The Sanṭūr, written also as Santoor, is a dulcimer that has only recently entered Indian classical music and is considered one of the most important developments of the twentieth century. In general, the dulcimer is present in many Eurasian musical traditions from China to Hungary, from Romania to Greece, from Iran to India. The basic principle of sound production in the dulcimer was later applied in the creation of the harpsichord and the piano, in which the strings are struck by mechanical hammers.

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Although Kashmir has been invaded and disrupted so many times that much, if not all, of the ancient sciences and traditional culture has been destroyed[1], a particular style of Kashmiri singing, called sūphiyānā kalāma[2], has survived. in which the Sanṭūr is played together with other instruments such as the sāz, the rabāb, the sehtār, the tumbakanari and the ghatā. The sūphiyānā kalāma presents a specific teaching system for both learning singing and practicing on musical instruments and the reference scales called muqam are very similar to the Rāgas of Indian music. The one who plays the Sanṭūr is the leader of the group and uses the instrument while singing, making it basically an accompaniment instrument, although occasionally it is also played as a solo instrument. The sūphiyānā kalāma ki sanṭūr[3], has one hundred strings that extend over twenty-five bridges, each of which houses four strings for each note, two of which are made of harmonic steel and are tuned to a higher octave than the other two made of copper or bronze which are harmonized on the lower octave, where the first group of four strings is tuned on the central tonic gradually rising up to the fifth of the upper octave, thus reaching an interval of an octave and a half. Although the basic structure remains the same, the various models of Sanṭūr adapted for Indian classical music differ from the traditional one of the sūphiyānā kalāma, for example in recently developed models the number of strings can vary from eighty to one hundred, while the number of bridges it was increased to twenty-nine, thirty-one and sometimes even forty-three, varying the number of strings stretched across each bridge accordingly. In fact, some bridges have three strings and some have two and in the lower octave where thicker strings are used, some artists prefer to stretch only one string per bridge. The soundboard of the Sanṭūr is made of mulberry, walnut or rosewood while the lateral boards are made of pine, walnut or even, for low quality instruments, plywood. The bridges are made of rosewood and in the past small strips of ivory, deer horn or bone were fixed on the upper part which served as javarī, while nowadays, given the illegality of the trade in these materials, bone, plastic and metal are used. The strings are fixed on a side-mounted metal tailpiece and after being stretched they are tied to the iron tuning pegs which are located on the diametrically opposite side and are tuned with the help of a particular key specific to the string pegs. Sanṭūr. For the wands, mainly rosewood or mulberry wood is used and in modern Sanṭūr they are heavier than those used in the sūphiyānā kalāma. Most artists prefer to hold the instrument in their lap rather than on a triangular wooden stand of the casimira tradition. This intentionally reduces the instrument's resonance, which helps the player produce more distinct notes, especially when playing notes quickly. The Sanṭūr is probably the only Indian chordophone capable of producing only staccato and does not lend itself to those fundamental techniques for Indian music such as the glissando, for this reason purists do not appreciate the "intrusion" of this instrument in the domain traditional classical music. Sanṭūr instrumentalists are quite aware of these criticisms and have addressed the problem by progressively introducing changes on the instrument or in the playing technique.

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Shiv Kumar Sharma has both the merit of having introduced the Sanṭūr on the stages of Indian classical music and of having contributed to the international diffusion of both the instrument and the musical art in question. His father Umadatta Sharma was a singer and disciple of Bade Ramdasji of Benares Gharānā [4]. Thanks to the teachings oriented simultaneously on both singing and tabla, Shiv Kumar Sharma became an extremely skilled musician and initially finding the instrument rather unsuitable for the classical style, to obtain a better timbre, he increased its dimensions, experimented on various types of wood arriving finally to prefer walnut.