In a " Gandhar Pancham " ( Imdadkhani, school of Vilayat Khan ) sitar, the bass or kharaj strings are removed and are replaced by a fourth chikari which is tuned to Ga. By playing the chikari strings with this tuning, one produces a chord ( Sa, Sa, Pa, Ga or Sa Sa Ma Ga or Sa, Sa, Dha, Gha depending on the raga ).

In both systems, the ground ( or tonic ), Shadja, Sa, and a pure fifth above, Pancham, Pa, are fixed and essentially sacrosanct tones.

According to some stories, he was nicknamed as Pancham because, as a child, whenever he cried, it sounded in the fifth note ( Pa ) of the Indian musical scale.

Yet another version is that when the veteran Indian actor Ashok Kumar saw a newborn Rahul uttering the syllable Pa repeatedly, he nicknamed the boy Pancham.