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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. AUNTIES AND GURUS:

WOMEN'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO ASIAN INDIAN DANCE

by

Christel Stevens

submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in

Performing Arts: Dance

Chair: 1 Dr. Naima PrevotsNa

Valeri

Dr. Dolores Koenig

1997

The American University

Washington, D.C. 20016

THB AMEBICM UMIVEESITY LIBR1BX

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Copyright 1998 by Stevens, Christel Martha All rights reserved.

UMI Microform 1387033 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. AUNTIES AND GURUS:

WOMEN'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO ASIAN INDIAN DANCE

by

Christel Stevens

ABSTRACT

India holds a unique place in the dance world, with its

array of different dance techniques. Each technique has its

own history, and women have played important roles in most

of the styles, having been identified as the most frequent

performers of dance in history, through textual references

and scriptual evidence.

Odissi, Bharata Natyam, Kathak, and Manipuri dance

styles are discussed, showing the contributions made to

their development by female dancers. It is demonstrated

that, for women, dance is a vehicle for crossing boundaries

established by society to enforce the male-dominated social

hierarchy.

Part of the research for this thesis was a study, by

the author, of Indian dance teachers in the Washington, DC,

metropolitan area during 1995-1996, which found that the

teachings of these women, like those of their counterparts

in India, perpetuate the oral tradition of Indian dance.

ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

CHAPTER

1. Introduction ...... I

2. Women as Dancers in India: Early Period .... 5

3. Dance Forms and Their H i s t o r y ...... 33

4. Twentieth Century Dance Revival ...... 57

5. Indian Dancers in America ...... 86

6. Conclusion ...... 112

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 118

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Human beings dance for several reasons. The word

"dance" may be defined as any rhythmic, repetitive, or

expressive movement performed for its own sake, rather than

for a utilitarian purpose such as transportation or food-

gathering. One category of dancing, dance performed to

attract a mate, is common to animals and humans alike. Even

birds and fish in some cases dance before mating. Among

humans, there are forms of social or recreational dancing

which in general may be said to fall into the category of

mating displays.

Dance as a form of artistic expression and dance as a

component of religious ritual are solely characteristic of

human culture. These latter two categories of dancing are

the subject matter of the present study. However, the

complexity of human nature requires one to recognize that

any given body of dance compositions may be used in

different categories, at various times or on various

occasions. Dance performed as an element of religious ritual

can sometimes develop into the most inspired artistic

expression, as will be seen in the course of this paper.

Similarly, dance of any kind can be used as a mating

1

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display. Dance theoretician Judith Hanna states in her

Dance. Sex and Gender.

Even when a dancer intends only to explicate movement forms, the dancer's body is said to disappear into the movement; even when the shape of the body is obscured by costume, signs and symbols of sexuality may be read into the dance and erotic or lustful feeling aroused.

This paper will discuss ways in which dance in India

has crossed boundaries, from mating display to religious

ritual to artistic expression, and how (in the context of

the late twentieth century) dance continues to manifest

itself in all the categories simultaneously . As an

occupation of women, particularly, it will be demonstrated

that dance can be and is used as a vehicle for crossing

boundaries established by society to enforce the male-

dominated social hierarchy.

Dance may be described as the art form which leaves

little trace of its realization. Because it occurs in space

and time, yet has no concrete form outside the body of the

dancer, it is evanescent. Yet many artists in other media

have been inspired by dance and have striven to reproduce

its temporary beauty in more permanent forms. Through their

efforts we are able to trace the history of dance. These

marks and signs that indicate the effect of dance

performance on the viewer include music, prose, poetry,

1 Judith Lynne Hanna, Dance. Sex and Gender (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 5

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painting, sculpture, and architecture. Reference will be

made to all such sources as they have relevance to the

history of dance in India and the way in which women

particularly have been able to contribute to that history.

The second chapter of this thesis will be an historical

overview, placing dance in the context of the history of

civilization in India. This will not be an exhaustive

historical account, but rather a description of the backdrop

before which the dramatic development of dance in India has

occurred. To continue the metaphor of a theatrical

production, women who have played important roles in dance

history will be spotlighted. The roles played by men cannot

be ignored, but their contributions have been exhaustively

described in the plethora of books about Indian dance

published to date. The curious reader is referred to the

bibliography for further information.

The third chapter will introduce the reader to several

different dance forms which exist in India today. As a

nation constructed from a conglomeration of widely variant

ethnic groups, and sub-cultures, India holds a unique place

in the world of dance. No other single nation can boast such

a bewildering array of highly differentiated dance

techniques. Each technique has its own history, and women

have played an important role in most of the styles.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Four major styles will be discussed in terms of the

contributions made to their development by female dancers.

These four dance forms are Odissi, Bharata Natyam, Kathak,

and Manipuri. These four forms were chosen as examples

because of the preponderance of historical references to

them in available texts, and because of the contribution by

women to their development. There are several other dance

styles, perhaps equal in antiquity, which have not been

treated fully in this paper. They are Mohini At tarn, Chau,

Kuchipudi, Kathakali, Sattriya and perhaps others. The

author does not wish to imply by excluding these forms from

the current thesis that they are not proper subjects for

research and commentary.

The fourth chapter will deal with twentieth-century

women who have made important contributions to the

development of dance in India. Again, several women will be

discussed and many, many important dancers will be left out

The author feels that in the thesis format, it is proper to

use a few cases which may be said to exemplify others in

their category. Finally, the fifth chapter will describe

contributions of Indian dance specialists living outside of

India.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER TWO

Women as Dancers in India: Early Period

In India, the earliest trace of a dancer's existence

was found during the excavation of the ancient city of

Mohenjo-Daro. This was a center of trade and commerce

between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia which evidently

flourished from around 3000 to 1500 B.C.E. A small bronze

figurine of a slender female, adorned with numerous bangles

and necklaces, and posed with one hand on the waist and one

leg ahead of the other, was discovered among the remains of

the ancient city. Archaeologists have identified it as the

figure of a dancer.1 Whether or not it is a dancer cannot

be known. However, it is a feminine figure in a graceful

pose, and it may have had a ritual meaning. On the basis of

this artifact, it is suggested by historians that dance

existed in India during the Harappan period, was part of

the urban lifestyle in a merchant city, and was performed by

women, if not also by men.

The next historical reference to dance can be found in

accounts of religious rituals of the Aryan people who moved

into the Indian subcontinent starting around 1500 B.C.E. and

lRustam J. Mehta, Masterpieces of Indian Sculpture (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons & Co. Pvt. Ltd., 1968), 37.

5

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gradually dominated the Indigenous people. Their great

hymn, the Rig Veda, mentions the inclusion of dance in

worship. Its performance is not restricted to women or men.

According to Brahmin scholars, two kinds of dancing formed

parts of the religious rituals of these early times. One

section of the actual performance of a 'Yagya' (sacrifice)

consisted of dances dedicated to the lords of the eight

directions, to propitiate these 'devasr(deities) and invite

their attention to the ritual. A 'yagya' could last from a

few days to a few months, depending on its importance.

Another kind of dancing would often be performed on a

raised, open-air platform to provide a break in the ceremony

and entertain the gathered participants and observers. This f) type of dance would be a story-telling or dramatic dance.'

The Rig Veda was composed prior to 1000 B.C.E. and is the

earliest evidence of India's religious development. This era

of Indian history is known as the Vedic Age, since this was

the period in which the ancient works of philosophy and

religion collectively titled "vedas" were composed.

One of the most important events in this period was an

internecine war at Kurukshetra, a battlefield near the

9 Dr. Narendra Kumar, Brahmin (hereditary religious authority) and Sanskrit scholar, interviewed by author, University Park, Maryland, March 2, 1997.

'Wmila Thapar, A History of India 1 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1966), 31.

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modern capital New Delhi, and the events leading up to it

which have been memorialized in the epic poem Mahabharata.

In this lengthy chronicle of a royal family divided by the

issue of succession are many descriptions of daily life in

the period around 900 B.C.E.4 In one chapter, dancing as a

royal pastime plays an important part in the saga. The five

brothers who are the protagonists of the story are driven

away from their kingdom and must live incognito until they

can attempt a return to power. One of the brothers, a hero

named Arjuna, gets employment as a dancing master in the

household of a neighboring king, teaching the princesses to

dance.3

Arjuna in the Mahabharata is the embodiment of the

Indian idea of masculine perfection. He is the most famous

archer of his day. He is handsome, upright, and dedicated to

the performance of his duty, both as a man and as a prince.

He is also an accomplished dancer, to the point of being

able to train others. From this fact we can infer that

expertise in dancing was an acceptable, even desirable

quality in the perfect man. However, the notion that

teaching dance was a suitable occupation for a man is less

clear. Arjuna disguised himself as a dance teacher with the

4Ibid.

3J. A. B. van Buitenen, ed. and trans.. The Mahabharata (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 41.

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thought that no one would discover the great hero in this

delicate profession.

The chapter of the Mahabharata concerning Arjuna's work

as a dance teacher contains interesting information about

the role of the dance teacher in society at that point in

history. When Arjuna decided to apply for the position of

dance teacher to Virata, king of a neighboring country, he

braided his hair like a woman and donned earrings and a

skirt. It was assumed by members of the court that he was,

therefore, a eunuch. The king hired him to teach dance to

the royal princesses, because, being a eunuch, he could pose

no threat to their virtue. Thereafter, he stayed in the

women's quarters and conducted dancing lessons for the women

of the royal family. So important was dancing in the lives

of the princesses that a special pavilion had been C constructed for it.

This brief look at the Mahabharata emphasizes several

points which are pertinent to the study of the history of

Indian dance:

(1) That dance was an acceptable pastime among the

higher classes;

(2) That dance was generally an occupation of women;

"That dance pavilion which the Matsya king has had built--the girls dance there by day and at night they go home." Ibid., 57.

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(3) That men could teach women to dance, only providing

that such male dance teachers posed no threat to the

virtue of their students (i.e. eunuchs):

(5) That a special building or enclosure would be

provided for dance activities.

The Mahabharata also refers to the convention of

minstrels or bards who were employed by kings to sing their

praises and entertain them with poems about other kings. The

Mahabharata itself is an example of a collection of such

poems which were composed on the spot, then passed on orally

from one bard to another. When the hero Arjuna is describing

his elder brother Yudhisthira's rightful status as a king,

he explains that, "Eight hundred bards always followed

behind [him] with earrings of polished gems and sang his

praises with Maghadan minstrels ..." Interestingly

enough, diamond earrings are still a mark of the hereditary

male court performer in India.

More importantly, this is an early reference to the

duties of court performers: in Vedic times, there were three

separate categories, namely bards (poets), minstrels

(singers), and dancers. Two thousand years later, in the

courts of the maharajahs, these three disciplines were

united in the performances of the "kathakas," talented court

7Ibid., 126.

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entertainers who could sing, recite poetry extemporaneously, g and dance. This convention of dance performance with

combined elements of music and poetry or story-telling,

under royal patronage is the source of much of classical

Indian dance. The term "kathaka," used in the Mahabharata to

signify an itinerant story-teller, has evolved into the

modern term "kathak," used to describe a north Indian

classical dance style.

The Mahabharata and other early literary works describe

life in the northern parts of the Indian sub-continent.

There is early literature in the Tamil language of south

India which also refers to dancing as part of a courtly

tradition. Saskia Kersenboom-Story refers to this "Cankam"

literature as describing "a feudal society in which the

noble ones, the aristocracy of warriors, chieftains, and in

their very center the king, were the ideal norm . . . of

cultural expression." These writings date from between

100 B.C.E to 300 C.E. and are examples of a tradition of

"bardic literature"10 which originated with the court poets

of that era. They contain descriptions of the many kinds of

8Sunil Kothari, Kathak: Indian Classical Dance Art (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1989), 11.

9Saskia C. Kersenboom-Story, Nit.vasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), 9.

lflIbid., 11.

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performance which were thought essential to increase a

king's fame. Female performers were employed "in singing-

love poetry, in dancing and playing the lute at the court of

the king."11 The male court-poets, on the other hand, used

to travel with the king in order to sing his praises on the

battle-field.

The Cankam literature also describes the ritual worship

of that historical period as performed by female slaves. The

object of daily worship was a tree-stump or post installed

in a special room. The women were responsible for cleaning

the room, washing the stump itself, decorating it with

flowers, and lighting lamps there at night. 12 This is a

very important description, as it prefigures the role of the

'devadasis' 11 , the ritual women later employed in Hindu

temples from the beginning of the Common Era to the first

half of the twentieth century.

The tradition of dancers being patronized and employed

by kings was firmly established throughout Indian history

until the end of the British occupation of India in 1947. By

that time, the various princely states were absorbed into

the new nation of India, and their ability to employ dancers

u Ibid.

12Ibid. , 12. n devadasi is a Sanskrit compound word meaning "female slave" (dasi) of a "god" (deva).

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came to an end. These court dancers sometimes trained

members of the royal family in dancing, in the tradition of

Arjuna. The dance teachers normally also trained young women

of the servant class who exhibited beauty and talent,

grooming them to perform before the aristocracy.14 The

female dancers who achieved expertise would then be paid

regularly. Their income was an important contribution to the

support of their families. A court dancer who rose to the

top of his or her profession might be rewarded with a gift

of land. In this way some women became independent through dancing.13

In the northern part of India and modern Pakistan there

were numerous princely states that were unified with British

India at the time of Independence. Most retained the court

dancer tradition right up to the time of the accession of

the last monarchies to the independent Indian nation. For

example, the last nawab (hereditary ruler) of Oudh (ancient

name Ayodhya) was Wajid Ali Shah, a dancer and patron of

dancers, who relinquished his kingdom to the British in IS 1856. If we consider that Ayodhya existed as a city as

14Xenia Zarina, Classic Dances of the Orient (New York: Crown, 1967), 5.

I5Ibid., 11.

16Kothari (Kathak, 10) states, "In the history of Kathak the contribution of Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Oudh, is particularly significant. He was himself an accomplished musician and a dancer besides being a poet of great merit

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early as 600 B.C.E.17 , and take as historical fact that

the maintenance of court dance teachers as described in the

Mahabharata was a common custom among these Aryan princes,

then we can deduce a 2.456 year history of court dancing in

Northern India. The very refined dance technique known as

"Kathak" is the modern repository of this legacy.

A separate category of female dance experts in Vedic

times lived independently outside the confines of the court,

but frequently received royal patronage. This group of women

is often described by historians as "courtesans," or even

sometimes as "geishas." They were professional women who

could be hired to sing and/or dance at private gatherings.

Their ranks were made up of women whose families might not

be able to provide a dowry to facilitate their marriage,

orphaned or abandoned girls, or daughters of courtesans.

Because their ability to earn money depended on their

writing in Urdu. The Nawab was obsessed with the Rasalila and he himself devised an opera which he called "Rahas." He took part in it along with his begums and during his rule Kathak as a dance form appears to have reached its zenith." (Rasalila refers to a dance performed by the Hindu god Krishna with his devotees, the milkmaids. Begums are Muslim wives.) This quotation describes the ideal of the court performer, who sings, dances, and writes poetry, embodied in the king, and expressly mentions that the women of the royal family took part in dance activities.

17"With the establishment of republics and kingdoms in Northern India by about 600 B.C. the details of Indian history begin to emerge with greater certainty . . . Towns . . . such as Shravast, Champa, Rajagriha, Ayodhya, Kaushambi and Kashi were of substantial importance to the economy of the Ganges plain." Thapar, 50 - 52.

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ability to entertain men, they often received extensive

training. All were taught to sing and dance. Many were

accomplished poets.

During Vedic times, courtesans were an accepted part of

10 society. Their profession put them into contact with men

from all levels of society, and often they were able to make

advantageous marriages. During this era of history, dancing

was identified as an element of feminine accomplishment,

even a divine characteristic. In the Puranas, religious

texts written between c. 500 B.C.E. and c. 500 C.E.19,

mention was made of Apsarases, divine nymphs who used to

dance in the court of Indra, the king of gods, namely

Chitralekha, Urvashi, Hema, Rambha, Menaka, Keshi, and 20 Tilottama. During that time, several kinds of dancing

were generally identified as socially acceptable:

During the Vedic period, special programmes of dance were arranged . . . Men and women - - took part in such programmes . . . held at night . . . an important means of entertainment for the people. Bachelors of marriageable age thronged such occasions. The dancers used to take Somrasa together and then dance. Dances were categorized into Rajju nritya, Salil

18Ibid. ,151.

I9Ibid., 30. 20 uRam Avtar, Indian Dances. History and Development (New Delhi: Pankaj Publications, 1984), 13. 2| somrasa - an intoxicating beverage

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nritya,,-Arun nritya, Pushpa nritya, and Vasant nritya.

The source of this information is the Arthashastra.

written around 300 B.C.E. by Kautalya, adviser to Emperor

Chandragupta Maurya. This text stated that dancers gave

performance as their profession and were paid from the royal

treasury. 21

During the latter part of the Vedic Age, there was a

religious backlash against the priestly class. Men and women

who felt that it was possible to have a direct relationship

with god refused to pay the priests to perform the

prescribed sacrifices. Instead, these conscientious

objectors withdrew into the forest or desert areas outside

the boundaries of human settlements to meditate and pray.

They abjured feasting and commercial pursuits. Many refused

all contact with the opposite sex. Out of this movement

arose two great religious movements. Buddhism and Jainism.

Buddhism had a negative effect on the lives of the

professional dancers of India for a time. Buddha,born around

600 B.C.E., himself advocated avoidance of women by his

devotees. When they encountered courtesans, they usually

22 4 Rajju nritya - king's dance; salil nritya - dance for the assembly; arun nritya - sunrise dance; pushpa nritya- flower dance; vasant nritya - springtime dance. 2^Avtar, 12.

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tried to persuade them to become nuns. Patronage of women

for pleasure was definitely discouraged.

However, the wave of Aryan influence which had started

in Afghanistan was still making its influence felt in the

southern part of India when the religious practices started

by Buddha himself were spreading in the north, around 400

B.C.E. The pantheon of Vedic gods was still expanding to 24 absorb the powerful Dravidian god Shiva, a deity

represented by phallic stones. Shiva in his demonic aspect

was said to drink bhang, a brew of marijuana leaves and

milk, and dance with an army of ghosts in graveyards.

The south was also home of many mother-goddesses

worshipped by male and female devotees. Worship of these

mother-goddesses involved dancing ecstatically. Although

written records of these practices in pre-Hindu south India

are rare, the practices themselves never totally

disappeared.23 Like many of India's ancient rituals, they

survived either among nomadic populations, in uncivilized

tribal areas, or in remote villages where they were

24 Dravidians are thought to have been the largest linguistic group in India prior to the arrival of Aryan­ speaking peoples. They were gradually pushed southward, and now Dravidian languages are spoken in South India. 9 * °". . . the goddess of war, Korravai, . . is surrounded by an army of demon-women joining her in dancing on the battlefield after the victory had been won." Also, Murukan, the son of the afore-mentioned goddess Korravai, is the source of ecstatic dancing when he takes possession (ananku) of the worshipper. Kersenboom-Story, 10, 13, 14.

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patronized secretly by people desiring to utilize primal

forces in overcoming life's obstacles.

Many remnants of these pre-Hindu religious practices

were absorbed into Aryan Brahmanism. Shiva eventually

usurped the position held by Indra, the king of the Aryan

gods, and achieved the title "Mahadeva" (Greatest God). The

bull-god worshipped in the north became Shiva's mount. The

concept of dancing as a form of worship gained strength with

the inflow of ritual elements connected with veneration of

Shiva.26

After the death of Buddha, his disciples began

spreading the message of Buddhism as wandering mendicants,

who used to preach to assembled groups outside the urban

centers. Then they began establishing themselves in caves,

which gradually became religious communities. They built

structures called stupas, which were mounds covering small

containers of relics from the Buddha himself, such as teeth

or hairs. These permanent structures gave people a focal

2R "In the poetry of the famous Saiva saint Manikkavacakar (9th century A.D.) we read for the first time a description of the girls serving in the temple as well as an indication of their tasks. . . They seem to be adorning the temple in preparation of a festival. . . When these temple girls move into the town surrounded by the singing of devotees, the people greet with loud acclaim. . . Poems like 'Tirruponucal' (sacred golden swing) and 'Tiru Ammanai' . . . form part and parcel of the devadasi repertoire. The hymn 'Tiruppalliyelucci' (raising from the sacred couch) is now sung . . . by otuvars (male singers); it was sung by devadasis until 1947." Kersenboom-Story, 23.

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point for worship. They also served as a magnet for the

wealth of the business community. The aristocrats and

traders were told that by endowing religious communities

they would gain merit in the next life. Monasteries were

built which became centers of learning. Monasteries for nuns

became places for women to receive higher education.

Possibly this was an additional attraction of religious

dedication for the courtesans, already more educated than 27 the normal housewife.

Another aspect of Buddhism which developed after the

death of the Buddha himself was the veneration of Buddha as

a deity. It became common for the "viharas," the caves in

which monks sat in meditation, to be adorned with frescoes

and bas-relief sculpture depicting events in the life of the

Buddha. At first, the Buddha was never actually shown, but

was represented by a pair of footprints. Gradually images of

the Buddha at the moment of enlightenment, sitting under a

tree in a yogic pose, were sculpted. Soon such images became

objects of worship.

A great blossoming of artistic expression resulted in

some of India's most impressive monuments, such as the cave

27 "The only categories of women who had a large measure of freedom were those who deliberately chose to opt out of what were regarded by law books as the 'normal' activities of women, and became either Buddhist nuns or joined the theatrical profession or became courtesans and prostitutes." Thapar, 152.

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temples of Ajanta and Ellora. At many of these sites, scenes

of the Buddha's life were augmented by sculptures executed

in the name of beauty alone, such as voluptuous female

spirits and dancers in graceful poses which ornament the

gateways of caves and stupas. Women as dancers were

evidently considered to be the height of human beauty, and

there was seemingly no moral compunction about this display

of dance poses at a religious center.28

The Jain religion, which advocated non-violence and is

the source of the Mahatma Gandhi's theories of political

revolution accomplished through non-violent protest, was

also a source of sculptural inspiration at the end of the

pre-Christian era. A famous cave sculpture in Orissa, a

kingdom on India's eastern coast, was sponsored by the Jain

ruler Kharavela around 200 B.C.E. It is noted here because

an inscription in the cave states that the King himself was

a great dancer and musician, and he arranged a performance

of abhinaya (gesture) and tandava (dance) for his courtiers.

In another cave in the same region, the king is shown

watching a performance by a female dancer.22

4Q Leila Ghosh and Dalia Roy, A.ianta and Ellora (Bombay: India Book House, 1986), passim.

2Q S. N. Raj guru, Inscriptions of Orissa vol.l. part 1 and vol. 3, parts 1 and 3 (Bhubaneshwar: Orissa Sahitya Academy, undated), quoted in Sunil Kothari, Odissi. Indian Classical Dance Art (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1990), 6 and 13.

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The priestly caste, custodians of the Vedas and the old

religious system of the Aryans eventually took a page out of

the Buddhist book. They too began building permanent

structures to attract devotees. Whereas the original center

of Vedic worship, as performed by the Indo-Aryans, was a

fire built in the open air, the indigenous peoples of

greater India often centered their religious rituals on

natural objects such as stones, mounds, bodies of water, or Ifl large trees. The tree-stump or post worshipped daily in

south India has been mentioned above.

The Cankam literature cited by Kersenboom-Story

describes "hero-stones," a form of monolith erected to

commemorate the death of a great warrior. These stones were

also worshipped at the time of their erection in the same

way as the tree-stump: washing the stone, feasting, and *>| singing the praises of the fallen hero. Since the stone,

mound, pond, or tree did not move, it was practical to build

a temple around it to shelter not only the object itself but

the priests and devotees as well.

Another Buddhist practice absorbed into the Hindu

revival was the idea of attracting devotees using some form

of entertainment. Wandering "bhikshus," Buddhist

missionaries, often told stories to villagers to attract

30Thapar, 133.

31Kersenboom-Story, 13.

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their attention. These stories demonstrated Buddhist

precepts in an attractive and entertaining way. The

"bhikshus" would even sing and act out sequences from their

fables. Having gained the attention of the audience, they

would preach the message of Buddhism.

The Buddhist period of Indian history lasted until the

beginning of the Common Era, when changes and divisions in

the theory and practice of the faith began to bring about

its decline within the bounds of the Indian sub-continent.

The latter part of the Buddhist age also marks the beginning

of the historical period of Indian dance, as many written

descriptions of dance practices date from this epoch.

During the first few centuries of the Common Era,

Hinduism began to develope many of the attributes and

practices which characterize it today. Among these was the

concept of installing sculpted idols representing gods in

temples. These images were inspired by statues of the Buddha

at first, and represented a god in human form. The practice

of showing the god's super-human powers by sculpting

additional arms holding multiple power-symbols developed later.33

32Mandakranta Bose, in her Ph.D. dissertation "The Evolution of Classical Indian Dance Literature: A Study of the Sanskritic Tradition"(New Delhi: Oxford University, 1989), 4, places the seminal treatise on Sanskrit theater and dance, Natyashastra. between 200 B.C.E. and 200 C.E.

33Thapar, 157-158.

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It is important for the dance-historian to recognize

that temples as they are known today did not exist in

ancient India. Pre-Aryan worship practices were centered at

naturally-occurring formations such as prominent stones,

mounds or mountains, anthills, lakes or ponds, and the like.

These practices still exist in modern India. The most

wide-spread examples involve snake-worship. In rural India,

known holes or burrows of cobras and other large snakes are

regularly adorned with flowers, red powder (kum-kum), oil-

lamps (diyas), and offerings of small dishes of milk.

In the northeastern hill state Manipur, the ancient line of

kings took their lineage name from their deity, the dragon­

like snake Pakhangba, and their flag shows an intricately

coiled snake biting its own tail.

In Manipur, the pre-Hindu religious practices are still

actively maintained by the populace. During their annual

fertility celebration, religious women from each settlement

worship at natural sites such as mounds, bodies of water, or

groves of trees. They dance at these locations to entice the

resident "lai" or ancestor-spirit to Join his human

worshippers in the village for a week or ten days. A

temporary shed or altar is erected to accommodate the

visiting spirit. For the prescribed ritual period, the

villagers dance daily in front of the altar, under the

direction of the priestesses, called "maibis." These dances

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take place in an unsheltered green space adjacent to the

village. At the end of the allotted time, the deity is

carried back to the place of its residence.

This style of worship exemplifies the pre-Hindu

practice in many parts of the sub-continent. In most areas,

the practice has been almost completely erased and

superseded by Hindu practice. Manipur, because of its very

remote and comparatively inaccessible location, was

Hinduized only recently, and the non-Hindu tradition has

continued alongside the newer religion. Therefore, in

Manipur it is still possible to see the very ancient style

of ritual dancing which has disappeared elsewhere. This

dance ritual will be described in a subsequent chapter, but

is introduced here in as an example of the kind of worship

which was common before the Aryan influx.

The Aryan form of worship was also an outdoor practice

which was centered around a sacrificial fire. The fire-god

Agni was one of the most powerful Aryan deities. Aryan

priests conducted the worship around the fire, chanting the

sacred hymns (the Vedas) and throwing various offerings into

the flames. This practice, also, still exists within

Hinduism, as the sacraments including initiation of

children, marriage, and funerary rites are all performed in

^Louise Lightfoot. Dance Rituals of Manipur (Hong Kong: Standard Press Ltd., 1958), Chapter 2.

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the presence of fire. In the Vedic period these fires were

kindled in open-air settings. As the practice presently

exists, a small fire is made in a courtyard of the home of

the worshipper or adjacent to the permanent temple

structure.35

These descriptions of pre-Aryan and Aryan religious

rituals are included at this point in my examination of

dance history in order to make the important point that

temple dancing did not exist until the Common Era because

temples were not built until the early part of the current

historical period. When ritual dancing was performed, it was

performed in the open air. Dancing which took place as a

part of dramatic presentation was performed in a structure

built for that purpose, or on open-air stages. Dance as part

of courtly entertainment had its own hall in the king's

residence or palace. All of these dance practices pre-date

temple dancing, and all of them still exist within the

various regional traditions.

Dance by its very nature has survived through the

centuries as an oral tradition. Until the advent of film and

video in the twentieth century, methods of recording dance

compositions and performances were necessarily static and

therefore incomplete. All of the dance-related art forms

35Sam Welles,ed. The World1 s Great Religions (New York: Golden Press, 1958), 27.

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such as sculpture, painting, poetry, and descriptive prose

are unable, despite their detail and complexity, to actually

re-create a dance performance. If the oral tradition,

through which teacher passed on to pupil the ancient

compositions, had failed at any point, the entire wealth of

dance literature would not be sufficient to re-create the

genre. Both men and women learned by memorizing considerable

amounts of orally-transmitted knowledge.

Under the patriarchal value system of the Indo-Aryans,

which has come down to us as Hindu practice, women were

generally denied the benefits of education after about 300 Ifi B.C.E. During the evolution of Brahmanic religion, the

age at which marriage was prescribed for women was gradually

lowered. By the beginning of the Common Era, marriage was

indicated before the onset of puberty in Aryan-dominated

areas.

Women's education, so far as it existed, ended at

marriage. During the next few centuries, the age of marriage

was lowered again, to the point where child marriage was

^Anant Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization (Benares: Benares Hindu University Press, 1938), 11, states that until 300 B.C.E., women were educated along with their brothers, and received "upanayana," the sacrament of initiation into the memorization and recitation of the Vedas (sacred hymns). Female scholars were among the authors of the Rig Veda, the earliest collection of religious theory. Altekar describes extensively the recorded instances of noted female scholars. He also describes the gradual lowering of the age of marriage, until marriage itself replaced the sacrament of upanayana for girls.

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common, after which girls went to live in their husband's

Joint family and were trained in household work by their

mothers-in-law. Literacy among women declined. Therefore, it

is not surprising that criticism and analysis of the art of

dance should have been written entirely by males, as far as

we know. It is not impossible that women wrote some of the

treatises under male pseudonym, given the atmosphere of

repression of women's scholarship. Moreover, dancing women

who did not marry were frequently educated in poetry and

philosophy, unlike their married sisters.37 They may have

authored or assisted in the authorship of texts, as they

would have the requisite expertise.

It is at this historical juncture, when women destined

to be married were denied education, and girls over the age

of ten might be considered unmarriageable if an alliance had

not already been contracted, that the teaching of dance was

reserved for dedicated women who were not scheduled for

marriage. These women might or might not be literate. But

they were thoroughly trained for dance performance by rote,

as dancers are even today. Thus women, shut out by social

"Abbe J.A. DuBois, a French missionary, wrote of the devadasis of south India, that they were "the only females in India who may learn to read, to sing, and to dance. Such accomplishments belong to them exclusively, and are, for that reason, held by the rest of the sex in abhorrence, that every virtuous woman would consider mention of them an affront."; quoted by F.A. Marglin, Wives of the God-King (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), 4.

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practice from the literary tradition, were able to

contribute to the preservation of dance through oral

tradition.

The first treatise which gives complete descriptions of

dance technique and performance is known as the

Natyashastra. "Shastra" is a Sanskrit word referring to holy

writ. "Natya" denotes drama. The term Natyashastra.

therefore, can be translated as "Holy Scripture of Theater".

This book has been described as the bible of Indian dancing,

and many dance historians have used this book to justify

their assertions that Indian dance originated as a religious

ritual which gradually degenerated into a courtly

entertainment and was then developed into a theatrical

performance in the twentieth century C.E.. However, careful

historical research and a close reading of the Natyashastra

reveal that speaking in general, Indian dance existed from

earliest times in three realms simultaneously; in court,

theater, and ritual practice. It was included as an element

of Hindu religious observance during the first five hundred

years of the Common Era.

The Natyashastra is a manual of theatrical

technique which describes performance and production of Ifl Sanskrit drama circa 100 C.E. In that particular

38Bose, 9.

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tradition, dance was used as a way of adding visual beauty

to certain parts of the drama.

For example, before the play proper begins, there are

several preliminary activities which are intended to remove

evil influences from the performance space and invoke the

blessings of the various gods having jurisdiction over the

theater. This ritual is called "purvaranga." Although the

purvaranga can be performed as a song only, Bharata (the

author) stated that dancing adds beauty to the purvaranga.

Throughout the treatise, Bharata discussed dance as a

species of ornament. It was not used to advance the story

line in any way, or to develop character. Bharata gave a

very complete discussion of gestures of the hands to which

some dance researchers refer as the basis of the gesture

language of Indian dance. However, Bharata assigned these

gestures to actors rather than dancers. Certain gestures of

an ornamental nature, called "nrttahastas," were specified

for dancing.

One significant detail of the Nat.vashatra is the

assignment of dance to women performers. While Bharata

ascribes to the powerful god Shiva the role of supreme dance

teacher, and his disciple Tandu (a male name) as purveyor of

dance to the human race, it is women who appear as dancers

in actual practice. Bharata describes a dance performance

which sets the stage for the drama. A single female dancer

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should present some invocatory dances, interspersed with

group dances, also performed by female artists. These group

dances contained floor patterns based on symbols which

represented various gods and goddesses, as well as certain

geometric shapes which had ritual import. Natyashastra also

described dance as an all-purpose expression of celebration

during joyful times of life.'*®

The end of the Buddhist era in India and period of

Hindu temple-building happened at the beginning of the

current era. Once the Hindus began building their temples,

they wished to attract devotees. They began the practice of

hiring female dancers to perform in the temples. Kings and

wealthy patrons were induced by the Brahmin priests to

donate amounts sufficient for the upkeep of one or more

dancers. Dance performances did indeed lure large numbers of

people into the temple compounds, of course bringing

donations for the upkeep of the temple and its priests.4®

". . . it is said that the dance is occasioned by no specific need; it has come into use simply because it creates beauty. As dance is naturally loved by almost all people, it is eulogised as being auspicious. It is eulogised also as being the source of amusement on occasions of marriage, child­ birth, reception of a son-in-law, general festivity and attainment of prosperity." Bharata-Muni, The Natyashastra (A Treatise on Ancient Indian Dramaturgy and Histrionics) . trans. Manomohan Ghosh (Calcutta:Granthalaya Private Ltd.,1967), 1:6 8 .

40 "Another segment of the dance system of the Telegu Kalavaanthi (female dance tradition of Andhra Pradesh,India) is Bhaagavatham, comprising of dance dramas . . . in which the leading female dancer enacts the principle of Bhakti

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Dance by women thus received a needed lift from the

restoration of Hinduism. The women received their salary

from the temple and usually lived in attached housing. These

dancers also took up the duties of the ritual women of south

Indian tradition, who were responsible for the daily

propitiation of the embodied deity. Not only did they sing

and dance before the deity at specified times of the day,

they also decorated the temple and handled the sacred lamps

and incense which were said to remove evil influence.*1

It is important to understand that kings were thought

to be descended from the gods, and were often treated as

"gods on earth." Therefore, the temple women were employed

by the king as frequently as by the temple. By waving sacred

lamps over him and his family, they were believed to have

the power to remove evil influences. Their very presence at

19 celebrations was thought to bring good luck. The king

Shringara. These Bhaagavathams were enacted on a platform built within the temple precincts during the night-long festivities held to celebrate any auspicious occasion. The Bhaagavathams often succeeded in keeping hordes of worshippers within the temple premises, and the worshippers could alternately offer prayers as well as avail of aesthetic pleasure with religious sanction." Swapnasundari, "Vilasini, the Traditional Female Dancers of Andhra", Vidya Vilasini (New Delhi: Kuchipudi Dance Center, 1995), pages unnumbered.

41Kersenboom-Story, 23.

*2"In royal durbars dancing girls called Rajadasis danced on state and festive occasions. At marriages and birth celebrations and other communal functions Alankara-dasis gave dance recitals, for dance was considered auspicious and therefore indispensable." Devi, 47.

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might even keep a dedicated woman at his home to propitiate

the deities in his own private prayer room. Alternatively,

the temple and the palace might be in close proximity to

each other.

At the same time, a king would commonly have his own

musicians and dancers attached to his court. The court

dancers and the temple dancers lived in the same milieu and

shared responsibility for the maintenance and development of

the dance tradition. The court dancers, however, might be

considered more artistic in the sense that their

performances were judged on the basis of beauty and

virtuosity. The performances of the temple dancers were

valued more as ritual where change might displease the

deity. Therefore, over the course of centuries, the temple

dance would be less likely to change or develop, and more

likely to be performed in a repetitive and perfunctory

style. The court dance, on the other hand, which would be

subj'ect to creative enrichment and affected by varied

stylistic influences, would naturally be a more vibrant and

virtuoso art form.*4

During the first millennium of the Common Era, dance

all over India developed in a wide range of regionally

differentiated styles. At this point it is appropriate to

43Zarina, 5; Kersenboom-Story, 64; Marglin, 143-144.

44Kersenboom-Story, 42-45.

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as is possible) the historical period in which each emerged.

From this historical moment on, it is possible to trace the

various traditions which have given rise to the separate

dance techniques termed "classical" in the second half of

the twentieth century.

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Dance Forms and Their History

India's classical age started with the slow decline of

Buddhism and the renaissance of Brahmanic religion. There

was a period of increased communication among princely

states, and a wave of Greek influence. The Gupta dynasty

reigned in North India from the fourth to the six century

C.E., a period referred to as India's Golden Age.1 Prior to

this period, as far back as 200 B.C.E., a cave located in

the state of Orissa had already been decorated with relief

sculpture of a dance performance with full orchestra. The

Natyashastra itself speaks of a dance style developed in the

south-east called "Odhra Magadha" style, the precursor of

Odissi dance.2

Starting around the third century of the current era

and continuing up to the 12th, hundreds of temples were

built in Orissa, many of which still stand in whole or part.

Many significant carvings within these temples depict female

dancers, alone or in groups, surrounded by musicians. Poses

Vhapar, 16.

2Kapila Vatsyayan, Indian Classical Dance (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), 49.

33

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of the dancers are quite recognizable as they are reflected

*1 in Odissi dance today. We may conclude that dance

performances in temples were common in this early temple-

building period.

During this period, the practice of having female

attendants living in or near the temples, who gave personal

service to the idols, spread over northern India. Kalidasa,

court poet to Chandra Gupta II (375-415 C.E.), mentioned in

his story-poem, "Meghaduta" (Cloud Messenger) that dancing

girls used to wave the fly-whisk in front of the image of

Shiva during the evening worship at the temple at UJJain.4

Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan states that,

From the sixth and seventh century onwards there is a massive evidence of dance as a part of worship and presumably this dance inspired the sculptors of the early medieval temples of Bhubaneshwar.

The most important temple in Orissa, the temple of

Jagannatha at Puri, was constructed beginning around 1112

C.E. by King Chodaganga and his descendants,

the kings of the imperial Ganga dynasty who ruled for over four centuries and were great patrons of art, architecture, and religion. They engaged expert 'beenkars' and 'maddalas' (instrumentalists), 'geeta-

3Ibid. p.50-51.

^Jogan Shankar, Devadasi Cult: A Sociological Analysis (New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1994), 41.

°Vatsyayan, Indian Classical Dance. 50.

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gaunis'(singers) and 'nachunis'(dancers) for the ‘seva'(service) of the Lord.

F.A. Marglin, in her comprehensive work Wives of

the God-King: The Rituals of the Devadasis of Puri, implies

that until the institution of dedication of women was

outlawed, the temple women were the custodians of the dance

tradition in Orissa. Marglin describes the "maharis" (female

temple dancers) who used to dance near the image of the

deity Jagannatha at the time of the morning food-offering.

The maharis also sang in the evening at the time of the

deity's being "put to sleep" and the lights in the temple

extinguished. At these times, the public were not allowed to

approach the deity. There were certain festivals, such as

the chariot festival and the boat festival, during which the

sacred images were brought outside of the temple precincts,

and on those occasions the dance of the maharis was seen by

the public.

Many travellers who visited India as recently as the

early twentieth century described the activities of female

dancers in the temples of Orissa. One is not sure whether

the travellers actually were present at the ceremonies they

describe, or had the rituals described to them by temple

C Leela Samson, Rhythm in Joy. Classical Indian Dance Traditions (New Delhi: Lustre Press, 1987), 96.

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officials, but the accounts they gave were often vivid and

apparently accurate.7

Specific mention is not made of the methods used to

perpetuate the dance tradition, that is, who taught the

maharis to dance. However, Marglin states that.

After the take-over of the administration of the temple by the state government in 1955, the devadasis turned to the State Academy of Music and Dance to replace the traditional patronage which they had received from the king. They applied for grants to establish a school of dance and music so that they could continue to train young girls who would follow the tradition. Their requests were repeatedly denied.

The second sentence implies that all along, the maharis had

trained their successors themselves, thus maintaining the

dual roles of performer and teacher.

Unfortunately for the maharis, during the revival

period of Indian dance, male teachers were patronized by the

educated elite who made it their mission to "rescue" the

Indian dance from the hands of the traditional performers

and re-form these arts for the western-style proscenium

stage. When theater and dance specialists decided to

"revive" the art of dance in Orissa, they turned to the male

7 "On ordinary days [the idols] again breakfast at 10 o'clock and at the same time they are entertained by some of the temple dancing girls . . . at night after the evening meal they are anointed with sandalwood, garlanded with flowers, amid music, dancing, and singing, and then placed on their cots for the night." Lowell Thomas, India. Land of the Black Pagoda (New York: The Century Co., 1930), 310.

Marglin, 29.

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dancers, who were known as "gotipuas". These gotipuas were

young boys who were trained in dancing, dressed as women,

and formed travelling theatrical troupes.3 Therefore, there

was a break in the chain of tradition which had been

maintained by the maharis.

Only one of the male teachers who were regarded as

authorities in the dance came from a family of maharis.

Guru10 Pankaj Charan Das, the foremost teacher of Odissi in

the nineteen-sixties and -seventies, was trained in dance by

his aunt Ratnaprabha, a mahari, before he joined an all-male

theatrical troupe as a youth.11 Although there has been a

significant period during which female Odissi dancers have

been trained by males, Odissi dance retained its extremely

Q "After Orissa was annexed to the Mughal Empire of Akbar in 1592 C.E., Ramachandra Deva, the Raja of Khurda, was appointed Superintendent of the Jagannath Temple. The Maharis, who were exclusively dedicated to temple service, were henceforth employed to dance at the royal court of Khurda, and from that time they lost their high religious status. In order to maintain the religious festivals of Jagannath, the Raja of Khurda appointed Gotipuas (boys in female dress) as dancers. Gotipuas were known in Orissa in the 14th century as actors, dancers, singers, and female impersonators in theatrical performances." Ragini Devi, Dance Dialects of India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1972; Second Revised Edition 1990), 142.

10guru - a Sanskrit word which means simply teacher or guide, the term "guru" is often used to denote either a religious leader or an authority on some subject. In this paper, the word is used in the latter sense to denote an authority on dance.

^Sunil Kothari, Odissi. Indian Classical Dance Art (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1990), 95.

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feminine character, and modern female exponents of the form

such as Sanjukta Panigrahi, Protima Gauri, and KumKum

Mohanty have established training centers both inside and

outside the modern Indian state Orissa where they are

engaged in passing on the tradition to a majority of female

performers.

Another category of Indian dancing which was maintained

for centuries by female temple dancers is Bharata Natyam.

This technique originated in south-eastern India, in the

states known today as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and

Karnataka. Bharata Natyam has a strong presence in the

history of dance in India because the development of the

temple dance was paralleled by an equally artistic court

dance tradition.

These parallel traditions were spared the destruction

caused in the north by invasions and religious suppression.

In Orissa, for example, from 1568 C.E., Muslim invaders took

control of the kingdom, and destroyed many temples. Those

temples left standing had their idols removed and worship

was proscribed. For the next three hundred years, political

turmoil and instability left dancers and musicians in Orissa

without regular patronage formerly provided by the

temples.12

l2Ibid., 142; Kothari, Odissi. 9-12.

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In South India, by contrast, there was a long period of

stable patronage for dancers under the dynasty of the

Cholas, 850 C.E.-1279 C.E., followed by the Vijaynagara

empire, 1336 - 1565 C.E., and lastly the kingdom of Tanjore,

which retained its character as a Hindu state from 1565 to

1856 C.E.13 One of the greatest monuments of the Chola king

Rajaraja is the Brihadisvara temple at Tanjore, his capital.

From copperplate and bronze inscriptions, it is known that

400 dancers were attached to the temple, and that they were

paid two measures of rice,two bundles of betel leaves, betel

nuts, oil, and spices daily.1* These dancers and other

temple servants were supported by donations from the royal

family.

Under the Cholas, the art of dance in South India took

on the attributes we recognize today: the image of the

dancing god Shiva Nataraja (King of Dance) in a ring of fire

which many dancers display on the stage in modern times was

first sculpted during the Chola period. The ornate jewellery

worn by contemporary exponents of Bharata Natyam and

Kuchipudi, two modern versions of ancient temple dance, is

modelled on Chola-period artifacts.13

13Kersenboom-Story, 24-39.

^Gowri Ramnarayan, "Rajaraja Chola: He Would not Stoop to Conquer", Namaste XVI (January 1996): 14.

lsAmmu Ambalakkat, "The Sparkling Legacy of the Mighty Cholas", Ibid., 29.

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It was during the Chola period that the position of

'devadasi'(temple-dancer), became an hereditary right, that

is, the daughter of a dancer inherited the position from her

mother.16 This is important because it means that the

orally-transmitted knowledge of dance movement and dance

literature (songs and collections of rules) would be passed

from mother to daughter, establishing a regular women's

tradition.

Dancers were also maintained outside of the temple by

the royal family. From the reign of Rajendra I (1012-1044

C.E.) comes the written record of his favorite court dancer,

who had enough personal wealth that she financed the

complete rebuilding of a temple at Tiruvarur. Her name was

Anukkiyar Paravai Nankaiyar, and she was held in such high

regard that a village and a temple were named after her, and

her image was installed in the Tiruvarur temple after her

death.17

The subsequent Vijayanagar empire was no less

supportive of the dancers in court and temple. Kersenboom-

Story states.

It is . . . clear that the palace-dancers were held in great respect by the king as they were allowed to chew betel in front of him, which no one was allowed to do apart from dancing women and wrestlers. Their art was generously supported and great attention was given to

l6Kersenboom-Story, 26.

17Ibid. , 27.

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the training of the dancers. A special hall for instruction was built inside the palace which contained panels that showed the proper positions and that contained bars which were used for the physical training of the dancers.

These periods of rich artistic culture in south India

provided fertile ground for the continuous development of

dance. The Vijayanagara empire saw the South united, and

cultural interchange took place among speakers of the major

South Indian languages, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, and Marathi,

as well as Sanskrit. Dancers absorbed into their repertoire

songs and dance-items from a number of different sources,

creating the rich mixture which came to the nineteenth

century as "dasi attain" (dance of the temple-servant) , or

"sadir kacheri" (concert dance).

The most famous woman artist of the Tanjore period was

Muddupalani (1739-1763), an hereditary court performer,

dancer, musician, and poet in Sanskrit and Telegu.

Muddupalani was the daughter of a courtesan, so presumably

her mother taught her in the traditional way. Muddupalani is

noted for having translated Geetagovinda (Song of the Lord),

a north Indian book of hymns by the poet Jayadeva, into

Telegu, the language of much south Indian court poetry. Her

translation, titled Ashtapadi (a reference to its eight-line

format) is still used by Bharata Natyam dancers as the basis

18Ibid. ,37.

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of their most sensitive emotional expressions.19

Muddupalani was also the author of an epic poem about

Radha, consort of the divine cowherd Krishna, titled Radhika

Santwanu. This poem has gone through a series of censored

translations and abortive publications because of its

perceived erotic content. 20 Another well-known dancer who

came across the text in later times attempted to reprint it.

The poem in question . . . so enchanted Bangalore Nagaratnamma, a patron of the arts, musician, and distinguished courtesan of Mysore, that she tried to bring out a new version in 1910. The version was immediately attacked, and in 1911 the Police Inspector Cunningham seized all copies of the 'obscene book' under section 292 of the Indian Penal Code. Only in 1947 were the ban orders withdrawn.

By way of contrast, the manual of love known as Kama Sutra.

by a male author, is available in several languages, and has

recently been used as the basis of a film (directed and

produced by women) about women in ancient India. 22

Apparently, an erotic text by a woman author was to be

19Tara Ali Baig, ed. Women of India (New Delhi; Directorate of Publications, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1957), 163.

20Avanthi Meduri, "Nation, Woman, Representation: The Sutured History of the Devadasi and her Dance" (Ph. D. Diss., New York University, 1996), xix.

21Janaki Nair, Women and Law in Colonial India (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1996), 163.

22Mira Nair, dir. Kama Sutra. A Tale of Love. Mirabai Films, 1996.

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suppressed, while a similar text by a man is considered to

be 'literature.'

The transformation of "dasi attain," from a collection

of separate dance items appropriate to different occasions

in the temple to a sophisticated entertainment, took place

starting in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Four

brothers, third-generation court performers and dance 23 teachers , systematized the concert repertoire, arranging

it in such a way as to progress logically through the

various aspects of dance expression. These brothers, known

as the Tanjore Quartet, also choreographed devotional dances

to be performed by the devadasis. Their contribution to the

art-form is undeniable.

The Tanjore court of Sarfoji II (1798-1832) became a

center of artistic excellence. The court dancers and

devadasis of Tanjore became famous far beyond the borders of

their own kingdom, and a fashion arose of having a group of

dancers and musician-accompanists from Tanjore at various

other courts. For example, the Maharajah Gaekwar Sayaji Rao

of Baroda kept as court dancer a famous Tanjore devadasi

named Gaurabai. His son maintained two dancing women from

Tanjore along with their musicians. The conductor of this

23 Kersenboom-Story, 44.

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troupe was Chandrasen Pillai, who learned his art from a

grandson of one of the Tanjore Quartet.M

One important result of this royal craze for dancers

from Tanjore has been the cultural hegemony of Bharata

Natyam all over India. After the accession of the princely

states to the independent nation of India in 1947, dancers

and musicians did not necessarily return to their native

places. Many settled where they were and became dance

teachers and performers. Even in the North, where Bharata

Natyam was not indigenous, it developed a large following,

and was widely taught and performed after 1947. Taya Zinkin,

a Frenchwoman married to a British officer of the Indian

Civil Service, describes in her memoir seeing a performance

by Ram Gopal, a (male) northerner who learned Bharata

Natyam, in the palace of the Maharajah of Jaipur, a northern

kingdom.

Zinkin was accompanied by the German Indologist Dr.

Stella Kramrisch. The dancer performed for them privately.

Later, in deference to Kramrisch's scholarship, Gopal

allowed them to see the dance of his own dance teacher's

daughter, who did not perform in public because of her

facial disfigurement.

This is an example of a female dance teacher who has

never been acknowledged in the annals of Indian dance

^Zarina, 5-6.

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history. Ram Gopal has been hailed as one of the greatest

performers in India's history.25 His teacher, Muthukumar

Pillai, was the son of a devadasi who gave him his basic

training. Muthukumar was also considered one of the giants

of the Indian dance revival in the twentieth century. But

his daughter's accomplishments have been buried in the back

pages of history.

By way of contrast, two quotations about her can be

cited. The first comes from Taya Zinkin:

After three dances Ram Gopal came and sat between us. An ugly little woman had been keeping time slapping her thigh with one hand. Ram Gopal told her to dance. 'Her name is Lakshmi Kantha. She is my guru’s daughter and has become my guru. I do not let people watch when she dances. She thinks it’s because she has a hare-lip. Her face looks like death. But for you. Professor Kramrisch, only for you, I am making an exception. . After you see her, I could never dance before you.'

The second quotation comes from a genealogy of Bharata

Natyam teachers prepared by critic Sunil Kothari:

Muthukumar Pillai was born in 1874 at Kattumanar Koil (Tamil Nadu) . . .Those were the days when Bharata Natyam was performed as a part of entertainment on the occasion of weddings. The devadasis and professional dancers used to dance in front of the bride and bridegroom. Muthukumar Pillai used to wear the costume of a girl and perform for a small fee of twenty rupees. . . . Muthukumar studied directly from his mother, Yogam Animal, who was a dancer and a musician of some repute. . .He taught well-known dancer Ram Gopal . . He has only one child, a daughter. She lives in Kattumanar

25Susheela Misra, Some Dancers of India (New Delhi: Harman, 1992), 63.

26Taya Zinkin, French Memsahib (Stoke Abbot, Great Britain: Thomas Harmsworth Publishing, 1989), 111.

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Koil with her children and grand-children. It is not known if ant of the children have continued the tradition.

In the first quotation. Ram Gopal states that he has

taken the daughter of his guru (Muthukumar Pillai) as his

guru, because of the beauty of her dance, one assumes. But

years later, when Kothari wrote his book, the daughter of

Muthukumar Pillai had become nameless, and her children

unknown. Evidently Gopal was successful in his efforts to

prevent Lakshmi Kantha from performing, so that he could

appropriate her heritage of dancing tradition, which came to

the family through her grandmother. Gopal went on to become

world-famous, Lakshmi Kantha was relegated to obscurity.

These quotations demonstrate another result of the

remodelling of dasi attarn by the Tanjore Quartet, namely the

male appropriation of the training of dancers. Previously

the women had been repositories of the temple tradition,

assisted by male musical directors and teachers. With the

rise of the Tanjore Quartet and their direct (male)

descendants, a patriarchal tradition was established.

Avanthi Meduri, a dancer who has recently completed her

dissertation on the devadasi tradition, states that,

. . .this cultural flowering, which continued until 1877, was not friendly to the devadasi and was, in fact, slowly removing her from the cultural scene. Male dance and music teachers were clearly beginning to

^7Sunil Kothari, ed. Bharata Natyam Indian Classical Dance Art (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1979), 129-130.

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define artistic practices . . .Suffice it to say that prior to the nineteenth century, the devadasi's cultural forms were manifested as matrilineal art forms: the dance was, in fact, hailed as dasi attarn or the dance of the devadasi. This changed in the nineteenth century as the four brothers were being hailed as . . . the founding figures of the sadir dance.

In the next chapter it will be shown just how far the

influence of the Tanj'ore Quartet extended into the twentieth

century.

In the northern part of India, two dance forms had been

maintained by female performers and teachers in non-temple

settings from the early historical period up to the

twentieth century. These two forms, Kathak and Manipuri,

contrast sharply with the southern styles and with each

other.

Mention has been made in an earlier chapter of Kathak

dance, the style which survived the many waves of invasion

which inundated North India throughout history. In fact, all

of the foreign influences which affected Indian history came

from the North except the last, the European influence which

came from the sea. So the dance of North India should

exhibit the greatest degree of admixture. This is true of

the Kathak dance, which was pushed out of its ritual role in

the temples as early as

28Meduri, 45-46.

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the twelfth century of the Common Era, when Muslim rulers

first claimed Delhi.

Kathak dance originated as a bardic practice, and was

nourished by both men and women, who sang and acted

devotional stories of Krishna, the cow-herd god, and his

milkmaid devotees. Under Muslim dominance the art changed

character somewhat. It was frequently performed by young

boys dressed as women, and this type of performance can be

seen today as "Braj Rasalila," a kind of dance-drama

depicting scenes from the life of Krishna performed during

annual festivals for pilgrims to Mathura, a city near Delhi

which is the historic site of much of Krishna's life on

earth.

The Mughal rulers also imported dancing women from

Persia, and the style of the Persian performers is said to

have influenced the Kathak presentation.29 While several of

the Muslim rulers were great patrons of the art and kept

male and female performers in their courts, others enforced

strict Islamic bans on dancing, especially by women.

While the Mughals held sway over much of North India,

the Europeans began to establish trading centers on the

coastline of India. As they penetrated into the country,

these first tradesmen tended to imitate the courtly style of

the Indian princes. One of their greatest pleasures was

29Kothari, Kathak. 7.

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watching the performance of the professional courtesans,

which they termed "nautch" after the Bengali word meaning

dance. Many beautiful drawings, paintings, and early

photographs of these "nautch" dancers have survived, and are

used as references by dance historians and Kathak artists

today. Even early British governors patronized these dancers

and hired them to entertain visiting dignitaries.

A glimpse of the life of a nautch-dancer or courtesan

during the British period was provided by an Urdu novelist

who chronicled the artist's life in Lucknow around the turn

of the century. Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa was a highly-

educated man who worked as a University lecturer by day and

frequented the "mushairas" 311 in the salons of the

courtesans at night. His novel Umrao Jan Ada. The Courtesan

of Lucknow, was according to its author based on the life of

a famous dancer, singer, and poetess who related the details

to Ruswa in her old age.

Umrao Jan described her upbringing in the house of a

famous Madam at Lucknow. As a young girl of nine years, she

had been kidnapped by an enemy of her father and sold to the

brothel in Lucknow, a city in North India which was at that

time (early nineteenth century C.E.) a center of

sophisticated art and culture. She was trained as a

*1(1 Mushaira is a gathering of poets who take turns composing and reciting verses extemporaneously.

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performer of dance and music by the best teachers. She was

taught to read and write in three languages. She described

her education under a Maulvi (Muslim cleric) as follows:

I sat at his feet and learnt, despite my humble status, to command the respect and attention of wealthy aristocrats. To him I owe the honour of being admitted in the King's court and being invited to the salons of ladies of nobility. I need hardly add that he fostered my interest in poetry till it developed into a passion.31

The main thrust of the story of Umrao Jan is that a

great percentage of her income came from her performances

rather than from sexual encounters. She says, for example,

after setting herself up independently in a provincial city.

There was music and singing in my apartments from the early hours of the evening to well past midnight. People also got to know that I wrote verse. There was hardly a day when I was not asked out to parties and symposiums and there was no dearth of invitations to sing. In a short time I earned a lot of money. . . .In every festivity and in every wedding in the homes of wealthy aristocrats, I was invited as a matter of prestige.

This is the kind of performer who perpetuated the

Kathak tradition through the nineteenth and into the

twentieth century. Since this class of courtly, educated and

independent woman did not exist in the western world at that

time, it is not surprising that this class of women was much

maligned by the European colonialists.

11 Mirza Mohammad Ali Ruswa, Umrao Jan Ada. The Courtesan of Lucknow. trans. Khushwant Singh and M.A.Husaini (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1982), 19.

32Ibid. , 88.

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Unfortunately, Christian missionary reformers who

followed in the footsteps of the traders campaigned against

such presentations. They characterized the performers as

prostitutes and their patrons as panderers. Gradually the

female performers were banished from polite society and

relegated to red-light districts and back rooms. The art of

Kathak languished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

century.

In a remote part of Northeastern India, a tiny kingdom

became the only place on the Indian sub-continent where

dance was never regarded as a sign of depravity, and where

all women were expected to dance at least once in every year

for the good of their community. This was the kingdom known

as Manipur.

In an earlier chapter, Manipur has been described as

home to ancient worship practices involving female priests

known as Maibis. These Maibis are not a hereditary

priesthood, but a group of women who are self-selected

because of a tendency toward spirit-possession. They may be

married or single. The only men who may act as Maibis must

dress as women while performing their ritual duties. All

Maibis dance as part of their own ritual practice, teach

dance to other younger Maibis, and direct dance performances

Pran Nevile, Nautch Girls of India: Dancers Singers Playmates (New Delhi: Prakriti India, 1997), passim.

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by members of the community during their annual fertility

festival, the "Lai Haraoba" (Pleasure of the Gods).

These female-controlled dance practices are part of the

daily life of the people of Manipur, and have been since

pre-historic times. In the fifteenth century of the Current

Era, Hindu practice began to filter into Manipur from

neighboring kingdoms in India.^ Hinduism supports a

patriarchal value system. The male is considered superior to

the female, and is duty-bound to control her activities.

Males also control the wealth of their female relatives.'*5

However, in Manipur, women have never traditionally been

subjugated by men.

The women of Manipur are expert weavers, and the

products of their weaving labor are their own to use as they

wish. Women have their own market-place in Imphal, capital

*"The influx of Brahmins from North India in various capacities including, of course, priestly functions in a large measure, started, historically speaking, as early as the reign of King Kyamba (1467-1508 A.D.) . . . when a temple was dedicated to Vishnu and the temple still exists almost neglected in the Bishnupur area of Manipur." E. Nilkanta Singh, Aspects of Indian Culture (Imphal.Manipur: Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy, 1982), 22,24.

55"No act is ever to be done according to her own will by a young girl, a young woman, or even an old woman, though in their own houses. In her childhood, a girl should be under the will of her father; in her youth, of her husband; her husband being dead, of her sons . . . She must be till death subdued, intent, chaste . . . Wife, son, and slave, these three are said to be without property: whatever property they acquire is his to whom they belong." from the Ordinances of Manu, ancient Hindu code, quoted by Sam Welles, editor. The World's Great Religions (New York: Golden Press, 1958), 23.

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of Manipur, where they maintain stalls and sell their own

woven goods as well as those of other women. This market is

known as "Ima Bazaar" (Mother's Market). In India as a

whole, this type of woman-controlled business district is

rare. These women even have their own credit unions from

which they can take loans as needed.

Because these women have their own means of support,

they are more independent than women in other parts of

India, and less likely to be exploited by men. During an

interview with a male theatrical director from Manipur, son

of a well-known dance teacher, the author was told that

there has never been prostitution in Manipur because the

women have their own means of livelihood in their weaving. A

good weaver can support herself and her children adequately

even if separated from her husband.

The very strength of the Manipuri woman's position was

central to the survival of the pre-Hindu religious practices

during the mass conversion of the populace which took place

during the eighteenth century C.E.3" King Garibniwaza

(1709-1748) attempted to wipe out the traditional practices

by destroying shrines and images of the Umanglais (ancient

clan deities). "But the effort of the king and his preceptor

36Ratan Thiyam, interview by author, July 22, 1996, Imphal, Manipur.

37Gangmumei Kabui, History of Manipur Volume One (New Delhi: National Publishing House, 1991), 233.

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to destroy the ancient Meitei religion failed due to

opposition by the traditional followers of the ancient

religion."'*® Since the "traditional followers" of the old

religion were guided by women, the resistance was

undoubtedly woman-controlled and instigated. The Hindu

rulers found that they needed to compromise with the

original religion of the Meiteis, the ethnic group which

occupies the Manipur valley.

One of the great compromises which was made to

encourage the Meitei people to accept Hinduism was the

composition of dances on Vaishnavite themes. 39 Since the

Meiteis1 traditional worship had taken the form of dance

ritual, this style of worship was acceptable to the people

of Manipur. The grandson of King Garibaniwaza, King

Bhagyachandra, introduced this concept of Manipuri-style

dances on Hindu themes. The female control was never absent,

however, from dance practice in Manipur. Manipuri historian

Gangmumei Kabui states that, "[Bhagyachandra's] daughter

Princess Bimbavati, popularly known as Shija Laioibi, helped

him in composing the dance which was also performed by her

in a devotional dance form."4®

38Ibid., 257. 38Vaishnavism is a branch of Hinduism in which devotion to the god Vishnu in the form of Krishna is emphasized.

4flKabui, 276.

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The tradition of female performance of dance inside the

Hindu temples in Manipur has never been discontinued. Men

never take part in these dances. The only exception to this

rule is in the case of "beardless" boys who act out the role

of Lord Krishna in the dance-drama known as "Ras Leela"

(Pastimes of the Lord). Originally the participants were the

"Rajkumaris" (princesses) but gradually many other women

took part. It is considered a great honor, for which parents

might pay large sums in temple donations and teacher's fees,

for a young woman to perform in a temple performance.^

The difference between these women and the dedicated

women of temples elsewhere in India is that there is no

dedication ceremony. Dance training is not limited to a

particular sector of society. Anyone may dance, and since it

is a community duty, almost everyone dances. Dance

participation has no bearing on a woman's marriage

prospects. Although Maibis (traditional priestesses) do not

dance in the Hindu temples, students of dance often perform

both in the Lai Haraoba (traditional ritual) and in the Ras

Leela (Hindu temple performance).

In Manipuri tradition, therefore, women have always

occupied a position of leadership. During the

"Sanskritization" (Hinduization) of their society, several

4lN. Tombi Singh, Manipur and the Mainstream (Imphal, Manipur: Chitrebirentombichand Khorjeirup, 1975), 70.

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male dance teachers were dubbed "gurus" and hired by the

Indian government to teach at the center for dance training

established at lmphal, the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipuri Dance

Academy. But all male and female teachers are addressed by

the same Meitei-language term, "Ojha", which means

"respected teacher." In other parts of India, male teachers

are normally addressed as "guru" and female teachers

addressed as "auntie," "mother," or "elder sister."^ And

the Maibis, those priestesses of the ancient religion, are

still the acknowledged leaders of the traditional dance

presentations in the communities.^

<9 See Chapter Five for discussion of forms of address for male and female dance teachers.

in The author's expertise in Manipuri dance and culture stems from extended research visits to Manipur in 1981, 1982, 1990-1991 and 1996.

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Twentieth Century Dance Revival

When Rukmini Devi (1904-1989), a Brahmin woman who was

inspired by ballerina Anna Pavlova to learn Indian dance,

investigated the surviving tradition in the early part of

the twentieth century, she went first not to literary,

sculptural, or painted records of dance in the past, but to

living dancers and dance teachers who remembered the lessons

of their youth, whether in temple or court. Later, when she

had learned from the oral tradition, she was able to enrich

her theoretical base and increase her movement vocabulary by

examining sculptured dancing figures in temples and

descriptions of gesture and pose in the Sanskrit treatises

which were extant. These Sanskrit texts, which had been

effectively "lost," were being translated by scholars in

Europe and India around the same time that some of the dance

styles were being "revived," that is, during the first half

of the twentieth century. The oral tradition was being

maintained by several classes of performer, who interacted

with one another and continually nurtured the various styles

of dance that were their birthright. Some of these

performers were dedicated female dancers attached to Hindu

temples, called variously devadasis (servants of god),

57

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maharis (a corruption of maharani, meaning queen), and

numerous other titles such as basavi, jogati, and so on.

Other artists such as singers, musicians, and conductors

were employed as part of a system of artistic service in the

temples and courts.

During the early twentieth century, the class of

hereditary performers, most of them women, who had been

maintaining the oral and kinetic tradition for hundreds of

years in temples and courts, fell into disrepute as a

Victorian value system was invoked against them by reformers

and missionaries. This persecution had actually been going

on since the days of the Muslim invaders in North India.

From the time of the Delhi Sultanate (1175-1340), many Hindu

temples were destroyed as a religious duty by fanatical

followers of Islam.1 Stones originally forming parts of the

temples were then re-used to build mosques and tombs for the

invaders, and can still be seen today in the ruins around

New Delhi. Dancers, singers, and other temple servants lost

their livelihood at that time, and had to learn to support

themselves in other ways, in some cases by becoming

entertainers in the courts of the invaders. Later, during

the reign of Aurangzeb (1659-1707), a passionate Islamic

reformer, thousands more temples were destroyed, and it

became a public offence to perform singing or dancing.

Aurangzeb in fact ordered all dancing women (who were by

Shankar, 42.

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custom married to a deity rather than to a mortal man) to 9 marry or be exiled.

When Europeans began travelling through India and

reporting on their experiences, they naturally viewed much

of what they saw through the lenses of their own cultural

conditioning. An example of this cultural effect was their

reaction to the devadasis and courtesans they encountered.

European religious ritual was embodied in the Mass or a

Protestant equivalent. Women did not perform any functional

role in that ritual. In European tradition, female religious

devotees were the nuns, who dressed in figure-hiding black

and white robes, cut their hair and eschewed personal

adornment. One can only imagine the horror with which these

travellers, many of them missionaries and members of

religious orders, viewed the dedicated women of the Hindu

temples of India.

The devadasis were considered to be perpetual brides of

the temple deity, just as nuns are called "brides of

Christ." But a bride in India wears auspicious red clothing,

and silver or golden jewellery in keeping with her husband's

wealth and social position. It is considered the bride's

responsibility to exhibit publicly the financial status of

her husband's family. Similarly, the devadasis, when

performing their duties such as dancing, singing, or taking

2H.M. Elliot, The History of India as Told by its Own Historians, (London: Trubner and Company, 1875), 283.

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part in processions, dressed in red temple saree and

beautiful ornaments, in order to uphold the grandeur and

power of the temple deity to whom they were married. Just

as the bride's Jewellery was often her personal wealth,

given her at the time of marriage by her own parents and her

in-laws, so the devadasis ornaments were their own property,

given to them by their patrons.*

Then, of course, they used to dance. Using provocative

gestures and alluring facial expressions, they danced as if

the sacred image were a human being, whom they wished to

charm and enchant. The translation of the devotional poetry

most often used as text for dance reveals the personal

nature of devotion. The "bhakti" movement, which cast God in

the role of the beloved (male) and the devotee in the role

of the lover (female), influenced religious expression

increasingly starting around 700 C.E. and culminating in

1533 C.E. with the life of Chaitanya, a Vaishnavite saint.’

The devadasis addressed God directly, begging Him not to

^"Dancing girls attached to temples are required to dance daily before the idols, while the priests are officiating and offering puja to them; but the majority of these are trained to appear in public, when they are profusely ornamented with gold and jewels and sumptuously dressed in silk and muslin." Siraj ul Hassan, quoted in Shankar, 50.

*Frederique Apffel Marglin quotes one of her informants, a mahari (temple dancer) who described her first sexual experience with the king of Talcher, a principality near Puri. Afterwards, she was given gold ornaments by the king of Talcher and the king of Puri, who was her patron. Marglin, 75.

^Thapar, 186.

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ignore His devotee, not to tarry with other lovers, to come

quickly and be embraced by His devotee.6

In short, the appearance and actions of the devadasis

were in direct contrast to what was expected by the

Europeans in the terms of religious activity, and therefore

the temple dancers were frequently misunderstood and

denigrated by them. Thus there arose an atmosphere of

disapproval around the institution of temple dancing and the

women who were dedicated to its performance. While the

temple priests and their wealthy patrons continued encourage

the practice, there grew up a so-called "anti-nautch '

movement" fuelled by the descriptions of temple dancers

published in Europe. One of these travellers whose words

have been frequently quoted by writers on both sides of the

debate was the Abbe J.A. Dubois. Without quoting at length

an article which has been reprinted numerous times, it is

C "Enough of your pranks now! Hear me; why are you keeping me waiting? 0 great and beautiful Lord, heed my request. Join me without fail. 0 Lord Brihadishwara. Do you think you are fair? I have all my faith in you. Oft have I seen you in the company of lovelorn maidens. 0 Lord, you are my ideal. Pray come; aren't you my beloved? Why this hesitancy? Indeed you are my Lord. This poem is the text of a "varnam", a type of dance composition, addressed to Lord Brihadishwara, the deity of the Brihadishwara Temple at Tanjore, Tamil Nadu. Quoted by Sunil Kothari. Bharata Natvam . 76.

^Nautch is the anglicized spelling of a Bengali word which means dance.

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sufficient to take note of the words used in the English

translation of his original French to describe the

devadasis. "Lewd", "lascivious", and "indecorous" apply to

their dance movements, while "obscene" applies to the texts 0 which they interpret.

In 1856 the principality of Tanjore in south India was

annexed by the British government in India. At that time,

Tanjore had been a great artistic center and numerous

devadasis and other dancers and musicians were patronized by Q the king. Under British governance, funds were no longer

available to these artists. Although at the outset, British

governors themselves used to patronize dancers, inviting

them to perform on public occasions and private parties, the

"anti-nautch" movement gained strength and soon patronage of

dance in any form was regarded as encouragement of

prostitution. How the temple dancers came to be termed

prostitutes has been exhaustively reconstructed by Avanthi

Meduri in her 1996 dissertation Nation. Woman.

Representation: The Sutured History of the Devadasi and her

Dance.

In actuality, the availability of devadasis as public

women varied widely from one temple to another and from one

®Abbe J. A. DuBois, Hindu Manners. Customs and Ceremonies. 1906, pp.585-587, quoted by Jogan Shankar, Devadasi Cult. 55. q 3Kersenboom-Story, 47.

^see note 20,Chapter 3.

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devadasi to another. In many cases, Europeans misread the

situation radically. One example is the Jagannatha temple at

Puri, which maintained its maharis (dancers and singers)

into the 1950s. W. Ward in 1815 wrote that.

It is a well-authenticated fact that at this place (Puri) a number of females of infamous character are employed to dance and sing before the God. Persons going to see Jagannatha are often guilty of criminal actions with these females.

However, Marglin in her book Wives of the God-King

emphasizes that the maharis were never available to pilgrims

to the shrine of Jagannatha, except as objects of worship.

During the dance of the devadasi in the dance-hall of the main temple, the pandas (priests) called the attention of the of the pilgrims to the devadasi and said that to have a viewing of the devadasi is the same as having a viewing of Jagannatha (the temple deity). At the end of the dance some pilgrims took the dust from the devadasi's feet, others rolled their entire body on the area where she had danced, to collect on their whole body the dust of her feet. Pilgrims would place in front of her offerings of sindur (red powder), feet dye, bangles, saris, ornaments, money.

Marglin also describes visits by groups of devadasis to

pilgrim lodging houses, at which time the pilgrims would

worship the devadasis and hear religious songs. These

ceremonies are described as specifically non-sexual. In this

example, at least, the devadasis are not regarded as common

prostitutes.

flW. Ward, 1815, Volume I, p.327 quoted by Shankar, 47.

^Marglin, 109.

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Unfortunately for the women who practiced dance in

India, many misconstructions and misguided cultural

interpretations were heaped upon them by late nineteenth

century and early twentieth century reformers. Their

lifestyle seemed to threaten both the British rulers and the

Indian citizenry, though in different ways.

The British lumped the practice of dedication of girls

to temple service together with other pernicious practices

which they felt it their duty to stamp out. These practices

included "sati" (the self-immolation of widows), child

marriage, dowry, polygamy, and so on. The Indians, on the

other hand, especially the educated upper classes who tried

to imitate the British in order to gain position in the

government hierarchy, felt that India was getting a bad

reputation internationally when such traditions as female

temple dedication were publicized.

The dancers found themselves literally between a rock

and a hard place. For centuries they had been respected as

artists and remunerated accordingly, to the extent that the

dancers themselves were often some of the greatest donors to

in the temples they served. With the decline in official

patronage, the women had to make their living by public

13"A notable feature found in many temple inscriptions in Andhra is the generosity and frequency with which the Gudi Saani (superior level temple dancer) herself donated valuable gifts to the temple. History abounds with mention of a precious piece of land, an ornament, an object used for worship, or, in some cases, an entire temple built by a Gudi Saani." Swapnasundari, unnumbered pages.

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performance. As soon as they did so, they were branded as

"fallen women", "prostitutes", and so on.

In earlier times they had been the only persons allowed

to sit among queens as equals.14 By 1947, the year in

which India gained independence from Great Britain,

devadasis were proscribed by law from continuing their

occupation. The list of laws passed at the turn of the

century and thereafter to eliminate the practice of devadasi

dedication includes the following:

1. Government of Mysore, April, 1909: Devadasis

excluded from temple service; prohibition of

dedication.

2. Bombay Devadasi Act, 1934: prohibition of devadasi

dedication.

3. Madras Anti-Devadasi Dedication Act, 1947:

prohibition of dedication and adoption of girls for

purposes of dance training.

4. Karnataka Devadasis Bill, 1982: prevention of

dedication.

5. Andhra Pradesh Assembly, 1987: eradication of

devadasi system.13

14Portuguese travel-writer Domino Paes in 1520 C.E. stated that " these women are allowed even to enter the presence of the wives of the king, and they stay with them and eat betel with them, a thing which no other person may do no matter what his rank may be" (Cf. R. Sewell:1982:242) quoted in Shankar, 49.

13Ibid. , 157-158.

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What was the effect of these laws and the accompanying

loss of status on the temple dancers? As might be expected,

they reacted in different ways to the hardship brought on by

their loss of support. Some of them had been granted small

parcels of land which were actually theirs outright, to

farm, rent or sell as they wished. Some of them simply

retired to live in their homes in obscurity. In other cases,

the land which had been given to the devadasis and their

families reverted back to the temples. In these cases, the

devadasis were left destitute and had to eke out a living by

means of sewing or other services. Some married and became

housewives. A few, such as Kotipalli Sathyavathi of West

Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, were able to use their

training to organize theatrical troupes which could

sometimes be hired for special performances during temple

festivals, as well as performances at private parties and

village fairs. In this way, certain parts of their

repertoire were preserved and have been accessed by modern

performers. The more esoteric temple rituals are remembered

by a very few elderly artists who may not have been allowed

to perform them in their proper setting for the last fifty 1 fi years.

The most damaging effect of the various laws against

devadasi dedication was the break in the traditional method

lf*Swapnasundari, Vilasini Natyam (Kuchipudi Dance Center, New Delhi, 1995), no page numbers.

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of training young dancers. The method of training had been

that young girls were adopted by the female performers as

daughters. Some of the dancers had their own daughters, but

since they were not married to mortal men, they passed their

natural daughters off as adopted. 17 In either case, the

daughters then underwent dance and music training from an

early age until puberty. Then they were officially dedicated

and employed by the temple as dancers, singers, and ritual

officiants. Once the prospect of temple dedication was

eliminated, families were no longer willing to apprentice

their daughters to the dancers, since the prospect of

livelihood was reduced to public dancing and the flesh

trade. It was at this historical juncture, from around the

turn of the century up to Independence in 1947, that the

word "devadasi" lost its respectable definition (i.e.

servant of god, auspicious woman) and became a term of

opprobrium (i.e. prostitute, cabaret dancer).1®

This is the crucial period during which the tradition

of Indian dancing was handed over from the women

practitioners to their male counterparts, the musicians and

nattuvanars (conductors of dance performance). Although the

women lost their status in the community and were labelled

as prostitutes, the men who had formerly served as musicians

and conductors of the recital became the standard-bearers of

17Marglin, 78.

^Meduri, 103.

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twentieth century, the women dancers who had for centuries

embodied India's rich dance traditions were relegated to

obscurity, at the very historical moment that Indian dance

was beginning to be hailed as one of the treasure-houses of

India’s national identity. For it was in this period that

the intelligentsia of India were looking for ways to break

away from the physical and mental monopoly of the British

rulers over their Indian subjects.

It was felt by some that the British system of

education perpetuated British dominance. Rabindranath Tagore

during the 1920s set up a college outside Calcutta at which

he trained students using his version of traditional Indian

methods, along the lines of ancient "ashrams" or retreats in

which a single wise preceptor lived with students at a

remote location and imparted wisdom during the course of

daily chores such as gardening, gathering flowers and

fruits, and cooking. Tagore employed (male) dance teachers

at his college, called "Shantiniketan" (Abode of Peace), at

first to give physical conditioning to the students, but

later to assist in the presentation of Tagore's musical

dramas, all of which used Indian artistic idioms to present

messages of national unity and social progress.

l9Shankar, 144.

20Meduri. 142-143,160.

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Several artistic giants of the early twentieth century

in India were indeed women, though they came not from the

families of traditional dance practitioners but from the

wealthy upper classes whose women were working at the

forefront of artistic innovation and political revolution.

They in turn were frequently inspired by foreign dancers

who, in the climate of fashionable "Orientalism” prevalent

in the West in the 1920s and '30s, presented their own

choreographic images of Indian dance based on drawings and

descriptions brought back by travellers. The most well-known

of these "dance tourists" were probably Anna Pavlova and

Ruth St. Denis.

In 1926, Anna Pavlova danced in Bombay. Two members of

the audience were enthralled and inspired. They were to

become pioneers of the Indian dance. Their names were

Rukmini Arundale and Leila Sokhey. Both of them had been

influenced by Western ideas, and this probably contributed

to their ability to shake off social prejudice and decide to

learn and perform dance. In the case of Rukmini, she was a

follower of the Irish religious reformer Annie Besant.

Rukmini was married to an Englishman, Bishop George

Arundale. Leila, on the other hand, was the daughter of an

Indian father and an English mother.

Rukmini Devi (her stage name) was later introduced to

Pavlova, and followed her on her tour of South Asia. Pavlova

taught Rukmini the elements of ballet, and later arranged

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for a teacher for her young protege when she herself

returned to London.**- Rukmini never even saw Indian dance

until 1932, because her father, along with many members of

upper-class families in Madras, had taken a vow never to see

performance of "Dasi-attam" (the common term for the

devadasi dance). Her passion for dance was such that, once

she had seen it, she determined to learn it and to promote

its appreciation among other Indians.

In 1926, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, modern dance

pioneers, visited India and tried to see a dance

performance. St. Denis had already dressed herself in the

costume of a north Indian "nautch girl" (kathak dancer) to

perform a dance which she titled "The Incense." At that

time, dancing by the very nautch-girls she emulated had been

banned in many parts of India. Because St,Denis and her

company were foreigners, they were allowed and encouraged to

dance everywhere. This is an example of the havoc wrought in

the Indian psyche by the colonial experience. India's own

native dancers were proscribed and criminalised, so such

wealthy patrons as the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharaja

Gaekwar of Baroda underwrote dance performances by a

visiting troupe from America which featured an imitation of n Indian dance on the program.

ZISusheela Misra, Some Dancers of India (New Delhi: Harman Publishing House, 1992), 45-46.

**Meduri, 158.

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Rukmini Devi» one of the first dancers from the upper-

classes to take up the art. was also one of the first to go

directly to the male nattuvanar (conductor of dance

performance) to request training» not in his home, as was

the ancient custom, but in an institutional setting. In the

beginning, the setting was the campus of the Theosophical

Society in Adyar. a suburb of Madras. Later Rukmini acquired

her own land not far from Adyar and established her own

center, which she named "Kalakshetra" meaning "birthplace of

arts."

She was also in the vanguard of reformers who changed

the name of the traditional dance so as to divorce the dance

completely from the traditional dancer. The old name was

"dasi attarn", dance of the temple-servant. The new name was

given as "Bharata Natyam." "Bharata” is the name of the

(male) author of the ancient treatise Natyashastra. which

had recently been rediscovered and was being translated into

English and German in the 1920s and 1930s. Reference to

ancient Sanskrit texts gave an intellectual gloss and

respectability to the dance, and enabled the dancers to

refer to their dance as "classical." It also gave an

additional male approval factor to the dance practice. There

would no longer be a need to refer to the devadasi or

remember her while discussing dance. In fact Rukmini Devi

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did learn from at least one well-known devadasi, Mylapare

Gowri Ammal.21

Rukmini's vaunted capability in abhinaya» or gestural

dance, was a result of her training by the devadasi. But

when Rukmini established her own training center for dance,

Kalakshetra at Thiruvanmiyur, she did not invite any female

teachers to take up residence or impart training there for

many years. At the outset, she brought only male teachers

and indeed created a kind of personality cult around the

male teachers which was to heavily influence the dance world 24 for years afterward. It was her opinion that Dasi-attam

needed to be "cleansed" and "purified" before it would be

acceptable and appropriate for the daughters of Brahmins,

foreigners, and wealthy business families with whom she

associated. She evidently wanted to assure her students a

training experience which would not put them in contact with

the devadasis.

It is instructive to take note here of ways that

Rukmini Devi changed the traditional dance style in order to

"purify" it. One method was costuming. It has been noted

earlier in this paper how the temple dancers wore the

colored silk saree with golden border which is worn by

Indian brides. It was their privilege to wear this costume

23Misra, 47.

24Meduri, 327.

23Misra, 48.

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throughout their lives, as the evergreen brides of god.

However, Rukmini Devi often wore a white costume, and

started a fashion of wearing white costumes to dance. Her

niece Radha Burnier, her first pupil, can be seen performing

in a white costume in the Jean Renoir film The River.

Strangely, white saris in Hindu tradition are worn by

widows, and a devadasi would never wear a white sari because

she was married to an immortal deity. Rukmini Devi, however,

perhaps influenced by her husband Bishop Arundale or by the

spiritualist Dr. Annie Besant, may have adopted the white

dress as a sign of purity, more like a Western bride than an

Indian bride.

Another aspect of dance which Rukmini saw as impure was

the use of erotic references in the lyrics used for dance,

and the concomitant sensual gestures which expressed the

sentiment "sringara" (romantic love). Rukmini decided to

excise all such behaviors from the dance tradition, substituting the religious sentiment "bhakti" (devotion).

By the end of her life, Rukmini Devi had created a huge

body of her own original choreography, had single-handedly

established one of the greatest centers of dance training in

26"Rukmini Devi with her innate aesthetic sensibilities and deep understanding of the art focussed attention on the spiritual and devotional import of the songs used for abhinaya. In order to make the dance acceptable to the society, it was necessary to lay right stress on the devotional aspect of the dance. She also introduced artistic changes in costumes complimenting the beauty of the presentation." Kothari, Bharata Natvam. 78.

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India, and had made the performance of Bharata Natyam world

famous. She will remain as one of the greatest female

contributors to the development of Indian dance. She

inspired many of today's female dancers and gave them the

example which they have followed to become outstanding

performers, teachers, and choreographers, and thus embody

the female principle in the realm of Indian dance.

Balasaraswati (1918-1984) was almost the antithesis of

Rukmini Devi, but while she lived, was acknowledged as the

greatest performer of abhinaya, that is, gestural dance. She

was one of the only dancers belonging to a hereditary dance

family, going back a hundred years to the court dancers of

Tanjore in south India, who became a famous performer after

Indian independence. Having given her first performance in a

temple at the age of seven, and having learned dance from

her female relatives, Balasaraswati was the embodiment of 27 the female dance tradition . She never rejected or

disavowed the devadasi tradition, and argued publicly that

there was no need to "clean up" or "purify" the tradition.2®

27Ibid., 141.

2®" .. . in 1958, Rukmini Devi Arundale ... went up to the dais and presented a paper on Bharatanatyam. . . Rukmini Arundale claimed that she had cleaned up the devadasi dance, reformed and rehabilitated it. Balasaraswati . . . responded sharply to these comments, approached Rukmini Devi Arundale and asked her to demonstrate how and in what manner she had cleaned up the dance." Meduri, 445.

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Balasaraswati operated along traditional lines to pass

on her art. She trained her daughter Lakshmi and often

shared the stage with her. She did not modernize or

Westernize her presentation in the way of Rukmini Devi, who

integrated English-language commentaries into dance

performances, and choreographed dance-dramas for the

proscenium stage. Balasaraswati clung to the path of

personal expression in a very traditional "kacheri" (small

audience of connoisseurs) setting. However, her art was

recognized internationally, and she travelled extensively

around the world. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Balasaraswati

taught summer courses in Bharata Natyam at UCLA, thus taking

her place as one of the first woman teachers of the

diaspora. Her student Avanthi Meduri believed that she could

only find a home in the United States because inside India,

she represented the condemned devadasi class too visibly,

thus disturbing the take-over of the dance tradition by the 29 male gurus and their middle-class pupils.

Rukmini Devi's companion at the 1926 performance by

Anna Pavlova was Leila Sokhey (1899-1947). Leila was another

upper-class Indian woman who fell under the spell of the

sound of the ankle-bells worn by India's traditional

dancers. Her father was a wealthy barrister in Calcutta, her

mother an Englishwoman. When Leila was in boarding school in

London, she became an accomplished violinist, but her father

23Meduri, 467.

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frowned on public performance by his daughter, so there was

no question of a musical career.

When Leila returned to Calcutta, she witnessed a

performance by Bachwajan, a famous courtesan of the day.

This was the same dancer who had performed for Ruth St.Denis

and Ted Shawn when they visited India. Again, this type of

performance was distasteful to Leila's father, although

Leila herself was enchanted and wanted to begin dancing

lessons right away. Only after marriage did she get to begin

her training. She learned from a well-known (male) court

dancer of the period, Acchan Maharaj, and through a

fortunate combination of talent and hard work became an

excellent dancer.

Leila adopted the stage name "Menaka," the name of an

idealized dancer, one of the "apsarases," the mythological

dancers who entertained the King of Heaven, Indra. When her

husband achieved knighthood, she became known as Madame

Menaka.

Madame Menaka's greatest contribution to the

development of Indian dance in the twentieth century was in

presenting the Kathak style in the ballet or dance-drama

form. During the nineteenth century C.E., when Kathak was a

court dance, much of the creative composition was done in

the group-dance format. Either groups of professional

dancers trained by a single teacher, or members of a

princely family under the direction of the court dancer

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would present mythological or poetic themes dramatically as

special event performances.3®

After the takeover of the princely states by the

British, financial backing was not available for large

productions. Kathak became a solo art form, performed at

private parties for small audiences of connoisseurs. Menaka

revived the balletic form. Using her inheritance from her

father, she brought together dancers, musicians, and (male)

choreographers, and sponsored the creation of full-scale

ballets, with authentic costumes and rich decor. The troupe

travelled abroad starting in 1935, and won three First

Prizes at the Berlin International Dance Olympiad in 1936.

Many Europeans saw Indian dance for the first time and were If entranced by it.

Madame Menaka employed traditional dancers from many

different parts of India in her productions. She also

attempted to establish a training center outside Bombay

where young people could learn from great teachers.

Unfortunately, she suffered from kidney disease and was not

able to operate her academy. She died in 1947, on the eve of

3flThe original "Rasalilas, " dramatic presentations through dance of the life of Lord Krishna, inspired the great patron Wajid All Shah to present his own versions of them in his court, with himself dancing the role of Krishna, and his wives and courtesans dancing the roles of the milkmaids who love Krishna. During his reign as Nawab of Oudh, he also commissioned the comic-drama Inder Sabha (Indra's Court), which was performed as a dance-drama and became popular enough to inspire numerous imitations. Kothari, Kathak. 25.

3IMisra, 21-23.

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Indian Independence, at the age of 48. She had truly

dedicated her short life to reviving Kathak as a woman's art

form, and many of the young people who started out in her

troupe became the leaders of the next generation of dancers.

From the establishment of Rukmini Devi's Kalakshetra

College of Fine Arts near Madras in 1936, the cult of male

teachers, known as ’’gurus" grew tremendously. There were men

who had learned from devadasis or maharis, like Pankaj

Charan Das of the Odissi school; men who danced disguised as

women, like Muthukumar Pillai of Bharata Natyam tradition

and Kelucharan Mohapatra of Odissi; sons of devadasi

artists, such as T. Swaminath Pillai; and men whose female

relatives are never allowed to dance in public, although

their female students become world-famous, like Birju

Maharaj of Kathak tradition. Such was the ambivalent

attitude of the public toward female dancers that everyone

wanted to see their performance but most families didn't

want a dancer as a daughter-in-law. The men, however, were

able to parlay their expertise into a lucrative business,

catering to the daughters of the intelligentsia and the

business class, who embraced the "purified" dance as a

symbol of refinement and cultural awareness.

One of these middle-class daughters who embraced the

dance tradition and then brought it full circle, finally

offering herself as the next disciple of traditional

devadasis is Swapnasundari. Another who finally rejected the

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male guru because of sexual harassment is Pratibha Prahlad.

These two dancers were interviewed in India by the author to

help discover the current state of woman dancers in India.

Pratibha Prahlad comes from a politically well-

connected family in Bangalore. From her childhood, she

learned dance as an after-school activity. She attended

Bharata Natyam classes taught by a well-known married couple

in Bangalore. U.S. Krishna Rao and Chandrabagha Devi. After

eight years of regular attendance, she found that her

teachers were reserving certain items of their repertoire

for their grand-daughter. When a coveted foreign performance

tour was arranged, the couple requested their senior

student, Pratibha, to teach classes in their absence, while

they took their grand-daughter with them as a performer.

Disappointed by her teachers, Pratibha searched for a

new teacher. She began travelling to Madras (an overnight

train journey) to learn abhinaya (gestural dance) from a

great female teacher named Kalanidhi Narayan. However,

Kalanidhi does not conduct dance programs herself. 12 She

recommended an aged (male) guru, Muthuswami Pillai, who was

a brilliant conductor and teacher.

12A traditional south Indian dance performance requires the repetition of rhythmic syllables and the playing of small cymbals to accompany the dance steps. Traditionally this task was performed by the male "nattuvanars". Presently, however, many female teachers, especially those living outside India, have begun conducting dance recitals themselves, since the nattuvanars are not always available.

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Pratibha began learning from Pillai, and eventually

when he was awarded a national-level honor, she was chosen

to demonstrate his choreography. Unfortunately, he also

developed a physical obsession with his pupil and began to

harass her with lewd suggestions, offers of marriage, and

unwelcome physical contact. Finally she left his tutelage

and struck out on her own as a professional dancer. After

his death, she was interviewed for a magazine article,

revealing what had occurred. She is one of the first star

dancers to speak publicly about the problem of sexual

harassment of female dancers by their male gurus.33

Swapnasundari is a very popular dancer who also grew up

with male tutelage. She learned a dance style called

Kuchipudi, which was actually perpetuated by female

impersonators, in Andhra Pradesh. This type of performance,

in which men dressed as women dancers, became quite popular

all over India after the devadasis were barred from

performing. During the latter half of the twentieth century,

women began learning from the male dancers and the style

became a popular concert specialty, like other styles

performed by females with a male conductor.

Swapnasundari explored the possibility that the

original female version of the Andhra temple dance might

still be found. Through extensive research, she literally

33Pratibha Prahlad, interview by author, June 18, 1996, Bangalore, India.

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"discovered" a group of Former temple artists living in

poverty and obscurity in the West Godavari District of

Andhra Pradesh, a southeastern state of India. After

visiting them and hearing their stories, she became

fascinated with the possibility that the (female) dance

style, considered dead, could be reinvigorated. She herself

spent months learning an entire body of dance and music from

these former devadasis, called "kalaavanthulu."

Fortunately, Swapnasundari had musical talent, as the

kalaavanthulu technique requires that the performer sing as

well as dance.

In 1995 and 1996, Swapnasundari organized seminars in

the capital. New Delhi, at which the kalaavanthulu were

given opportunities to speak about their art form and give

demonstrations. Swapnasundari herself presented masterful

renditions of the kalaavanthulu repertoire, both temple

ritual and dance-drama versions. This author attended one

such performance in the Indian International Center in

August of 1996. The presentation was similar to a Western

opera, in that the performers sang all of the dialogue. It

would be difficult to imagine a Western opera in which the

diva performed a solo dance in between arias, yet that is

exactly what occurred in Swapnasundari's performance.

Swapnasundari has shouldered the burden of persuading

the Government of India to grant pensions to the

kalaavanthulu and to get them belated recognition for their

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artistry. But the wheels of government move slowly, while

many of these former dancers are in their seventies, so it

is doubtful that the aged kaalavanthulu artists will derive

much benefit from the government's patronage. Meanwhile,

Swapnasundari is vigorously searching for young dancers to

participate in historical and artistic preservation by

learning this art form, now renamed Vilasini Natyam.^

Another way in which female dancers have contributed to

the development of their art form is through scholarship.

Many prominent dancers have used their own training as a

springboard for further research into the roots of the

tradition. Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan is an excellent example. In

her youth, she was among the first students of Kathak guru

Acchan Maharaj, a former court dancer who was brought to

Delhi in 1936 to teach at the newly-established Delhi School Off of Hindustani Music and Dance. Later she received

training in Manipuri dance from Guru Amobhi Singh, one of

the first Manipuri dance teachers to teach outside of

Manipur.

Dr. Vatsyayan had a thirst for knowledge, and

eventually learned basics of both Bharata Natyam and Odissi.

^The kalaavanthulu performers felt that their traditional name had negative connotations, so a poll was conducted among the dance community to vote for a new title for this dance form. "Vilasini Natya" employs Sanskrit terminology, granting cachet and intellectual status to the performers. "Vilasini" is an ancient term for an actress, and "natya" is the combination and dance and drama.

^Kothari. Kathak. 32.

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She is a Sanskrit scholar, and has made it her life’s work

to explore the roots and branches of all of India's

performing arts, through her research into textual and

visual art sources. The author of several books on Indian

dance and theater which are regarded as definitive, she is

the senior scholar and Director of the Indira Gandhi Center

for the Performing Arts in New Delhi. Her contribution to

the development of Indian dance has been to thoroughly

ground the study of dance in its historical milieu, and to

open the mysteries of the kinetic expression of emotions

through careful analysis of its elements.

Bharata Natyam dancer Kamalini Dutt, who gave her debut

performance in the Tanjore tradition at age six, has found

another way to contribute to her art form. At the age when

she should have reached the pinnacle of success, she was the

victim of a burn accident. Although she felt unable to

perform publicly, she continued to practice, and trained

both her younger sister and later her daughter in dance. But

her contribution was not to be as a teacher.

After graduating from Delhi University, Kamalini was

employed in Delhi Doordarshan (Television) as a producer.

She put hundreds of dancers in front of the television

cameras, and eventually became the leading producer of dance

programs in India. She influenced public perception of the

art form by selecting the foremost artists, and filming them

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in such a way that the artistic content was never

compromised.

When Doordarshan converted to color technology in 1983,

this author was privileged to be among the first dancers to

appear on a color broadcast, and the producer, Kamalini

Dutt, was already using color in a completely Indian way.

Colors in India have a relationship to music, as well as a

complex symbolism in terms of seasons of the year and human

emotions. Thus the filming of dance against a backdrop of a

certain color immediately affects the audience appreciation

of the performance. Kamalini carefully orchestrated all

aspects of her production to harmonize with the theme of the

dance being presented. This she was able to do because of

her early training in dance, as well as her degree in

Sanskrit literature from Delhi University. She has recently

been named Director of the Central Production Center in New

Delhi, and in spite of lingering health problems is

continuing to advance the status of Indian dance by careful

production for mass media.

The greatest contribution to the development of Indian

dance by women has been through teaching activities. The

second generation of performers since Independence has

matured and taken on the mantle of the old gurus who have

now mostly passed away. This new generation is primarily

women, and through their example they are inspiring younger

performers who see no barriers to the level of

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accomplishment for women. In fact, the next generation now

taking the spotlight includes many duet teams formed of

husband-and-wife pairs. This indicates that old inequalities

are fading into history, and a new parity is being

established between men and women performers and teachers.

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Indian Dancers in America

One of the fastest-growing minority populations in

the United States is Asian Indians. They share several

characteristics with other Asian immigrant groups, such as

strong family support patterns and deep respect and desire

for educational achievement. There are also unique traits

which seem purely Indian. Asian Indians (hereinafter

referred to simply as "Indians") have a strong attachment to

their traditional social systems, some of which are based on

religion. The Indian population in North America is, in

general, well-placed economically. Most have sufficient

disposable income that they can visit their families back in

India once every two years. They are strongly influenced by

prevailing social trends in their home country, and make

every effort to conform to those trends when they return to

their homes in North America.

One "cultural fashion" which has been current for the

past fifteen years or more dictates that female children of

"good” (i.e. high caste or middle class) Indian families

should learn dancing, specifically Indian classical dance,

any of five or six dance traditions based on ancient Hindu

86

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religious texts.1 These quasi-religious dance styles have

enjoyed a renaissance of popularity in India since the turn

of the century, and have become emblematic of cultural

awareness and refinement. Dance classes help expatriate

Indian families reinforce in their children important

lessons about religious beliefs, language fluency, dress

codes, and a general feeling of cultural familiarity.

It may not be clear to the non-Indian reader how

important it is for Indian immigrants to bring their

children to dance classes. Indian dance carries a heavy

cultural load, starting with its subject matter, which is

nothing less than the Hindu religion in its myriad forms ;

then moving to the peripheral attributes, such as the native

languages used in the songs that accompany the dances, the

costume of the dancer (which is frequently the traditional

garb of an Indian bride), and the occasions for dance

performance, usually religious gatherings. Taken together,

requiring the learning of Indian dance is a convenient way

" Bharatanatyam is one of the contemporary styles of classical Indian dance that are frequently performed, on both stage and television, in India and abroad. . . .Outside India, it is synonymous with traditional Indian culture and is a skill highly sought after among expatriate Indian communities." Anne-Marie Gaston, "Dance and the Hindu Woman: Bharatanatyam Re-ritualized," in Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, ed. by Julia Leslie (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1991), 149.

^Shanti Swarup, 500 Years of Arts and Crafts in India and Pakistan (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co.,1968), 170.

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for Indian immigrant parents to enculturate their daughters

(sons are commonly sent to Indian music or language classes

for similar reasons).

As part of the research for this thesis, the author

conducted a study of Indian dance teachers living and

working in the Washington, DC metropolitan area during 1995-

1996. The study was limited to female Indian dance teachers

(there are relatively few male teachers in North America).

The reason for examining these Indian women who teach dance

was that inn India itself, there are increasing numbers of

female Indian dance teachers in a profession which was once

male-dominated. The increase in numbers of female dance

teachers abroad may possibly indicate a change in the status

of the professional dancer in India.

At the outset, the study began as a alternate project;

unable to go to India, the author would interview dance

teachers in America and try to draw conclusions about the

dance scene in India. But as the interview process

progressed, it became evident that expatriate teachers form

a sub-group that should be treated separately from teachers

in India. Living in America, they have their own

characteristic set of behaviors, beliefs, and teaching

styles. A subsequent research trip to India by the author

validated this viewpoint.

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This study examined the lives of female Indian dance

teachers in the Washington, D.C., area to discover the

commonalities and contrasts in their motivations, teaching

habits, and their artistic goals. This study found that the

teachings of these women constitute a perpetuation of the

ancient oral tradition of Indian dance, with small but

important changes which always occur when oral traditions

are transmitted not only from one person to another, but

from one country to another half a world away.

Background Information

The interview process started with telephone calls to

dance teachers in the author's circle of acquaintance.

Married to an Indian dance teacher, the author was able to

contact twenty women who are actively teaching Indian dance

in the greater Washington area. All interviewees were asked

to list all the female Indian dance teachers living and

working in the Washington area, and the various lists were

then cross-referenced to produce a master-list. There are

five different dance styles represented by these teachers,

namely Bharata Natyam (South Indian), Kuchipudi (South

Indian), Mohini Attam (South Indian), Odissi (Eastern

Indian), and Kathak (North Indian). Of the remaining kinds

of Indian dancing, Manipuri (Northeastern Indian) is taught

by a male teacher, so is not represented in this study.

It was important to interview exponents of contrasting

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styles because of the divergent traditions which govern

teaching practices. Eight teachers were interviewed in

person: two teachers of Bharata Natyam. two teachers of

Kuchipudi, two Odissi teachers, one Mohini Attain teacher,

and one Kathak teacher. South Indian dance teachers formed

the greater part of this small sample. The following table

shows the percentage of the total teaching each style:

Bharata Natyam 40%

Kuchipudi 20%

Kathak 15%

Odissi 15%

Mohini Attarn 10%

In addition to conducting interviews, the author sent

out mail questionnaires to all teachers. Some of those who

had been interviewed also returned questionnaires. Four

teachers who had not been interviewed returned the

questionnaires; one Bharata Natyam teacher, one Mohini Attam

teacher, and two Kathak teachers. In total, twelve out of

twenty, or 60% of the total population of Indian dance

teachers contributed to the study. The number of

participants classified by discipline is as follows:

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Bharata Natyam 3

Kuchipudi 2

Kathak 3

Odissi 2

Mohini Attain 2

Data and Analysis

A general overview of the female dance teachers shows

many similarities in terms of superficial characteristics.

They all started taking dance classes themselves at a young

age, between seven and eight years on average. Most of them

were encouraged in their dance training by their mothers,

but all of them had male dance teachers at some point in

their lives, and 90% of them felt that male dance teachers

were more highly regarded than female dance teachers in

India.

The difference in status was exemplified by the forms

of address used for male and female teachers. Both in India

and here in America, female Indian dance teachers are always

addressed by a word indicating an older female relative: in

America, "Auntie" was the most common. Other forms of

address used for female teachers include "Didi" (elder

sister in Bengali), "Athai" (aunt in Tamil), and "Chechi"

(elder sister in Malayalam.) In contrast, male teachers are

addressed most often as "Guruji" (respected teacher in

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Sanskrit and Hindi), or as "Master" or "Sir," titles used

for schoolteachers since the days of the British rule in

India.

Interestingly, this tendency carries over into

literature on the subject of Indian dance as well. For

instance, in a book of dancers' lives. Some Dancers of India

by Susheela Misra1, the term "guru" appears in print 316

times. The term is applied to men 250 times, to women 14

times, and as a neutral plural 52 times. That is, 71% of all

uses of the word "guru" referred to men, while only 4%

referred to women. Does this imbalance reflect the status of

female teachers of dance compared to the status of male

teachers in India's dance world? Although current literature

accords the title "Guru" to any dance teacher, male or

female, only one of the dance teachers in this study had

ever addressed her female teacher as Guruji, and none of n them was so addressed by her own students. This situation

prevailed even though the dance teachers studied are highly

educated, all having Bachelor of Arts or Science degrees,

several having Master's degrees, and one teacher having a

Doctoral degree.

^isra, passim.

^Anita Ratnam Raj, Narthaki: A Directory of Classical Indian Dance (Madras: Dravida Communications, 1992), throughout.

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During the interviews, the women were asked whether

they would have become dance teachers had they remained in

India. Of eight teachers, only two said that had they

remained in India, they would be teaching dance. In effect,

the majority of these women have become dance teachers by

default, at the request of parents of local children of

Indian descent, since other teachers are not available here

in the United States. Yet, these women are recognized by the

community of Asian-Indian Americans as accomplished dancers

who are experts in their art form. This chapter examines

some of the reasons why female Indian dancers have become

dance teachers, even though they may not consider themselves

particularly qualified to teach.

Many have training in other fields, such as health

sciences, data processing, managerial skills, and

accounting, which they do not hesitate to acknowledge and

draw on for financial support. Only one, however, has chosen

to support herself through dance-related activities, and

that teacher is the only one who has lived in America since

childhood. Are unspoken concepts operating which prevent

these women from seeing themselves as professional dance

teachers? Are these concepts a result of traditional

teaching methods and theories of Indian dance? Is the

philosophy of Indian dance training contaminated by issues

of gender and class? These questions were significant to the

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author, a Western observer of the Indian dance scene, but

seemed less important to the teacher-informants who

participated in the study.

Since Indian dance is an oral tradition, passed from

teacher to student through face-to-face contact, it can be

defined as a type of folklore. Although there have been many

books written about Indian dance and Indian dancers, the

written material is either descriptive, explaining what

various dance forms look like, or historic, detailing the

development of a style and naming the dancers and teachers

who were important exponents. The actual dance steps are not

presented in such a way that one could learn from a book.

Dance in general is primarily an oral tradition. In order to

understand the Indian dance tradition more fully, it is

necessary to examine other, non-technical varieties of

folklore, which have been absorbed by the dancers along with

the technical and aesthetic knowledge received from their

teachers, hereinafter referred to by the Sanskrit term

"gurus."

Three out of four dance teachers who responded to the

survey are married, one divorced, one separated, and two

single. One of the single teachers stated that the most

important thing in her life right now was getting married.

While all the married teachers felt that family life was

important to them, they all put their dance careers on the

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same level of Importance with their family lives. A common

description the interviewees used was that they were

"balancing" or "juggling" their family responsibilities and

their dance activities. Although they were not asked whether

their preoccupation with dance had led them to limit their

family size, they all had small families. Three had no

children, four had one child, and five had two children.

Since the average age of the teachers at the time of the

study was 37 years old, it is probable that most of them

have completed their families (with the exception of

Informant B3, who stated during her interview that she

hoped to have one more child, and since the interview has

had a second son). Small families benefit the women by

reducing the amount of time devoted to family

responsibilities. In India, families with three or more

children are still the norm, even among dancers.4

In America, these teachers continue with their dance

activities even in the face of discomfort on the part of

their husbands and children. Four of them said outright that

their children "hated" to have so much of their mothers'

time taken up by students, and that, although their husbands

3 For purposes of the study, the dance teachers are identified by letters of the alphabet.

4In 1988 (the most recent statistical study available) the average total fertility rate for Indian women was 4.2 children. World Bank, World Development Report 1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1990), 230.

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would not tell them to stop dancing, the husbands were fed

up with having to cope with strangers in the living room,

meals unprepared, and children to care for while their wives

spent the evenings teaching. However, the teachers all

agreed that this was just the way it was going to be. and

the husbands would have to get used to it.

In India the situation would have been different,

because in that traditional setting, where the wife usually

lives with her in-laws in the same house, the comfort of the

husband and children is considered far more important than

the wife's career. One of the dancers interviewed described

her experience when she returned to India as a teenager and

took dance classes. She said that when a married woman

attended dance class, everyone else in the class moved aside

for her and gave her particular respect, "because she had a

husband, she had money, she had position." But the other

side of the coin was that these married dancers often had to

leave class or rehearsal early because "her mother-in-law

was waiting."

Another dancer said that when her mother was trying to

arrange a marriage for her, she told her daughter to stop

attending dance classes in case a prospective mother-in-law

might not approve of dance. She obeyed her mother, then was

surprised and pleased when her prospective bridegroom and

his family "talked about nothing but dance. I went back to

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class the very next day after I met them," she stated. She

was fortunate that the family into which she married

supported her artistic expression.

Five out of six of the teachers are employed outside of

their homes in non-dance-related jobs, yet half of them

described themselves as professional dance teachers. The

other half called dance their hobby. Perhaps that explains

the fact that the majority of informants stated that

receiving payment for teaching dance was unimportant to

them. While all of them accept teaching fees, several stated

that the fees were only imposed so that the students would

have a proper degree of respect for the classes and for the

art form itself. "It's not enough to live on," "I keep it

for putting on performances," or "I donate it to my Guru's

institution in India" were typical descriptions of the

possible uses for money collected from students.

The question at the heart of the study, then, was: what

compels these women to teach dance? Their lives, if they did

not teach dance, would be full by normal standards. They

have education, jobs, and families, and what adds up to a

solid middle-class standard of living. They do not need the

extra money. To answer this question, an imaginary dance

teacher, a composite of all those interviewed, has been

created.

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As a child, she went to dance class two or three times

a week, and showed some talent so that her teachers gave

extra encouragement. As she got older, she gave performances

under her teacher's guidance. When she finished college and

her parents started to talk about marriage, the dancer made

sure that her prospective husband knew that she was a

dedicated dancer. When she got married to someone who was

planning to emigrate to the United States, she packed

several dance costumes and tapes of her dance music.

In the United States, she gave a few performances at a

university, community festival, or Indian gathering. Once

people came to know that she had a background in traditional

Indian dance, they asked her to conduct a class for the

daughters of other Indian immigrants. At first she said no,

she was busy with a new baby, a new Job, a new country. But

the requests intensified, so she said yes, and started

accepting students at home, in the basement of a town house.

She thought this was the best way for her not to forget her

dance, although she did not feel perfectly qualified to

teach. But after a few years of teaching, her students

started to appear on cultural programs organized by the

local Indian association, and more and more students

attended classes. Soon her husband began complaining of the

traffic in and out of the house. So she arranged to hold her

classes at a community center near her home. Dance classes

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are conducted generally on weekends, and sometimes weekday

evenings, whenever the parents of the students were free to

act as chauffeurs.

Now the dancer realized that she is regarded as the

authority on Indian dance in her community. So she takes a

leave of absence from her job for three months, brings her

children to stay with their grandmother in India, and

attends a special teacher-training course at her old dance

academy (while her long-suffering husband enjoys the peace

and quiet at home.) Upon her return, she takes on more

students and produces a performance of a classical

mythological dance-drama, with her students dancing all the

roles. With the proceeds, she pays for a ticket for her guru

to come to America to teach a special workshop for her

students.

This is the way a dance teacher develops here in the

United States. In each case,the teaching career started when

parents found out that someone was knowledgeable about

dance, and requested training for their children. The career

did not start with a dancer publishing her availability as a

teacher, and in two cases the dancer actually tried to brush

off such requests, to no avail. Although 40% of the teachers

interviewed said that had they remained in India, they would

not have taken up teaching dance, the dancers seemed to feel

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that they couldn't say "no" to the requests made to them in

America.

Perhaps it should not be surprising to discover an

Indian folktale which describes what happens to an artist

who refuses to share his art with others. A.K. Ramanujan

includes a Tamil folktale called "A Musical Demon" in a

collection of stories from India. This story features a

demon who was a Brahmin3 in a past life, a great expert in

music. He explains:

I spent my whole life hoarding my knowledge and never shared it or taught it to anyone. That's why I have become a demon. That's God's punishment. If you turn around, you'll see a little temple. In that temple, a piper plays all day in the most atrocious manner.always out of tune. It's torture to me; it's like pouring molten lead into my ears. I cannot bear it. Every wrong note goes through me like an arrow.

If such terrible things happen to artists who refuse to

teach, it is no wonder that the dancers in the study, when

requested to teach, would be inclined to comply whether they

considered themselves qualified or not. Six out of eight

interviewed, moreover, said that once they had embarked on a

teaching career, they returned to India for several months

to take special classes to improve their teaching skills.

They definitely felt a responsibility to their students to

brahmin - member of the caste of priests and scholars, by tradition the teachers in Indian society.

6A. K. Ramanujan, Folktales From India (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991), 119 - 121.

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provide them with the highest quality of dance training it

was in their power to give.

The functioning of an oral tradition such as Indian

dance depends on the willingness of the initiates to pass

their knowledge on to others, so that the legacy of past

generations will be continuously maintained. In reviewing

the reactions of the female dance teachers to the question,

"Would you be a dance teacher if you had remained in

India?", there is an alternative interpretation of the

negative responses which may reveal the difference between

the dance scene in India and the scene in America. While the

folklore and the history in India tend to depict men as

teachers, even in Bharata Natyam, the dance tradition which «r features mostly women performers , the female dancers who

moved to America seem to have been released to a great

extent from the bonds of tradition, by living in a place

where there are few (male) "gurus" in the dance field.

After the study in the U.S. was completed, the author

travelled to India to interview female dance teachers there.

When asked whether female teachers of dance are to be

addressed as "Guru" by their students, different responses

7Kuchipudi, Kathakali, and Kathak all depended on male performers for at least 100 years of their history. Kathakali still is performed by men only. Kuchipudi has been taught to women only in the 20th century. Kathak in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was performed by female courtesans who were trained by men. Mohini Attam has a history of being nurtured and performed by women alone.

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were given. One dance teacher who was interviewed on the

question was Sonal Mansingh, a Bharata Natyam teacher who is

also a noted performer of Odissi and contemporary creative

dance. Mansingh frequently appears on television talk shows

as a spokesperson of the arts field. Mansingh stated that

her students address her as Guruji, because she insists that

there should be no difference between male and female s teachers.

Manjusri Chaki-Sircar, a performer of Bharata Natyam,

Manipuri, and contemporary creative dance, had two opinions

on the question. She stated that, in some cases, she felt

that some of the female dance teachers do not meet the

standard implied by the word guru, that is, master teacher.

Chaki-Sircar stated that some of her own students set

themselves up as teachers after marriage because their in­

laws did not approve of their performing on a stage.

Teaching was permissible because it was lucrative.

In Chaki-Sircarrs opinion, there is still some

antipathy on the part of conservative families to having a

dancer in the family, but that having a dance teacher was

acceptable because there was money to be made. But these

teachers may not have had sufficient depth of training to be

considered master teachers. It was only force of

8Sonal Mansingh, interview by author, August 5, 1996, New Delhi, India.

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circumstance which sent them into a teaching career. In that

sense, the women Chaki-Sircar described are in a similar

position to the Indian dance teachers in America. In

America, however, the financial picture is different, in

that teaching is not considered lucrative, due to smaller

population of Asian Indians in America, resulting in a

smaller group of possible dance students to whom the

teachers can market their classes.

The other opinion voiced by Chaki-Sircar was that she

herself did not want to be identified with the male gurus,

and therefore she did not wish to have the same mode of

address applied to her. She felt that some of the male gurus

exploited their reputations and positions for financial

gain. In her opinion, some gave the word "guru" a pejorative

meaning by admitting large numbers of students to their

classes and then giving substandard training, or not being

interested in each student's progress. She said that, in the

case of female teachers, by contrast, they were addressed as

"Auntie" or "Didi" (elder sister), and they had to care

about their students as if the students were, indeed, family q members.

The demand for dance training in the United States has

been such that women, who had not seen themselves in the

^Manjusri Chaki-Sircar, interview by author, June 4, 1996, Calcutta, India.

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role of teacher as long as they lived in India, have found

the resources within themselves to step into the role once

they realized that there was no one else available. When

viewed in this light, the answers of Informant (G), for

instance, revealed a progressive empowerment that

transformed a recreational artist into a respected

professional teacher:

Q. If you had stayed in India, would your career as far as dance goes have been different? G. I think so. Q. Would you have been a teacher? G. Maybe not. I would have enjoyed learning more than teaching. Because the gurus are still alive, they are waiting to teach us. I would have been a performer maybe, but, yes, I would have been learning more than teaching. Here I have no other way to share my art form but to teach. Q. Would you say that that's the real reason you took up teaching? G. I think the real reason is that I found there was a tremendous amount of ignorance in the public here, both Indian and American, they didn't know what was Odissi and I just felt it was time for someone, for me, for whoever, to show them what Odissi is all about, and what a tremendous art form it is. . . They had never heard about it, and that's when I felt very strongly, how can they be so ignorant? It's not their fault, we need to educate them.

This impassioned response to a perceived lack of

information about Indian dance in America has been expressed

repeatedly in the interviews. Whether they planned it or it

just happened, the female teachers here are filling roles

which might have been filled by males in India.

But, in another sense, there may be an opportunity in

America to rewrite or reinterpret the folklore of Indian

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dance to emphasize the women's contribution. When Informant

(G) decided to produce a dance-drama in which her students

would perform, she selected a story which included a

depiction of a traditional Indian "gurukula" academy, the

type of school where children live with their teacher for

several years and learn while performing services for the

teacher. This was the kind of school described by Informant

(Z), a Brahmin Sanskrit scholar, held as the ideal

educational setting in ancient India. He describes the

gurukula as follows:

A student might come at the age of seven or eight, an initiation of some kind is done, then he is told what are his responsibilities, his responsibilities to the guru. When he comes to the guru's house, he is taken care of, his full shelter, food, everything is done by the guru. In the forest, outside a village or wherever,the students essentially take care of the guru and the guru takes care of the students. Some of the students would take his cattle to graze, some if they were Brahmin childrenn would go to beg food from different homes . . . each child is practicing,the one taking cattle, one might go to work in farming, another might be protecting the area against wild animals,each one is getting the kind of training that would come in handy as they grow up.

In this description, there is no mention made of a

woman's role in education. However, when Informant (G)

described the same system as depicted in her dance-drama,

she ascribed a very important role to the wife of the guru,

called the guru-ma:

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In the gurukula scene we explained that the guru teaches the V e d a s , religion, weaponry, the sciences, astronomy, the technical theory behind all this. But it was always the guru-ma who appealed to the emotional aspects, by teaching music,dance, the niceties of life in fact, even telling them little stories to make them sleep, it was always the guru-ma who did all of that.

This author attended the performance described above,

and noted that, in the gurukula scene, there was indeed an

equal amount of time used to present the Image of the guru-

ma Instructing the children in fine arts as was used to show

the guru teaching the children to recite the Vedas. One may

infer that, with female dance teachers taking on the

responsibility of presenting Indian cultural traditions to

Americans through dance presentations, there will be a

gradual shift in emphasis which will transform the self-

deprecating attitude typical of these teachers today, to one

in which they recognize the ways in which their teaching has

empowered them and freed them from the limitations imposed

by the patriarchal society they left behind in India.

Informant (B) stated that she thought the male teachers

are more highly respected because they come from a

generation of dancer teachers, whereas the newer female

teachers learned from male teachers. However, she said that

nowadays, fewer men are taking up the profession of dance

teacher, so most of the male teachers are very old. Because

l®Vedas - sacred knowledge of Hinduism, passed down as oral tradition since 2000 years B.C.E.

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of their advanced age, they would naturally be highly

respected. In India, age commands respectful treatment at

all times. But, when that last generation of male dance

teachers passes away, there will be a preponderance of

female teachers who will then be more highly respected.

Public image was not much of a concern for these women,

but three women mentioned that dance gives them a unique

identity among their peers,and people admire them because of

their art. Financial success and dance could never be

related, according to these teachers, but the four who are

married have husbands who are engaged in high-paying jobs,

so those women did not worry about the financial success of

their dance activities.

The one question which brought the widest variety of

responses was whether the dancers identify themselves with

the heroines they portray in their dances. Indian dance is

literal, and the subject of most Indian dance is Hindu

mythology. When a dancer performs, she conjures up images of

goddesses who destroy demons with super-powerful weapons, as

well as lovelorn maidens pining in gardens. The different

dance styles specialize in one or the other type, but a

dancer can pick and choose among dances to find those which

suit their personal philosophy. However, teachers generally

pick and choose for them, and often, as one informant said,

"I'm just acting, so it's fun. I don't identify with those

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stereotypes at all, but I don't need to, really. I just want

to imitate that role better than anyone else can." Two said

that they felt empowered by the characters they portrayed,

goddesses who are possessors of the (female) force called

"shakti", which was often borrowed by (male) gods to

increase their own strength.

One of the most interesting revelations of the survey

of dance teachers was in the responses to the statement, "

My status in the community is determined by my (family

connections) (dance activities) (non-dance occupation)."

Each informant indicated that dance activities determined

her status in the community. The most vivid and charming

description of the level of recognition accorded to dance

teachers was given by Informant (A):

I feel many times that I don't know if they really appreciate me or not, but I want to tell you why being a dance teacher is so good, even though the people are abusing you and all that, you feel that you're not really paid for it. Number one is, the glow in a person when they say that so-and-so is a dance teacher. Now my sister has done her doctorate in math, she teaches in Maryland University and Montgomery College, she is a very popular math teacher. But she used to tell me, you know, when she is in a crowd, and people say she's a math teacher, or she's a doctor, their eyebrows don't go up, they don't say "Oh really?', but when they introduce me and they say "She's a dance teacher,' the glow in their faces is a different kind of recognition that I don't think any other profession is going to get you.

In earlier times, when Indians emigrated to the Western

hemisphere, there was some loss of culture. For example,

among people of Indian descent living in Guyana, there is no

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tradition of classical Indian dance training or

performance.11 In India itself, dance training in the

second half of the twentieth century has been limited to

children of dance families or daughters of upper-class

families, because of the often prohibitive fees for classes

and costs for costumes, jewelry, musicians' payments, and so

on. Many of the Indian immigrants living in America were not

able to study dance as children. But here in America, they

have sufficient income to afford extra-curricular classes

for their children. Since they want to give their children

opportunities which they themselves never had, and at the

same time are interested in raising their children as

Indians in America, rather than Americans whose parents came

from India 12 , when they find a dance teacher, they are more

than eager to sign their children up for classes.

With a new and expanding demand for classical Indian

dance lessons, perhaps one should not be surprised to find a

Khairool Ghani, Guyanese immigrant to the U.S.A., in an interview conducted on October 21, 1994 in University Park, MD, stated that because she lived in the city (Georgetown), she was able to attend dance classes taught by Gora Singh, a dancer who had received a government scholarship to learn dance in India. However, because there was little opportunity for him to perform, he soon emigrated to the United States, and currently resides in New York. Aside from Gora, there were no Indian dancing teachers in Guyana. Children of Indian families used to imitate dances they saw in Hindi-language films screened in local cinemas; this was their only contact with Indian dance.

12Kamala Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1994), 116.

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new breed of dance teachers coming into prominence in

America. In India, the traditional image of a dance teacher

is a male born into a family of musicians and dancers, for

whom art is both a hereditary occupation and a livelihood.

Numerous students from wealthy families come to his class

for after-school enrichment. If the students stay in India,

marry and settle down there, they will probably never become

dance teachers themselves. Why should they? The hereditary

teachers are still in business.

But what if they marry and emigrate to the United

States? Suddenly they find their status as dancers enhanced.

They become the culture-bearers in the expatriate community,

and are besieged by parents who want to give their children

the opportunity that they, the parents, may not have had:

the chance to participate directly in the transmission of a

centuries-old oral tradition, which will serve to define

them as Indians no matter where they are born or dwell.

This study revealed that the dance teachers in America

are rising to this challenge with enthusiasm. Dance has

become their identity, the source of high regard in their

community of family, friends, and fellow immigrants. These

women have a strength of character that has developed over

the years as they attended dance classes in India and

blossomed in the United States. In them, the model of

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into a model of enhancement of cultural opportunities, so

that the transplantation of the Indian dance tradition can

be a process of growth, rather than a falling away.

The question of financial value has been raised, but

generally the consensus is that whether or not they have

been paid, the dance itself is of priceless value to them,

the teachers, because, in the words of more than one of the

informants,

It's the one thing that no one can take away from us. Dance is what makes us important. Others may be doctors, lawyers, or engineers, but we are dancers. No matter what happens, we will never leave off dancing."

Donald Brenneis, "Aesthetics, Performance, and the Enactment of Tradition in a Fiji Indian Community," in Gender. Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions, ed. Arjun Appadurai, Frank J. Korom, and Margaret A. Mills (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 363.

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Conclusion

This thesis began with a description of dance as having

a threefold identity; mating display, element of religious

ritual, and artistic expression. All these forms are

exhibited in the dances of India, and all the forms have

received substantial contribution from women. Women were

identified as the most frequent performers of dance since

the dawn of history, through textual references and

sculptural evidence. By 1500 B.C.E., women were definitely

identified as performers of dance, on ritual as well as

social occasions, as demonstrated in Chapter Two.

In the ancient Indian epic poem Mahabharata. which

itself was passed on orally through many generations of

bards or itinerant poets, dance was described as an

important element in the life of the kingly class. Dance by

female members of a king's family was so essential that a

special structure was built for dancing, and a teacher of

dancing was engaged to train the princesses as well as the

female slaves.

Another category of ancient bardic texts found in the

southern regions was Cankam literature. These poems and

songs mention the existence of female entertainers who dance

112

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before the king when he is not engaged in battle campaigns.

They also describe female slaves who maintain the room in

* which religious rituals take place. These women cleaned the

room and the sacrificial objects, decorate with flowers, and

light lamps at dusk. Later in history, these two categories

were combined in the persons of the devadasis who danced in

the temples and lit lamps which they waved in front of the

sacred images.

During the Buddhist period, ritual dancing declined in

importance, but the court tradition was maintained, and the

dancer as an icon of beauty continued to be portrayed in

works of sculpture. During the early years of the Common

Era, Buddhism gradually lost its influence in India, to be

replaced by Hinduism. There was a great wave of temple

construction in several parts of India, and the custom of

ritual dance in the temples became prevalent. Ornamental

dance by women in theatrical productions was also common.

Women were the custodians of the dance tradition,

passed on orally from generations of female performers to

their daughters. Once the devadasi (temple dancer) tradition

became established in various parts of India, the position

of temple dancer became an hereditary one, and families of

dancers and musicians with a matriarch (the devadasi) at the

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head of the family became common in several parts of

India.1* In a predominantly patriarchal society, the dance

tradition gave many woman the capacity to sustain themselves

and their families independently of male control. Since the

temple dancers did not marry mortal men, they were able to

keep their own earnings and control their own wealth.

During the medieval period, waves of invaders from the

North - Greek, Turkic, and Mongol - fought for control of

India’s wealth. Female dancers were affected in various

ways. Kathak, the dance of the storytellers in the northern

regions, was influenced by the introduction of court

performers from Persia. When Islam was introduced, temple

dancers were affected. Muslim invaders destroyed many

temples and forced the dancers to seek employment in non­

religious settings. Many female temple dancers became court

performers. Some dance tradition passed into the hands of

men, who were permitted more freedom under Islam. The

feminine oral tradition was discontinued in some places.

Under Islam, and later under the dominance of European

Christians, a different cultural perspective was applied to

the female dancers. They were labelled as harlots,

prostitutes, and women of loose moral character. Eventually

the European influence became so overpowering that the

^Janaki Nair, Women and Law in Colonial India: A Social History (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 19961 163.

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Indians themselves rejected their own dance traditions in

the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

During India's independence movement, attempts were

made to throw off the Western cultural dominance. Indigenous

art forms were again perceived to have value. Several women

were in the forefront of the crusade to revive Indian

dancing. Among them were Rukmini Devi, Balasaraswati, and

Madame Menaka. European dancer Anna Pavlova and American

dancers Ruth St. Denis were also inspirational to many

female dancers in India at that time.

In modern times, dance has retained its ancient

function as a mating display. Now that dance is considered

to be part of a young Indian woman's education, whether she

lives in India or outside, expertise in dance is a desirable

attribute in a prospective bride. After marriage, however,

there is still some question of the propriety of dancing in

public. However, teaching is generally acceptable, and even

bestows a certain glamour to the life of a housewife.

Therefore, many women have become teachers, and spend their

time passing their knowledge to younger women, thus

reclaiming their position as culture-bearers. They are also

contributing to the dance tradition through research,

writing, and related arts such as television production.

In some parts of India, women continue to perform

ritual dance as part of a religious observance. In Manipur,

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for example, women officiate at the ceremonies of the old

religion which forms an important element of the spiritual

life of the Meiteis, the majority linguistic group in

Manipur. This religious tradition is completely controlled

by women, and men who join the ranks of officiants dress as

women. Dance is the central component of worship. The female

ritual leader dances at the head of the ceremonial

procession, thereby enforcing the image of woman as leader

in Meitei society. In Manipur, the contribution of women has

been not only to maintain and nourish the oral tradition,

but to defend it from the attempts to erase it in favor of

Hinduism, the dominant religion of the rest of India.

In North America, women are the primary performers and

teachers of Indian dance. Outside of India, dance has become

a very important culture-delivery vehicle. Children raised

in American society receive cultural messages from the

Indian moral code and religious tradition during dance

class. Since the teachers and students are female, Indian

dance is being developed as a woman's art form in America.

The future of the women's dance in India is quite

exciting. Female dancers have taken a leading role in

exploring innovative concepts in performance practices.

Unconventional musical accompaniment or simple spoken poetry

have been used to highlight the dancers creative abilities.

Some dancers are simplifying the costume, wearing less

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jewellery and make-up in order to de-emphasize the function

of dance as mating display and focus audience attention on

the artistic content of dance performance. There are also

many female dancers who are moving differently, attempting

to discover alternative dance forms which still retain an

Indian quality. Future research in India and the United

States will demonstrate, as this thesis has, that the

contribution of women to the development of Indian dance,

significant in the past, is increasing in importance as

dancers continue to move in new directions in the twenty-

first century.

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DISSERTATIONS

Bose, Mandakranta. "Evolution of Classical Indian Dance Literature: A Study of the Sanskritic Tradition." Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1989.

Meduri, Avanthi. "Nation, Woman, Representation: The Sutured History of the Devadasi and Her Dance." Ph. D. diss.. New York University, 1996.

FILMS

Nair, Mira, dir. Kama Sutra. A Tale of Love. Mirabai Films, 1996.

Renoir, Jean, dir. The River. Oriental-International Films, 1951.

INTERVIEWS BY AUTHOR

Babu, Lakshmi, Kuchipudi dance teacher. 17 October 1994, Gaithersburg, MD.

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Chaki-Sircar, Manjusri, Director, Dancers' Guild- 4 June 1996, Calcutta, India.

David, Rani, Bharata Natyam dance teacher.16 September 1994, Adelphi, MD.

Dutt, Kamalini, Director, Central Production Centre. 9 June 1996, New Delhi, India.

Dutta, Radha, Mohini Attam teacher. 6 October 1994, University Park, MD.

Ganesan, Radha, Bharata Natyam teacher. 22 September 1994, University Park, MD.

Ghani, Khairool, Guyanese immigrant dance student. 10 October 1994, University Park, MD.

Kiran, Sandhya, Bharata Natyam teacher. 19 June, 1996, Bangalore, India.

Krishnamurthy, Chitra, Odissi dance teacher. 24 October 1994, Potomac, MD.

Kumar, Narendra, Sanskrit scholar. 20 November 1994, University Park, MD.

Mansingh, Sonal, Bharata Natyam and Odissi teacher. 5 August, 1996, New Delhi, India.

Nehru, Anuradha, Kuchipudi dance teacher. 18 October 1994, Potomac, MD.

Paine, Jayantee, Odissi teacher. 6 November 1994, Herndon, VA.

Swapnasundari. Kuchipudi and Vilasini Natyam teacher. 12 June, 1996, New Delhi, India.

Prahlad, Pratibha, Bharata Natyam dancer. 18 June, 1996, Bangalore, India.

Thiyam, Ratan, Director, Chorus Repertory Theatre. 22 July, 1996, Imphal, Manipur, India.

Vattikutti, Asha, Kathak teacher. 1 October 1994, MacLean,VA.

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