Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
śruti
Introduction References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics
Quizzes
Young girl wearing a demin jacket playing the trumpet (child, musical instruments, Asian ethnicity)
Sound Check: Musical Vocabulary Quiz
Quick Facts
Britannica AI Icon
Adding us as a Preferred Source tells Google you trust our content, so our articles show up more often in your Google Search, Discover feed, and AI Overviews.
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

External Websites

śruti

music
Also known as: shruti
Written and fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
History

śruti, (Sanskrit: “heard”), in the music of India and Pakistan, the smallest tonal interval that can be perceived. The octave, in Indian theory, is divided into 22 śrutis. The division is not precisely equal, but these microtonal units may be compared to Western quarter tones, of which there are 24 to an octave.

The word śruti is used both to indicate a specific note and as a unit of measurement to describe the size of an interval encompassed by two given notes.