Double-chested plucked lute, without frets, of northern South Asia. It is one of the most important instruments of Hindustani music. Like the sitār (long-necked lute) it belongs to the Indo-Muslim music culture within the classical tradition and is accompanied by the tablā. In its modern form the instrument is little more than a century old, having evolved from the Rabāb, which is still found in the north-western parts of South Asia, and the rubāb or rabāb of Afghanistan.
The present-day sarod is larger than the rabāb, about 103 cm long, has metal main and sympathetic strings and a metal fingerboard. These developments are credited to Ghulam Ali Khan, a mid-19th-century player of Afghan descent. Nowadays the sarod is found in two types, that of his gharānā or school and that of the more recent Allauddin Khan (18811972) gharānā.
On the modern Ghulam Ali sarod the soundchest, boat-shaped in profile, is divided in the middle by a rounded waist (see illustration). The lower chest, nearly round in front and about 30 cm in diameter, is somewhat spherical in shape, though flat-backed, and is about 26 cm deep; it is covered by a glued-on soundtable (khāl or purī), usually of goatskin, which extends also over the waist and in a narrow band on the upper chest. From the latter protrudes a short neck (both neck and chest are carved from a single piece of wood), covered, like the chest, with a chrome-metal, screwed-on fingerboard about 50 cm long which flares from a width of roughly 5 cm at the top to 15 cm at the bottom. The pegbox (now technically a peg-block) protrudes from the wooden rim which terminates the neck; it is a lightly tapering, bent-back, round-sectioned piece of wood through which the main pegs are inserted bilaterally. Many sarod have a small second resonator (tumbā) of wood and gourd (like that of the two-gourd sitār) or more often of metal, fixed behind the pegbox.
The sarod bridge (ghorā: horse) is a broad, arch-shaped piece of bone or ivory, about 7 cm wide, 2·5 cm high and 4 mm thick, with grooves on top for the main strings and small holes below for the secondary strings. It sits unsupported on the lower part of the soundtable. The string holder is a brass plate, with studs to attach the strings, screwed below the bottom rim of the bowl. Two cords running from the string holder prevent the bridge from moving upwards.
The Ghulam Ali sarod has six main strings (which pass over the nut) attached to large pegs fixed three on either side of the pegbox. Four are melody strings, tuned to the 4th and 1st notes of the middle octave and the 5th and 1st of the lower octave (the highest is steel, the others bronze). The sarod tonic is commonly c', to which the fifth and sixth (steel) strings are tuned. Below the nut, on the upper side of the neck, are two more pegs for thin steel strings, the cikārī or punctuating strings, tuned to the upper tonic in a double course. These rise over grooves in a small ivory or bone post which serves as their nut. All eight main and cikārī strings pass over the upper edge of the bridge. In the right side of the upper chest are set 11 to 15 small pegs for the sympathetic or resonance strings (taraf, tarab). These rise from their pegs, inside the body, through small, bone-ringed holes in the fingerboard, passing down under the main strings to a row of small holes in the main bridge, below its upper edge, and are tuned to the scale of each rāga played.
The sarod of the Allauddin Khan school has somewhat larger dimensions and has different features and tuning (masaPASANIrigasasa/sa). There are eight main strings running from the pegbox, with the two cikārī and the sympathetic strings as described above. The four melody strings have their pegs on the lower side, and only these pass over the nut. There are four steel drone strings (javārī strings), on the pegs of the upper side, passing over a small deep bridge with parabolically filed surface (javārī), projecting from the side of the nut. The eighth string is tuned to the middle tonic and passes over the top of the main bridge, the fifth, sixth and seventh to notes around this according to the rāga. These pass through a row of holes on the bridge between the main and the sympathetic strings.
The sarodiyā (sarod player) sits crossed-legged, supporting the middle of the instrument on his raised left thigh; the strings are plucked with a triangular wooden plectrum held by the thumb and fingers of the right hand. The oral rhythmic notation for the sarod is the same as for other Indian chordophones, but here the down beats (dā etc.) are played with a down-stroke and the upbeats (rā) with an up-stroke.
M. Taylor: Catalogue of Indian Musical Instruments, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, ix (1864); repr. in S.M. Tagore: Hindu Music from Various Authors (Calcutta, 1875, 2/1882/R1965)
S.M. Tagore: Yantra-kos (Calcutta, 1875)
B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India (Calcutta, 1978)
J. Battacharya: Ustad Allauddin Khan and his Music (Ahmedabad, 1979)
B.C. Wade: Music in India: the Classical Traditions (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979)
A. Miner: Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Wilhelmshaven, 1993)
ALASTAIR DICK