Page:The Music of India.djvu/135

 difficulty. The sound is mellow and somewhat resembles that of the viola. It is a very fine instrument, and expert players can get a tremendous lot from it. Even the beggar manages to produce quite a delightful noise with it. It provides a very good accompaniment for singing, and has more fulness of tone than the sitar and also very considerable possibilities of development. It seems hardly possible, however, that it will rival the violin in the power and beauty of its tone or in its range, but it will always be a good member of an Indian orchestra, and, like the viola, will come in very useful as a contrast. In the south already the violin has come to stay, and there is not much likelihood of the sararigi displacing it now. It may, however, come to the south as a member of an Indian orchestra. The sararigi usually has, like the other instruments already mentioned, a number of sympathetic strings, from fifteen to twenty-two, under the four main strings. The Gandharva Mahavidyalaya has a fine orchestral sarangi which stands seven feet high, and which is meant to be used in the concerts given there, though hitherto it has been mostly ornamental. (See p. 99.)

The Saroda or Sarrawat is a sarangi played with the plectrum instead of the bow. It has a powerful tone and is usually much larger than the sarangi.

The Esraj is the Bengal variety of the sarangi. It is a little smaller than the latter, and uses all wire strings instead of gut. The tuning is Sa Sa Pa Ma, (C C G F), the Ma string being the chief string. This is the common instrument that one finds to-day in the houses of cultured people in Bengal. It is played with a bow like the sarangi.

The Sarinda is another variety of the sarangi, peculiar to Bengal. The bottom of the instrument is oval instead of rectangular, and the upper half of the body is left open. It is played in the same way as the sarangi. It usually has an elaborate tailpiece. It has only two thin strings of gut and not four as in the sarangi. It is used chiefly by jogis and fakirs.

The Chikara is a curiously shaped variety of the sarangi. The body consists of a long hollow piece of wood,