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Shehnai

Indian reed musical instrument

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ847911
Source-derived summary

The shehnai (also spelled shenai) is a musical instrument from South Asia. It is made of wood, with a double reed at one end and a metal or wooden flared bell at the other end. It was one of the nine instruments found in the Mughal royal court. The shehnai is similar to South India's nadaswaram.

Characteristics

This tubular instrument gradually broadens towards the lower end. It usually has between six and nine holes. It employs one set of quadruple reeds, making it a quadruple reed woodwind. To master the instrument, the musician must employ various and intricate embouchure and fingering techniques.

The shehnai has a range of two octaves, from the A below middle C to the A one line above the treble clef (A3 to A5 in scientific pitch notation). A shehnai is often but not always made with a body of wood or bamboo and a flared metal end.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Shehnai” as indian reed musical instrument. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Shehnai, Indian and reed.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 152-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Shehnai, Indian and reed providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

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Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q847911. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Shehnai” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.