I heard the veena live for the first time while I was pregnant during lockdown, when the world was no longer one I recognised. Questions about logistics, safety, and health raced through my mind.
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My aunt played it in her drawing room to soothe me. Her hands moved carefully over the frets. She was a student, but the instrument didn’t seem to care. Its music filled the room with grace, calm and beauty – something it has been doing for centuries.
That is the power of the veena. And nowhere does it speak more eloquently than in its historic hometown of Thanjavur, where tracing the instrument’s past and present offers a rare passage into India’s cultural soul.
Ancient soul
The veena is one of India's oldest musical instruments, with a history stretching back thousands of years. Literary references to the veena appear in the earliest Sanskrit texts, where it is held by Saraswati, the goddess of learning and arts.
Early visual evidence appears in temple art. A thousand years old and still a living site of worship and art, the Brihadeeshwara Temple in Thanjavur contains murals and sculptures of early veena variants. “One is most probably a sculpture from the early 11th century which shows a gandharva (celestial musician) playing an instrument with a gourd end,” explains CN Subramanian, who has photographed artistic treasures of the temple.
During invasions, temple-based patronage waned. At that time, artistic communities sought refuge in regions of relative peace. One such refuge was the court of Thanjavur in the 17th century, where the modern Carnatic veena was designed. With 24 frets and a distinct resonating bowl, it began to shape the modern grammar of South Indian classical music.
The Sangeetha Mahal, a magnificent concert hall within Thanjavur Palace, was also built during this cultural flowering. Designed for unamplified performances, the hall is an acoustic marvel. Today, visitors can still walk through its curved-ceilinged halls.
Clap softly or hum, and you’ll understand instantly why veena concerts once filled this space with rich, resonant sound.
Over the years, the veena has been played in temples, royal courts and during special festivals. If temples are what draw most travellers to Thanjavur, the magic of the veena is what stays with you.
Building a divine instrument
Just outside the palace complex, around East Main Street, there are many places where you can observe the veena being made by hand. Here, the veena makers work in modest, often family-run workshops that hum with quiet concentration and the scent of seasoned jackfruit wood. These workshops are typically tucked into narrow bylanes – easy to miss, unless you’re listening for the soft rasp of sandpaper or the tap of a chisel.
Inside, the spaces are simple: A low workbench, hand tools neatly arranged, and shelves lined with instruments in various stages of birth. The air is filled with the smell of lacquer, wood dust, and sometimes incense.
The artisans, often from families who’ve made veenas for generations, select wood only from jackfruit trees that are at least 100 years old. The wood is then hand-chiseled into shape, four segments forming a whole: There’s the large resonating gourd (periya kudam), the small resonator (chinna kudam), the fretboard (dandi), and the dragon-head carving (yazhi).
Every fret is placed by hand, adjusted using beeswax. There are no shortcuts; just instinct, skill, and reverence.
The finished veenas – some made to order for professional musicians, others for students – hang like sleeping swans from ceiling beams.
Occasionally, a visiting musician might stop by to test the tone of an instrument or request a custom design. Discussions drift between Tamil and the language of music: Timbre, grain, weight, and resonance.
To more fully experience the sounds of the veena, head to heritage hotels like Svatma or Great Trails River View Resort, which offer in-house classical concerts in the evenings. Here, sitting in a quiet courtyard under soft yellow lights and listening to the hypnotic music, it’s easy to feel like you’ve been lifted into another century.
Modernisation and memories
In Thanjavur, it’s not uncommon to see taxi drivers who are transporting a veena to a concert hurriedly touch its case and place their palms on their eyes as a mark of respect. Despite reverence for the instrument, however, the veena faces challenges in modern times.
“The veena has a beautiful sound,” says Savita Narasimhan, Carnatic musician and director at the Museum of Performing Arts (MOPA), Chennai. “But its volume is acoustically low. The instrument was built to play to an intimate audience in chamber concerts and royal courts.”
The challenge extends to technique. Carnatic concerts often aim to mirror the inflections of the human voice. This is difficult on a fretted instrument, where pitch is more rigid.
“The magic of Carnatic music lies between the notes,” says Balachandran, a Carnatic musician.
Balachandran’s son, Ramana, is among a new wave of veena artists attempting to resolve that tension – between fidelity to tradition and the demands of modern audiences.
In a documentary for MOPA, Ramana plays a short phrase. His fingers glide laterally along the frets to create a fast, lilting tune. There is lightness in the sound.
Then he combines the base and main strings to play a deeply emotive phrase, and I am tugged into a sepia-tinted world of memories and those moments when the veena brought unexpected peace into my life.
The veena is not just a musical instrument. It is a thread that connects India’s artistic past to its creative present. It has withstood the collapse of royal courts, the decline of temples, the challenges of modern acoustics, and the skepticism around innovation.
And still, it plays on.
Photo: Booking.com
Where to stay in Thanjavur
Svatma: Elegant cultural retreat with immersive experiences.
Great Trails River View Resort: Tranquil riverside resort blending nature and comfort.
Lakshmi Hotel: Comfortable and centrally located.
Hotel Victoriyah: Budget-friendly with basic amenities.
