Dilruba
दिलरुबा
The Heart-Stealer: A Bowed, Fretted Instrument of Sikh and North Indian Music
The dilruba is a bowed, fretted North Indian instrument with sympathetic strings, played in Sikh devotional music (Gurmat Sangeet) and in classical and light classical music.
History & Evolution
Sikh tradition credits Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, with bringing the dilruba into Gurmat Sangeet about 300 years ago, as a smaller, lighter form of the taus that could travel on horseback. The sources that repeat the story give no documentary evidence for it. The Batish family of players tells another story, set in royal households of northern India during the Muslim period, where the dilruba let women singers do without male sarangi accompanists. A 1971 government survey says only that the instrument came into vogue after the fretted sitar spread.
Surviving objects give firmer dates. A dilruba now at the Penn Museum carries a Philadelphia catalogue number from 1904, and taus instruments in London, New York and Milan date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to the Milan record, the peacock form was widespread at nineteenth-century courts.
Western listeners heard it too: two Indian musicians played dilruba in the Beatles' "Within You Without You", recorded at Abbey Road on 15 March 1967.
- 17th Century
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Guru Hargobind and the taus
Sikh tradition credits Guru Hargobind, the sixth Guru, with bringing the taus into Sikh music. Its name is Persian for peacock, after the bird that shapes its body; its Indic name is mayuri. - Late 17th Century
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Traditional Origin
Sikh tradition holds that Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru (1675 to 1708), brought in the dilruba as a lighter, smaller taus that musicians could carry on horseback. No source gives documentary evidence for the account. - Colonial Period
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Harmonium replaces string instruments
The harmonium largely replaced the tanti saaz, the string instruments of Sikh kirtan, during British rule. Meanwhile the taus player Gajja Singh (1850 to 1914) played at the 1911 Delhi Darbar and led a project to record the ragas of the Guru Granth Sahib. - 1930s to Present
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Gurmat Sangeet revival
Campaigns to restore string instruments in kirtan began in the 1930s, with others in the mid-1970s and at a 1991 gathering in Ludhiana. In 2006 Sikh authorities asked for traditional instruments at the Golden Temple, Amritsar; in 2022 the Akal Takht, the highest Sikh authority, renewed the call.
Technical Aspects
Movable Frets
The neck carries arched metal frets tied on with thin gut; one teaching family notes that fishing line is now common for the ties. Because the ties do not fix them, the frets can be slid along the neck to set the scale of a raga, as on the sitar. The same family adds that accomplished players leave the frets in place and rely on the sliding finger.
Fret counts vary from one instrument to the next. Dilrubas in London and Philadelphia museums have 18 frets, a second Philadelphia example has 15, one in Milan has 19, and the Batish account gives 18 or 19.
On the dilruba the frets serve as a guide to where each note lies. Most sources describe meend, the glide between notes, as a slide of the finger along the string, with no sideways pull across the fret of the kind sitar players use. One museum record in Milan describes the reverse, with the strings deflected sideways over the arched frets for wide glides, so practice may differ between players.
Sympathetic Strings (Tarab)
Beneath the main strings runs a second set of thin strings, the tarab or sympathetic strings. They pass under the frets and through small holes in the bridge to pegs set along a strip at the side of the neck. The player tunes them to the notes of the raga, so they sound without being bowed whenever the melody touches one of those notes.
Their number varies. A 1971 government survey and the Batish family both give about 22, and a dilruba at the Horniman Museum in London had 17 side pegs plus 5 at the head. Other documented instruments carry 18 or 15, and one organology study gives eleven to seventeen for the dilruba and esraj together.
The strings sound over a body carved from a single block of wood, waisted at the sides and covered with thin skin, usually goatskin. The bridge stands on that skin and carries both sets of strings. It is bone on some instruments and ivory on older museum pieces, and some makers set a strip of leather beneath it to protect the skin.
Bow and Main Strings
Four metal main strings run over the frets, two of brass and two of steel. Sources disagree on their order but agree that the melody is played mainly on one steel string. One organology study gives the four a tuning of Ma, Sa, Sa and Pa across octaves, and adds two drone strings, the chikari, tuned to Sa, the tonic, which can also mark the rhythmic cycle.
The player holds the dilruba upright, its lower end in or in front of the lap and its upper part against the left shoulder. The right hand draws a bow like the sarangi's, and the left hand stops the playing string with the fingertips, where a sarangi player uses the nails. One practitioner notes that fast passages come more easily on the sarangi, whose strings are shorter.
Many modern instruments use geared, guitar-style tuning machines in a flat head in place of wooden pegs. Documented dilrubas measure about 92 to 102 cm long.
Journey to Mastery
Follow this structured journey to master this discipline
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Posture, bow and first notes
Start by sitting with the dilruba upright, its top against the left shoulder, and drawing the bow to sound clean single notes. The bow takes patience: one Gurmat Sangeet musician recalls that his own guru spent 29 days learning just to hold it against the instrument. Draw a full stroke on one note and listen for an even tone from start to finish.
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Frets and Intonation
Learn where each note sits on the frets and tune the sympathetic strings to the notes of the raga. The frets only guide the hand: the finger glides on the string, and the ear decides whether the note is true. Check each note against the chikari, the drone strings tuned to Sa.
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Meend and Ornament
Learn to glide the finger along the string from note to note. One teaching family says these glides let the dilruba imitate vocal ornaments: meend, the slide from one note to the next; gamak, a heavy oscillation on a note; and taan, a fast run. Its first video tutor ends with an alap, the slow opening of a raga, in raga Alhaiya Bilaval.
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Gurmat sangeet repertoire
Learn to accompany shabad kirtan, the singing of hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib, following the singer through the raga prescribed for each hymn. For formal study of Gurmat Sangeet, the department at Punjabi University, Patiala, offers a three-year BA (Hons), a two-year MA and a PhD.
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Raga development and accompaniment
Develop a raga at length through alap and fast runs (taan), using glides along the string to follow the ornaments of the voice. Then accompany a singer: in Gurmat Sangeet and in light classical music the dilruba's main work is accompanying song, with solo playing beside it.