SARANGHI

A popular stringed musical instrument from India played with a bow, holding it vertically with the sound chamber below.

This traditional Indian wooden bowed lute is known as a saranghi and is carved from a single piece of wood, probably tun (red ceder). It is beautifully polychrome-painted and lacquered, displaying scenes of flowers and scrolling foliage within borders, all painted in gold, red, green and blue on a dark ground. The rear is distinctively fluted and also painted with flowers.

The chaati (finger board) has eleven wood and bone pegs and displays a little damage where the magaj (top head) has become detached and lost. The open pét (body) would be covered in leather and would originally have had an attached ghurach (bridge), the intergral tar-gahan is still attached to the bottom of the body.

A sarod from this group of Benares instruments is part of the South Asian art collection at the V&A museum 02020(IS)

Provenance
UK art market