Short-necked fiddle of South Asia, found both in the art music of North India and Pakistan and, in related forms, in traditional musics, especially those of Rajasthan and the North-West. Similar instruments include the sarān (Kashmir), sarāng (Afghanistan) and sarāngā (Jammu). In Rajasthan the term sārangī and its variants may be used generically to denote other types of fiddle. In Nepal the sārangī, a term borrowed from India, is either a small fiddle with four strings played exclusively by men of the Gāine caste or a larger instrument with sympathetic strings played by Bādī musicians.
This is the most important bowed chordophone of North Indian classical music. In matters of structure and technique there is a marked lack of standardization. The typical sārangī is a short lute, made by hand usually from a single block of tun wood about 66 to 69 cm long. There are four main parts: an inferior string holder, and the body, neck and pegbox (there are no frets and no fingerboard). The body is hollowed out and covered with goatskin and a wooden bar is inserted inside, to strengthen it. The waisting is irregular, more marked on the (player’s) left side than on the right. The neck tapers slightly towards the top and the back is open. The front is a flat piece of wood, serving in place of a fingerboard, and the neck acts as a pegbox for most of the sympathetic strings. The main pegbox is divided into two sections, both of which are hollow, and houses the pegs for the playing strings and the remaining sympathetic strings. The three playing strings are made of goat gut, and the sympathetic strings (usually as many as 36, though the number varies) of brass and/or steel. The sārangī has at least two, and usually four, bone bridges: the main one, through which all the sympathetic strings pass and on top of which the three main strings rest, is carved in the shape of an elephant, and is placed on a leather strap across the skin cover; a second essential bridge lies at the upper end of the neck and raises the three main strings from it so that they maintain approximately the same distance from it throughout their length. The remaining two bridges enhance the sound of some of the sympathetic strings by their flat surface and fine curve (javārī). The bow is slightly convex and the stick is rigid; the tension of the hair (usually horse) is constant. The three main strings are usually tuned to sa (equivalent to doh), pa a 4th below and sa an octave below the first string. The sympathetic strings are tuned to the notes of the rāga, and often one set is tuned to all 12 semitones of the octave.
To play the sārangī the performer sits cross-legged and holds the instrument against his left shoulder (see illustration). The strings are stopped with the fingernails of the left hand, so that pressure is applied laterally. Fingerings vary from player to player, but in general the same finger may be used for more than one note, so that the vocal slurs characteristic of Indian music may be produced. The bow is held in an underhand grip in the right hand.
Comparison of this description of the typical modern sārangī with earlier accounts suggests that the number of sympathetic strings has increased, while in place of the present three playing strings there were often four. In rural areas of North India a great variety of bowed and generally unfretted instruments go under the name of sārangī and the word can serve as a generic term for bowed chordophones. The continued prominence of the sārangī in folk music is but one indicator that it was originally a folk instrument, incorporated into classical music probably when the khayāl vocal style, with which the sārangī is still intimately connected, came into prominence in the 18th century. By the 19th century it had become associated with dancing girls, and this social stigma has been given as a main reason, along with the sheer difficulty in playing it, for the instrument’s decline in the 20th century. Another factor is the rise of the harmonium, which rivals the sārangī as an accompanying instrument.
The state of Rajasthan, in North-West India, is especially rich in bowed chordophones. There the professional musician caste groups are distinguished partly by the instruments they play. Thus the bhopa priests play the rāvanhatthā (spike fiddle), the Manganiyārs the kamāicā, the Langas the sindhī sārangī and gujrātan sārangī and also the surindā, and the Mirasis a sārangī similar to the classical instrument. All these instruments, or ones virtually the same, may be referred to as sārangī, though not necessarily in the same area.
The sindhī sārangī and the gujrātan sārangī are both smaller than the classical instrument, and have fewer sympathetic strings, though the number of playing strings is four rather than three: the first two are of steel and are tuned in unison to the tonic, but the second string is not stopped and serves only as an optional drone, while the third and fourth are made of gut and tuned to the 5th and lower tonic respectively. The sindhī sārangī is about 56 cm long and has 23 steel sympathetic strings, while the gujrātan sārangī is about 1 cm shorter, with only eight sympathetic strings. The playing style of both instruments differs in some important respects from that of the classical sārangī. The pitch is higher, to suit the high-pitched, even strained male vocal style of the Langas, and the full range of the instrument is rarely exploited, since the aim of the accompaniment is to enhance the song rather than imitate it in all its detail. Another aspect of this is that the bowing is more jerky, and is used as a kind of rhythmic accompaniment since there is usually no drumming or other rhythmic support in this music (on certain other bowed instruments, for example the rāvanhatthā, the effect is intensified by attaching bells to the bow). Of the two, the sindhī sārangī is preferred and may be used independently of the smaller gujrātan sārangī, but the reverse is not true, for the gujrātan sārangī tends to function as little more than an extra drone for the sindhī sārangī which follows the melody of the song more closely.
S. Krishnaswami: Musical Instruments of India (New Delhi, 1965/R, rev. 2/1971)
M. Helffer and A.W. Macdonald: ‘Sur un sārangī de gāine’, Objets et mondes, vi/2 (1966), 133–42
K.S. Kothari: Indian Folk Musical Instruments (New Delhi, 1968)
K. Kothari: Monograph on Langas (Borunda, 1972)
K. Kothari: Folk Musical Instruments of Rajasthan (Borunda, 1977)
N. Sorrell and R. Narayan : Indian Music in Performance: A Practical Introduction (Manchester, 1980) [incl. cassette]
J. Bor: ‘The Voice of the Sarangi’, National Centre for the Performing Arts Quarterly Journal, xv/3–4; xvi/1 (1987) [complete issue]
NEIL SORRELL