Alauddin Khan

He was born, most likely circa 1881, at Shibpur village in Brahmanbaria, East Bengal, to Sabdar Hossain Khan, an amateur sitarist; he has also been described as born in 1862, 1869 or 1871, and the article follows the evidence for circa 1881.¹ Drawn to music from infancy, he frequented the religious and musical gatherings at a local Shiva temple and the morning and evening prayer sessions where visiting sadhus sang bhajans, and at about eight he ran away from home to join a Jatra troupe, reaching Dacca with them.¹

At about fourteen he reached Calcutta, where he trained for some seven years under the vocalist Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya (Nulo Gopal), and after his teacher's death turned to instruments, spending seven years under Amritlal Dutta and learning from many specialists.¹ Moved to tears by Ahmad Ali Khan's rendering of Raag Todi, he became his disciple, served him for four years, and travelled with him to Rampur, where — after six fruitless months and the intercession of a sympathetic maulavi with Nawab Hamid Ali Khan — he was formally accepted by the beenkar Wazir Khan, who taught him sarod, rabab and sursringar.¹

Summoned to Maihar as Maharaja Brijnath Singh's personal tutor and court musician, he settled there in 1918, refusing a salary for teaching and accepting instead a plot of land.¹ His teaching was famously rigorous: students lived with him in seclusion, were forbidden outside music and audiences for years, and were held back from advanced forms like the alap for decades while they mastered scales, rhythmic patterns and compositions.¹ In 1918 he founded the Maihar Band from children orphaned by the influenza pandemic, creating instruments for it such as the Nal Tarang and the Sitar-Banjo; in 1935 he toured Europe with Uday Shankar's ballet troupe.¹ He modified the sarod's stringing, expanded the technical range of sitar and sarod, and created new ragas, among them Hemant, Hem-Bihag and Madan-Manjari, named after his wife.¹

In religion he was considered broad-minded. He was deeply devoted to the Maa Sharda Devi temple atop the Trikuta Hills in Maihar; when he performed his daily prayer or namaz, he would send Nikhil Banerjee to his room for his Gayatri Japa, and Banerjee recalled Khan uttering namaz while crying out "Ma, Ma" to Goddess Saraswati.¹ His burial procession was attended by Hindus and Muslims alike, and the chief priest of the Maa Sharda temple joined it.¹

He was elected a Fellow of the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1954, received the Padma Bhushan in 1958 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1971, the first Hindustani classical musician to receive it.¹ Allauddin Khan died on 6 September 1972 at Maihar, where a tomb was built for him and his wife in the premises of his residence.¹

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