Arched Harps
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Arched harps is a category in the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system for musical instruments, a type of
harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or ...
. The instrument may also be called bow harp. With arched harps, the neck forms a continuous arc with the body and has an open gap between the two ends of the arc (''open harps''). Arched harps are probably the most ancient form of the harp, evolving from the musical bow. The first bowed harps appeared around 3000 B.C. in Iran and Mesopotamia and then in Egypt. India may have had the instrument as early as Mesopotamia. The horizontal arched-bow from Sumeria spread west to ancient Greece, Rome and Minoan Crete and eastward to India. Like Egypt, however, India continued to develop the instrument on its own; undated artwork in caves shows a harp resembling a musical bow, with improvised resonators of different shapes and different numbers of added strings. When the angular harp replaced the arched harp about 2000 B.C. in the Middle East and spread along the Silk Road, the arched harp was retained in India until after 800 A.D. (a form of ancient vina), and in Egypt until the
Hellenistic Age In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the Roma ...
(after 500 B.C). It can still be found today in Sub-Saharan Africa. From India the arched harp was introduced into Malaysia, as well as
Champa Champa (Cham language, Cham: ꨌꩌꨛꨩ, چمڤا; ; 占城 or 占婆) was a collection of independent Chams, Cham Polity, polities that extended across the coast of what is present-day Central Vietnam, central and southern Vietnam from ...
and
Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...
(as early as 500 A.D.) where it is still played under the name of '' saung'', - ''...yazh resembles this old vina... however it is the Burmese harp which seems to have been handed down in almost unchanged form since ancient times'' and in 7th-century A.D. Cambodia as the pin Buddhists were involved with the spread of the arched harp in Asia. Artwork depicting the arched harp that survived in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, and Cambodia comes from Buddhist communities. The harp disappeared in India about the time when Hinduism displaced Buddhism. The Buddhists took the harp north from India along the silk road to China, where it was painted in the
Mogao Caves The Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu p ...
and Yulin Grottos. Additionally, Buddhist Burma sent two types of harp to Chinese court to perform, including the phoenix-headed harp. The latter became known in China as the Phoenix-headed konghou. Portable bowed harps may have made their way from Egypt up the Nile to East Africa and, branching off from this route, also to Central and West Africa. Alternative, the arched harp may have entered Sub-Saharan Africa from Indonesia, during trade in the Middle Ages.


Description


Classification

The harp is a composite chordophone. It has string-carrying neck permanently attached to a resonator body that receives the vibrations of the strings and emits them as sound. Its strings are stretched between the neck and the body. What distinguishes it from
lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lu ...
s is that the plane of its strings is not parallel to the sound-emitting surface of the instrument's body, but perpendicular to it. The body and neck form an arch in arched harps, or two sides of a triangle in angular harps. If the triangle is completed, with a third side joining the body and neck, it is a frame harp. Harps without the third side are open harps.


Structure

The body of the bowed harp is
resonator A resonator is a device or system that exhibits resonance or resonant behavior. That is, it naturally oscillates with greater amplitude at some frequencies, called resonant frequencies, than at other frequencies. The oscillations in a reso ...
. Its shape is varied, and it can have the shape of a spade, spoon or ladle, boat or box, among others. A leather soundboard is stretched on its open surface facing the direction of the strings, and a string-holding rod usually runs along its center line, to which the strings are tied. Their other end is connected to the neck via a tuning device - which can be a special loop, rotating leather ring or tuning peg. The defining characteristic of the bowed harp is that its neck starts more or less in the direction of the longitudinal axis of the body, and then curves. Bow harps have relatively few strings, usually fewer than 10, compared to angular harps, which usually have 15 to 25 strings. Historically, strings were made of
sinew A tendon or sinew is a tough band of dense fibrous connective tissue that connects muscle to bone. It sends the mechanical forces of muscle contraction to the skeletal system, while withstanding tension. Tendons, like ligaments, are made of ...
(animal tendons). Other materials have included gut (animal intestines), plant fiber, braided hemp, cotton cord, silk, nylon, and wire.


Variations

Bowed harps are diverse in both size and shape, from instruments small enough for a child to hold in their arms to harps made from logs, left lying flat on the ground. Similar to the angular harps, a vertical and horizontal variant can be distinguished here. The strings of the vertical bowed harp are more or less vertical, and most of the time the resonating body of the instrument is below the neck. The high notes are closer to the musician, the low notes are further away, just like in the case of today's Western harp. The body of the horizontal bowed harp is in a horizontal position, and the neck typically grows out of the end of the instrument body farthest from the musician.


History

The musical bow has been identified by some researchers as "the earliest chordophone". The earliest image of a musical bow from circa 15,000 B.C. was found in the Cave of the Trois-Frères. Musical bows need resonators, and a calabash gourd is used for that purpose. The musical bow "probably" became the bow harp when its disconnected resonator and the bow were integrated, the bow becoming the instrument's neck, and more strings were added. A very early depiction of a bow-shaped harp with three strings survives on a clay tablet from the Uruk period at the end of the 4th millennium. The image is a pictograph, an early form of writing, showing a three-stringed bow harp. The earliest harps appeared in Mesopotamia (vertical) and Iran (horizontal), circa 3300–3000, and researchers haven't determined if one is earlier than the other. By 3000 B.C., bow harps were common in the Middle East. They were commonly depicted in Egypt by 2500 B.C. Harps depicted were always arched until about 2000 B.C. After that, harps were increasingly angular, until the arched harp disappeared from Mesopotamia and Iran. Frame harps used in Europe were invented about 1000 C.E. Separately, the Greeks had a frame harp, called spindle harp, shown well developed about 430 B.C. India also had early bow harps, similar to musical bows, visible in cave art which has not been precisely dated.


Earliest harp image

In excavations of
Megiddo Megiddo may refer to: Places and sites in Israel * Tel Megiddo, site of an ancient city in Israel's Jezreel valley * Megiddo Airport, a domestic airport in Israel * Megiddo church (Israel) * Megiddo, Israel, a kibbutz in Israel * Megiddo Juncti ...
in the former land of
Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...
, a harp image was found engraved on a paving stone dating from between 3300 and 3100 B.C. The image shows an apparent framed harp, probably in the hands of a woman, which was found in a group of 20 carvings on floor stones. According to Joachim Braun, this image of a stringed instrument predates the previously known images of Cycladic frame harps by 1000 years and is said to represent the oldest known forerunner of the Chang and angular harp in the Caucasus. Braun draws a typological connection to the ''tor-sapl-yukh'' angular harp played by the West Siberian Khanty and
Mansi Mansi may refer to: * Mansi people, an Indigenous people of Russia ** Mansi language *Mansi (name), given name and surname *Mansi Junction railway station * Mansi Township, Myanmar ** Mansi, Myanmar, a town in the Kachin State of Myanmar (Burma) * ...
people up to the beginning of the 20th century, the free ends of which are connected by a strut. However, such an interpretation is not universally accepted; other authors want to be cautious in recognizing a harp or a lyre.


Another early image

An early image of a bow harp can be seen on a cylinder seal from Iran that dates from 3300 to 3100 B.C., found in
Chogha Mish Choghā Mīsh (also Chogā Mīsh) () dating back to about 6800 BC, is the site of a Chalcolithic settlement located in the Khuzistan Province Iran on the eastern Susiana Plain. It was occupied at the beginning of 6800 BC and continuously ...
(western Iranian province of Khuzestan). It was found during excavations from 1961 to 1978 by the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Though broken, small fragments were put together to form an orchestra image which includes the harp. It is, perhaps, the oldest known image of an orchestra or ensemble. In the image, a presumably female protagonist sits on the right-hand side. Facing her is a servant holding a milk jug for her, while opposite four musicians are also seated. A musician is playing a four-string bowed harp, and the figure below is beating a drum standing on the floor in front of it. Further to the left a musician is blowing a horn, and behind him the singer is holding a hand behind his cheek, as oriental singers still do today, such a Kurdish '' Dengbêjdo''. The large jug with a handle in the middle and the scene on the right make it clear that the band is performing at a religious festival. Other illustrations of horizontal bowed harps come from Shar-i Sokhta (3000-2300 B.C.) in eastern and southeastern Iran.


Distribution


Mesopotamia

The harp was ''zà-mí'' in the
Sumerian language Sumerian ) was the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the List of languages by first written account, oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 2900 BC. It is a local language isolate that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the a ...
. The Akkadian word for harp was ''sammû'', possibly a loanword from Sumerian. Among the Sumerian pictographs from around 3000 B.C. is one in
Uruk Uruk, the archeological site known today as Warka, was an ancient city in the Near East, located east of the current bed of the Euphrates River, on an ancient, now-dried channel of the river in Muthanna Governorate, Iraq. The site lies 93 kilo ...
that resembles a vertical bowed harp. In this period similar representations also occur on stone tablets and seal impressions. A horizontal bowed harp can also be recognized on a Bismaya steatite vase fragment from the second half of the 3rd millennium B.C. The remains of two 13-stringed harps were found in the royal cemetery of the city of Ur from around 2500 B.C. One harp was reconstructed and is now in the British Museum. All the wooden parts of the instruments were destroyed, but they could be easily reconstructed based on sketches from excavation, the gold and silver decoration embedded in bitumen that partially covered them, and images on seals. In Mesopotamia, the bowed harp was used until around 1900 B.C., when it was replaced by the angular harp. File:Banquet plaque, Tell Agrab, Main Shara Temple, Early Dynastic period, 2700-2600 BC, limestone - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC07369.JPG, Tell Agrab, Iraq, 3000 to 2334 B.C. University of Chicago, Oriental Institute. ,


India, Indochina

In India today, the term ''
veena The ''veena'', also spelled ''vina'' ( IAST: vīṇā), is any of various chordophone instruments from the Indian subcontinent. Ancient musical instruments evolved into many variations, such as lutes, zithers and arched harps.
'' (''vina'', ''bin'') includes a large variety of stringed instruments. In ancient Indian times, ''vina'' was used to name bowed harps and lutes and later to stick zithers. Names of arched harps included the fingerplucked ''chitra vīṇā'' with seven strings, the ''vipanchi vīṇā'' with nine strings (plucked with a plectrum) and the ''mattakokila vīṇā'' (a harp or possibly board zither) with 21 strings. Today, the mainstream instruments using the name veena include the Rudra veena stick zither and
Saraswati veena The Sarasvatī vīṇa (also spelled Saraswati veena) (, , , Malayalam: സരസ്വതി വീണ) is an ancient Indian plucked veena. It is named after the Hindu goddess Saraswati, who is usually depicted holding or playing the instrume ...
lute. In India, the vina harp had a history (as documented in sculpture) from circa 175 B.C. in the sculpture of Bharhut to artwork in circa 800 A.D. In looking for origins, ethnomusicologist
Curt Sachs Curt Sachs (; 29 June 1881 – 5 February 1959) was a German musicologist. He was one of the founders of modern organology (the study of musical instruments). Among his contributions was the Hornbostel–Sachs system, which he created with Eric ...
noted that the instrument in artwork in Mesopotamia and India was very close. He wrote that the horizontal harp seen in the Mesopotamian Bismaya art has the same "shape, position and manner of playing" as the Bharhut harp. Sachs felt that the link to the Bismaya harp was direct, that it could not be related to the Egyptian harp. His reasons included that both the Indian and Iraq harps were played horizontally with plectrums, and Egyptian were not. In spite of this, Sachs also wrote that the Egyptian ''bīnꞏt'' and Indian ''bīn'' (a north Indian variant of ''vīna'') were the same word. When Mesopotamia and Iran abandoned the use of the arched harp for the angular harp towards about 1900 B.C., Egypt and India continued to use the instrument. The development of the angular harp did not occur in India, nor did the chang angular harp type, widespread in the Middle Ages in the Orient, have an Indian counterpart at any time. The arched harp lasted in art in India until circa 800 A.D., and later in connected communities in Southeast Asia. Among the writings of the Indus Valley Civilization (3000–1800 BC) there were pictograms resembling a harp, but after the
Indus script The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley script, is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whe ...
stopped being used, there wasn't a depiction of a harp up to the 2nd century B.C. Upon the re-appearance of Indian pictorial art, bowed harps were immediately visible, so it is possible that the type of instrument was in continuous use until then. The instruments mentioned as vina or vipanci in the
Natya Shastra The ''Nāṭya Shāstra'' (, ''Nāṭyaśāstra'') is a Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts. The text is attributed to sage Bharata, and its first complete compilation is dated to between 200 BCE and 200 CE, but estimates vary b ...
, the oldest Indian collection of texts on music written in
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
circa 200 B.C.E. — 200 C.E., were probably multi-stringed bowed harps. In
Old Tamil Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning from the 3rd century BCE to the seventh century CE. Prior to Old Tamil, the period of Tamil linguistic development is termed as Proto-Tamil. After the Old Tamil period, Tamil becomes Middl ...
literature, the term
yazh The yazh (, also transliterated yāḻ, ) is a harp used in ancient Tamil music. It was strung with gut strings that ran from a curved ebony neck to a boat or trough-shaped resonator, the opening of which was a covered with skin for a soundboa ...
is used for "harp". The Indian bow harp is most often used in a religious context related to Buddhism. Paintings in caves have revealed growth in human culture, as the focus of paintings moved from animals and hunting scenes to images of "ritual participants." In India in the rock caves of Bhimbetka have preserved paintings dating from the Mesolithic (older than 5000 BC) to historical times. In addition to numerous depictions of animals, there are scenes from the "late
Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...
and
Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...
" of ritual dances and musicians. Over time, the subject matter of paintings began to change, and "painters shifted from imaginary images to ritual participants." These ritual would come to include music, dancers and musicians. The timeline hasn't been settled. An early version of the bow harp has been found in 5 cave paintings in the Pachmarhi hills. The harps are bows with 1-5 strings and one end attached to a resonator. The cave names are Batki Bundal, Nimbu Bhoj, Rajat Prapat, Kanji Ghat, and Langi Nadi. According to the descriptions in the Vedas, the same instrumentation as in Choga Mish—bowed harp, flute, drum and song—was used in the 1st millennium B.C.in ancient India to accompany dancers. Similarly in the shelters in the Pachmarhi hills, all four classes of musical instruments (under Hornbostel-Sachs) can be found in paintings, idiophones, membranophones, chordophones and aerophones. The modern term vina was originally applied to arched harps, the ancient veena. Literary evidence is found in
Brahmana The Brahmanas (; Sanskrit: , International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: ''Brāhmaṇam'') are Vedas, Vedic śruti works attached to the Samhitas (hymns and mantras) of the Rigveda, Rig, Samaveda, Sama, Yajurveda, Yajur, and Athar ...
texts (before 6th century B.C.), according to which the harp was said to have had "a hundred strings" (called ''satatantri'').


Spread of the arched harp from India

India's arched harp spread along the silk road to China. Buddhists carried the instrument with them into
Gandhara Gandhara () was an ancient Indo-Aryan people, Indo-Aryan civilization in present-day northwest Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar valley, Peshawar (Pushkalawati) and Swat valleys extending ...
in northern India (art survives 1st-4th centuries A.D.), and along the silk road to the civilizations including
Balkh Balkh is a town in the Balkh Province of Afghanistan. It is located approximately to the northwest of the provincial capital city Mazar-i-Sharif and approximately to the south of the Amu Darya and the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan border. In 2021 ...
in
Bactria Bactria (; Bactrian language, Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization in Central Asia based in the area south of the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) and north of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an area ...
and
Samarkand Samarkand ( ; Uzbek language, Uzbek and Tajik language, Tajik: Самарқанд / Samarqand, ) is a city in southeastern Uzbekistan and among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central As ...
in
Sogdia Sogdia () or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemen ...
. Images of the arched harp can be seen in Buddhist paintings from the 9th through 11th centuries A.D. in the
Mogao Caves The Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu p ...
(Caves 327 and 465) and Yulin Caves in
Dunhuang Dunhuang () is a county-level city in northwestern Gansu Province, Western China. According to the 2010 Chinese census, the city has a population of 186,027, though 2019 estimates put the city's population at about 191,800. Sachu (Dunhuang) was ...
, China, and the
Kizil Caves The Kizil Caves (also romanized as Qizil or Qyzyl; ; zh, s=克孜尔千佛洞, l=Kizil Caves of the Thousand Buddhas) are a set of Buddhist rock-cut caves located near Kizil Township ( zh, s=克孜尔乡, p=Kèzī'ěr Xiāng, labels=no) in Ba ...
and Bezeklik Caves (cave 438) in
Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...
, China. Images have also been found in
Khotan Hotan (also known by #Etymology, other names) is a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang, an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region in Northwestern China. The city proper of Hotan broke off from the larger Hotan County to become an ...
in Xinjiang. The Mogao caves marked the furthest point of spread of the arched harp eastward into China along the Silk Road. Indian bowed harps have been depicted on stone reliefs at Buddhist cult sites (stupas) from the Sunga period (2nd–1st centuries BC) in central north India, among others: five-string harps on the stupas of Bharhut and Bodhgaya , seven-string harps in Sanchi; also on reliefs at the Butkara stupa in the Swat valley in the Gandhara region (2nd century AD), at the stupas of Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda (both 2nd/3rd centuries AD). Buddha himself, after Jataka 243, was an excellent vina player at the court of Varanasi before retiring from worldly life. In southern India in the 7th/8th century, harps could have as many as 14 strings and were used for singing accompaniment. Towards the end of the 1st millennium the bowed harp all but disappeared from India. Harps appear in Indian iconography until the about circa 1000 A.D. Indian arched harps were thought to be lost until 1983, when the ''bin-baja'' of the Pardhan of Madhya Pradesh was noticed by ethnomusicologist Roderic Knight, one surviving relic of India's arched-harp tradition. One reason the harp remained hidden for so long is that it is mainly used for private religious expression, and the musicians who play the instrument take special care not to play it publicly outside of ceremony. The ''bin-baja'' (''bīṇ bājā'', also ''Gogia bana'') is a five-string arched harp in the
Mandla Mandla is a city with municipality in Mandla district in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of Mandla District. The city is situated in a loop of the Narmada River, which surrounds it on three sides, and ...
area of the central Indian state of
Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (; ; ) is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and the largest city is Indore, Indore. Other major cities includes Gwalior, Jabalpur, and Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, Sagar. Madhya Pradesh is the List of states and union te ...
, played by male musicians of the Pardhan caste to accompany epic songs. The harp has a boat-shaped body and a string connector in a sawtooth pattern, with bamboo laid beneath the strings. Only the musicians of the Gogia, a small social subgroup of the Pardhans, play the bin-baja for their patrons, the Gonds, instead of the bowed lute bana that Pardhans otherwise use to accompany songs. Outside of India arched harps have survived in places culturally connected to India. These include the ''waji'' of
Nuristan Nuristan, also spelled as Nurestan or Nooristan (Pashto: ; Katë: ), is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. It is divided into seven districts and is Afghanistan's least populous province, with a ...
, the 5-7 string ''t'nah'' or ''na den'' or 6-string ''tinaou'' of the Karen from Thailand and Myanmar, and the ''saung'' of Burma. File:Harpist, Mathura-school artwork, 1st century C.E.jpg, Harpist, Mathura-school artwork, Mathura, Northern India, 1st century C.E. Horizontal bow-harp, the striker to play the strings is held in the Harper's raised hand. File:Gandhara harpist, bow harp.jpg, Gandhara harpist, bow harp, 100-300 A.D. Horizontal bow-harp, played with striker. The harp is being held on the neck, over the strings. File:Arched harp from Gandharan artwork, 2nd century CE.jpg, Arched harp from Gandhara, 2nd century A.D. Found at Loriyan Tangai, Pakistan. Indra and his harpist visit the Buddha in Indrasala Cave.jpg, Buddhist artwork from Gandhara, Sikri Yusufzai stupa, 3rd-4th century A.D. Indra and his harpist visit the Buddha in Indrasala Cave. File:Saraswati Third Century AD.jpg,
Saraswati Saraswati (, ), also spelled as Sarasvati, is one of the principal Devi, goddesses in Hinduism, revered as the goddess of knowledge, education, learning, arts, speech, poetry, music, purification, language and culture. Together with the godde ...
playing an arched harp, 3rd century A.D. Manasa- Mandsaur area of
Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (; ; ) is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and the largest city is Indore, Indore. Other major cities includes Gwalior, Jabalpur, and Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, Sagar. Madhya Pradesh is the List of states and union te ...
, India. Unlike the Gandhara images, this image shows the harp being played with both hands and not with a plectrum. File:Lady with a Harp, Brooklin Museum, ACCESSION NUMBER 2002.65.jpg, 5th century A.D. sculpture from the Gupta Empire, India, showing a lady playing an arched harp. File:Vina on decorated bowl, MET LK.1975.419.jpg, alt=Vina harp on decorated bowl at the Metropolitan Museum of art, MET LK.1975.419, 5th-6th century A.D. India, decorated bowl with harp vina. Southern India, probably
Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (ISO 15919, ISO: , , AP) is a States and union territories of India, state on the East Coast of India, east coast of southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, seventh-largest state and th ...
File:Harp, detail from pedestal, My Son E1, view 4, 7th century, Quang Nam - Museum of Cham Sculpture - Danang, Vietnam - DSC01721.jpg, Vietnam,
Champa Champa (Cham language, Cham: ꨌꩌꨛꨩ, چمڤا; ; 占城 or 占婆) was a collection of independent Chams, Cham Polity, polities that extended across the coast of what is present-day Central Vietnam, central and southern Vietnam from ...
arched harp, '' Mỹ Sơn'', 7th century File:Borobudur lute and harp, 9th century CE.jpg,
Borobudur Borobudur, also transcribed Barabudur (, ), is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in Magelang Regency, near the city of Magelang and the town of Muntilan, in Central Java, Indonesia. Constructed of gray andesite-like stone, the temple consi ...
lute and harp, 9th century CE File:Champa Harp.jpg, Vietnam, Champa harp, part of relief sculpture from Phong Lệ, 10th century. File:Cloesup of The women sing and play to the prince.jpg, 12th century A.D., Ananda Temple at
Bagan Bagan ( ; ; formerly Pagan) is an ancient city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Mandalay Region of Myanmar. From the 9th to 13th centuries, the city was the capital of the Pagan Kingdom, the first kingdom that unified the regions that w ...
, Myanmar File:A little lunchtime music (10845286724).jpg, Modern saung File:Pin, Cambodian harp.jpg, A Cambodian woman plays a modern pin.


Nuristan

Overland from India in north-eastern Afghanistan, the Nuristani people have the Kafir harp or ''waji'', though the instrument has become rare. To make it, a musical bow is embedded into the resonator's skin soundboard through two holes, resting with the open arch of the bow facing the sky. The resonator is boat shadows with incurved sides, each end of the boat pointed. The resonating skin soundboard is stretched across the bowl of the resonator and the edges are pulled and secured on the resonator's bottom side with a thong sewn through the edges. The bow is held tight to the resonator with chords running from each end of the resonator to the closest side of the bow. The player, seated on the floor or on a chair, holds the waji cradled in his left arm. The strings are in an approximately horizontal position and are strummed with a pine plectrum in the right hand. The plucking is usually done in an up and down motion across all strings. Strings that are not meant to sound are muted with the fingers of the left hand gripping from the outside.


Southeast Asia, Burma

Arched harps spread to Southeast Asia to create the saung in Burma, the pin in Cambodia, the t'na of the Karen and Mon peoples, the harp seen in ancient artwork from
Champa Champa (Cham language, Cham: ꨌꩌꨛꨩ, چمڤا; ; 占城 or 占婆) was a collection of independent Chams, Cham Polity, polities that extended across the coast of what is present-day Central Vietnam, central and southern Vietnam from ...
in Vietnam, and the harps displayed in Malaysia in the reliefs of
Borobudur Borobudur, also transcribed Barabudur (, ), is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in Magelang Regency, near the city of Magelang and the town of Muntilan, in Central Java, Indonesia. Constructed of gray andesite-like stone, the temple consi ...
. The ''saung'' entered Burma between pre-500 A.D. to after 800 A.D. The dates represent modern debates among researchers. ''800 A.D. and after'' is based on medieval Burmese artwork from 1000 to 1200 A.D. and the relationship between Burma and Bengal in that same period. ''Before 500 A.D.'' represents the idea that the harp was found in earlier '' Pyu'' artwork which resembled the Amaravati harp (200-400 A.D.) and on the relationship between India and the Pyus in the 1st-5th centuries A.D. The earliest archaeological evidence of the harp is at the Bawbawgyi Pagoda of the
Sri Ksetra Sri Ksetra (, , ; Sanskrit: श्री क्षेत्र, Htin Aung, Maung (1970). ''Burmese History before 1287: A Defence of the Chronicles.'' Oxford: The Asoka Society, 8 - 10. or 'Field of Glory'), located along the Irrawaddy River at p ...
kingdom of the Pyu people, near present-day
Pyay Pyay, and formerly anglicised as Prome, is the principal town of Pyay Township in the Bago Region in Myanmar. Pyay is located on the bank of the Irrawaddy River, north-west of Yangon. It is an important trade center for the Ayeyarwady Delta, Centr ...
(Prome). At that site, there a relief sculpture from the mid-600s that depicts an arched harp with about five strings, in a scene with musicians and a dancer. The artwork dates to the era of expansion of Buddhism into Burma. Other evidence for an early date for the arrival of the harp in Burma comes from Chinese chronicles from the 801-802 A.D. documents from China. In that period, the Pyu Kingdom sent an embassy to China, with an orchestra of Burmese musical instruments, including two types of arched harp – a 14-string, long-necked harp topped with a phoenix head projecting forward, and a harp that curved inward. Both types were found in Amaravati artwork form 200-400 A.D. The '' Saung gauk'' is still present in Burma as a living tradition. The instrument was played in the royal court until the end of the kingdom. There followed a period of decline before World War II. Then in 1947, Hmat Kyi, who descended from royal woodcarvers, created 7 harps for the State Schools of Fine Arts. While rare today, there are still craftsmen in the country making the instruments. At the university level, musicologists are working to expand harp education in the country.


Southeast Asia, Cambodia

In Cambodia a harp called the pin (, ) was one of the most historically important instruments in
Cambodian music The music of Cambodia is derived from a mesh of cultural traditions dating back to the ancient Khmer Empire, India, China and the original indigenous tribes living in the area before the arrival of Indian and Chinese travelers. With the rapid Wes ...
. Originating in India, the instrument can be seen in ancient artwork. Its historical importance is emphasized by the very name for Cambodian classical music, '' pinpeat'' (Khmer: ពិណពាទ្យ). Cambodians stopped using the pin about the sometime between the 13th and 15th centuries A.D. The instrument is now being restored in modern times.


Karen harp

A third arched harp belongs to the Karen and Mon peoples, the ''T'na'' arched harp. The Karen harp is usually made with five or seven strings,The Karen People of Burma: A Study in Anthropology and Ethnology by Harry Ignatius Marshall, pp. 139-141, 162 but may have as many as 10 to 12 strings to play contemporary songs. Traditionally, harp strings were made of braided hemp thread or bamboo-vine fiber, coated with beeswax. Later cotton strings were used. Today it may be strung with silk or nylon strings or wire strings. The instrument was "strummed" and had a soft tone. In making the T'na, it is divided into two parts, the body part and the head part. The body is usually made of one type of wood and the headstock is made of another type of wood. The body of the harp is made of hard wood hollowed out, resembling a dugout canoe with one end sharper than the other, about two feet long, 5 inches wide. The soundboard might made of barking deer hide. Two holes are drilled in the sides of the body. The neck of the Karen harp is not curved as far inward as the Burmese ''saung'' harp. The head of the harp is made from naturally curved wood attached to the body, inserted into the sharp end. Pegs in the neck are used to tighten the strings, the other end of the strings going to a strip of wood attached to the middle of the soundboard. According to Harry Ignatius Marshall, who was with the Karen prior to 1922, the ''t'na'' was used primarily by young men, who frequently carried the harp with them. He reported that the T'na was used in courtship in the early 20th century. Young men would play for young women, who would answer with a ''t'xe'' mouth harp. The two could sit together, her parents listening; so long as they could hear instruments playing, the young people could have privacy. The Karen have also made the t'na with a bamboo body, resulting in an instrument with greater resonance. The opening for the skin soundboard was made on one side of the tube, between two nodes in the bamboo. The skin was stretched across the opening and tied on the opposite side of the tube.


China

Arched harps migrated to China from India by way of
Gandhara Gandhara () was an ancient Indo-Aryan people, Indo-Aryan civilization in present-day northwest Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar valley, Peshawar (Pushkalawati) and Swat valleys extending ...
,
Bactria Bactria (; Bactrian language, Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization in Central Asia based in the area south of the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) and north of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an area ...
and
Sogdia Sogdia () or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemen ...
. Additionally, Burma sent musicians to play in the Chinese court, including two types of arched harp. One of the harps had a neck longer than the instrument's body, "the end of the neck...turned outward and the apex shaped like the head of a phoenix". This was like the later Chinese ''feng shou konghou'' (, literally "phoenix-headed ''konghou''"), an arched harp, thought to have been introduced from India in the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420 AD). "Beginning in the
Sui dynasty The Sui dynasty ( ) was a short-lived Dynasties of China, Chinese imperial dynasty that ruled from 581 to 618. The re-unification of China proper under the Sui brought the Northern and Southern dynasties era to a close, ending a prolonged peri ...
(581–618), it was also used in (banquet music)." The arched harp probably disappeared in China after 1000 A.D., coinciding with the decline of Buddhism. The angular harp lasted longer than the arched harp in China, becoming extinct sometime in the
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...
(1368 to 1644). Chinese musical researcher Li Mei (李玫) mentioned that in the artwork in China, two kinds of arched harps can be seen. One of them appears to be the standard Indian arched harp, which became the modern saung. This kind has a long wooden body and a high arched neck, carved to meet smoothly. The other type is the Qiu-Zi arched harp, named for the Qiu-Zi Grottos (Kizil Grottos). This harp appears to have been made with the body of a gourd, looking somewhat like a bean and not transitioning into the instrument's neck as smoothly as the Indian arched harp. The harp is only depicted in the Kizil Grottoes, which is why it was named for them. File:Phoenix headed konghou 10th century.jpg, Phoenix headed konghou (Konghou fengshou), 10th century A.D., Bezeklik Caves, cave 48. File:Apsara playing a Phoenix-headed konghou - Yulin Cave 15.jpg,
Apsara Apsaras (, , Khmer language, Khmer: អប្សរា are a class of celestial beings in Hinduism, Hindu and Culture of Buddhism, Buddhist culture. They were originally a type of female spirit of the clouds and waters, but, later play ...
or Feintian (flying goddess 飛天女神) playing a Phoenix-headed konghou - Yulin Cave 15. Tang dynasty artistry, (618-907) File:Arched harp, Kizil Cave 80.png, Arched harp, Kizil Cave 77, circa 7th century A.D. (Alternately dated 3rd-9th centuries A.D.) File:Mogao Cave 465, bow harp.jpg, Mogao Cave 465, Tibetan-style bow harp.
Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty ( ; zh, c=元朝, p=Yuáncháo), officially the Great Yuan (; Mongolian language, Mongolian: , , literally 'Great Yuan State'), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after Div ...
, 1227–1368.


Egypt

The harp was the most important musical instrument in ancient Egypt. The bowed harps known from Ancient Egypt from the same period (Egyptian in general ''bīnꞏt'', ''b.nt'', ''bent'', ''benet'', Coptic ''voina'') can be roughly divided into four groups according to their chronological order and their shape. These include shovel, ladle, naviform (boat-like), and arch or crescent. The bowed harp was first used in the Old Kingdom, in the 4th dynasty (2723–2563 B.C.) and appears in the feast scenes of the mastabas of Saqqara and Giza. This type of harp is reminiscent of a modern spade: its small, flat, pointed body is joined by a slightly curved, stout, long neck, like a spade blade. The "spade-shaped" bowed harp was initially the only type of harp, but it was made in several sizes, with the number of strings between 4 and 6. Towards the end of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, it disappears from iconography, and then reappears during the New Kingdom. Already in the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2160–1633 BC), a new type of "ladle-shaped" harp appeared . A small, "ship-shaped" harp also became popular in the New Kingdom, gradually increasing in size over time, and eventually sometimes reaching the height of the human body. A special type of harp of this era is the "seven-shaped" vertical bowed harp, the neck of which bends in a narrow arc and then continues horizontally, straight, in a manner reminiscent of the number 7. During the Hellenistic period (332–30 BC), "sickle-shaped" bowed harps appeared.


Egypt gallery

File:Harp player, from Tomb of Rekhmire.jpg, Arched-harp player, from Tomb of Rekhmire. Ladle harp. File:Maler der Grabkammer des Nacht 001.jpg, Blind harper in Tomb of Nakht, TT52, 1422-1411 BCE. Ladel-shaped File:Banquet inerkhaou dj 33 harper.jpg, Egyptian harper in Tomb of Ankerkhe, Workmen's Tombs. File:Woman playing an arched harp, detail from a tomb wall painting at Beni Hasan.jpg, Shovel harp.
Beni Hasan Beni Hasan (also written as Bani Hasan, or also Beni-Hassan) () is an ancient Egyptian cemetery. It is located approximately to the south of modern-day Minya in the region known as Middle Egypt, the area between Asyut and Memphis.Baines, John ...
area tomb painting. 2040 BC -1782 B.C. File:Tomb chapel of paätenemheb (RMO Leiden egypt saqqara 1333-1307bc) (3963497965).jpg, Tomb chapel of Paätenemheb, 1333-1307 B.C. File:Harper, Stela of the Overseer of Priests Iki, 1981-1802 B.C.jpg, Shovel harp, resembles crescent harps from about 1500 years later. Stela of the Overseer of Priests Iki, 1981-1802 B.C. File:Harper, tomb of Nebamun, TT17.jpg, Naviform harp. Shoulder harp. Tomb of Nebamun, TT17. File:Harp at the access door to the temple of Mut at Karnak.jpg, Crescent harp, circa 246-222 B.C. File:Crooked harp or 7-shaped harp, 25th dynasty.jpg, Crooked harp or 7-shaped harp, 25th dynasty File:Egyptian harp.jpg, Ancient Egyptian naviform arched harp on display in some UK museum. New Kingdom era, Tomb of Ani (Thebes). File:Arched Harp (shoulder harp) MET 43.2.1 EGDP013644.jpg, Shoulder harp, arched harp. circa 1390 –1295 B.C. New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty


Egyptian hieroglyphs

File:Harp Hieroglyph.jpg File:Abydos-Bold-hieroglyph-Y7.png File:Abydos-Bold-hieroglyph-Y7A.png File:Abydos-Bold-hieroglyph-Y7B.png File:Abydos-Bold-hieroglyph-Y7C.png


Greece and Rome

The
cithara The kithara (), Latinized as cithara, was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the yoke lutes family. It was a seven-stringed professional version of the lyre, which was regarded as a rustic, or folk instrument, appropriate for teaching mus ...
was the main stringed instrument of ancient Greece, and other stringed instruments were known there, including the
pandura The pandura (, ''pandoura'') or pandore, an ancient Greek string instrument, belonged in the broad class of the lute and guitar instruments. Akkadian Empire, Akkadians played similar instruments from the 3rd millennium BC. Ancient Greece, Ancien ...
lute. Although preferring the cithara, Greeks possessed both arched and angular harps whose names are known, but which academics cannot match with a specific harp. These include psalterion, pektis, trigonos, magadis,
sambuca Sambuca () is an Italian anise-flavoured liqueur. Its most common variety is often referred to as "white sambuca" to differentiate it from other varieties that are deep blue ("black sambuca") or bright red ("red sambuca"). Like other anise-fla ...
, and epigonion. Much of the surviving artwork shows angular harps. However the Greeks did use the arched harp too, which passed to Greece and Rome from Egypt. Recovered artwork has revealed at least two pictured arched harps. A relief sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, dating back to the 5th century B.C., shows a scene of musicians dressed in Greek fashion playing musical instruments, including a large vertical bowed harp similar to harps played in Egypt. Also, a vase painting shows a woman holding a small bowed harp, similar to the enanga harp used in Africa today. This last may be a sambuca, because (being small) it would have the high, effeminate tone that the sambuca was said to have. Harps were played by women in Greece, often hetaira. In the literature of the 4th century BC and later, the term ''sambukistria'', meaning a woman who plays the ''sambuke'', was used for courtesans (as in general, the word ''psaltria'', meaning a female harpist). The arched harp may survived in the Roman Empire at least until the 1st century A.D. Excavations at a villa near Pompeii uncovered a frescoe of a young woman playing an arched harp. (see artwork) This artwork may not be reliable as to depicting current events of its day, as Romans copied art from earlier periods.


Sub-Saharan Africa

Today, the richest deposits of bowed harps are in sub-Saharan Africa; in 1984, the ''New Grove Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments'' listed about 37 entries for African arched harps (as compared to 5 entries for angular harps). They are found mainly in the parts of Central Africa north of the equator, from the western savannas to Uganda, where nearly 50 different cultures use harps. African bowed harps have five to ten strings; it is used standing, lying down, in all possible postures to accompany singing. While there isn't evidence that directly links Egyptian arched harps to modern African Arched harps, it can be assumed. The assumption is based on the studied survival of another Egyptian musical instrument, the plucked lute, which survives as the gunbri. Ethnomusicologists in the 1960s mapped locations of different types of harp in Africa and arrived at a theory of how they arrived from Egypt and spread across the upper middle part of the continent, below the Sahara. There is also a connection between Africa and Indonesia which could have introduced the harp, by way of ships sailing the monsoon winds between the two regions. The yam arrived from Indonesia and was grown in a "narrow corridor" called the "yam-belt" in "Kenya, Uganda, North Zaire/South Sudan, the Central African Republic, South Chad to Gabon/Guinea/Cameroon/Nigeria." These are also the areas where the arched harp is used. It isn't certain which direction the harp took on this sea-road, but both Indonesia and Africa used the arched harp. African bowed harps are very diverse both in construction and decoration, which is often figurative and anthropomorphic. They are identical in that they have a body covered with a leather resonator, which is usually joined by a curved neck made of wood. In most cases, the strings can be tuned with wooden keys fitted to the neck of the instrument. The other end of the strings runs to a longitudinal string support slat, which is located either above or below the leather roof panel, or threaded through it from above and below. The integration of the neck into the body can be done in three ways: Type 1 sits in the cavity of the body like a spoon in a teacup, held in place only by the tension of the strings. Type 2 is tightly screwed into the tapering end of the body, like a cork in the neck of a bottle. Type 3 is attached to a – often anthropomorphic – extension of the body carved from wood. File:Ennanga - MET 89.4.926.jpg, ''Ennanga'', Uganda Type 1. ''Ladle shaped''. The string support is below the leather sound table; it pokes through the table at the neck, wedging into the neck and keeping it from being pulled further by the strings. File:Mangbetu-Harpe anthropomorphe-Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale.jpg, Mangbetu harp, ''Kundi'' type 2. ''Ladle shaped''. The string support is below the leather sound table. File:Musée africain de Gunsbach-Ngombi.jpg, ''Ngombi'', Gabon Type 3. The string support is below the leather sound table. File:InstrumentistesNord2.jpg, 2016, Cameroon. Right, arched harp with modern tuners. Left, possible ''gúlúm'' or ''gurmi'' lute. File:Harp 2 - Collection des instruments de musique du Baron d'Erlanger.jpg, Tunisian harp, type 2. String support visible, poking through skin. File:Harpa - Massa, Chad - Royal Museum for Central Africa - DSC06965.JPG, Chad, Masa people, type 2. ''Dilla''. Visible string support. File:Harpa - Ngbaka, Zaire - Royal Museum for Central Africa - DSC06959.JPG, Zaire, Ngbaka people, type 3. Visible string support. File:Harpa - Fang, Gabon - Royal Museum for Central Africa - DSC06968.JPG, Gabon,