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The SwarPlug synth plugin includes Ravan Hattha and over 100 other perfectly sampled
virtual Indian instruments. It can be loaded in most VST, Audio Units and AAX compatible DAWs
(Digital Audio Workstations) like Cubase, Logic, Ableton Live, Protools, FL Studio etc... It also
comes with lots of ready-made MIDI loops for each instrument.
The Ravan Hattha is an old bowed stringed instrument used in India, Sri Lanka, and encompassing regions. It is believed to be a predecessor of the violin.
Ravan Hattha's sound box might be a gourd, a split coconut shell, or a burrowed-out wood block, with an extended goat skin stretched over it. A neck of wood or bamboo is connected, carrying one to four strings made of intestines or steel, hung over a scaffold. A few models might have a few sympathetic strings. The bow is ordinarily of horsehair.
The instrument's name, Ravan Hatta, is a contraction of "Ravan Hasta Veena”. In Indian and Sri Lankan custom, the Ravan Hattha is believed to have started among the Hela individuals of Lanka during the time of King Ravana, after whom the instrument is evidently named. As per legend, Ravana used the RavanHatta in his dedication to the Hindu God, Shiva. The story says that after Lord Rama defeated Ravana, his faithful Hanuman took the Ravan Hatha to North India.
Outside myth and legend, what likewise makes the RavanHattha astounding and a subject of much interest among musicologists and history specialists is that it is one of the most established instruments played with a bow. Books on Music history distributed in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, for example, 'The History of Violin' by William Sandys and 'The Violin and its Story' by Geoffrey Alwyn, propounded the view that 'Ravanstrom' as they called Ravan Hattha was the 'precursor' of the cutting edge Violin.
The great strains of Ravan Hattha can be heard in Rajasthan in their lilting folk music. It is said that the royals of Rajasthan and Gujarat advocated this instrument to become the principal instrument to be instructed to the rulers of regal families as well as among the ladies.
It is a vital joint instrument used by the Bhopas, the cleric vocalists of the society gods in Rajasthan. They sing of the stories of the people god, Pabuji, who lived in Rajasthan during the fourteenth century. The Bhopas have a place within the Nayakpeople group. Generally, they portray the story of Pabuji before the Phad/Par, which is a painted material around 15-30 ft. long and 4-5 ft. deep, where works of art portray the existence of Pabuji.