Sitar: The Instrument That Took Indian Classical Music to the World

Popular legend credits a 13th-century Sufi poet with inventing the sitar. Modern scholars think that story is simply wrong.

From Mughal Delhi to Monterey

ArtnCulture0100

1739 CE

First Documented

Named in the Muraqqa-i-Dehli, under Muhammad Shah’s Mughal court

19TH CENTURY

Sympathetic Strings Added

Grows into the lead instrument of khyal singing style

1965 CE

George Harrison Takes Notice

Plays sitar on “Norwegian Wood,” then studies under Ravi Shankar

1967–1969

A Global Stage

Ravi Shankar’s Monterey and Woodstock sets reach mass Western audiences

A name, not the whole story: “sitar” comes from the Persian for “three strings,” even though a modern concert sitar typically carries close to 20.

⬇ Download as image

Timeline

• 1739 CE: The sitar is first documented by name, in the Muraqqa-i-Dehli, written during Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah’s reign.
• 19th century CE: The instrument grows larger, gains sympathetic strings, and becomes the lead instrument of khyal, Hindustani music’s dominant vocal style.
• 1965 CE: George Harrison plays sitar on the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood,” then begins studying the instrument under Ravi Shankar.
• 1967–1969 CE: Ravi Shankar’s performances at the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock introduce the sitar to a mass Western audience.

Must Know

• The sitar is a plucked string instrument, central to Hindustani classical music, the North Indian tradition.
• Its name comes from the Persian sehtar, meaning “three strings,” even though a modern sitar carries far more strings than that.
• It has a long hollow neck (dandi) and a gourd resonator (tumba). Movable metal frets, called parda, allow fine, microtonal pitch adjustments.
• Popular legend credits the 13th-century Sufi poet Amir Khusrau with inventing the sitar, but modern scholarship considers this attribution discredited.
• Pandit Ravi Shankar is the sitar player most responsible for introducing Indian classical music to global Western audiences.

Good to Know

• Modern scholars instead credit Khusrau Khan, an 18th-century Mughal-era musician, with developing the sitar. He adapted the Persian setar, blending it with the Indian veena tradition.
• Below the main strings run 9 to 12 sympathetic strings (tarab), added in the 19th century. These vibrate on their own, giving the sitar its distinctive resonant sound.
• Two major schools, or gharanas, shaped the modern sitar. The Imdadkhani gharana perfected gayaki ang, a vocal-style of playing, later refined by Ustad Vilayat Khan.
• The Senia-Maihar gharana, popularised by Ravi Shankar, favours a wider range of instrumental technique, drawing on dhrupad and tappa styles too.
• George Harrison’s sitar lessons under Ravi Shankar, beginning in 1965, triggered a wider craze for Indian-influenced sounds among Western rock and pop musicians.
• Ravi Shankar went on to win five Grammy Awards and, in 1999, India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. The sitar, a plucked string instrument central to Hindustani classical music, gets its name from a Persian word meaning what?

Long neck

Singing wood

Moon lute

Three strings

 Loading…

 

Great to Know

• The Amir Khusrau legend is a useful case study in how folk attribution spreads. A 19th-century writer’s ambiguous statement likely conflated the famous 13th-century poet with an unrelated 18th-century musician who shared part of his name.
• The sitar’s movable frets and sympathetic strings aren’t just decorative. Together, they let the instrument bend and sustain notes in a way that closely mimics the human voice. That’s exactly what gayaki ang playing exploits.
• Harrison and Shankar’s collaboration ran in both directions. Harrison brought the sitar to a mass pop audience. Shankar used that platform to insist Indian classical music be taken seriously on its own terms, not just as an exotic sound effect.
• The sitar sits within a wider Hindustani tradition of ragas and gharanas, alongside a distinct Carnatic counterpart in South India. See ArtnCulture0005 — Indian Music: Hindustani and Carnatic Traditions for that fuller picture.
• For the broader Hindustani classical tradition the sitar belongs to, see ArtnCulture0103 — Hindustani Classical Music.