Naatyashastra, the ancient Indian treatise on performing arts codifies, for the performing arts practitioner in a comprehensive way for ready reference various aspects of theatre, dance, rhythm, music, stagecraft, stage-architecture, writing, emotional and aesthetic flavors (Rasa), etc.. As is always with ancient Sanskrit texts, its date of origin remains foggy. Cultural historian Kapila Vatsayanan pegs it anywhere between 200 BCE and 200 CE. And although it is supposed to have written by a mythical sage named Baratha, she maintains that it is a text that has grown over the years with its varied interpolations.
The Naatyashastra in its origins has an interesting self-declared mythical story that clearly sets out the context of its existence. A basic peep into this context becomes crucial especially when we have many performing arts practitioners – especially in theatre – who make a strong case that we take from Naatyashastra only those aspects that are relevant for us and discard the rest. Is it really possible for us to indulge in such a selective pick and choose, given the nature of Naatyashastra’s self-declared context?
The mythical tale that narrates the origin and purpose of Natyashastra is dealt head-on in its very first chapter. Before dwelling on that, it could first be useful to brush up our collective memory on certain aspects referred to in the Naatyashastra, so that there could be a smoother understanding of this myth. These are those aspects that the writer/s probably assume that the readers are aware of, but we modern-day complex beings are probably not. One of the areas that it briefly refers to in its first chapter is the Vedic construct of cosmology, specifically its measurement of cosmic time.
The political slugfest
The Vedas are a set of four sacred Sanskrit texts whose origins is a subject of a present day political slugfest. Although most historians pin its creation at about 500 BCE to 1500 BCE, the ultra cultural right wing cabal without strong evidence is strongly making attempts to date it further back to between 5000 BCE to 8000 BCE, such that they pre-date the well evolved settlement oriented Indus Valley Civilization that is dated between 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE. In this game of asserting civilizational supremacy establishing a continuum of the Indus civilization with the all encompassing Vedic culture and way of life that it propagates would wrongly rule out the theory that the Vedic culture could have come from the migrants of the Central Asian steppes, whereas DNA samples of most of the North Indian upper castes have the later component in them.
The specificity of the concept of time in Vedic cosmology is not seen so much in the Vedas themselves, but in later Sanskrit texts that are in the Purana genre, mainly the Vishnu Purana and the Bagvatha Purana. Puranas like the Vedas are also ancient Sanskrit texts, that have in them among other things philosophy, astronomy, genealogy, origins of universe, origin of gods, destruction of demons, myths etc… How exactly these numbers that would be quoted henceforth have been derived by the creators of Puranas is not clear. They seem to be there and by the sheer virtue of it are supposed to be taken as the gospel.
Cosmic Time
A basic unit of the Vedic construct of cosmic time is the Kalpa. This time unit is supposed to be a mythical day in the life of the creator of this universe, Brahma. Converted into human years, a Kalpa is about 4,320 million years. Brahma himself is self-born and so there is nothing prior to him or nothing after him, except another Brahma. In this narrative of multiple Brahmas, each Brahma is supposed to live for 100 ‘divine’ years, the time span called a Maha Kalpa (maha = super). Maha Kalpa has that many Kalpas to it. When a Maha Kalpa lapses, both Brahma and the universe get extinct. And then, yet another universe and yet another Brahma gets born, literally from nothing! The current Brahma is supposed to have completed 50 ‘divine’ years, out of his 100!
In a sense, Brahma is considered to be the manifestation of the Brahman, the supreme formless and timeless metaphysical energy or reality; the ”eternal truth” that binds and runs this entire universe. This cyclic narrative of the Maha Kalpa could increasingly look like as if it is an allegory for the big bang theory; the expansion of the Universe that begins with a big bang and its ultimate contraction into black holes. It is relatively unknown as to what lies beyond these two cosmic events. The number of human years one mythical Brahma lives and the number of Brahmas that are born and will be born could give a sense of the infinite flow of time that neither has a beginning nor an end – an unknown perpetuity.
If there is a cyclic pattern in each of the Maha Kalpa, the motif is repeated even within a single Kalpa. So, at the end of a Kalpa which is equal to 4.32 billion human years, there is Pralaya, or destruction of the material earth, in which darkness will descend for an equal number of years. That is the mythical night of the Brahma, the dawn of which would usher another new Kalpa and another cycle of creation and destruction. What is supposed to mythically happen within a particular Kalpa is of paramount interest to the context and purpose of Naatyashastra.
The time unit of Kalpa is further divided into 14 Manvantara periods, each of which measures about 306 million and 720 thousand human years. Every Manvantara is ruled by heads of dynasties who are created by Brahma, at its beginning. These heads, generically called Manu, are responsible for ruling and managing the world until they perish at the end of each Manvantara. Aiding Manu in his administration of the material earth in each of these Manvantaras are the seven sages also created by Brahma. Along with Indra, the king of the heavenly world who is also a creation of Brahma, these sages too get annihilated at the end of each Manvantara, only to be created again at the beginning of the next. Manu is dead, long live Manu!
The rule of Manu
Manu is referred to as the first man to be created by Brahma, at he beginning of every Manvantara. He is the progenitor of mankind, after which Brahma creates the first woman for him, Ananti. On the advice and guidance of Brahma, this patriarch called as Svayambhuva Manu – as the first Manu created in the first Svayambhuva Manvantara of the present Kalpa is called – is supposed to have drafted a code of law called Manusmruti, so that the world runs systematically and in an orderly fashion. So, in essence, this is a divine law that is drafted by Manu that has to be adhered to by all of his children, ie. the entire humankind. Manusmruti contains laws that pertain to secular and non-secular matters of human beings.
Manusmruti like the other ancient Sanskrit texts systematically upholds the varna system. While it is difficult to figure out an effective English phrase for this expression, it has its references in the Rig Veda where we are are told that the learned Brahmin community emerged from the head of Brahma, the worrier Kshatiiya community from his arms, the trading Vaishya community from his thighs and the helper Shudra community from his legs. Manusmruthi allows some bit of mobility for a person to choose his varna (simplistically, occupation), but some of its laws makes such choices undesirable. For example verse 81 in the 4th chapter mentions that a Brahmin who teaches Vedas to the Shudras would go to hell. Varna also means colour in Sanskrit, thus giving the whole discourse a racial undertone. No wonder the Varna system has morphed itself discriminatingly into stratification of people based on their birth.
Going further into the realm of the Vedic cosmic time, each of the Manvantara is divided into four yugas (ages) that have a combined duration of 4 million and 320 thousand years. These yugas are further classified into four categories – as Krita yuga, Treta yuga, Dwapara yuga, and Kali yuga – the moral and ethical state of human beings is supposed to be reduced by a quarter with each of these yugas. When such a state is at its lowest ebb during the Kali yuga, the myth goes that God himself would descend upon the material world to take a human form so that the evil be annihilated and thus, the ethos, morality, ethics, and general well-being of the human world is resurrected. This would then take the material world back to another cycle of yugas, starting with Kritha yuga or the Satya yuga where peace, tranquility, truth, and rule of law are in abundance. The divine rule of Dharma (social order) as proposed by the casteist Manusmruti, is thus restored.
Coming back to the story behind the necessity to create Naatyashastra and the purpose of its existence, when the 2nd of the cyclic time span in the current Kalpa, the Krita yuga (of the Swayambhua Manwantara – the first Manvantara of the current Kalpa – as per Adya Rangacharya’s translation of the treatise in Kannada) came to its fag end and before the start of the next time unit of Treta yuga of the Vaivasvata Manvantara (the 7th and current Manvantara of the current Kalpa) began, crude and uncivil tendencies besieged human population. Lust, greed, jealousy, and anger made people oscillate between merriment and misery. A worried king Indra and the gods that he led in the celestial world, requested Brahma to create an all-encompassing text, the implementation of which would simplify the essence of the four Vedas for all people. If grasped the social order and the way of life as envisaged in the Vedas could thus be restored.
The Vedic way of life
The Veda literally meaning knowledge, the texts have an Indo-Aryan legacy to them. The way of life embodied in them is manifested through hymns, prayers, myths, poems, religious instructions etc. Over centuries they were orally transmitted through generations by the Brahmin community. In the Indian caste system, this community is at the top of the social hierarchy and therefore over the centuries they have had unhindered monopolistic access to knowledge and learning. At about 1500-1000 BCE, the Vedas were put into written form. Of the four Vedas – the Rig Veda has hymns that praise gods like Sun and the wind, it also reflects on the origins of the universe etc. The Saama Veda has chants in a musical form that is to be sung in religious rituals, the Yajur Veda has instructions for religious rituals and the Atharva Veda has spells against enemies and diseases etc.
Access to the Vedas was denied to the lowest among the stratified communities, mainly the Shudras and / or Dalits (present day terminology); and by and large to women too. In the story embedded in the first chapter of Naatyashastra, when king Indra makes a petition to Brahma that the moral mayhem prevalent in the material world be eased by forming an all-encompassing text for the performing arts – the implementation of which can explain in simple terms the values of Vedic dharma (Social order) and the way of life that it manifests, in an entertaining manner through story, acting, songs, dance etc, it implies that either the supposedly wayward people in the material world found it difficult to comprehend the vedas or they have not been given access to them.
In either case, the reference here is quite likely to be the communities that belong to the lower end of the stratified society. It therefore implies that king Indra and Brahma himself could have opined that it is these communities who are responsible for the said mayhem and the moral degradation by the virtue of the fact that they are ignorant about Vedic values. A familiarization of such values in a language that is simple, accessible, and entertaining could bring them back to the Vedic fold. So, the purpose of Naatyashastra can be inferred to be that it pushes the castes/communities who are at the lower end of the stratified society into the Vedic way of life practiced rigorously by the dominant communities – without actually giving them the necessary access to the source text itself.
Notwithstanding this, while pleading with Brahma for the creation of Naatyashastra, as a matter-of-fact king Indra quotes the caste status qua immersed in the Manusmruti. He says that because the Shudras are forbidden to learn the Vedas, there is a dire need for the gods to create the Naatyashastra, the supposed fifth veda that can be accessed by all. The intention of this benevolence is not so much that the Shudras be empowered by the knowledge contained in the vedas, but for the need to restore the rule of Manu and the castiest dharma that he proposes. So, the Naatyashastra in this sense facilitates Manus’s administration of the material world by making people fall back in line with the vedic world view.
The fifth Veda by the dominant caste
To continue the mythical story, Brahma agrees to create the fifth Veda. He then reflects on all the four vedas and creates the Naatya Veda, incorporating in it significant messaging derived from the Rig Veda, melody and music from Saama Veda, aspects of acting from Yajur Veda, and the emotional aesthetic essence (Rasa) from the Atharva Veda. He also drafts Upavedas or the supportive texts that gave explanations to the main discourse. The Naatya Veda would facilitate the understanding and the methodology for a successful adherence to Dharma (social order) by people. It would incorporate moral preaching (for the lower caste?), it would suggest the probable events that might take place in the future and forewarn their repercussions, it would provoke intellectual debate and it would encompass within itself all other art forms.
Once the Naatya Veda is created, Brahma requests king Indra to stage a play based on this Veda, using the services of the skilled, smart, and hard-working celestial beings that he ruled upon. The latter excuses himself saying that the implementation of the Naatya Veda should be done by someone who has the intellect to grasp all the nuances that are imbibed in the Naatya Veda, the celestial beings who rule the divine world are incapable of doing so. The community of sages who have studied the Vedas would be ideal for this work, he suggests.
Accordingly, Brahma entrusts the job of staging the first play based on the Naatya Veda to sage Bharata. Needless to say, sage Bharata belongs to the learned Brahmin community. So, the Naatyashastra was not just created to bring about compliance of the seemingly unruly communities who are at the lower end of the stratified society to the ‘divine’ casteist Manusmruti law created by the upper caste members, but its implementation is also through the eyes and views of the same dominant class and caste.
The position of women in Natyashastra
Bharata and his 100 disciples prepare a play that depicts the archetypal fight between the celestial godly beings (devas) and the demons (asuras). In the climax of the plot, the former defeats the latter. After seeing a presumable rehearsal, Brahma realizes that Bharata has used only three distinct acting styles (vruthi) – the one that appeals to the thought and the intellectual and which is verbal (Bharati vruthi), the one that showcases power and heroism through dialogues and actions (Saththvati vruthi) and the one that has a villainous tint to it as the characters use lies, deceit and magic in a show of strength (Aarabhatti vruthi). It should be noted here that all these three styles are to be performed by the male.
Brahma suggests yet another acting style that could entertain (Kaishiki vruti), its elements include dance, graceful postures, subtle emotions, beautiful costumes, and properties that would evoke the romance of desire, longing, and lust. Such a style has to be enacted only by females, who would be an essential element of this style of acting. On Bharata’s request, Brahma creates 24 female actresses who can efficiently perform this style of acting. He also creates male singers and instrumentalists. So, in the context under which Naatyashastra was created, women seem to play a secondary role – they are not meant to provide intellectual discourses, they cannot play the heroic, nor can they enact roles that have the intellect to scheme and plot and they don’t sing and play instruments. Their role is just to entertain the male by their dance, postures, and sensuousness!
Whose point of view?
The first show of the play is planned for the day when king Indra celebrates the victory of godly celestial beings Devas over the ‘troublesome’ Asuras. It seems appropriate for Brahma and his biases that an imitation (play) that depicts the victory of Devas over Ásuras be staged on the celebration of an actual battle victory of king Indra over the Ásuras. The play is a stupendous success, judging by the gifts that the Devas bestow upon the actors of the play. But one group is very dissatisfied with the performance and the message that it has propagated – the Ásuras.
Peeved by their portrayal in the imitation, under the leadership of Virupaksha, the Ásuras show their dissatisfaction, by creating trouble for the performers. Through their magic spells, they make the dancers fumble. Seeing this Brahma asks the archetypal architect Viswakarma to create a special stage for the performance. All the gods put together could guard this space at various positions and protect themselves as well as the performers against the onslaught of the Asuras and other trouble makers. Virupaksha argues that the Naatya Veda was created by Brahma at the behest of the Suras (Devas) and therefore it is bound to take the point of view of the Sura. What about the point of view of the Ásuras? Since both Suras and Ásuras are created by Brahma himself, parity of expression should be ensured, instead of the present discrimination.
Brahma acknowledges that Asuras are of immaculate nature but refuses to accept that the Naatya Veda is biased. He argues that it contains the actions, thoughts, and feelings of both the Devas and the Ásuras. He then goes on to the rhetoric to explain what the all-encompassing Naatyashastra contains – entrainment, education of morals and righteousness etc. Without addressing the core issue of the need for the point of view of the Ásuras to be reflected in the plot of the play, Brahma diverts the issue by listing out to the Ásuras what Natyashastra can do and it should do. The first chapter ends when Brahma gives a catalogue of rituals that the devas need to perform so that they be safe, the performance goes on smoothly and its purpose becomes successful. He then asks Bharata to worship the stage and thus by implication, begin the play.
It does seem that Virupaksha’s questions are not satisfactorily answered in this mythical story that exists in the prelude to Naatyashastra. Although Brahma argues that his Naatya Veda is not biased towards the Devas, in the implementation of it by Bharata the Ásuras are depicted as evil and troublesome in nature and are therefore defeated. If on one hand it is being said that the actions and feelings of the Ásuras are also incorporated into the imitation that Ásuras has created on stage, and on the other hand if the Ásura’s negative portrayal in the imitation that leads to their destruction in the plot is left unmodified, it clearly implies that the said actions and thoughts of the Ásuras and their very portrayal in the imitation is negative in nature and thus, worthy to be subjugated and looked down upon. And therefore, by implication, they are not ideal qualities to have as they do not adhere to Dharma that the divine rule of Manusmruti propagates.
So much so for the double standards of Brahma and the Devas. In Naatyashastra, the Ásuras are addressed to as ‘immaculate’ by Brahma; yet in the play that he asks Bharata to direct they are depicted as evil and immoral. Such a depiction gives motivation and justification for the ultimate defeat and annihilation of the Ásuras. In the fifth veda, the Ásuras don’t stand a chance of getting represented in the way they want themselves to be represented.
Much, much later than the Rig Veda era, there emerged the myth of Samudra Manthana wherein the devas wanted to churn the ocean for the purpose of extraction of divine nectar that could make them immortal. But they could not do the ocean churning without the help of the Ásuras. Aided by the three supreme beings Brahma (Creator), Vishnu (Preserver) and Shiva (Destroyer) the devas plotted against the Asuras by having an outward agreement with them that they would churn the ocean together and share the spoils. But when the nectar emerged, Vishnu deceitfully took the form of a beautiful damsel named Mohini to seductively lure the nectar away from the Asuras who had managed to take possession of it in the fight that had ensured. Mohini then distributes the nectar to the devas. Deception and fraud are practiced by the so-called ‘righteous’ devas too, but it is the ‘bad’ Ásuras who need to be tamed and killed!
This is a far cry from the early Rig Veda era when the word Ásuras was used as an adjective – ie.. something that is meant to be powerful. A god, a human, a king, a troublesome being, and even a missile could have Ásuras qualities. But in the late Rig Veda period the word transformed itself into a noun, it denoted demons – something evil, troublesome full of extreme desire and deceit, and therefore something that is to be finished off.
Restoration of the vedic way of life, compliance of the law of Manu, and the adherence of the politics that reflects the dominant point of view – such is the discreet charm of the context of Naatyashastra.
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