Page:The Music of India.djvu/138

 of which passes over the frets, the others being the drone strings. The drone strings are tuned to the tonic and its fourth or fifth. The musical capacity of the Kinnari is not great, and its sound is very weak and rather twangy.

The Dhenka, found in Madras, is a similar instrument, with two cocoanuts as resonators and cowrie shells as frets.

The Yektar is another very primitive instrument, having, as its name implies {Ek=one, Tar = string), only one string. It is much used by beggars throughout India. It has an open string without any frets. It is made from a piece of bamboo, to the under side of which a large gourd or hollow cylinder of wood is attached in the same direction as the bamboo, one end being closed by a piece of parchment. The string passes through a hole in the centre of the parchment. It is about three or four feet long. This instrument is the beggar's band and gives a twanging accompaniment to his songs. It is seen mostly in North India.

An officer in the Indian army told me of a similar instrument with only one string that he had come across at Manipur on the Assam frontier, which was played with a bow. It was called Penna. The name reminds one of the ancient Pinaka, the stringed instrument of Siva. Many of these instruments are of the violin variety, and lend support to the idea that the violin in its primitive forms is indigenous to India, and certainly the Sarangi and its different varieties show considerable development towards a finer instrument.

The Rabab is a fine Muhammadan instrument, with a wide shallow bowl made of wood covered with parchment. It is something like a flattened and shortened sitar, but has no frets. It has four strings, one of brass and two of gut, with sympathetic metal strings at the side. Sometimes the two upper strings are doubled. All the six strings may be of gut. The instrument is played with a bow of horsehair.

The strings are tuned in one of the following ways : — Sa Pa Ma Sa (c' g f c) or Sa Sa Pa Pa Ma Sa (c' d G G F c) or Sa Sa Pa Sa Ga (c c Gi Ci e). Sometimes it has a few catgut frets placed at diatonic intervals. The