The sarangi is the main bowed instrument of Hindustani music. It has three gut melody strings that are stopped by the left-hand cuticles or the skin above the nails. Around 36 sympathetic strings give a hauntings echo. Traditionally the sarangi’s public role has been to provide melodic accompaniment for vocal music, but its players have always practised and performed solo sarangi in their homes and at musicians’ gatherings. The constraints posed by the sarangi’s unusual construction and technique have given birth to a unique instrumental manifestation of vocal music that has never before been examined in a musicological work.