Sanskrit Drama: Theory and Performance

Abstract

The word natya means and comprises both dance and drama. The dual meaning signifies also the fact that drama, as conceived by Bharata, is an integrated art of music, dance, action and poetry. 2 Bharata natya (classical Indian dance) is as glorious an achievement of the ancient Indian genius as the sculpture of Sanchi or the painting of Ajanta, nay, as the Vishnudharmottara says, it is the very basis of the latter arts.3 The highest literary creations of ancient India, the works of Kalidasa and Sudraka, lie in it; an understanding of its technique is necessary to appreciate the several regional and popular dance-drama traditions surviving in the country. What a wonderful medium it was cannot be better demonstrated than by the sway its technique and theme gained throughout both East and South-East Asia, which it helped to consolidate into a cultural homogeneity still happily undestroyed. The antiquity and indigenous growth of this art are clear from early literary evidences. The Rig-veda has many references to it; the most noteworthy is the beautiful description of dawn as a brightattired danseuse. We know that by the fifth century B.C., the art of actors had become sufficiently developed, for the great grammarian Panini informs us that two authors, Silalin and Krisasva, had by that time codified the art into aphoristic texts, the Nata Sutras. The epics, known to Kautilya in the fourth century B.C., and Buddhistic literature bear out the popularity of this art. Further, we have fragments of a peculiar kind of play called Vasavadatta-natyadhara, surviving in quotations, which Subandhu, a poet and minister of the Mauryan court wrote during this period and in which he developed, in a series of plays-within-plays, his theme of court intrigues using the story of King Udayana and Vasavadatta. In the middle of the second century, B.C., Patanjali, the grammarian, speaks of many elements pertaining to the art: the ranga or stage, the music, the verses, the actors, the themes of binding Bali and killing Kamsa and even the concept of rasa or sentiment and emotional response.4 A rectangular terra cotta tablet dug up at the Bhir Mount site at Taxila,