Part of Carnatic Classical
Carnatic instrumental music is South Indian classical music played on veena, violin, flute and mridangam. Instrumentalists play the same songs as singers, in a singing style.
Historical Timeline
The word is far older than the instrument. Sanskrit vina appears in Vedic texts and gives vainika, the word for a veena player. In early usage it covered stringed instruments in general. Early Indian sculpture shows harp-like, seven-stringed and single-string veenas. One study of the iconography traces a change in the instrument Saraswati holds, from a harp-like vipanchi in a 6th-century Nalanda bronze to the Thanjavur lute, which late 19th-century paintings by Ravi Varma and the calendar art that followed made her standard attribute.
The present form took shape at the court of Thanjavur in the early 17th century, in the reign of Raghunatha Nayaka, himself a veena player. Earlier veenas carried fewer than twenty movable frets; the Thanjavur design fixed 24, twelve to the octave. Sources credit it to Raghunatha, to his minister Govinda Dikshita, or to both. A Press Information Bureau feature, drawing on S. Krishnaswami's Musical Instruments of India (1993), says that fixing the frets opened the way for the 72-melakarta scheme of raga classification, which Govinda Dikshita's son Venkatamakhin set out in the Chaturdandi Prakasika.
The word vina
The Sanskrit word vina already appears in Vedic prose, in the Taittiriya Samhita and the Shatapatha Brahmana. Monier-Williams's Sanskrit dictionary cites both texts for the word and marks its derivation as doubtful.
Frets appear in temple sculpture
Accounts differ on when frets first appear in sculpture. A 2023 Open magazine feature says early veenas were fretless, with the first fretted image at a 12th-century Belur temple. The scholar Ragini Trivedi sees frets earlier, at Ajanta and the Harshat Mata temple, Abhaneri.
Thanjavur court and its treatises
Nayaka and then Maratha rulers of Thanjavur patronised music. Tradition credits Raghunatha Nayaka with the Sangita Sudha; Venkatamakhin wrote the Chaturdandi Prakasika and Tulaja Maharaja the Sangita Saramrita. That milieu shaped Muttuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835), born in Thanjavur district and trained in veena playing.
Modern Era
Indian government sources name Veena Dhanammal, the Karaikudi brothers, Emani Sankara Sastri and S. Balachander among the notable 20th-century players. Since 2013 Thanjavur Veenai (Tanjore Veena) has been a registered Geographical Indication, protecting the name for instruments made around Thanjavur.
Playing Techniques
Fret and Gamaka System
The hollow neck (dandi) carries 24 fixed frets (mettu) of metal, usually brass, set in hardened beeswax mixed with charcoal. The player raises pitch by pulling a string sideways across a fret, which tightens it; slides and finger flicks add further ornaments. A Press Information Bureau feature summarises C. V. Raman's view that the curved frets and string ends give the player continuous control of string tension.
String Configuration
The veena carries seven steel strings. Four run over the frets and carry the melody. Three drone strings, the talam strings, run at the side of the neck; the little finger of the right hand strikes them to sound the reference pitch (sruti) and mark the rhythm (laya).
Jackwood Resonator
Makers hollow the large round resonator (kudam) from jackwood and carve the tuning end as a yali, a lion-faced mythical creature. They carve an ekantha veena from a single block and build an ottu or sada veena from jointed pieces. The small resonator under the neck (sorakkai) began as a gourd and today comes in papier-mache or fibre.
Journey to Mastery
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Posture and plucking
Sarali varisai, janta varisai and alankarams
Gamaka and Ornamentation
Repertoire Development
Performance and Improvisation
Past Performances
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