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Yes: India has documented bagpipe traditions of its own, alongside the later presence of Scottish Highland pipes. Southern and Central India’s titti, also called sruti upanga, and Northern India’s mashak or moshuq are distinct instruments with their own regional uses—not simply Indian versions of the Highland pipe.
India’s bagpipes are not one single instrument
The word “bagpipe” describes a broad way of making music: air is stored in a bag and fed to one or more pipes. That shared principle does not make every bagpipe interchangeable. The Metropolitan Museum of Art documents different Indian forms, with separate names, construction details and performance settings.
In the Met’s account of the sruti upanga, the instrument is also known as titti and bhazana sruti; titti is a name used in Andhra Pradesh. The museum describes it as historically played across Southern and Central India. Its separate record for a 19th-century Zitty or Bagpipe discusses Northern Indian forms called mashak, moshuq or mashaq bin. These names should not be collapsed into one standardized “Indian bagpipe.”
How the titti or sruti upanga was used
The sruti upanga’s documented role was often accompaniment rather than carrying the main melody. The Met describes it as a drone instrument: in Tamil Nadu, it accompanied devadasi performers, and in Andhra Pradesh it accompanied singers performing Telugu epics.
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The museum’s account, drawing on a 1982 monograph, says the instrument survived in Andhra Pradesh into the early 1980s. That is evidence of its historical use and persistence at that time, not a claim about whether it is played there today.
The Northern Indian mashak and the Zitty
The Met identifies Northern Indian bagpipes as mashak, moshuq or mashaq bin, and describes their use in temple settings by bhopas serving a deity. Its curatorial description also notes vernacular forms made with goat skin and pipes fitted at the forelegs.
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The museum’s 19th-century Zitty object has unusual sewn-leather and pipe features. Its curator, Cassandre Balosso-Bardin, suggests that some features could be interpreted as reflecting Highland-pipe influence, while emphasizing that the object differs from vernacular examples. That is a qualified possibility about this object—not proof that Indian bagpipes as a whole originated in Scotland.
Highland pipes in India are a separate history
Scottish Highland-style pipes also have a history in India. A 2017 account by the Bagpipe Society describes pipe making in Meerut and relays historical evidence that Lady D’Oyly commissioned a set of Highland pipes in Patna in or before the early 1830s. The account gives a pathway for Highland pipes in India; it does not mark the beginning of the country’s distinct regional bagpipe traditions.
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What the comparison does—and does not—show
Compare the traditions by name, construction, musical role and setting, rather than treating “bagpipe” as a single design. The available descriptions show a titti or sruti upanga used for drone accompaniment in particular regional settings, Northern forms associated with temple use, and Highland-style pipes made or used in India through a different historical pathway. They establish meaningful connections and distinctions, but do not support ranking one tradition as more authentic or treating all Indian forms as copies.
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