The word "sarod" roughly translates to "beautiful sound" or "melody" in Persian. Although the sarod has been referred to as a "bass rubab" its tonal bandwidth is actually considerably greater than that of the rubab, especially in the middle and high registers. Lalmani Misra opines in his "Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya" that the sarod is a combination of the ancient chitravina, the medieval rubab and modern sursingar. Another instrument , the Sur-rabab, is known to exist, which has the characteristics of both the dhrupad rabab/seniya rabab and the sarod. The sur-rabab has the structure of the dhrupad rabab but has a metal fretboard and uses metal strings.