The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c11.203

c11.203

T HE Kinnari is a rude stringed instrument employed chiefly by the country people in South Kanara and Mysore. It is somewhat singular that a stringed instrument of much the same name—the Kinnor¹⁵—should have been mentioned in the Bible, and this leads one to conjecture that they may both have been derived from the same Aryan source; for the Kinnari is an instrument of great antiquity, and takes its name from the legend that it was invented by Kinneri, one of the gandhârvas or singers of Brahma-loka, the heaven of the god Brahma.