
गन्धर्व
Gandharva
celestial musician spirit
Sanskrit
Regional Lore Archive
Folklore beings originating from this region
Historical and contemporary encounter reports in Himachal Pradesh
CASE #GANDHA-001
A village musician in the Vindhya foothills — the exact settlement unrecorded, the season given only as "after the mango harvest" — stopped playing his sarangi mid-raga and sat motionless for three hours, later reporting that someone had continued the piece from the point where he left off, completing ornaments he had never learned and could not afterward reproduce. His wife, who was present, confirmed the sound but described it as coming from a direction that contained only the open hillside. He gave up the instrument within the month, saying only that he no longer felt it belonged to him.
Source: Oral account collected by Pt. Hariprasad Shukla, Sangeet Natak Akademi field survey, 1963.
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