Bandurka

Bandurka is a traditional Ukrainian musical instrument, another name is ``Mama's kobza. It is a small stringed instrument of major scale. His image can be seen in folk paintings "Cossack Mamai".
The shape and size of the bandura, as well as the number of strings, can be different.
==Ancient Mamai kobzas==
The first image of such an instrument can be found on one of the frescoes of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, 11th century.Andrii Horniatkevich. Kobza, bandura, kobza-bandura, "Kobza" and (again) kobza.— Folklore Notebooks, 3-4.2010
Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine the order of the instrument behind the fresco.
Before the appearance of a new musical system in Ukraine, i.e., approximately from the 17th to the 18th centuries, there could be two to four strings on the kobza. Such conclusions can be drawn as a result of the analysis of the works of Mykola Lysenko, Petr Sokalsky, Oleksandr Famintsyn, Hnat Khotkevich, as well as catalogs of ancient musical instruments and anthologies of world musical instruments, researches of modern musicologists. 
Since the dum accompaniment is often built on a fifth, we can assume that the original two-string kobza had a fifth tuning, for example, "re-la". The three-string had a fifth "re-A" and another A string to play the melody.
The four-string "Mamaiv" kobza is a product of the late Middle Ages or the early Renaissance.
Probably, its tuning repeated the tuning of the first four strings kobza Ostap Veresaya —re-sol-la-re.
Such an instrument with a round body and 4 strings called balalaika Cossack () is recorded in the American Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments in 1888 Mary E. Brown, Wm. Adams Brown/ Musical Instruments and Their Homes (with 270 illustrations in pen and ink) A coplite catalog of the collection of musical instruments now in the possession of Mrs. J/ Crosby Brown of New York. New York, 1888? -380 p. — P. 343, 345.
== Bandurka with major tuning of the XVIII–XX centuries ==
The next evolutionary stage was a five-stringed instrument with a major scale.
A historically recorded musical instrument with the name "bandurka" was kept in the everyday lives of Ukrainian settlers on the territory of the Russian Federation during the 18th and early 18th centuries. XX centuries. Had 5 strings.' It was distributed in the northern regions of the Urals, the Vyatka province, Western Siberia, and the Republic of Komi. Instruments of this shape and size are also found on the ancient "Mamay" dating back to the beginning of the 19th century. But in Ukraine, during the 19th century, the instrument gradually "dissolved" into newer publicly available forms - a seven-string guitar and a three-string balabaika, which had the same tuning.
Another comment by M. Pryvalov, quoted by I. Shramko, attracts attention:
... Bandurka is something like a five-stringed Ural balalaika; it is very possible that four
Category:Ukrainian musical instruments
Category:Alphabet instruments