This article is about the instrument. For the Sri Lankan city named after the instrument, see Jaffna.
See also: Ancient veena and Ancient Tamil music
Yazh
Classification
String instrument
Hornbostel–Sachs classification
322.11 (arched harp)
Related instruments
African harp
Pin (Cambodian harp)
Saung (Burmese harp)
harp-style Vina
Musicians
Tharun Sekar
Builders
Tharun Sekar[1]
The yazh (Tamil: யாழ், also transliterated yāḻ, pronounced[jaːɻ]) 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 soundboard. At the resonator the strings were attached to a string-bar or tuning bar with holes for strings that laid beneath of the soundboard and protruded through. The neck may also have been covered in hide.[2][3][4]
The arched harp was used in India since at least the 2nd century B.C.E., when a woman was sculpted with the instrument in a Buddhist artwork at Bhārut.[5] Both the Indian harp-style veena and the Tamil yazh declined starting in about the 7th century C.E., as stick-zither style veenas rose to prominence.[2][3]
While use of the instrument died out in centuries past, artworks have preserved some knowledge of what the instruments looked like. Luthiers have begun to recreate the instrument.
^Gershon, Livia (26 April 2021). "Listen to the First Song Ever Recorded on This Ancient, Harp-Like Instrument; Tharun Sekar, a luthier based in southern India, has painstakingly recreated the long-lost yazh". Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
^ abAlastair Dick (1984). "Yāl". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. p. 881. Volume 3.
^ ab"Musical instruments played in India". Chapter of SPICMACAY, Cornell University. Archived from the original on 10 February 2010. Retrieved 16 November 2011. The yazh is an ancient Dravidian instrument, somewhat like a harp. It was named for the fact that the tip of stem of this instrument was carved into the head of the animal yaali (vyala in Sanskrit). The yazh was an open-stringed polyphonous instrument, with a wooden boat-shaped skin-covered resonator and an ebony stem. It was tuned by either pegs or rings of gut moved up and down the string...was displaced by the veena in the middle ages
^"Celebrating unheard melodies". The Hindu. India. 25 December 2010. Yazh (a form of harp)...Notes (svaras) are known as Narambu. Narambu are the gut strings used in the Yazh. Each string of the Yazh was tuned to one note therefore this association of Narambu to note.
^Catherine Ludvík (2007). Sarasvatī, Riverine Goddess of Knowledge: From the Manuscript-carrying Vīṇā-player to the Weapon-wielding Defender of the Dharma. BRILL Academic. pp. 227–229. ISBN 978-90-04-15814-6.
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