ravanahatha
A ravanahatha (variant names: ravanhatta, rawanhattha, ravanastron, ravana hasta veena) is an ancient bowed, stringed instrument, used in India, Sri Lanka, and surrounding areas. It has been suggested as an ancestor of the violin. • Illustration — Indian Ravanhatha at the Casa Museo Del Timple, Lanzarote, Spain.
Also recorded as rāvanhattā · ravanhatta · rawanhattha · ravanastron
ravanahatha
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- musical instrument
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- India · Pakistan
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gnd · 1088337945 · wikidata · Q2724498 · wikipedia · Ravanahatha
In this article
Construction
Construction
• Illustration — Man playing Ravanahatha in Jaisalmer, India The ravanahatha's sound box may be a gourd, a halved coconut shell or hollowed-out cylinder of wood, with a membrane of stretched goat or other hide. A neck of wood or bamboo is attached, carrying between one and four or more peg-tuned strings of gut, hair or steel, strung over a bridge. Some examples may have several sympathetic strings. The bow is usually of horsehair; examples vary in length.
History
History
In Indian tradition, the ravanahatha is believed to have originated among the Hela people of Lanka during the time of the legendary king Ravana, after whom the instrument is supposedly named. The Hela people, however, had only settled in Sri Lanka around 500 BCE, and had not found any trace of an earlier civilization, only groups of tribals whom they called 'yakshas'. According to legend, Ravana used the ravanahatha in his devotions to the Hindu God Shiva. In the Hindu Ramayana epic, after the war between Rama and Ravana, Hanuman returned to North India with a ravanahatha. The ravanahatha is particularly popular among street musicians in Rajasthan, North India. Throughout the history of Medieval India, the kings were patrons of music; this helped in increased popularity of the ravanhatha among royal families. In Rajasthan and Gujarat, it was the first musical instrument to be learned by princes. The Sangit tradition of Rajasthan further helped in popularizing ravanhatta among women. Some sources suggest that between the seventh and tenth centuries AD, Arab traders brought the ravanastron from India to the Near East, where it provided the basic model for the Arab rebab, and other early ancestors of the violin family.
Modern use
Modern use
• Illustration — Dinesh Subasinghe showing his new version of the ravanahatha to Mahinda Rajapaksa In modern times, the instrument has been revived by Sri Lankan composer and violinist Dinesh Subasinghe and used in several of his compositions, including Rawan Nada and the Buddhist oratorio Karuna Nadee. The European experimental folk band Heilung also make use of the ravanahatha, in two of their albums Ofnir and Futha. The Ravanahatha is mentioned briefly in Chapter 2 of Samuel Beckett's 1953 novel Watt: “A ravanastron hung, on the wall, from a nail, like a plover.”
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India and Pakistan
Country
ravanahatha is associated with India and Pakistan.
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Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Ravanahatha, revision 1286088597 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Monika Zin: In: Ellen Hickmann, Ricardo Eichmann (Hrsg.): Studien zur Musikarchäologie IV. Musikarchäologische Quellengruppen: Bodenurkunden, mündliche Überlieferung, Aufzeichnung. Vorträge des 3. Symposiums der Internationalen Studiengruppe Musikarchäologie im Kloster Michaelstein, 9.–16. Juni 2002, S. 321–362, hier S. 322
- 2.Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva, S. 103
- 3.Joep Bor, 1987, S. 43
- 4.Joep Bor, S. 40
- 5.Alastair Dick, Neil Sorrell, S. 199
- 6.Joep Bor, 1987, S. 40f
- 7.Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva, S. 101
- 8.Joep Bor, 1987, S. 53f
- 9.Joep Bor, 1987, S. 43, 45
- 10.Joep Bor, 1987, S. 45
- 11.Joep Bor: The Rise of Ethnomusicology: Sources on Indian Music c.1780 – c.1890. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Band 20, 1988, S. 51–73, hier S. 54, 60
- 12.Charles Russel Day: The music and musical instruments of southern India and the Deccan. Novello, Ewer & Co., London/New York 1891, S. 102f
- 13.Curt Sachs: Die Musikinstrumente Indiens und Indonesiens. Zugleich eine Einführung in die Instrumentenkunde. Berlin 1915, S. 17
- 14.Möglicherweise wurden zuerst Reibestäbe an Lauteninstrumenten um das 6. Jahrhundert in der zentralasiatischen Region Sogdien eingesetzt, von wo aus diese Technik nach China gelangte und dort von der frühesten Quelle im 8. Jahrhundert als Spielweise einer Röhrenzither erwähnt wird. Vgl. Harvey Turnbull: A Sogdian friction chordophone. In: D.R. Widdess, R.F. Wolpert (Hrsg.): Music and Tradition. Essays on Asian and other musics presented to Laurence Picken. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1981, S. 197–206
- 15.Michael Maier: Geistertrio. Beethovens Musik in Samuel Becketts zweitem Fernsehspiel. In: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft. 57. Jahrgang, Heft 2. Steiner, Stuttgart 2000, S. 172–194, hier S. 193f
- 16.J. M. Coetzee: The Manuscript Revisions of Beckett’s Watt (1972). In: David Attwell (Hrsg.): J. M. Coetzee: Doubling the Point. Essays and Interviews. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1992, S. 41
- 17.Jaap Kunst: Hindu-Javanese Musical Instruments. Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1968, S. 17
- 18.Alastair Dick, Neil Sorrell, S. 199
- 19.Curt Sachs: Die Musikinstrumente Indiens und Indonesiens. Zugleich eine Einführung in die Instrumentenkunde. Berlin 1915, S. 111
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