[7] The horizontal arched-bow from Sumeria spread west to ancient Greece, Rome and Minoan Crete and eastward to India.

[8] Like Egypt, however, India continued to develop the instrument on its own; undated artwork in caves shows a harp resembling a musical bow, with improvised resonators of different shapes and different numbers of added strings.

in the Middle East and spread along the Silk Road, the arched harp was retained in India until after 800 A.D. (a form of ancient vina), and in Egypt until the Hellenistic Age (after 500 B.C).

[12] Artwork depicting the arched harp that survived in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, and Cambodia comes from Buddhist communities.

The Buddhists took the harp north from India along the silk road to China, where it was painted in the Mogao Caves and Yulin Grottos.

[19][18] Other materials have included gut (animal intestines),[20] plant fiber,[20] braided hemp,[21] cotton cord,[22] silk,[23] nylon,[24] and wire.

[26] A very early depiction of a bow-shaped harp with three strings survives on a clay tablet from the Uruk period at the end of the 4th millennium.

[26][30] The earliest harps appeared in Mesopotamia (vertical) and Iran (horizontal), circa 3300–3000, and researchers haven't determined if one is earlier than the other.

[32] The image shows an apparent framed harp, probably in the hands of a woman, which was found in a group of 20 carvings on floor stones.

[34] An early image of a bow harp can be seen on a cylinder seal from Iran that dates from 3300 to 3100 B.C., found in Chogha Mish (western Iranian province of Khuzestan).

[40] All the wooden parts of the instruments were destroyed, but they could be easily reconstructed based on sketches from excavation, the gold and silver decoration embedded in bitumen that partially covered them, and images on seals.

[43] Upon the re-appearance of Indian pictorial art, bowed harps were immediately visible, so it is possible that the type of instrument was in continuous use until then.

[43] The instruments mentioned as vina or vipanci in the Natya Shastra, the oldest Indian collection of texts on music written in Sanskrit circa 200 B.C.E.

"[33] In India in the rock caves of Bhimbetka have preserved paintings dating from the Mesolithic (older than 5000 BC) to historical times.

[33] Over time, the subject matter of paintings began to change, and "painters shifted from imaginary images to ritual participants.

The cave names are Batki Bundal, Nimbu Bhoj, Rajat Prapat, Kanji Ghat, and Langi Nadi.

[9] According to the descriptions in the Vedas, the same instrumentation as in Choga Mish—bowed harp, flute, drum and song—was used in the 1st millennium B.C.in ancient India to accompany dancers.

[33] Similarly in the shelters in the Pachmarhi hills, all four classes of musical instruments (under Hornbostel-Sachs) can be found in paintings, idiophones, membranophones, chordophones and aerophones.

Buddhists carried the instrument with them into Gandhara in northern India (art survives 1st-4th centuries A.D.), and along the silk road to the civilizations including Balkh in Bactria and Samarkand in Sogdia.

[48] The Mogao caves marked the furthest point of spread of the arched harp eastward into China along the Silk Road.

[53] The bin-baja (bīṇ bājā, also Gogia bana) is a five-string arched harp in the Mandla area of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, played by male musicians of the Pardhan caste to accompany epic songs.

These include the waji of Nuristan, the 5-7 string t'nah or na den or 6-string tinaou of the Karen from Thailand and Myanmar, and the saung of Burma.

[68] In Cambodia a harp called the pin (Khmer: ពិណ, pĭn [pɨn]) was one of the most historically important instruments in Cambodian music.

The body of the harp is made of hard wood hollowed out, resembling a dugout canoe with one end sharper than the other, about two feet long, 5 inches wide.

[73] According to Harry Ignatius Marshall, who was with the Karen prior to 1922, the t'na was used primarily by young men, who frequently carried the harp with them.

[76] Chinese musical researcher Li Mei (李玫) mentioned that in the artwork in China, two kinds of arched harps can be seen.

The bowed harps known from Ancient Egypt from the same period (Egyptian in general bīnꞏt, b.nt, bent, benet, Coptic voina) can be roughly divided into four groups according to their chronological order and their shape.

A small, "ship-shaped" harp also became popular in the New Kingdom, gradually increasing in size over time, and eventually sometimes reaching the height of the human body.

They are found mainly in the parts of Central Africa north of the equator, from the western savannas to Uganda, where nearly 50 different cultures use harps.

[88] The yam arrived from Indonesia and was grown in a "narrow corridor" called the "yam-belt" in "Kenya, Uganda, North Zaire/South Sudan, the Central African Republic, South Chad to Gabon/Guinea/Cameroon/Nigeria.