Tata Vadya - Stringed Instruments

                            The tata vadya is a category of instruments in which sound is produced by the vibration of a string or chord. These vibrations are caused by plucking or by bowing on the string which has been pulled taut. The length of the vibrating string or wire, the degree to which it has been tightened, determines the pitch of the note and also to some extent the duration of the sound.

The tata vadya are divided into two broad categories-the plucked and the bowed, and further subdivided into the fretted and non-fretted variety.
The oldest evidence of stringed instruments in our land, however, are harps in the shape of the hunters bow. They had a varying number of parallel strings made of fibre or gut. There used to be one string for each note, plucked either with the fingers or with the plectrum called the kona. Veena was the generic term for stringed instruments referred to in texts: and we have the ekatantri, the sata-tantri veena, etc. The Chitra had seven strings and the Vipanchi nine; the first was played with the fingers and the second with a plectrum.

Representation of these can be found in many sculptures and murals of olden days, as for example, in the Bharhut and Sanchi Stupa, the reliefs of Amaravati and so on. Mention of. Yazh are found in old Tamil texts from the 2nd century A.D. The playing of such instruments was an important part of ritual and ceremonies. As the priests and performers sang, their wives played on instruments.

Another class is of the dulcimer type, where a number of strings are stretched on a box of wood. The best known of these was the sata-tantri veena-the hundred stringed veena. A close relative of this is the Santoor, a very popular instrument still played in Kashmir and other parts of India.
A later development of stringed instruments are the fingerboard variety, which were most suited to Raga Sangeet and many of the prevalent instruments of the concert platform, whether fretted or non-fretted, bowed or plucked fall into this category. The great advantage of these instruments is the richness of tone production and continuity of sound. In the finger-board instruments all the required notes are produced on one chord (string or wire) by altering the length of the wire either by pressing it with a finger or a piece of metal or wood. This increase or decrease in the length of the vibrator wire is responsible for the changes in pitches of notes-swaras.
Bowed instruments are usually used as an accompaniment to vocal music and are referred to as Geetanuga. They are divided into two broad categories-the upright and the inverted. In the first category the fingerboard is held straight up as in the case of Sarangi and in the second category, that is, in the inverted variety, the board or resonator is held towards the shoulder and the fingerboard dandi is held across the arm of the player as in the case of the Ravanhastaveena, the Banam, the Violin.