রুদ্র বীণা

The rudra veena, called the bin or been in North India, is a plucked stick zither of Hindustani music. A hollow tube of bamboo or teak carries the frets and strings, with two calabash gourd resonators beneath. It has four melody strings and three chikari drone strings. The Met notes that it appears routinely in ragamala paintings and is closely associated with dhrupad.

You can learn the rudra veena with KalaSudha online and in workshops, and beginners start at Foundation level. Foundation teaches the traditional posture, one gourd on the left shoulder and the other on the right thigh, and slow single strokes with the mizrab. Children learn with us as well as adults: ask us about a starting age and about a size for a younger learner.

Players returning after a long break start again where they left off. Our courses run in levels, and your teacher reviews where you stand first.

KalaSudha sells the rudra veena to players outside India, by quote or made to order, and delivers worldwide. We pack each instrument for international shipping; ask us about cases and insurance.

We service and repair any rudra veena, wherever you bought it, in any country. Strings and spare parts are available from us too. For help with your instrument after the sale, ask us through the chat on any page or at [email protected]. You can also ask us about gift vouchers, class sets for schools and flight cases for travel.

Museum examples of the rudra veena measure 125 to 143.5 cm overall, and the gourd resonators are about 34 to 37 cm across. One instrument in Berlin weighs 3.5 kg. The design of Zia Mohiuddin Dagar is larger: he enlarged the gourds and the hollow tube to gain resonance and longer sustain.

The documented 20th-century centre of rudra veena making is Kolkata. There the firm Kanailal & Brother built instruments to Zia Mohiuddin Dagar's enlarged design, and the maker Murari Adhikari (1934 to 2006) was co-designer of the enlarged instrument in the 1960s. The Horniman Museum holds a Kanailal & Brother instrument of about 1960 to 1980.

The name rudra veena, or rudra vina, means "the veena of Rudra", and Rudra is an epithet of Shiva. In North India the instrument is called the bin, also spelt been. Organologists class it as a stick zither, and the Met notes that it appears routinely in ragamala paintings, closely associated with dhrupad.

Players hold the rudra veena at a slant in front of the chest, with one gourd resting on the left shoulder and the other on the right knee, as Alain Daniélou describes in his notes for the UNESCO Collection. The two gourd resonators hang beneath the neck on metal tubes. The right hand plucks the strings with steel picks worn on the index, middle and little fingers.

Darbar names Asad Ali Khan and Zia Mohiuddin Dagar as the masters who kept the rudra veena's legacy alive, within the Khandarbani and Dagar traditions of dhrupad. Zia Mohiuddin Dagar's son, Mohi Bahauddin Dagar, is widely recognised as a virtuoso of the instrument and received the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 2012. Darbar also names Jyoti Hegde as one of the few women to master it.

Tradition holds that the sage Bharata created the rudra veena, and that origin remains a legend. Alain Daniélou, in his UNESCO Collection notes, calls it the most ancient Indian fretted zither; its oldest known examples, from the 6th to 10th century, have one gourd. He adds that many 15th- and 16th-century paintings depict it. Today it belongs to dhrupad, carried by players of the Dagar and Khandarbani traditions.

The rudra veena of Hindustani music is a stick zither: a hollow tube with two large gourd resonators beneath it. The Saraswati veena of Carnatic music is a long-necked lute with fixed frets, its 24 frets set into a ridge of beeswax on the neck. The rudra veena is closely associated with dhrupad and is plucked with a wire plectrum on metal frets.

You can book a rudra veena player through KalaSudha for a concert, event or recording. A rudra veena recital is mostly alap, often an hour or more, and pakhawaj may join for a composition. Ask us through our page to book Indian classical musicians, and hear our artists in KalaSudha's recordings and concert videos.