Sahrdaya Arts TrustHyderabad

A Quarterly Journal of Indian DanceVolume: XVII, No. 3 July-September 2017

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Editor: Madhavi Puranam

RNI No. APENG2001/04294ISSN 2455-7250

Chief EditorMadhavi Puranam

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FoundersG. M. Sarma

M. Nagabhushana Sarma

Anuradha Jonnalagadda (Scholar, Kuchipudi dancer)

Avinash Pasricha (Former Photo Editor, SPAN)C.V. Chandrasekhar (Bharatanatyam Guru, Padma Bhushan)Kedar Mishra (Poet, Scholar, Critic)Kiran Seth (Padma Shri; Founder, SPIC MACAY)K. K. Gopalakrishnan (Critic, Scholar)Leela Venkataraman (Critic, Scholar, SNA Awardee)Mallika Kandali (Sattriya dancer, Scholar)Pappu Venugopala Rao (Scholar, Former Associate D G,American Institute; Secretary, Music Academy)Reginald Massey (Poet, FRSA & Freeman of London)Sunil Kothari (Scholar, Padma Shri & SNA Awardee)Suresh K. Goel (Former Director General, ICCR)

Advisory Board

Cover, Design & LayoutShakeel Ahmed

Cover Photo:Mandakranta Bose

Nartanam, founded by Kuchipudi KalaKendra, Mumbai, now owned andpublished by Sahrdaya Arts Trust,Hyderabad, is a quarterly which providesa forum for scholarly dialogue on abroad range of topics concerning Indiandance. Its concerns are theoretical as wellas performative. Textual studies, dancecriticism, intellectual and interpretativehistory of Indian dance traditions are itsfocus. It publishes performance reviewsand covers all major events in the fieldof dance in India and notes and commentson dance studies and performancesabroad. The opinions expressed in the articlesand the reviews are the writers’ own anddo not reflect the opinions of the editorialcommittee. The editors and publishersof Nartanam do their best to verify theinformation published but do not takeresponsibility for the absolute accuracyof the information.

PatronEdward R. Oakley

Chief ExecutiveVikas Nagrare

All articles, photographs and other materials, appearing in Nartanam, whether in whole or in part, in any form areexclusive copyright of Sahrdaya Arts Trust unless otherwise specified, and may not be reproduced in any form or stored

in any electronic or retrievable format without prior written consent.

Photo Courtesy: Mandakranta Bose

NARTANAMVolume: XVII, No. 3 July-September 2017

CONTENTS

Editorial/ 7

Mandakranta Bose: A Profile / 11

Mandakranta Bose : An InterviewMADHAVI PURANAM / 25

COLLECTION OF ARTICLES BY MANDAKRANTA BOSE

Bharata on Dance: The Key Concepts / 36

Recovering Kohala: The Expansion of the Performing Arts Discourse / 51

Defining Dance: Sarngadeva’s New Approach / 60

The Idea of Uparupaka in the Sanskrit Tradition:Dramatic Dances and Musical Plays /72

The Body as Paintbrush: The Idiom of Classical Indian Dance / 95

The Performing Arts of Mughal India: Dance / 104

Sastra and Prayoga:Theory and Practice in the Performance of Classical Indian Dancing / 109

An Art of One’s Own: Heritage, Gender, and Classical Indian Dance / 118

The Idea of Anukarana in the Jaina Tradition / 127

The Textual Source of Odissi: Nartananirnaya / 137

The Dramatic Art of Lasya / 144

BOOK REVIEW

Movement and Mimesis by Mandakranta BoseKAPILA VATSYAYAN / 156

PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

Delhi DiaryLEELA VENKATARAMAN / 162

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EDITORIAL

A recent visit to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford revealed a unique bronzeto me, the Devi dancing in a flaming surround, eastern India, early Pala style, AD700-800. The bronze intrigues me for I have never seen a goddess dancing inthe ring of fire, the prabhamandala. That image is reserved for Shiva as Nataraja.The bronze throws up many queries, firstly of what it represents, the symbolism,the era in which it was made and dance in those times, the literature on dance ofthat period, the Pala dynasty and dance under its patronage, the gender reversalfrom the god of dance to the goddess of dance, and so spirals on the possiblescope of research. While I await the details on the Devi from the Jameel Centreat the Ashmolean which was prompt in responding to my email requesting formore details, I felt the need to write about the incredible bronze for two reasons:

One, the subject itself, the dancing Devi arouses curiosity. Two, the need forIndian museums to be more proactive in terms of audience engagement and bemore interactive with many activities other than the mere listless display of price-less objects. There should be more talks, guided tours, interactive audio andvideo guides, documentaries, workshops, focused talks about the objects ondisplay, and thematic talks and displays of cultural artifacts. There should becourses on conservation, specially curated exhibitions, and so on.

I have to recount here the time when I visited the National Museum in Delhiand wanted to know something specific about a painting from Nepal, not ondisplay but present in their collection. I was turned away rudely for it was pre-sumed that I was not a bonafide scholar and researcher for I was not a studentor a teacher at any university. An ordinary citizen apparently has no right toknow more about his or her own culture. The objects of culture and history arethe property of museums and governments entombed in lifeless galleries.

We are glad to present the vast work of scholar Mandakranta Bose in thisspecial issue on her. A great authority on dance literature in the Sanskrit tradi-tion, Mandakranta’s work exemplifies the vast scope of academic investigationinto the history, performance technique and grammar, and aesthetics of dance

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through the study of dance literature which exists extensively in Sanskrit. Wehave chosen mostly the articles written by her which have not been published sofar and have tried to do justice to the vast corpus of her work. Right fromBharata to Kohala to Sarngadeva, or Jayapa, Mandakranta expounds on theirwork with authority and presents insights into dance, its theory and aesthetics.She explores the textual sources of the present day dance forms and at the sametime investigates the ownership of Indian classical dance and its performance onthe global stage.

An interesting point made by Mandakranta in one of her articles, "Sastraand Prayoga: Theory and Practice in the Performance of Classical IndianDancing", published in this issue, summarizes the need for academic excursioninto dance: A long time ago, the 14thcentury Jaina author Sudhakalasa lamentedin his Sangitopanishatsaroddhara that the sastra of natya had fallen into apoor state because scholars who wrote on natya or nrtta did not understandwhat actors and dancers did, while actors and dancers had no idea what thescholars were talking about. She quotes from the Sangitopanishatsaroddhara,"As time went by, dancers became ignorant and the scholars no longer remainedpractitioners. Without a dancer there can be no practice and there is no successwithout the [knowledge] of sastra."

Things do not seem to have changed ever since. Most dancers don’t readmuch for they do not find the need to and scholars and dancers are forever atloggerheads. We at Nartanam try to bridge the gap but an interesting fact is thatour readers do not include many Indian dancers. They make an attempt to buyNartanam only when a picture of theirs appears or when they have been re-viewed in our pages. No matter, in these hard times for print magazines Nartanamis heavily subsidized for purchase. Of course, there is a passionate raving bydancers about the great job that Nartanam is doing but I am afraid none of itcomes actually from reading it.

It is a great pleasure to inform our readers that Nartanam is organizing aConclave on Dance – NARTANAM – from 5 – 8 October 2017, in Hyderabad.A serious academic pursuit of dance combined with a performance festival withthe best of scholars and performers from across the world under one roof is theunique feature of the Conclave. Our mission is to make dance, a popular culture,through audience outreach and education. We advocate the intrinsic value ofdance and its distinctive capacity to evoke aesthetic pleasure. The Conclave willstrive to provide a platform for the dancers, the scholars, the spectators and the

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patrons to come together to experience and explore dance. It is, perhaps, theonly one of its kind to present group choreography in various styles apart fromshowcasing the traditional solo format and the guru-sishya parampara. Thedancers drawn from different styles will explore new vistas in responding to thechallenges of our times. They will also exemplify the inherent resilience of thedance traditions to cope with new ideas and changing contexts rendering theduality of the classical and the contemporary irrelevant.

The Conclave will feature the performances of renowned dancers, GuruMadhavi Mudgal and Arushi Mudgal, Guru Jayarama Rao and Reddi Laxmi,Guru Parswanath Upadhye and group, and the renowned production KeibulLamjao from the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy, Imphal, Manipur.Nartanam has carefully chosen the acclaimed maestros to present exemplarydance to the Hyderabad audience.

The other major component of the Conclave is the Seminar onNrttaratnavali, an important treatise on dance and music of the Kakatiya times.Renowned scholars like Mandakranta Bose from Vancouver, R. Ganesh andVidya Shimladka from Bengaluru, Pappu Venugopala Rao from Chennai, BharatGupt from Delhi, Anuradha Jonnalagadda, Yashoda Thakore, and Kalakrishnafrom Hyderabad and national critics like Leela Venkataraman, Manjari Sinha,Sunil Kothari, eminent personalities who have straddled the world of art likeSuresh K. Goel, Kiran Seth, Photographer Avinash Pasricha from Delhi, K. K.Gopalakrishnan from Kerala, Kedar Mishra from Bhubaneswar and many oth-ers will be participating which is sure to create a vibrant discussion on the textand generate valuable academic information. The Kakatiya Heritage Trust, whichhas recently published a translation of the treatise Nrttaratnavali in English, isthe co-host of the Seminar.

The details of the Conclave can be obtained from our websitewww.nartanam.in. We look forward to seeing our readers at the Conclave–NARTANAM.

Madhavi Puranam

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Special Issueon

Mandakranta Bose

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Mandakranta Bose

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Mandakranta Bose: A Profile

Mandakranta BoseMA, MLitt, DPhil, FRAS, FRSC

Education

1990 D.Phil. in Oriental Studies (Sanskrit), Somerville College, Oxford University.

1979 M.A. in Comparative Literature, University of British Columbia.

1964 B.Litt. in Oriental Studies (Sanskrit), Somerville College, Oxford University.

1959 M.A. in Sanskrit; special fields: smriti and mimamsa (Hindu sacred lawand codes of conduct); Calcutta University.

1957 B.A. honours in Sanskrit, Sanskrit College, Calcutta University.

Honours

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, elected 2007. Fellow of the Royal AsiaticSociety, London, elected 1990.

Professor Emerita, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia.

Personal information: Canadian citizen.

Academic positions and memberships

Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research, UBC, 1999-2003, resumed2012. Senior Fellow, Green College, University of British Columbia.

Faculty Associate, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, UBC.

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I met Mandakranta Bosea couple of years ago in Delhiwith the daunting task ofinterviewing her. It was nomean feat in face of theformidable span of her workand a vast corpus of herachievements and writings.This issue of Nartanam is aspecial on MandakrantaBose's work on danceliterature in the Sanskrittradition and carries a wideselection of her articles. Mostof the academic questions onmy agenda are extensivelyanswered through her wellwritten and incisive papers.However, this interview hopesto savour the essence of herpersona. Here is a glimpse of

the petite and affable scholar of no mean achievements, soft spoken, and equipped

Mandakranta Bose : An InterviewMADHAVI PURANAM

MADHAVI PURANAM is the Chief Editor of Nartanam. A trained Kuchipudi dancer, she haspostgraduate degrees in Business Administration, and Performing Arts. Her book, An IndianAnalysis of Aesthetics: The Dance, the Dancer and the Spectator with a foreword by KapilaVatsyayan, was published in 2015 by Abhinav Publications, New Delhi. She is a recipient of theSenior Research Fellowship, and the Tagore Scholarship, awarded by the Ministry of Culture,Government of India. She is currently working on a book on Arts Management in India.

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This article was earlier published in a collection of essays by Mandakranta Bose titled, Speaking ofDance: The Indian Critique: Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2001. It is being reproduced with permissionfrom the author and courtesy D. K. Printworld, New Delhi.

Bharata on Dance: The Key ConceptsMANDAKRANTA BOSE

The earliest source of our knowledge of Indian dancing is the Natyasastra ofBharata, whose influence on all later writers proved to be so deep, extensive andlasting that in all Sanskrit works on dance we find substantially the same materialas in the Natyasastra, both as to the principles and to the technique of dancing.Bharata’s text is primarily aimed at discussing the origin, nature and techniques ofdrama, and he deals with music and dancing essentially as subsidiary orcomplementary arts for enhancing dramatic performances. For him dance is partof dramaturgy and to be employed as an ornamental overlay upon drama. Theaesthetic concepts of dance that Bharata lays down and the techniques that hedescribes have remained central to all subsequent discussions on dancing. Alllater authors elaborated upon Bharata’s account. Their writings testify to acontinuous process of accretion in the form of the assimilation of new styles andtechniques through the ages, but the basic concepts remain unaltered from Bharata’stime. Any discussion of the dance in India must therefore begin by clarifying whatBharata’s own understanding of these concepts was before examining the ideasof those who followed him.

As noted above, Bharata’s work offers a comprehensive view of the performingarts, and he valorizes the knowledge that he is imparting by tracing it to a legendaryorigin, which allows him to elevate it to the status of sacred knowledge. That iswhy he calls his text the fifth Veda, the natyaveda: natyakhyam pancamamvedam. . . (NS. 1. 15). When he designates dance as an introduction to dramaticperformance, he is drawing upon the legend that he records, according to which itwas Siva himself who prescribed the addition of dance to the preliminaries of a

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Recovering Kohala: The Expansion of thePerforming Arts DiscourseMANDAKRANTA BOSE

This article has not been published so far. It is being published for the first time in Nartanam.

Kohala is an oft-quoted name in early Sanskrit dramaturgical texts. In his seminaltext, Natyasastra (NS), a treatise written perhaps around 2ndcentury C. E., Bharatadeclares, sesamuttaratantrena kohalastu karishyati (NS. 37.18), that is, Kohalais to describe the rest in an Uttaratantra, as a supplement to Bharata’s ownwork on the art of drama.

Unfortunately, Kohala’s texts have not yet been found. Indeed, despite theimportance imputed to Kohala by Bharata, Kohala seems to have slipped out ofsight for centuries until approximately the 10th century C.E., when Abhinavaguptareintroduced him to the discourse of the performing arts, acknowledging hisimportance by using extensive quotations from his works. In his commentary onchapter 2 of the NS, Abhinava explains: brahmeva kavi sakra iva prayojayitabharata iva natyacarya kohaladaya iva natah, which testifies to Kohala’sreputation as a performer as well. One reason for Kohala’s disappearance fromthe scholarly scene may be that the long period of at least eight centuries, whichseparate Bharata and Abhinava, seems to have produced hardly any sastra onthe art and technique of natya. The only extant text from that period on theperforming arts is the Vishnudharmottara Purana (VDP), which has a sectionon dance, entitled nrttasutra. This section of the text, very likely written around5th century, describes a tradition close to Bharata’s. Kohala is not mentioned inthis text. The only major author to refer to Kohala before the 10th century authorsAbhinava and Dhananjaya is Damodaragupta, the 8th century author fromKashmir.1 In his Kuttanimatam he refers to Kohala as a kusilava, that is, anexpert in the performing arts and to Bharata as an expert in natya: natakabhumaubharatah kusilavah kohaladayah munayah (verse 876).

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In the history of writings in Sanskrit on dance and music, Sarngadeva occupiesa seminal position. Bharata, with whom the extant discourse on dramatic artoriginated, left his mark by establishing a tradition that he recorded, which hasworked and still is working as the framework for every writer on dance. Not onlythe academic writer but even the practicing artist of classical dancing in Indiafeels happier to be able to claim a connection with Bharata and his work. What,then, is Sarngadeva’s contribution to our knowledge of dance? Why do we thinkthat he has made a contribution that is worth our discussion? And how, if at all,does Sarngadeva deviate from the established path or tradition set out by Bharata?Is his contribution conceptual in the sense that our understanding of the art haschanged by what Sarngadeva has to say on the tradition that he calls desi? Or, isit an augmentation of the content of dance that he achieves by describing inSangitaratnakara (SR) movements that had been fully recorded before or hadbeen differently described? To answer these questions and to trace the evolutionof dance in India, we must begin with a clear idea of dance, its nature and contentsas recorded by Bharata and by those who emulated him in describing dance. It isagainst this background of an established discourse of dance that we shall bestunderstand what it is that Sarngadeva has given to posterity in SR. Taking a broaderscope, this will also provide the perspective to the process of evolution to whichSarngadeva bears witness.

Until the 10th century Bharata’s was the only tradition that appeared in thetexts dealing with dancing, although in other types of literature we come acrossterms pointing to different traditions of dancing that obviously existed but were

Defining Dance:Sarngadeva’s New Approach

MANDAKRANTA BOSE

This article was first published in the Proceedings of the Sarngadeva Festival by the Sangeet NatakAkademi, Delhi, 1998, in the book, Sarngadeva and His Sangita-ratnakara (pp. 238-251) edited byPrem Lata Sharma (Sangeet Natak Akademi, 1998).It is being published here with the consent of theauthor and permission from Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi.

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Uparupaka, literally a minor play, is a term that appeared in the late medievalSanskritic tradition to denote a form of dramatic art significantly different fromrupaka, a major dramatic form described by Bharata and followed by others.Bharata, with whom the extant discourse on dramatic art originated, left his markby establishing a tradition that he recorded, a record that has worked and still isworking as the framework for every writer on dramatic art. This work, theNatyasastra, is the seminal text for the arts of dance and drama,1 for it is this textthat laid down the framework of discourse that has guided not only descriptiveaccounts but theoretical speculations in these fields. The influence of this text hasbeen so profound on all subsequent works on the subject that not one of the manytreatises on dance or drama has attempted to describe them without substantiallyborrowing from the Natyasastra.

The term uparupaka came into existence much later than the term rupaka,which Bharata applied to drama. He describes in detail ten major forms of dramabased on four types of presentation, which he calls abhinaya, presented throughdifferent media: angika (body-movements), vacika (verbal), aharya (costumeand stage properties) and sattvika (emotional expression). Bharata’s descriptionof drama includes dance with several chapters on stylized body movements. Hedescribes dance in the context of the preliminaries of a play and he seems to havesuggested that stylized body movements are necessary for dramatic presentation.2

Abhinavagupta, the tenth century commentator on the Natyasastra, correlatessome of the karanas (dance-units) with particular dramatic characters.3 Bharata’sown interests seem to have been in the broader principles of stage presentation.

In Bharata’s view body-movements were integral part of a dramaticperformance where music played a less important part. He classifies body-

The Idea of Uparupaka in the SanskritTradition: Dramatic Dances and MusicalPlaysMANDAKRANTA BOSE

This article has not been published so far. It is being published for the first time in Nartanam.

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The central importance of the human body in the classical Indian arts is evidentenough without belabouring the point. On temple walls, in frescoes and miniatures,on the dance floor and the stage, the body appears in the richest variety imaginable.But whether its place in the various arts is underwritten by some common conceptof it is not as easy to determine. A fundamental difference in artistic approachesto the body becomes obvious when we compare the arts that represent the body,such as sculpture and painting, and the arts that use the body as their medium,such as dancing and acting. Is the body the object of creativity or its instrument,the model or the paintbrush? Or can it possibly be both? If so, what unites thetwo approaches?

Speaking of the nature and function of art, the authors in the Sanskritic tradition,which dates back to the earliest known historical period, took as a basic tenet theinterrelationship of all artistic genres. As Kapila Vatsyayan has observed, althoughthe artistic endeavours of India were diverse, all art forms were correlated in ageneral theory of art.1 This unity seems to be conceived in terms of the affectiveand cognitive functions of works of art, that is, the rasa or affects engenderedand the enlightenment attained. But whether there can be any methodologicalunity between different art forms at some deep, conceptual level is not clear. Thecultural history of early India shows that some sense of the commonality of thearts evidently seeped from the scholarly realm to the social, where proficiency ina variety of arts was considered a necessary qualification for cultivated persons.Not everybody could be expected to be in command of all sixty-four arts, orseventy-two according to some, as would be a talented courtesan, but more than

The Body as Paintbrush: The Idiom ofClassical Indian DanceMANDAKRANTA BOSE

This article has not been published so far. It is being published for the first time in Nartanam.. Thepaper was presented at the 225th American Oriental Society's Conference, New Orleans, March2015.

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Preamble

My father the late Professor Makhanlal Roy Choudhury was a scholar ofIslamic Studies who shed a great deal of light on many areas of Mughal governanceand culture. His special interest lay in the life and times of Akbar, the greatMughal Emperor. One of his many publications was Music in Islam,1 whichfascinated me. As a tribute to him I am presenting here a short note on a dancestyle that evolved and flourished during the Mughal era, especially in the reign ofAkbar. That style was recorded in a Sanskrit treatise by a contemporary authorcalled Pundarika Vitthala who was well versed in the sastras of dance and music,and he dedicated his work, Nartananirnaya,to Akbar.2

Dance in 16th century India

Around the 16th century a few dance styles came to India from Persia. Thesedances absorbed Indian myths and some technical features from the existingclassical styles of Indian dancing. From this amalgamation emerged a new stylewhich gradually crystallized as the classical style now known as Kathak. Thisnovel style was created without the heavy emphasis on the elaborate hand gesturesand eye movements that were the hallmark of the ancient classical styles ofIndian dancing. It is significantly different in its approach from other styles prevalentin India at that time. Since then that style, the Kathak of our times, has furtherevolved, especially in Northern India, and it continues to enchant audiences inIndia and beyond. Until the 16th century the dance tradition recorded by Bharatain his Natyasastra was the only recognized sastric one. Subsequent authors whowrote on the tradition by and large followed Bharata. A number of these works,dating from the 10th to the 15th century also make brief references to regional

The Performing Arts of Mughal India:DanceMANDAKRANTA BOSE

This article has not been published so far. It is being published for the first time in Nartanam.

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A long time ago, the 14th century Jaina author Sudhakalasa lamented in hisSangitopanishatsaroddhara that the sastra of natya had fallen into a poorstate because scholars who wrote on natya or nrtta did not understand whatactors and dancers did, while actors and dancers had no idea what the scholarswere talking about.1

kale sminnartaka murkha vidvamsah sadhaka na hi /na nartakanvinabhyasah sastrat siddhirna tam vina // (SUS. 6.129)

As time went by, dancers became ignorant and the scholars no longer remainedpractitioners. Without a dancer there can be no practice and there is no successwithout the [knowledge] of sastra.

The history of the classical performing arts of India shows that thisapprehension of a disjunction between precept and practice was not altogetherunfounded. Beginning with Bharata’s Natyasastra, a substantial number ofaccounts of dance and drama in Sanskrit have come down to us through the pasttwo millennia. Barring a few, most of them are general descriptive accounts thatdo not offer much useful instruction to practicing artists. For this reason there isconsiderable uncertainty, confusion even, concerning the respective authority ofdifferent texts and their guidelines for dancers. All the texts offer us detailedinformation on the technique of dancing but how that information applies to presentday dancing has not been determined with any academic rigour so far.2 Theproblem is further compounded by the fact that all dance literature is ultimatelyderived from the Natyasastra, which therefore has been unreservedly nominatedas the direct source of the classical tradition of dancing. Every dancer of modernIndia claims to draw his or her art from the Natyasastra, and their claim does hold

Sastra and Prayoga:Theory and Practice in the Performanceof Classical Indian DancingMANDAKRANTA BOSE

This article has not been published so far. It is being published for the first time in Nartanam.

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I have been studying Classical Indian dance, its theory and practice, for overfour decades and one question has haunted me all these years: who owns this art?Can the performer–who is almost always a female–use dance as a vehicle ofpersonal sensibility, her individual reading of aesthetic, spiritual or politicalexperience? Or is it her master or the theorists of dance, who have been traditionallymales, who determine what she is going to dance, and how? Through the decadesof my study of the texts and iconography of dance to understand the evolution ofthe art I have not found that a female dancer ever owned her dance in the sensein which I am using the word “owned.” My sense of what I think of as thisdislocation of the performer from the performance has only strengthened throughmy more recent study of gender and performance issues in the Ramayana, andof classical Indian dance in the South Asian diaspora.

But first let me go back to the gendering of dance in the Indian tradition bytelling you a story.

Some years ago I was talking to one of the greatest dancers and dance teachersof contemporary India, late Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. Telling me how hestarted as a dancer, he recalled how furious his father was when he was told thathis son wanted to be a dancer. “What?” he said to Kelucharan’s teacher, “youwant my son to sway his body like a woman?” Nothing proves as well as thisanecdote does how fixed is the feminization of dance. Kelucharan’s father’sresponse is not an unusual one in India or anywhere else. Putting gender labels onaction and belief is the rule rather than the exception and the performing arts arenot immune to it. I would even say that the performing arts are particularly open

An Art of One’s Own: Heritage, Gender,and Classical Indian Dance*

MANDAKRANTA BOSE

This article has not been published so far. It is being published for the first time in Nartanam.

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From the earliest times, anukarana or imitation was a central donnee ofIndian art. Its purpose was twofold, religious and instructional, as we see in theNatyasastra of Bharata and the writings of his numerous followers. Theseobjectives were not alien to the Jaina tradition in its early days, although in latertimes the imitation of sacred events fell under prohibition. The importance ofanukarana is clear in early Jaina texts such as the Rajaprasniya Sutra, whichdescribes thirty-two natyavidhis. Thirty-one of them are bhakticitras, in whichdevotees portray beautiful objects through gestures and action as offerings toMahavira. But the thirty-second natyavidhi imitates Mahavira’s entire life in anobvious attempt to instruct and elevate the assembly spiritually. Given the well-known prohibition of the representation of Mahavira in later times, this natyavidhiraises a serious question about the admissibility and use of anukarana.

The enactment of Mahavira’s life is evidence that anukarana was as much acentral element of Jaina art as it was of Indian art in general. Eminent Jainawriters on poetics and dramaturgy such as Vagbhata, Hemacandra, Ramacandraand Gunacandra took it for granted. Nor did any Jaina writer on the arts object tothe respect paid to dramatic and other performing arts in the Brahminic tradition,in which it was held that through the mimetic power of the dramatic artsworshippers could seek spiritual connections. The spiritual importance ofrepresenting divine beings through dance, drama and music is attested, to takeonly one instance, by the widespread performances of Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda.The presence of the 32nd natyavidhi suggests that both the spiritual and theaesthetic functions of dramatic art were acknowledged within Jaina ethics in

The Idea of Anukarana in the JainaTraditionMANDAKRANTA BOSE

This article was first published in Speaking of Dance: The Indian Critique. Delhi: D. K.Printworld. 2001. It is being reproduced here with permission from the author and courtesy D. K.Printworld, New Delhi.

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The classical dance traditions of India are fortunate in possessing several recordsof the art that illuminate the history of their evolution. An especially illuminatingtext is Nartananirnaya by Pundarika Vitthala, a 16th century Sanskrit text ondance and music. It is a unique work in that it records all the recognized styles ofdancing prevalent in India in Pundarika’s time and a rich source of informationabout the classical styles of dancing that have come down to present-day India.1

This is particularly true of Odissi and Kathak, which are major styles of present-day classical Indian dancing. Here I will focus on Odissi. When we examine thetechnical details given in Nartananirnaya we find that the stances, musical scores,individual movements and short dance sequences ascribed to one of the stylesclosely match those in Odissi.

Although the term Odissi was not used at that time, the evidence ofNartananirnaya helps us establish for Odissi a line of unbroken continuity withthe past. This text is thus an invaluable source for finding out what Odissi was likeat a very early point in its evolution.

The Natyasastra of Bharata (believed to have in written around 2nd centuryC.E.) is the fountainhead of all the extant manuals on dancing.2 Nevertheless, itdoes not describe any complete dance sequence that might enable us to actuallyvisualize what a composition looked like in Bharata’s time. Bharata’s main concernwas to describe the movements of every single part of the body. Combined together,these movements gradually build up to larger movements and finally to shortsequences. It seems that the intention of Bharata was to give the artist the freedomto choreograph his or her own piece with the help of the technical detail he provided

The Textual Source ofOdissi:Nartananirnaya*

MANDAKRANTA BOSE

First published in Speaking of Dance: The Indian Critique. Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2001.Being published here with permission from the author and courtesy D. K. Printworld, New Delhi.

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There is some confusion in the understanding of the term lasya today and itsuse in the critical literature of the performing arts of classical India. It is regardedtoday as a feminine dance supposedly described by Bharata in the Natyasastra(NS).1 There is, however, no authority for this view in the Natyasastra, which, onthe contrary, compares lasya in the nineteenth chapter with bhana and prakarana,which are forms of drama:

bhanakrtivat lasyam vijneyam tvekapatraharya ca/prakaranavad uhya karya samstavayuktam vividhabhavam//

NS, 19.118

Lasya is to be defined as a form similar to that of bhana and it is to be actedby one person. As in prakarana, its plot [lit: the function] is a conjectured one,which relates to praising and a variety of emotions.

The emphasis here is on the dramatic quality of lasya. It can be divided intoparts that lend themselves to dramatic representation and constitute dramatic action.More than just a performing style, lasya is compared to such dramatic genres asnataka, bhana, and prakarana. Its association with dancing is not evident fromBharata’s definition, nor its identity – later taken for granted – as a feminine art.

The confusion is of long standing. But it is not one authorized by Bharata. Thedramatic quality attributed by Bharata to lasya excludes it from his definition oftandava, which is Bharata’s term for dance because it was Tandu who receivedthe art of dancing from Siva. This is the term by which his illustrious successor

The Dramatic Art of LasyaMANDAKRANTA BOSE

One version of this paper was published in Movement and Mimesis (Kulwer,1991) and wassubsequently published by D. K. Printworld in a 2nd edition in 2007. This article is a re-editedversion with additional information.

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MOVEMENT AND MIMESIS: The idea of Dance in the SanskriticTradition. By Mandakranta Bose. (Studies of Classical India 12). [KluwerAcademic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1991. $ 100].

The Studies of Classical India Series, published since 1978, consists of definitiveworks by many scholars largely located in Europe and the USA. Renowned scholarsof Indian Philosophy and literature, such as V.B.K. Matilal, Granoff, Ingalls andDimock have edited, translated or written critical commentaries on major Indiantexts, whether of Dignaga or Nagarjuna or Bhartruhari. The inclusion of a workwhich deals principally with texts on dance in this series is welcome, especiallysince those interested in the philosophic thought have often not considered thetextual tradition of the arts a significant stream of classical studies.

The author of the present work has been a serious and devoted student ofSanskrit. Her thesis entitled Classical Indian Dancing [Calcutta 1970], a criticaland comparative study of Sanskrit texts dealing with dancing, was most informative.The present work pursues the history of certain concepts contained in the textualtradition over a period of nearly 16 centuries. This in itselt is a very difficult andcourageous undertaking.

Here canvas is wide, almost wider than that of late Dr. V. Raghavan who wasthe first to bring to light the wealth of material in Sanskrit relating to dance, musicand theatre which had remained largely neglected and unpublished.

Movement and MimesisKAPILA VATSYAYAN

Kapila Vatsyayan is a leading Indian dance scholar, art historian and institution builder. She is thefounding director of Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi. A widely decorated scholar,she is the recepient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowshipand the Padma Vibhushan. A prolific writer of papers, articles and books, her corpus of work is vast.Nartanam has published a special issue on her - Vol XVI, no. 2.This review was published in Sruti, issue 107, August 19993. It is being published here withpermission from Sruti magazine, Chennai.

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PERFORMANCEREVIEWS

Delhi DiaryLeela Venkataraman

After experiencing years of complete apathy to any interactive sessions onvarious aspects of dance and art in general, it is heartening to see that organisationshave begun to try out some discussion and talk evenings related to dance whichhave, notwithstanding small gatherings, stirred some lively exchanges. At the IICauditorium, lectures on a variety of subjects saw Prerana Shrimali talk on Kathakdance and how she perceived it. The main burden of her talk dealt with twoaspects – one, the open-ended nature of a Kathak performance without a rigidlyprescribed performance format and the other its emphasis on abstract dance –which offered the performer enviable freedom to fashion a recital in one’s ownway. She made references to how the dance presentation today had changedfrom the days when as a young child learning Jaipur gharana Kathak, she witnessedthe ati vilambit of 64 counts rendered with a tehrav, which has vanished fromthe scene today and also how her Guru Kundanlal Gangani stressed making thebody light – with his ability to execute the most demanding of footwork designsdancing on a muslin cloth spread out on the floor – with the cloth not showing theslightest wrinkle after all the tatkar wizardry. Thata which today receives fleetingtreatment in a recital, she said is for her the most demanding aspect of Kathak,for here the very dance like just a turn of the head or an eye glance marking thesama is a movement emerging out of a deep inner process of absorbing the musicalrefrain (nagma or lehra) and allowing rhythm to run through the whole body. Thedancer can create his/her own poetry through the nritta intra-forms andimprovisations and needs no outside poetry for interpretation.

There were other talks like Legends of India sponsoring a series of talks bypersons representing different art disciplines in what has been called the Pendulumdialogues. The Guru/Shishya Parampara, Body/Mind connect, was a