Short answers, pulled from the story.
Modern scholarship identifies Khusrau Khan, an 18th-century figure of the Mughal Empire, as the true inventor of the sitar. The earliest written mention of the instrument dates to 1739 AD in Dargah Quli Khan's text Muraqqa-i-Dehli during the reign of Muhammad Shah Rangila.
A standard sitar holds anywhere from 18 to 21 strings total with six or seven played directly by the musician. The remaining strings function as sympathetic resonators known as tarb or tarafdaar that vibrate in response to the played notes underneath the main frets.
Teak wood or tun wood form the neck and faceplate tabli while calabash gourds serve as resonating chambers for the instrument. Bridges may be crafted from deer horn, ebony, camel bone, or synthetic materials depending on the builder's preference.
Ravi Shankar began introducing Indian classical music to Western culture in the late 1950s and early 1960s with his tabla partner Alla Rakha. George Harrison played the instrument on Beatles tracks recorded between 1965 and 1967 including Norwegian Wood and Love You To.
Meend involves pulling the melody string down over curved frets to achieve a seven-semitone range of notes. Vilayat Khan developed this method into a vocal-style imitation called gayaki ang which mimics human singing.