used to accompany
his father Nirmol Khan to listen to musical sessions given
by Aurangzeb' s second son, Mohammad Azam Shahll 6 • He is
refered to as an eminent singer and composer of dhrupad,
khyal and tarana. Na 'mat Khan is said to have signed
numerous khyal compositions under the pen-name of Sadarang
but also in Mohammad Shah's name. Apart an indirect mention
of Sadarang in the Muraqqa ' - i - Dehl i, none of the
contemporaries sources do mention this 117
pseudonym .

114 Ibid: 193-94. Mirat-i-waridat, 80; Nadir-uz-zamani, 389b. A dutch

chronicle Diary of Erutcreriraad Graaf, 299. cf. also Miner 1993: 80.
115 Dargah Quli Khan, Muraqqa' -e-Dehli The Mughal Capital in Muhammad
Shah s :Time,
1 english transl., introduction and notes by Chander
Shekhar and Shama Mitra Chenoy, Deputy Publication, Delhi 1989:75-76.
116 Halim 1948: 116, Miner 1993: 86.
117 In one of the courtesans• sketches, Dargah Quli Khcin says: "These
days in Dehli, the khayyals of Sada Rang are in vogue. (Raji] sings

30
 .......

Sadarang•s khyal became widely renowned and still

constitute today a major repertoire of the performing
artists. Na'mat Khan was undoubtly a very creative musician
and composer as it was ascertained in his own time but the
identification of his name with Sadarang is still unclear
although it is reporterd for long in the oral tradition 118 •

Dargah Quli Khan quotes several disciples of Na 'mat Khan

who used to perform in Moharmnad Shah's court. First are
recorded Na 'mat Khan's brotherll9 , who "has also mastered
the art of playing different musical instruments" and his
nephew, Firoz Khan who played the new appeared sitar. Being
both instrumentalists, they were presumably also well
acquainted with bin playing. The others disciples mentioned
are Qasim Ali, singer of kabbit, "one of the [bright and
talented] disciples of Ne'mat Khan" and two highly talented
and reputed female singers, Parma bai, whose "virtues and
other qualities of merit deserve special mention ... The
stability of her high pitch flashes like the rays of the
sun in the sky" and Kamal bai regarded by the author as a
female kalawant. "Like her name [kamal] she has mastered
through constant practice the art of singing and dancing to
perfect ion" 120 •

3.4 Later music centres

While Dargah Quli Khan was in Delhi, the persian ruler

Nadir Shah had marched towards India and entered in the
capital (1738). After a short stay, Nadir Shah replaced
Moharmnad Shah on the throne and went back to Persia with a
large booty including the famous Peacock Throne and the
most precious jewels from the imperial store-houses. The
fallen emperor had lost his keen interest in music and the
musicians were ask to ref rain to perform in the royal
court. Some of them found a wealty and enraptured audience
accustomed with musical assemblies but others left the
capital in search of new patronage. Na'mat Khan died in the
last years of Mohammad Shah's reign.

With the troubles that were generated by the steady decline

of the political power of the mughal emperor, the military
harassment of the maharate armies and the growing appetite
of the British East India Company, distant provinces
subordinated to the Empire took the opportunity to contend
themselfs for independance. The kingdom of Awadh, ruled by
the Navab Shuja ud-Daula (r.1754-75) emerged in the second
half of the 18th c. as a prosperous trade and cultural
centre. Urdu poetry, painting, dance and music were
flourishing and attracted numbers of musicians. Na'mat
Kh§.n; s u<=.1::>bew Firoz Kll&n rerr.•:l.i:r:ed in DelhL for about a

them in his attractive style" . Chander Shekhar and Shama Mitra Chenoy
1989: 113. Cf. Miner 1993: 87.
118 Miner 1993: 87.
119 Later writers named him Khusrau Khan. He is said to have introduce
a three strings musical instrument, probably the sitar .
120 Chander Shekhar and Shama Mitra Chenoy 1989: 121-22.

31
decade then settled in Rohilkhand, an independant hilly
state in the north- east of Delhi, conquered in Mohammad
Shah's time by afghans troopers. Rampur became the capital
of Rohilkhand and soon competed for artistic pre-eminence
with Awadh's main cities, Faizabad and Lucknow.

Muhammad Karam Imam, a courtier attached to the court of

wajid Ali Shah (r.1847-56), the last Nav§.b of Awadh, wrote
in 1856 a valuable book on music entitled Ma'dan al-mO.siqi.
In a Chapter on musicians121, after a review of the past
famous artists of the mughal times, Karam Imam gives an
historical account of the Faizabad and Lucknow courts.
Among the musicians who hailed from Delhi to the court of
Shuja ud-Daula figured dhrupad rabab players related to
Tansen lineage and Umrao Khan binkar. According to Karam
Imam, umrao Khan lineage traced back to Raja Samokhan
Singh. His two sons, Amir ·Khan and his younger brother
Rahim, both high ranking binkar are also mentioned along
with umrao' s brother, Muhammad Khan binkar122 . Umrao Khan
was a leading court musician in Banaras and Captain
Willard, who listen to him probably while he was in post in
Banda, indicates his direct lineage to the famous j ivan
Shah:
11
K.hooshhal Khan and Oomraw Khan, Veenkars, mentioned before,
have in their possession the instrument on which their
grandfather Jeewun Shah used to ravish his audience 123 .

The name of Khusshal Khan related to Ji van Shah is not to

be found in other sources. Karam Imam quotes that Umrao
Khan and his brother Muhammad Khan, were employed by the
Banaras ruler, Maharaja Udit Narayan a keen patron of music
but the relationship or identity of Muhammad Khan with
Khusshal Khan remains unclear.

Karam Imam cormnents the conservative attitude of these

hereditary musicians who strictly preserved their inherited
knowledge of dhrupad and bin for the closest male members
of their family:

"Rahim khan, son of Umrao Khan, is adept at playing on the

Been. His elder brother, Amir Khan is a well-known Ustad.
Hassan Khan also plays well. According to Ali Naqui Khan
Saheb, the sons of Umrao Khan play Been while Hassan Khan
plays the Sitar baaj on the Been. The trouble is, the rules
of Been are taught by the Ustads to their sons only and not
even to their daughter's children, therefore, Hassan Khan did
not have the privilege of learning it ul24

Yet, while he was in Lucknow, Umrao Khan thaught the bin to

waj id Ali Shah's prime minister, Ali Naqi Khan, above-
mentioned. Karam Imam also reports that a non-hereditary

121 Mohammad Karam Imam, Ma 'dan al-MOsiqi, Hindustani Press, Lucknow

1925. "Melody Through the Centuries", chapter transl. by Govind
Vidyarthi in SNA bulletin 11-12 1959.
122 Ibid: 19 and 23 . .
123 Willard 1965: 91.
124 G. vidyarthi 1959: 23.

32
musician named Mir Nasir Ahmad "married a girl from
Kalawant class in Delhi in order to fulfil his desire to
1 earn Been 125 " .
By the end of the 18th and early 19th c., an extremely
refined culture brighten up in Lucknow. The prodigality of
the Nav§.b toward artistic creation had a great impact on
the cultural life in the city. As a matter of fact, the
ustad were surrounded by an increasing appeal for new
musical forms and instruments as khyal and sitar. umrao
Khan imparted musical training to Ghulam Mohanunad Khan who
became a very famous sitar player and did apply on his
instrument the technical specificities of the bin. Karam
Imam stresses the ability of this musician who could render
bin and rabab features better than any binkar or rababia
excepted umrao Khanl2 6 • People from non-professional
families and even amateurs were also eager to learn music.
The descendents of the eminent dhrupad rababia and binkar
who settled in Lucknow during Shuja ud-Daula, taught many
students and certainly played an inf luencial role in the
raising Lucknow sitar music known as purab baj (eastern
style) which technical elements were borrowed from their
own dhrupad heritage and instrumental style121.

Almost in the same time when Lucknow emerged as a leading

musical centre by the end of the 18th c., Rampur also
attracted indian court musicians who came in close contact
with local afghani rabab players. After the dismissal of
Waj id Ali Shah by the British who annexed the kingdom of
Awadh in 1856 and the socio-political troubles that
followed for two years after the indian a:rmy mutiny,
musicians from Delhi and Lucknow moved to Rampur. Amir Khan
and his brother Rahim Khan were welcomed by the Nav§.b Yusuf
Ali Khan and became top ranking binkar of the court. Like
his father Yusuf Ali Khan, Nav§.b Kalbe Ali Khan (r.1864-87)
maintained a generous patronage for music and his
stepbrother Nav§.b Haidar Ali Khan, a writer, poet and
musician who learnt music from several ustad, received bin
training from Amir Khan 128 . By the second half of the 19th
c. , Rampur became a highly reputed musical centre where
prestigious ustad trained some of the outstanding musicians
of the 20th c.

Rajput princely states also supported for centuries an

important musical tradition. From Akbar's period at least,
rajasthani musicians used to entertain their indian and
mughal patrons. The oral sources relate Sarnmokhan Singh or
Misri Singh, alias Naubat Khan eminent binkar in Akbar 1 s
court with Rajasthan. Jaipur was founded in 1727 by the
Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II and special quarters were
as.5.i.gl.Led rur the: craftmen and a:i:.·tists12~. Musicians were

125 Ibid.
126 Ibid.
127 see Miner 1993: 119-21; 125-26 .
128 Sulochana Brahaspati, History of Rampur as a Centre of Music, in
the present publication.
129 Joan L. Erdman 1985: 30-42.

33
requested from Delhi by the Maharaja and "provided daily
programs of singing and instrumental music in Hara Bangla
at the southwest corner of Chandra Mahal" 130 . Sawai Jai
Singh II created the gunijankhana, one of the thirty- six
departments of the Maharaja household, a musical department
of "those who know the art". The gunijankhana included
singers, instrumentalists, dancing girls and was headed
( daroga) till 1942 - 4_2 by a renowned and knowledgeable
musician. "Gunijankhana provided musical and dance
performers for royal occasions, except for the Naubat Khana
(or Naflar Khana) which marked watch-hours of the days,
special long ceremonial horns of the Roshan Chauki, State
Band which was part of the military, and girls, who danced
in the zenana" 131 .

In a voluminous historical account of Rajasthan published

in the first-half of the 19th c., Lieut. -Col. James Tod,
reports the keen interest of the Maharaja of Mewar, Sheodan
Sing for music:
He was a proficient in musical science, and could discourse
most fluently on the whole theory of Sangita, which
comprehends vocal and instrumental harmony ... He had attached
to his suite the first vocalist of Mewar, and occasionally
favoured me by letting them sing at my house . .. Sadoola, who se
execution on the guitar would have secured applause even at
the Philarmonic, commanded mute attention when he played a
tan or symphony, or when, taking any of the simple tuppas of
Oojein as a theme, he wandered through a succession of .
voluntaries 11132 •

Tod also notes that "Every chief has his band, vocal and
instrumental; but Sindia, some years since, carried away
the most celebrated vocalists of Oodipoor. 11 He also
mentions the Rana of Udaipur as "a great patron of the art"
and the Prince of Katha who "has the largest band, perhaps,
in these countries; instruments of all kinds stringed,
wind, and percussion". Concluding with the Mewar musical
customs he adds in a frustrating statment: "As to their
lutes, guitars, and all the varieties of tintibulants (as
Dr. Johnson would call them) , it would fatigue without
interesting the reader to enumerate theml33 n.

Music centre in Rajasthan such as Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur

and Alwar were well-known for their dhrupad and bin
traditions. The Jaipur ruler Maharaj a Sawai Ram Singh II
(r.1835-1880) cultivated a personal involvment in musical
practice. He learnt dhrupad singing and bin from the best
musicians of his Gunijankhana . In a letter written in 1926
to the president of the Council of State of Jaipur, the
d.hrupad singer Riazuddin Khan states that he was the great-
grandson of Behrfun Khan :

130 Ibid : 37 .
131 Ibid: 77.
13 2 James Tod 1983 : i-513.
133 Ibid: 515.

34
 one of the three eminent musicians, Behram Khan, Rajab Ali
Khan and Amritsen, who were engaged at Rs. 7 per day as Music
Masters to the most enlightened ruler of this State, Maharaja
Sawai Ramsinghji Bahadur of the blessed memoryl 34 .
An early photography (c.1860) shows Maharaja Sawai Ram
Singh II playing his bin (ill. 34) . Behram Khan was the
daroga of his Gunijankhana and Rajab Ali Khan was his bin
teacher . Records in the administrative archives department
of the Royal Palace indicate that those outstanding
musicians had been granted lands for incomes (jagir) .
According to oral sources, Raj ab Ali was the son or the
nephew of Shahji Sahab, an ascetic bin player whose family
hailed from Golcunda in the 18th c. 135 . Rajab Ali Khan
taught the bin to Musharraf Khan, one of his brother's son
and to another relative Amiruddin Khan. Rajab Ali and
Musharraf were first employed in the prestigious court of
Sivdan Singh, ruler of Al war. Along with Behram Khan and
Amritsen also appointed in the Al war court, they moved
later on to Jaipur 136 . Musharraf Khan was probably the first
binkar to travel in Europe since he gave a concert in
London in 1886. A beautiful gold-painted bin supposed to
have belonged to Musharraf Khan is still kept in the Alwar
Palace Museum.
Amiruddin who was also in the service of Sawai Ram Singh II
trained his own son Jamaluddin and a cousin, Abbas Ali,
said to have been a prodigy of the instrument but who died
very youngl37 . Jamaluddin Khan became a great binkar and was
later engaged as a leading court-musician by Maharaja
Sayaji Rao Gaikwad of Baroda (r. 1875-1939) who also asked
him to teach surbahar to the Maharani 138 . By the second-half
of the 19th c. ,. Baroda had welcomed several famous artists.
Among them, Maula Bakhsh stood as a highly knowlegeable
musician and binkar. Before he was appointed to the Baroda
court and after a long jouney all over North India, he also
travelled in the south where he studied Carnatic music and
had been employed in Mysore and Hyderabad courts 139 . Aware
of the necessity of new means to propagate musical
education, he created in Baroda a public school on the
behalf of his patron and introduced a system of musical
notation.

134 Joan L. Erdman 1985: 104 .

135 Bimal Mukherjee 1991: 2. Asad Ali Khan holds the same statements
about his ancestors but precises that Rajab Ali was a nephew of Shahji
Khan .. (Interview dee. 1987). B. Mukherjee and Asad Ali Khan both agree
that Shahji Sahab lineage originated from lower Rajasthan and migrated
to Deccan sometime in the 14th-15th c.
136 ~':'"" M;_!'.~r .1.993: l30-3l.
137 B. Mukherjee 1991: ibid.
138 Remark of Abid Hussain binkar, son of Jamaluddin and music teacher
of B. Mukherjee. B. R. Deodhar 1993:187 notes that Jamaluddin Khan's
was related to the family of the famous sarangi player Bundu Khan
whose ancestors were bin players.
139 see J. Bor, booklet notice of Inayat Khan, the Complete Recordings
of 1909. A set of two CD published by EMI/The Gramophone Company of
India Ltd. 1994.

35
 Gwalior had been recorded in written sources as a highly
reputed music centre from Raja Man Singh' s times. Several
musicians attached to Akbar's court originated from Gwalior
but it was later particuliary known for its strong
· association with khyal. Bande Ali Khan the well-known and
legendary binkar of the 19th c., a nephew of Behram Khan,
stayed for a while in Gwalior where he is said to have been
much influenced by the music of Baba Dixit and taught bin
to Eknath Pandit and Balvant Rao Bhaiya140 . According to
some accounts, he was born in 1826 in a town named Kirana
(U.P.) and his father was a certain Sadiq Ali Khan, binkar
and singer141. Other oral sources say that he was the son of
Gulam Jaffar Khan whose father Hussein Khan Zini and
grandfather Khalipha Mohammad zama Khan were both bin
players in Alwar statel42 .

Bande Ali Khan married the eldest daughter of the famous

Gwalior khyal singer Haddu Khan but after some times
shifted for Indore to the court of Maharaja Shivaji Holkar
to whom he also imparted bin training. He became quickly an
eminent musician whose unforeseeable attitude and
detachement toward worldly goods, confered upon him an aura
of high spirituality. An adept of Sufism and imbued with
khyal, he developped a musical style of his own which later
had a great impact in Maharastra. After a stay in
Hyderabad, he settled in Pune with his second wife Chunna
Bai, previously a highly appreciated female court-singer
and favorite of Scindia in Gwalior. The fame of Bande ali
Khan attracted to him many pupils among whom are listed
sarangi and sitar players. His most well-known bin disciple
was Murad Khan who spread over Maharastra a khyal based bin
style still alive today.

Philippe Bruguiere

140 sarat Chandra Arolekar, interview, Bombay march 1990.

141 Jiwan Lall Matto: 1967.
142 Zia Moihuddin Dagar, interview, Bombay feb. 1989.

36
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et la pratique de la musique, Paris 1636-37. Ed. facsimile
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Paris 1963, Editions du CNRS.

Marin Mersenne, Harmonicorum Libri XII, Paris 1648. Ed.

facsimile Geneve 1973 , Editions Minkoff.

P. Della Valle, Viaggi descri tti in 54 lettere famigliari,

Rome 1650-58. G. Havers (trans.} and E. Grey (ed.}, The
travels of Pietro Della Valle, vol. 1-2,London 1892, Hakluyt
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Francis Fowke, An Extract of a Letter from , Esq. to the

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F. Balthazard Solvyns, A catalogue of 250 Coloured Etchings:

Descriptive of the Manners, Customs, Characters, Dress and
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James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajast 'han, 2 vols.

London 1829-32, 4th ed. New-Delhi 1983, M. N. Publishers.

N. Augustus Willard, A Treatise on the Music of Hindoostan:

comprising a Detail of the Ancient Theory and Modern
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Blochma.n, Biographical Notices of Grandees of the Mughul

Court in: The Indian Antiquary, Calcutta 1872.

Amir Khusraw, a•jaz-i khusravi, Lucknow 1876, Nawal Kishore

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c. R . Day, Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India

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Abu al-Fazl, Ain-i AklJhari vol. III , transl. H. s. Jarrett,

Calcutta 1894, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 3rd ed. New-Delhi
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2 vol. edited by Jadunath Sarkar, New-Delhi 1971, Oriental
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Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge, TO.zuk-i-Jahangiri or

Memoirs of Jahangir, 1st publ. 1909-14, 3rd ed. New-Delhi
1978, Munshiram Manoharlal.

w. Smith, A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, Oxford

1911.

Percy Brown, Indian painting under the Mughals AD 1550 to AD

1750, Oxford 1924, Clarendon Press.

Mohammad Karam Imam, Ma'dan al-MO.siqi, Lucknow 1925,

Hindustani Press. Melody Through the Centuries, chapter
transl. by Govind Vidyarthi in SNA bulletin 11-12 1959.

Henry George Farmer, Ibn Khurdadhbih on Musical Instruments,

in: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1928.

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Catalogue of the Indian Collections

in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Cambridge, Mass. 1930,
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Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Parts of a Vina, in: Journal of

the American Oriental Society, New Haven 1930, Yale
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Henry George Farmer, Ninth Century Musical Instruments in:

Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments I, London 1931.

CUrt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, New-York ·

1940, w w Norton & Company, Inc., 2nd ed. 1968.

Claudie Marcel-Dubois, Les Instruments de Musique de l'Inde

Ancienne, Paris, PUF 1941.

S. N. Haidar Rizvi, Music in Muslim India, Islamic CUlture

XV/3, 1941.

A. Halim, Music and Musicians of the court of Shah Jahan,

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