page_title: History of lute-family instruments
section_title: Chinese sanxian
hierarchical_section_title: History of lute-family instruments / Long-necked lutes / Chinese sanxian
caption_attribution_description: Sanxian Traditionelle chinesische Laute Qing-Dynastie Fotograf:de:Benutzer:Dr. Meierhofer Datum: 19.08.2006
context_page_description: Lutes are stringed musical instruments that include a body and "a neck which serves both has a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body".
  The lute family includes not only short-necked plucked lutes such as the lute, oud, pipa, guitar, citole, gittern, mandore, rubab, and gambus and long-necked plucked lutes such as banjo, tanbura, bağlama, bouzouki, veena, theorbo, archlute, pandura, sitar, Tanbur, setar, but also bowed instruments such as the Yaylı tambur, rebab, erhu, and entire family of viols and violins.
  Lutes apparently rose in ancient Mesopotamia prior to 3100 B.C. or were brought to the area by ancient Semitic tribes. The lutes were pierced lutes, long-necked lutes with a neck made from a stick that went into a carved or turtle-shell bowl, the top covered with skin, and strings tied to the neck and instrument's bottom.
  Curt Sachs, a musical historian, placed the earliest lutes at about 2000 B.C. in his 1941 book The History of Musical Instruments. This date was based the archaeological evidence available to him at that time.
context_section_description: It has been suggested that the sanxian, a form of spike lute, may have its origin in the Middle East, and older forms of spike lute were also found in ancient Egypt. Similar instruments may have been present in China as early as the Qin dynasty as qin pipa (pipa was used as a generic term in ancient China for many other forms of plucked chordophones) or xiantao (弦鼗). Some thought that the instrument may have been re-introduced into China together with other instruments such as huqin by the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), however, an image of a sanxian-like instrument was found in a stone sculpture dating from the Southern Song period (1217–79).  The first record of the name "sanxian" may be found in a Ming dynasty text.
  The instrument was transmitted to other East Asian countries, for example to Japan as shamisen.
caption: A sanxian
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