The Music of Hindostan c6.119

c6.119

Then followed an interval for putting rice on their dhols. These are barrel-shaped drums with terminal diameters of seven and eight inches respectively. Boiled rice mixed with wood-ash was applied to the larger end,¹ thereby giving more resonance to the tone and lowering the pitch by anything up to an octave. They did not tune the dhols to the same note by tightening the braces, nor did they aim at any definite interval between the two ends of the dhol, by the application of the rice. They brought no wind or strings; they would have played the bamboo flute, but ‘would have had to make one’, and there was no time.