सारंगी
The sarangi is the great accompanying instrument of Hindustani vocal music — for centuries, no vocalist performed without a sarangi player. Its name is said to derive from "sau rang" (a hundred colours), reflecting its extraordinary expressive range. Despite this central importance, the sarangi and its players occupied a paradoxical social position — essential to music but often marginalised socially.
The sarangi is made from a single block of wood, typically Tun wood, carved to create the body, neck, and scroll in one piece. It has three or four main playing strings (typically made of gut, though synthetic strings are common today) and between thirty-five and forty sympathetic strings running beneath the main strings and through the neck. These sympathetic strings resonate with the played notes, producing the characteristic overtone-rich sarangi sound. The bowing surface is wider than a European violin bow.
Uniquely among bowed instruments, the sarangi is stopped (the strings pressed down) with the fingernails of the left hand rather than the fingertips. This allows the player to approach the strings from the side rather than above, enabling smooth glides that closely mimic the meend of vocal music. The right hand draws a relatively short, thick horsehair bow across the strings. Mastering the sarangi is considered one of the most demanding technical feats in Indian music.
The sarangi developed in its current form in the seventeenth century, though bowed instruments appear in Indian art much earlier. It became the standard accompaniment for Khayal, Thumri, and Ghazal vocals — the sarangi player would follow the vocalist's every phrase, filling in between vocal lines and supporting the melodic structure. In the twentieth century, the harmonium began to replace the sarangi in many contexts, and the instrument faced a severe decline. Late twentieth and early twenty-first century musicians, including Pandit Ram Narayan, have worked to reestablish the sarangi as a complete solo concert instrument.
No instrument in the Hindustani tradition more completely embodies the ideal of music as the imitation of the human voice. The sarangi's ability to follow every nuance of a great vocalist — to sustain long notes, execute the same gamaka, match the same pitch precisely — makes it the perfect musical shadow of the voice. Its decline from the accompanist's position has been a significant loss to the tradition.