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 Instruments
almost identical to what we know as
the "guitar"
have been popular for at least 5,000
years. The "guitar" that is
so popular in the Western World has
derrived from ancient mother instruments
which were invented in Central Asia,
Iran. Earliest evidence of instruments
very similar to the Westernized guitar
appear in ancient Susa carvings and
statues recovered from the Iranian Plateau.
The name, guitar, is a combination
of two words. "Guit" comes
from the Sanskrit word "Sangeeta"
meaning "music." The second
half of the word "tar" is
purely Persian and means "chord"
or "string." Sanskrit itself
was primarliy the official language
of the Aryans of Central Asia, that
is, Iran, and was spread along the east,
as far as present Bihar by about 600
BC where it was later to be established
as classical sanskrit of India. So the
word "guitar" is Iranian in
Origin, and so are the ancestral instruments
from which the Westernized guitar derrived.
The word qitara is a word in the Arabic
given to those ancestoral lutes of the
Westernized guitar. The Arabic name
for these lutes, that is, qitara, is
obviously rooted in Persian. The name
"guitar" was first introduced
to the Western World when guitars were
brought into Spain by the Moors after
the 10th century.
The idea that the name "guitar"
also may have been derived from the
word sitar, is therefore invalid. The
word sitar is also purely Persian, meaning
"three-strings." There are
two theories on the creation of the
sitar. One theory states that it evolved
from a purely Indian instrument called
the Chitra Veena. The other theory is
that the instrument was created by a
Persian musician of the Persian court
in India. His name was Khosro Parviz.
The various components of the "sitar"
also bare Persian names. The name "sitar"
is actually the name of a Persian lute
which indeed had three strings but today
has four. The Chitra Veena is depicted
in Indian artwork as the official instrument
of the Hindu goddess Saraswati. The
idea that, the name (along with those
listed above) may be derived ultimately
from the kithara, an instrument from
classical times used in Ancient Greece
and later throughout the Roman Empire,
is thus also invalid. For kitharais
also the Greek version of the Persian
word, guitar. Though it becomes clear
that the name was first Introduced to
Greek through the Persian language when
the two cultures came into contact.
Henceforth, the guitar and its name
were both introduced to other European
nations, such as Spain.
Through the course of time, the name
moved into the English language. And
today the guitar, or what it
has evolved into, is used throughout
the World. The guitar is a minute example
of how Persian culture influenced the
world. Also, it is a fact that the guitar
and its name are both merely two examples
of how the Western World, especially
Ancient Greece, borrowed ideas from
the older and more ancient Central Asian
and even Sumerian ancestors. Another,
more major example is Greece's plagerism
of Central Asian mathematics. The Spanish
vihuela appears to be an intermediate
form between the ancestral guitar and
the modern guitar, with lute-style tuning
and a small guitar-style body, but it
is not clear whether this represents
a transitional form or simply a design
that combined features from the two
families of instruments. The electric
guitar was invented by Adolf Rickenbacker,
with the help of George Beauchamp and
Paul Berth, in 1931. Rickenbacker was
the inventor of the horseshoe-magnet
pickup. However, it was Danelectro that
first produced electric guitars for
the wider public. Danelectro also pioneered
Tube Amp technology.
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