This sarinda would originally have had four gut strings and a number of sympathetic wires – additional strings to give extra resonance – made of brass. The hollow body is of wood inlaid with ivory, the belly half covered with parchment chamfered or pared away (the chief characteristic of this kind of instrument). The sarinda is held with the left hand and rests against the performer’s body with the neck at the top resting on the left shoulder. The bow is held in the right hand with an underhand grip similar to that used by an Elizabethan viol player. An almost identical sarinda is in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, and the inlaid decoration is typical of 19th-century work from Hoshiarpur in north-west India.