ইসরাজ
इसराज
বাংলা গানের সুরেলা কণ্ঠ
ইসরাজ হল বাংলা সংগীতের কেন্দ্রীয় একটি পর্দাযুক্ত ছড়ি যন্ত্র, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর কর্তৃক রবীন্দ্র সংগীতের পছন্দের সঙ্গত হিসেবে সমর্থিত।
History & Evolution
The esraj is tied to Bengal and eastern India. The sources we found give no firm date or place for its first making, and the published ages of 200 or 300 years that we traced cite no evidence. The earliest dated references we found come from the nineteenth century.
Banglapedia credits Hari Singh and his son Hanuman Das with bringing esraj playing into the Gaya gharana around the middle of that century. Their disciple Kanailal Dhenri took the gharana to Kolkata later in the century and taught the esraj to Abanindranath and Arunendranath Tagore of the Jorasanko Tagore family.
At Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore selected Asheschandra Bandyopadhyay (1920 to 1992, also written Ashesh Chandra Bandyopadhyay) in 1937, aged 17, to teach classical vocal music. He came from a Bishnupur musical family and taught at Sangit Bhavana for about fifty years, with the esraj as his speciality. The university credits him with using it to accompany Rabindra Sangeet and with giving the esraj, until then mainly an accompanying instrument, a distinct place in classical solo music.
- 19th century; received 1889
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Crosby Brown Collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York received a nineteenth-century Indian esraj and its bow, accession 89.4.153a, b, in 1889 as part of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments. - About 1870 to 1910
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Esraj with a gourd
The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates esraj 46.34.8 to between about 1870 and 1910. Made of wood and gourd with painted decoration, it came to the museum in 1946 as a gift from Alice Getty. - 7 April 1985
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Ranadhir Roy recorded
A video now held by the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, dated 7 April 1985, records Ranadhir Roy on esraj with Afaq Husain Khan on tabla. They play two raga pieces, in Shuddh Sarang and Jaunpuri. - 2023 to 2025
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Undergraduate Esraj curriculum
Visva-Bharati's four-year undergraduate Esraj curriculum at Sangit Bhavana, written under the National Education Policy 2020, took effect in the 2023 to 2024 academic year. The Board of Studies passed its first revision on 26 May 2025.
Technical Aspects
Frets, finger contact and meend
The left hand touches the string with a light contact towards a fret, and the exact finger position sets the pitch. Esraj frets are metal, tied to the neck and movable. The Horniman Museum's esraj has 16 of them and an instrument at Tokyo University of the Arts has 19. Frets can drift as the climate, skin or strings change, so the ear decides where each note sits.
Meend, a glide from one pitch to another, comes from sliding the finger along the string. A sitar player makes the same effect by pulling the string sideways across the fret. Visva-Bharati lists meend among its first esraj techniques, with ornaments such as krintan, quick notes articulated by the left hand, and kan, a brief grace note.
Fingering follows more than one school. A sitar-influenced approach leads with the index finger and adds the middle finger for speed. A sarangi-influenced approach pairs the index and middle fingers. Bandara and Das report that older Bishnupur practice relied on the index finger, sometimes adding the second.
Bowed and sympathetic strings
The main strings share out the work. David Courtney, a teacher and author, describes the first as always played and the fourth as almost always a drone, a steady reference pitch, with the second and third free to do either job. Sympathetic strings, which he calls taraf or tarafdar, are not bowed. They vibrate when a matching note sounds on the main strings. Some instruments add jawari sympathetic strings that pass over a small curved bridge and give a buzzing tone.
No string layout is standard. The Horniman esraj carries four bowed strings and fifteen sympathetic strings, pegged from a board on the side of the neck, with its bridge standing on a skin soundtable. The example at the Tokyo University of the Arts has goat skin over the front of a wooden body. Its four main strings, of steel and brass and tuned B-e-e-a, run over two bridges beside fifteen steel sympathetic strings. Ask your teacher to name the role and tuning of each string on your own instrument.
Bow (gaz) and stroke patterns
The right hand draws the bow, called the gaz, across the main strings while the left hand fingers the notes. Visva-Bharati's undergraduate curriculum starts with basic bols, named patterns of bow strokes set against a tala. Later courses build alankars on bow patterns and study further bowing techniques. A useful aim in any of these exercises is to place the intended note inside a fixed stroke pattern.
Playing posture varies by school. Bandara and Das, writing on the Bishnupur and Santiniketan lineage, describe older postures with the neck resting on the shoulder or the lower body standing on the floor between the feet. They credit Surendranath Bandyopadhyay with a posture that stands the lower body upright on the right foot, which they report frees the player from shoulder support and keeps the frets in view. He taught it to his nephew Asheschandra, who carried it to Sangit Bhavana and developed it further. A Tokyo catalogue entry describes another hold: vertical, with the head against the left shoulder.
দক্ষতার পথে যাত্রা
এই শাখায় দক্ষ হতে এই সুপরিকল্পিত পথ অনুসরণ করুন
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Start and finish one bowed note
Ask your teacher to check how the esraj rests against your body, since playing posture differs between schools. Draw the bow, called the gaz, for one short stroke on a single note, pause, then repeat. Listen for a clean start and finish before you lengthen the stroke. Keep the left hand still so your attention stays on the sound.
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Pitch and first alankars
Listen to a reference note from your teacher, then find it on the esraj, using the fret as a guide and your ear to settle the pitch. Once single notes sit in tune, play an alankar, a patterned scale exercise, with even bow strokes. Visva-Bharati's courses place alankars straight after this first bow work.
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Connect two notes with meend
Meend connects pitches through a glide. Ask your teacher to demonstrate a small slide along the string between two chosen notes. Hear each destination before copying the movement. Then play the pair within a short phrase, checking where the glide begins and where it settles into the next note.
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Respond to a sung phrase
Choose a short song passage with your teacher, for example from Rabindra Sangeet. Hum the singer's phrase first, then find it on the instrument. Agree where the esraj joins, holds or leaves space for the words, and practise that response with the voice. The two-year course at Visva-Bharati's Centre for Esraj includes accompaniment of Rabindra Sangeet and other songs.
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Learn a first gat
Learn a short gat in a raga your teacher suggests. Find where it starts in the tala cycle and repeat it at the agreed tempo. Then add one small variation your teacher shows and hear where it rejoins the composition. Visva-Bharati's curriculum names two gat types, the slow Masitkhani and the fast Razakhani.