Keywords in South Asian Studies Bharat Natya Dr Alessandra Lopez Y Royo AHRC Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance
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Keywords in South Asian Studies Bharat natya Dr Alessandra Lopez y Royo AHRC Research Centre for Cross-cultural Music and Dance Performance (SOAS, Roehampton and UniS) Key words in South Asian Studies Bharat natya by Alessandra Lopez y Royo ‘bharat natya’ is known in a variety of spellings: Bharata Natyam, Bharata Natya, Bharatnatya, bharatanatyam, bharat natyam, Bharat Natya, Bharat Natyam, bharathanatya. All these spellings are correct. But do they all refer to the same thing? Vowel quantity plays a role in determining the meaning of the first half of this compound. Bharat (long ‘a’ or Bhaarat) is the Hindi for ‘India’ whereas bharata (short a) in Sanskrit is, among others, the sage Bharata Muni, author of the Natyasastra or, more simply, an actor. However, differences are not so clearcut. First of all, vowel quantity is not indicated in the English spellings – I have not yet come across a bhaarata naatyam spelling, though of course it is possible. Also, whereas bharat is India in Hindi, India was also known in Sanskrit as bharatavarsa (long ‘a’) or (variant spelling) as bharatavarsa (short ‘a’). So the bharat or bharata or bharat natya retains its elusiveness: what does ‘bharat’ mean on its own? What does it mean in conjunction with natya (natyam)? Natya (natyam), does not seem to present immediate problems as far as its meaning goes. It is the Sanskrit for ‘drama’. But bharat natya refers to dance, not drama. Thus here we have another ambiguity: though Indian dancing is loosely referred to as dance, Indian dance forms involve acting, usually denoted by the word abhinaya, which together with nrtta, nritya and of course, natya makes up the Indian dance modes, therefore the word ‘dance’ is ill-suited. The term bharat natya, in its current usage, seems to have three primary meanings: the first one is that of ‘Indian dance’ – natya here means dance-drama or dance with a dramatic component; the second one is that of dance based on bhava, raga, and tala (and thus applicable to all the classical genres); the third one refers to a Tamil/South Indian dance genre, more commonly known as bharata natyam or, more recently, bharatanatyam, whose very name posits it as the archetypal Indian classical dance. From these primary meanings we get a host of subsidiary ones. In this article Iwill discuss bharat natya (with a small ‘b’ and a small ‘n’) as a term which refers to Indian classical dance, playing on the ambiguities that the word bharat has when the vowel quantity is not specified. I take bharatanatyam (one word, with no split and no capitals, short’ a’) as the dance derived from the Tamil sadir. As dancer and scholar Uttara Asha Coorlawala points out: Scholars and dancers joined both words to clarify that Bharatanatyam indicates a very specific dance form, and not any dance form that subscribes to Bharata’s canon.1 It is important to note here that Coorlawala uses the capital ‘B’, whereas other dancers feel that it should be written as one word and, most importantly, with a small ‘b’, in the same way as western classical ballet is. Indeed, the editor of the British South Asian dance magazine pulse (also with a small ‘p’) insists that all the names of the different Indian classical dance genres should not be in capitals. She regards this as a form of activism, for a universal recognition of these genres as classical dance.2 I will readily admit that bharat natya (or bharat natyam) is not a term commonly used to denote Indian classical dance, as it is more likely to refer to the southern bharatanatyam, in its northern Indian pronunciation. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to treat bharat natya as meaning Indian classical dance because the southern bharatanatyam has been made to conflate with this bharat natya I am describing, allowing an interpretation of it to take place whether for political effect or perhaps in a pointed reference to its nationalistic background, as the Sanskrit term for 'Indian Dance' (Bharat + Natyam) and by extension, the repository of 'Bharatiya' culture and values.3 Thus to suggest that bharat natya means Indian (classical) dance is not wide off the mark. Indian classical dance, better still, Indian classical dance genres – bharatanatyam, kathak, odissi, mohiniattam, manipuri – are now well established dance genres on the global scene. Another classical genre perhaps better identifiable as theatre rather than dance – though it encompasses it – is kathakali. Kuchipudi is an interesting example of a form in transition: it was earlier regarded as a ‘semi-classical’ theatrical form; it is now performed as a solo dance and by women – thus it has become, in other words,a classical dance genre. Other classical dance genres keep on being added to this list – chhau for example, and more recently, the Assamese sattriya. The existence of all these categories and classificatory practices such as ‘classical’, ‘semi-classical’ and ‘folk’ dates to the twentieth century. Indian classical dance is a twentieth century construct and it is, in a sense, open-ended. There is a process which we can identify as ‘classicisation’. One can virtually take any dance form from any Indian region and turn it into classical dance – by following certain principles, culled from the Sanskrit texts on music and drama, which have now become guidelines for classicisation, and by following the blue print of the southern, ex-sadir, bharatanatyam. An interesting story was related to me by an Indian friend who is also an accomplished dancer. Not too long ago she was invited together with another dancer from the Dancers’ Guild – the institution where they both trained in Calcutta - to visit the new state of Jharkhand, which lies between Bihar and West Bengal. They watched a performance of a new classical chhau. The State Government of Jharkand is keen to have its own classical dance and it has rediscovered a form of chhau, distinct from the all others (Mayurbhanj, Purulia and Seraikella), which is now being polished and replenished with dance compositions inspired by the Radha /Krishna theme. Normally, these chhau dances have very little to do with such Hindu themes, rather, they are linked with the non-Hindu tribal culture of the region. The classicisation is thus to do with a process of Sanskritisation and Hinduisation, a process of which even the dance form kathak, usually described as a harmonious blend of Muslim and Hindu elements, has been part of4. It has been suggested that the ‘classical’ styles should be called ‘neo-classical’– one should note here that in India one talks of ‘styles’ rather than ‘genres’, to emphasise the fact that they all share an ancestry traceable to the tradition of the Sanskrit texts, as to say that these dances are mere stylistic variations of each other. The term neo-classical has occasionally been used by Indian dance scholar Kapila Vatsyayan and dance critic Sunil Kothari, but it has not gained wide currency because it does not go well with the construct of Indian dance as ‘3000 years old’, now a well established myth about the dance. Creating ‘classical dance’ was part of the movement to reinscribe Indian dance forms in modern artistic practice and give them a status, equivalent to that of classical ballet in the West. This recodification and reclassification involved an act of cultural translation. The term ‘classical’ was a conscious borrowing from western art discourses to refer to the canon that was being put together from an investigation of the sastras, the Sanskrit manuals on dramaturgy and from the prayoga sampradaya, the teachings of the masters. Prior to this classical dance there were highly formalised traditions of dance, described and prescribed in the Sanskrit texts and referred to as margi. Margi is not a term found in the Natyasastra itself, it is what later commentators called the tradition. There were also other formalised traditions, but more localised, known as desi. Between sastra (available for both margi and desi) and prayoga, between canonical literature and praxis, there was an ongoing process of negotiation, as Bose has argued.5 By the early twentieth century the relationship between sastra and prayoga had lost its momentum and the practice of ‘high-class’ (margi/desi) dance, in the hands of hereditary specialist practitioners known as devadasis, was waning. Bose has highlighted a complexity of causes for this decline, such as the disappearance of courts and temples as sources of patronage, colonial rule, new educational paradigms and so on.6 Through the engagement with modernity, the project of recreation of dance as art began, marking the birth of classical dance. This is, admittedly, a simplified account of a complex history. The devadasis, for example, were only a group of practitioners of high class dance, not an exclusive one, as sometimes understood. Dance was part of theatre and was thus also performed by male actors – kudiyattam, kathakali, bhagavata mela are cases in point. This theatrical dance was as highly formalised as the dance of the devadasis and rajadasis ‘court dancers’, known as sadir in the south - in Orissa it was practised by maharis and gotipua boys and known as naca, literally meaning ‘dance’. Thus the adoption of the term ‘classical’ in the Indian context was a political act. It was not about importing ideals of harmony, alignment, symmetry and proportion, the hallmark of Graeco–Roman art which remain the basis of western notions of classicism. The adoption of the term in India resulted in an indigenisation of the idea of classicism, motivated by the desire to give recognisable national and international status to the dance that was being reconstituted. Rukmini Devi Arundale , founder of the Kalakshetra school in Madras (Chennai) can be credited with the vision which led to the creation of a modern Indian ‘classical’ dance aesthetics.