The name derives from Sau Rangi meaning 100 colours. Sarangi is played with a bow and has four main strings and as many as forty resonant strings. It is generally used to accompany singers but can also be a solo instrument. The Sarangi is the most important bowed string instrument of India`s Hindustani classical music tradition. Famously difficult to play and tune, the sarangi has traditionally been used primarily for accompanying singers. Of all Indian instruments, it has the ablilty to imitate vocal ornaments such as gamakas (shakes) and meend (sliding movements), making it a vocal music. The vocal quality of sarangi is in a quite separate category from, which attempts to imitate the nuances of khyal while overall conforming to the structures and usually keeping to the gat compositions of instrumental music.

Carved from a single block of wood, the sarangi has a box-like shape, usually around two feet long and around half a foot wide. The lower resonance chamber is hollowed out and covered with parchment and a decorated strip of leather at the waist which supports the elephant-shaped bridge. The bridge in turn supports the huge pressure of approximately 40 strings. The remaining strings are resonance strings or tarabs, numbering up to around 35, divided into 4 different "choirs". On the lowest level are a diatonic row of 9 tarabs and a chromatic row of 15 tarabs, each encompassing a full octave plus 1-3 extra notes above or below. Between these lower tarabs and the main playing strings are two more sets of longer tarabs, which pass over a small flat ivory bridge at the top of the instrument. These are tuned to the important tones of the raga.