Padma Bhushan awardee, Ustad Sabri Khan played which of the following musical instruments?

Correct — C. Ustad Sabri Khan was a sarangi player, the short-necked bowed instrument stopped with the fingernails that long accompanied khayal and thumri singing.

He was among the musicians who carried it out of the accompanist's seat and on to the solo concert stage.

Option (c) names the instrument he played.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Tabla — Tabla is a pair of hand drums, the treble dayan and the bass bayan, with no strings and no bow.
• (b)
  Sarod — Sarod is a plucked lute with a fretless metal fingerboard, sounded with a plectrum. It is Ali Akbar Khan's instrument, not Sabri Khan's.
• (d)
  Santoor — Santoor is a hammered box zither from Kashmir, struck with light wooden mallets, most closely associated with Pandit Shivkumar Sharma.

Hindustani instruments sort by how the sound is produced, and that sorting settles most of these pairing questions.

Bowed: sarangi, esraj, violin.
Plucked: sitar, sarod, veena, surbahar.
Struck: santoor, tabla, pakhawaj.
Blown: bansuri, shehnai.

The sarangi is bowed, carries a set of sympathetic strings under the playing strings, and is stopped with the nails rather than the fingertips. That technique is why its tone is described as the closest of any instrument to the human voice.

Key facts

• Ustad Sabri Khan was a sarangi player and a Padma Bhushan awardee.
• The sarangi is a bowed instrument whose strings are stopped with the fingernails.
• Pandit Ram Narayan is another sarangi exponent who established it as a solo concert instrument.

Common traps

• Guessing sarod because the surname Khan is shared by exponents of several instruments.
• Confusing sarangi with sarod, which are bowed and plucked respectively.

No directly related past PYQ was found.