The Laws of Movement: The Natyashastra as Archive for Indian Classical Dance

It is well known that the Natyashastra is considered a master archive for Indian performance, and that its principles and tenets organize much of the movement patterns and expressive codes of the canon of Indian classical dance. This treatise, dating to the ancient period (c. 2nd century BCE – 2nd century CE) and presented as a compendium of performance knowledge in the Indian subcontinent at its temporal juncture, offers a valuable taxonomy of drama, dance, and music as integrated fields, coalescing in the ‘natya’ concept. As a multiplylayered text of uncommon significance, its historical, philosophical, and aesthetic dimensions have been widely explored by a constellation of critics and commentators, its vitality continually affirmed and challenged in the world of artistic practice. Inhabiting a rarefied discursive space, and positioned authoritatively as the ‘fifth Veda‘, the Natyashastra inaugurated a profound series of philosophical debates and interpretations about performance, and in parallel anchored a host of creative applications, theories, and techniques in myriad art genres. The Natyashastra’s formidable hold on Indian/diasporic artistic imaginaries and scholarship into the present can be attributed partly to its intrinsic complexity, its deep and comprehensive coverage of a whole performance process, and partly to external reasons–a broad social consensus that emerged over the centuries elevating it to a position of veneration and renown, and also revealing it as a hegemonic object of contestation. Kapila Vatsyayan, the late distinguished scholar of Indian aesthetics, declares in ‘The Theory and Technique of Indian Classical Dance’ (1967) that the Natyashastra and related aesthetic philosophies, in 1. Bharatmuni, Natyashastra, transl. Adya Rangacharya (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996). Rangacharya states that the Natyashastra ‘remains the origin of our dramatic tradition’ (xxi). Natya is denoted in the text as the synthesis of multiple mediums, like music, acting, movement, and in a staged concert; this confluence is often described as ‘total theatre’ or cited as ‘performance’ in English. It should be noted that none of the disciplines incorporated in natya was understood to exist autonomously, since in practice, they folded into each other; however, they are sometimes analytically separated as specific points of discussion in the Natyashastra. See also Bharatmuni, Natyashastra, Ascribed to Bharata-Muni (A Treatise on Ancient India Dramaturgy and Histrionics), vols. I–IV, transl. Manmohan Ghosh (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, [1967] 2007); Kapila Vatsyayan, ‘The Theory and Technique of Classical Indian Dancing’, Artibus Asiae 29, nos. 2/3 (1967): 229–238, and Bharata: The Natyasastra (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1996); and G.H. Tarlekar, The Natyasastra, with Special Reference to the Sanskrit Drama in Performance, 2nd rev. ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991). Most scholars agree the original Sanskrit treatise was likely composed sometime between the 2nd century BCE and 2nd century CE, although its exact date is still unknown. Bharat Gupt speculates it may have emerged even earlier, in the 5th century BCE, in ‘The Date of the Natyashastra’, in Natyasastra – Revisited, ed. Bharat Gupt (New Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2016), 25–26. Contemporary Theatre Review, 2021 Vol. 31, Nos. 1–2, 132–152, https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2021. 1878507