321.321-71 Necked bowl lutes sounded by bowing with a bow

'Alabu sarangi', fiddle. It has a gourd back with ivory stringing round the edge of the flat wooden soundtable with two f-holes. It has four bowed strings, two of gut and two copper overwound, pegged from violin-style pegs. There are eight sympathetic strings pegged along the fingerboard. They run from holes in the fingerboard, through holes in the bridge, to holes in top of the violin-style tailpiece that is attached to the peg projecting from the distal end of the body. The fiddle has a violin-style peg-box for four strings, surmounted by a scroll.

This fiddle has features in common with the 'alabu sarangi' in the Tagore Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (224426) illustrated in 'Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries', by A. Milner (Wilhelmshaven, 1993, fig 36).

object
MUSEUM NUMBER
MT484-1998
PLACE
COLLECTION
MEASUREMENTS
overall: 620 mm x 190 mm x 200 mm
MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE
wood; gourd; gut; copper; ivory; metal
CATEGORY
Musical Instruments
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