वायलिन
The violin reached India through European colonial contact in the late eighteenth century. In South India, musicians recognized its potential for Carnatic music — its ability to produce the long glides (gamaka) essential to Carnatic style, without the frets that constrain the sitar. Within a generation, the violin had become one of the primary melodic instruments of Carnatic classical music.
The violin used in Indian classical music is identical in construction to the Western violin — it has not been modified. What has changed is how it is played and how it is tuned. The Carnatic violin is typically tuned Sa-Pa-Sa-Pa (tonic-fifth-tonic-fifth) rather than the Western G-D-A-E. The instrument is held differently — the bottom of the violin is placed against the ankle, and the bow is drawn across the strings with the body of the instrument supported on the shoulder and breast.
The Indian violin posture (held at the ankle rather than under the chin) gives the left hand a different relationship to the fingerboard and allows for the particular gamaka (ornaments) of Carnatic music. The bow arm moves in a straight, controlled manner across all four strings. Because the instrument is fretless, the player must develop an exact intonation sense for the microtonal intervals of Carnatic ragas, which often involve quarter-tones and other inflections not present in Western music.
The violin was introduced to South India in the late eighteenth century, and Muthuswami Dikshitar (one of the Carnatic Trinity) is known to have used it in his compositions. Vadivelu, one of the Tanjore Quartet, is credited with establishing the playing style that became standard. In Hindustani music, the violin followed a different path — Dr. N. Rajam developed a Hindustani violin style that maintains the North Indian playing posture and ornament vocabulary.
The Indian violin's adaptation is one of the clearest examples of Indian classical music's capacity to absorb foreign elements and transform them completely. The violin arrived from Europe, was placed in a different posture, retuned, and re-ornamented until it became not a European instrument played with Indian influences, but an Indian instrument that happened to be made in Europe.