Taus (mayuri)

Description

This is a peacock-shaped, bowed long-necked lute that was popular in the Indian courts of the 19th century. This example has a one-piece neck and pegbox made of wood, covered with a wooden fretboard with raised edges (the arched frets, usually of metal, are missing), and a vellum soundtable. There are four pegs at the pegbox for the melody strings, and eleven pegs along the side of the neck for the sympathetic strings. The strings and bridge are missing. The wings of the bird run along the sides of the body and have a carved line indicating their shape, being painted to represent the body feathers in brown, red, yellow and gold colour. On the bottom of the body there is a carved section outlined in red and yellow paint to form the being of the peacock tail feathers, which continues to the neck/fingerboard of the instrument, decorated with eight eye feathers in red, yellow green and gold colour. The pegbox is decorated with bands of painted patterns in red, yellow and dark brown depicting white flowers and red crosses.