A common South Asian name for a double clarinet with bottle-gourd wind cap. Pūngī means ‘tube’ or ‘pipe’ in modern North Indian languages; it is rather a generalized term, and many local names are found.
The pūngī usually consists of two small pipes of naturally cylindrical materials (cane, bone etc.); at the top of each is partially excised a single beating reed. The number of finger-holes varies, but often one pipe is melodic, the other a drone, though the latter may have several tuning-holes, sealed with wax. Some modern specimens may also have a third long metal drone pipe. The top end of the pipes is fixed into a bottle-gourd with wax, resin etc., the neck of the gourd serving as the mouthpiece (see illustration). In some areas the blowing-tube – and, in the North-West (Rajasthan, Sind, Gujarat), even the whole wind cap – may be of wood. Many writers call this mouthpiece an ‘air-reservoir’, and relate the instrument to the bagpipe, but, as with other capped reed-pipes, it has no reserve of air at all; with the pūngī, however, the player’s puffed-out cheeks have this role, as it is usually played by circular breathing (nāksasī: ‘nose-breathing’). In West India a larger type occurs, with a large gourd (dudhiā) mouthpiece, apical or lateral blowing-hole and, often, a wound palm-leaf bell.
Its use is largely restricted to itinerant specialists such as snake-charmers (except in the West, as in the tarpo, and the North-West, as in the muralī).
Other names found are bīn and nāgbīn (‘serpent’s bīn’) or bīn jogī (‘magician’s bīn’) in North and Central India and Pakistan; tumbā, tumbī and tomrā (all meaning simply ‘gourd’) in North India; tarpo, dobru, pavri and mahuvar in Gujarat and Maharashtra; sāpurer basi (‘snake-charmer’s pipe’) in Bengal; nāgeśvar in Orissa; nāgasvaram in Andhra; and mākuti and pambatti kulal in Tamil Nadu. Several of these names may also be applied to oboes.
C. Sachs: Die Musikinstrumente Indiens und Indonesiens (Berlin and Leipzig, 1914, 2/1923)
K.S. Kothari: Indian Folk Musical Instruments (New Delhi, 1968)
B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India (Calcutta, 1978)
A. Dick: ‘The Earlier History of the Shawm in India’, GSJ, xxxvii (1984), 80–98
ALASTAIR DICK/R