Spike fiddle of Rajasthan and Gujarat, north-west India. The resonator is half a coconut shell (about 10 cm in diameter), covered with a single or double skin, nailed or braced by fabric-covered hoops and cord lacing; it is sometimes open below and capped by a truncated brass cone. The hollow bamboo handle and the shell are held together by a heavy iron spike (about 25 cm long) piercing both and serving as string holder.
The ordinary rāvanhatthā of this area, used principally by itinerant mendicants to accompany their own singing of devotional songs (bhajan), is smaller. The bamboo neck is thin and about 40 to 50 cm long. One or two pegs are inserted vertically, from the back, in the top of the neck. The first string is of horsehair, the second of plaited metal; they are usually tuned an octave apart, and they pass over a small narrow bridge on the table. The instrument is held in inverted position against the chest by the left hand, which stops the first string by touching it with the balls of the fingers on the proximal side. The bow, steeply arched, often has small pellet bells (ghungrū) attached.
The instrument played by the Bhopā (religious singers) is larger (see illustration). The thick bamboo neck, over 70 cm long, bears at its top end from 3 to 16 pegs for thin steel sympathetic strings, which pass down the front of the neck through holes below the blade of the bridge to the inferior string holder. The two main pegs are here lateral, placed one on each side, and the first, main string passes up at an angle to the bridge along the side of the neck. The Bhopā not only accompanies his own singing, but also dances and tells stories, using a painted scroll, from the epic of Pābujī.
Similar spike fiddles of the area are also known variously as nārelī (‘coconut’), gujrī (‘of the Gujars’) and also sārangī or hārangī (see also Sārangī). Similar instruments are distributed throughout the subcontinent, including the kokā (Maharashtra), the tenkaya burra (Andhra), the pena and lha (Manipur and Nagaland) and the vena (or rāvana vīnā, Sri Lanka); in some areas they are designated by the wider generic terms cikārā (Rajasthan) or kendrā (the majhi kendrā of Orissa). These are all played in inverted position, as are the fiddles of the east-central Ādivāsī belt (such as the bana, banam, Kendrā and kikir), most of which, like the pena and lha, have no tuning-pegs.
Sachs (1914) showed a picture of a similar type (but played semi-vertically, with the top of the neck resting against the left shoulder) as found in Tamil and Telugu 19th-century picture-books, which he called rāvanahasta (‘Ravana’s hand’): the top of the neck is carved in the shape of a hand. This association with Ravana occurs in areas as far apart as Rajasthan, South India and Sri Lanka. Older European sources also show similar types called rāvana or rāvanāstra. Many of these fiddles appear to be associated with bardic traditions, or with mendicants.
C. Sachs: Die Musikinstrumente Indiens und Indonesiens (Berlin and Leipzig, 1914, 2/1923)
K.S. Kothari: Indian Folk Musical Instruments (New Delhi, 1968)
K. Kothari: Folk Musical Instruments of Rajasthan (Borunda, 1977)
B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India (Calcutta, 1978)
ALASTAIR DICK/R, NEIL SORRELL/R