MelodySikh Punjab, North India

Dilruba

also known as Esraj (eastern cousin), Taus (peacock-bodied ancestor)

The bowed "heart-stealer" of Sikh kirtan — a sitar-like fretted neck over a chorus of shimmering sympathetic strings, born as a portable successor to the peacock-bodied taus.

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About the Dilruba

The dilruba — Persian for "heart-stealer" — is a bowed string instrument that pairs a sitar-like fretted neck with a small skin-topped body played upright with a bow (gaz). Four main strings carry the melody while a dozen or more sympathetic strings ring along untouched, wrapping every phrase in a silvery halo. Because the strings are bowed rather than plucked, the dilruba can sustain and bend notes the way a singer does, gliding between pitches with the meend that gives Indian sacred music its vocal quality. Sikh tradition attributes the instrument to Guru Gobind Singh, who is said to have re-shaped the larger taus — the peacock-bodied bowed instrument of Guru Hargobind's era whose name is Persian for "peacock" — into a lighter form his soldiers could carry on horseback. The dilruba later reached Western ears in 1967, when George Harrison featured it on The Beatles' "Within You Without You" on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Its Role in Kirtan

Alongside the plucked rabab, the bowed dilruba and taus are tanti saaj — the string instruments on which Gurbani kirtan was sung for centuries before the harmonium arrived. Their sustained, voice-like tone shadows the singer's line, breathing with the shabad rather than punctuating it. Like the rabab, both instruments nearly disappeared from the gurdwara in the twentieth century, and both are returning through the tanti saaj revival, as luthiers rebuild them and a new generation of ragis bows the old sound back into worship — the dilruba favored for its portability, the taus for its deep, resonant grandeur.