The spiritualistic and mythological approach of Veena

The Hindu goddess of knowledge and wisdom, Saraswathi plays the veena. The Hindu epic, Ramayana has a reference to the celestial being Saint Narada singing the praises of Vishnu while playing the veena. It is also a Hindu belief that Narada was the one who brought music to the Earth. The Vedas mention the instrument veena. According to the history, the Vedic veena had five parts, the siras or the head, the udara or the bowl, the ambhana or the sounding board of the belly, the tantra or the string and the vadana or the plectrum [2]. There is also the story about one of the Hindu trinity Siva, the god of destruction created veena upon seeing his wife Parvathi sleeping with her hand across her breasts, hence the shape of the veena with two globular parts and the finger- board in between. The Hindu philosophy reflects on the metaphysical understanding of Man in relation to the Supreme power, that is jeevatma, the individual to paramatma, and the Universal principal[3]. The veena has four main strings to play the melody and three side strings to provide the drone. Because they are pulled frequently to play the melody the four main strings go out of tune while the side strings pretty much stay in tune because they are only strummed and there by used as reference in re-tuning the main strings. This can be compared to the Hindu philosophical concept of the individual or the jeevatma strayed by the Karmic actions, the paratma remaining changeless.