The short-necked bowed fiddle, stopped with the fingernail side of the fingers and rich with sympathetic strings — the instrument closest to the human voice in Hindustani music. Historically the vocalist's shadow and the classic lehra instrument for tabla solos, prized because its sustained line keeps the cycle audible with vocal warmth.
For a tabla player, sarangi accompaniment is a lesson in phrase-following: it bends and breathes rather than striking notes. The great solo recordings of the twentieth century very often have a sarangi holding the lehra.