The sitar is the instrument most of the world pictures when it thinks of Indian music, and it deserves the reputation: no other instrument produces that particular shimmer, or lets a player slide between notes the way a singer does. This overview explains where it came from, how it is built, and what the terms you will meet when buying one actually mean.
Where the sitar came from
Indian classical music is an oral tradition thousands of years old, and because so little of it was written down, the sitar has no clean birth certificate. What is reasonably clear is the family it belongs to. The oldest plucked string instruments of India are the vinas, surviving today as the Rudra Vina in the north and the Saraswati Vina in the south, both long-necked and fretted, and the Rudra Vina using two gourds as resonators exactly as many sitars do. Long-necked lutes appear in temple sculpture from the ninth and tenth centuries.
From the eleventh century onwards, Persian and Central Asian music was a constant presence in the courts of northern India, and with it came the tambur, a long-necked lute, and the setar, whose name simply means three strings. Folklore credits the invention of the sitar to Amir Khusro in the thirteenth century, though there was a second musician of that name in the eighteenth century, much closer to the period when sitar performance is actually documented. The honest summary is that the modern sitar grew out of a meeting between the Indian vina tradition and the Persian long-necked lute, and took roughly its present form in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
How a sitar is built
The body is a dried pumpkin gourd, the tumba, capped with a wooden face called the tabli. The long hollow neck is carved from tun, a light Indian cedar, or from teak, and the two are joined at an angle that has to hold against the pull of twenty or more strings at pitch. A second gourd is often fitted at the top of the neck. It adds a little resonance and a good deal of weight and length.
There are usually seven main strings running over the frets, and thirteen sympathetic strings, the taraf, running underneath them through small holes in the neck to their own row of pegs down the side. Nobody plays the sympathetic strings. They are tuned to the notes of the raga and ring on their own whenever those notes are sounded, which is where much of the instrument’s halo of sound comes from.
The frets are curved metal bars tied on with thread rather than fixed. That is deliberate: a player slides them to suit the raga, and it also means the frets stand clear of the neck, so a string can be pulled sideways across several frets to produce the long meend that makes a sitar sound like a voice. Tying them properly is a skill in itself, covered on our fret tying page.
Jawari: the reason a sitar sounds like a sitar
The main bridge is not a knife edge. Its top is a wide, shallow curve, and the string grazes along that curve as it vibrates instead of stopping dead at a point. That grazing contact is what generates the dense cloud of overtones every listener recognises. The word jawari means glimmering, and it describes both the surface and the craft of cutting it.
How open or closed that curve is cut changes everything about the instrument’s voice. A very open jawari is dazzling immediately and wears flat quickly. A closed setting is more focused and lasts longer. Most instruments are best served by something in between, which is how we set the sitars we sell; see our sitar setup. Bridges are traditionally deer antler, now more usually bone or a synthetic, and the surface has to be recut by hand as it wears.
The mizrab
The sitar is played with a mizrab, a wire plectrum worn on the index finger of the right hand. It is bent to fit, and it should sit firmly enough not to rotate but not so tightly that it cuts off the circulation. Most players own several, because the fit changes with the weather and a new mizrab has to be shaped to the finger. The angle at which it strikes the string is a large part of a player’s individual tone.
Kharaj pancham and gandhar pancham
These two terms describe how a sitar is strung and tuned, and they map onto the two great playing styles.
Kharaj pancham, the Ravi Shankar style, adds a low Pa and a low Sa below the playing string. It gives the instrument a deep bass register that suits a long, unfolding alap, and these instruments usually carry the upper gourd.
Gandhar pancham, the Vilayat Khan style, leaves out the two lowest strings and sits higher, with Ga and Pa as drones. The result is brighter and more vocal, set up for heavy string pulling, and the instrument is usually lighter with no upper gourd.
Neither is superior. They are different voices for different music, and the choice between them is the first decision to make when buying. Our sitar buying guide goes through the rest.
What number one, two and three mean
You will see sitars described as number one, two or three. This is not a manufacturer’s specification; it is a dealer’s grading, and it should be explained to you. Ours is simple. A number one is an instrument we would happily take on stage: the best tone, the cleanest carving, the most stable neck of the batch. A number two is a very good instrument with a modest cosmetic compromise or a slightly less remarkable voice. A number three is honest, properly set up and priced to reflect what it is. Every one of them is playable, and we will always tell you exactly why an instrument sits where it does.
If you are thinking about buying one
Read the buying guide and the sitar FAQs, look at the workshops in our guide to makers, and browse sitars in stock. Everything we sell is set up in Mumbai before despatch, delivered across India in seven to ten days and shipped worldwide, insured. Ask us for a video of any instrument being played before you decide.