Is the chitraveena an ancient instrument?

Bharata's Natya Shastra describes a seven-stringed chitra vina played with the fingers and a cylindrical device called kona, and the 13th-century Sangita Ratnakara describes it in similar terms; the chitraveena takes that name. B. Chaitanya Deva, writing in 1978, calls the early instrument a harp. The modern slide instrument took shape with Sakha Rama Rao in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.