Nāṭyaśāstra: The Text and Creativity

    While the rather long sequential narration of the Nāṭyaśāstra may have taxed the patience of readers, it was necessary. Often, all too often, the text has been broken up into fragments and each interpreter or group of specialists have looked at it either only as their text, or a text which addresses itself only to higher abstruse issues or technical details. This analysis may have also made clear the special characteristics of a śāstra as a category in the Indian tradition. It is neither theory nor praxis, nor purely speculative or empirical. It has a definite purpose (uddeśya) and a clear structure. It is a well-defined critical discourse and can be couched in a language of ‘myth’ so that the multiple layers of discourse can be sustained.

    Once the Nāṭyaśāstra was created, it influenced both the critical discourse as also creativity, not only in the theatre arts, literature, poetry, music and dance, but also in architecture, sculpture and painting.

    While it is not the purpose of this monograph to go into the sphere of the applicability of the theory to actual artistic creations from Bhāsa and Kālidāsa’s plays to contemporary traditional Indian theatre, or music – Hindustani, Carnatic, the styles of dance, the many schools and styles of architecture, sculpture and music, it would perhaps be pertinent to restate in general and not in technical terms, how the world-view, the theoretical principles enunciated by Bharata, especially the goal of artistic creation as a tool to evoke a rasa (aesthetic relish, āsvāda) and not to look at or imitate actuality, is manifested in the different arts. While both the inspiration and the final goal are similar, if not identical, the formal aspects and techniques are different.

    These underlying principles provide a fundamental unity of vision to the Indian arts, extendable to the Southeast Asian arts, while leaving immense scope for regional identities, individual styles, and an infinite number of variations and modifications.

    Until the eighteenth, in some cases, the nineteenth century, this was true of all the arts, with varying degrees of sophistication and excellence. Thereafter is a break and another phase of the modern sensibility emerges, especially in literature, architecture, sculpture and painting. We are confining our remarks to the general applicability of Bharata’s perceptions to the early and medieval phases of Indian art.

    So, what is the Indian artist’s concern and how does it express itself through the particular medium?

    The search for ‘totality’ and ‘wholeness’: totality (pūrṇa and akhaṇḍa) and transpersonal is primary. The nascent stage is unmanifested but intensely experienced. It expresses itself through a multiplicity of forms, all abstract and universalized, non-contextualized, so to say. The ‘forms’ with their typologies of the mythic and the human world recreate, replicate, re-narrate, re-state, re-model the ‘incipient’ experience of bhāva. This is anukīrtana, anukathana, anukṛṣṭi, and anucarita. It is manifestation of states of being with both a sense of distance as also intensity. Eschewing of the particular ‘I’ is a primary demand. It is not imitation or mirroring of actuality or imitation of a single ‘ideal’ or an absolute. This re-recreation is a mini-micro or a macro form, in a small shrine or a great temple, diminutive sculptor or monumental sculpture, mural or miniature, a full drama or a lyric, a full theatrical spectacle or a solo performance, an orchestra or a solo performance which becomes a ‘prism’ for seeing and hearing many colors – all only to suggest or evoke a single ‘unified’ luminosity.

    This is the singular rasa of the beginning and the end; all else is play (līlā, kṛḍā) of forms in specific configurations serving a very important and indispensable, but nevertheless ephemeral function. Heightened and charged experience is the source and the ultimate goal. If achieved, the artistic ‘product’ is empowered in contexts specific and defined, and communicates beyond context in ‘space’ and ‘time’. If not, the artistic product is skillful (kuśala), dexterous but never uplifting or inspiring.

    Bharata provided a vast vocabulary of formal elements of each mode of expression, so did the śāstras of architecture, sculpture, painting, music and dance. These were so useful and challenging as games that often the artistic creation was the configuration of all the formal elements (the śarīra, body of drama, the itivṛtta of Bharata) but without soul (ātman). This was and continuous to be an inherent challenge of the Indian traditional arts.

    Since the demand of the ‘sacrifice’ of the individuated subjective-self is great, it requires a ‘life of discipline’. This alone may facilitate the inner happening of the invisible heightened experience. This is the ‘unsaid’ invisible ‘seed’ (bīja) of creativity. However, this may or may not happen, and yet the tools available for a formal language of the arts are so chiselled that it can happen that the artistic product remains at the level of deadly correctness of formal elements, skillful and competent, but is not energized with life-breath (prāṇa) from within. This is as true of good and bad poetry, inspired or only correct, as of monumental architecture, sculpture, paintings, music and dance. When the intuitive heightened experience permeates the structure like fire ignites wood, or all the elements become a continuous ring of fire (alātacakra), the artistic creation uplifts, elevates and liberates. If not, it is repetitive in theme, content and structure. There are countless examples of both in the panorama of the Indian arts. There are thousands of Nataraja images, many correct, only a handful charged. The same composition of a varṇa is correctly performed by dancers. Only a few, even that only on particular occasions, evoke a sense of transcendence.

    However, all the arts, at their best, in the past or present, can be comprehended through the world-view outlined and Bharata’s principles of ‘structure’. Since we cannot go into the history of creativity in all the arts and the specific applicability of Bharata’s theory, we shall attempt to state this in general terms for general readers.

    Indian architecture, whether the stupas or the temples or the city-plans or domestic architecture, is created on the concept of bīja (seed), bindu (point) and puruṣa. The mud walls, the brick and stone, ground or elevation plans are an orchestration of multiple forms flowing out of and flowing into a center. Invariably, it begins with a point of unity and manifests itself through a spectrum of multiple forms which, in turn, evoke harmony and equanimity.

    There is, first and foremost, a center. The center enlarges itself into a vast complex either as a circle or as a square, and is filled with crowded abundance of life in all its variety.

    The ornamentation and the decoration, representational or abstract, play their role to an ascending oneness vertically, and a closing in and gathering of all energies horizontally from the outer to the inner. Brick by brick, stone by stone, an immense epic poem of the infinite is made. Each detail can be separated, but in fact, none is autonomous; each unit is a part of the whole, interwoven and interlocked. In its totality, it represents heaven on earth, the central mountain, the Sumeru.

    Ultimately, it is the cosmic order on earth arousing the dominant mood of wonder (vismaya) and evoking a transcendental experience of bliss, whether the observer, participator or pilgrim moves from the outside to the inside, or circumambulates the stupa or temple until he reaches the center which represents the ultimate void, the śūnya, nirvāṇa or mokṣa. Alternatively, he figuratively ascends the pinnacle whether in the austere simplicity of the spherical dome of the stūpa, or through the crowded multiplicity of the temple. Sanchi and Bharhut, the temples of northern, southern, western or eastern India, speak the same language of transcendence and of heightened experience despite the cultural specifies of each of these monuments. Impersonality and intensity are the twin paradoxical demands of this art which is life-bound and goes beyond it. These monuments bear testimony to the concretization of this vision through a perfect language of art, which was a Pan-Indian as specific in time, region or locality.

    Sculpture, likewise, manifests this vision of wholeness through a methodology of impersonalization. Indian figurative art is not portraiture of the specific. Each image is an embodiment of a dominant abstracted impersonalized state or mood in a given stance or pose, evoking stillness and dynamic movement together. Each is a complete world unto itself, related to life, born of life, part of the cultural fabric, but not it. Buddha is the Buddha, the historical prince Siddhārtha and Śākyamuni, out he is more; he is compassion, pathos and grace in absolute.

    The spirit and soul of the cosmic infinite is contained in the body of the particular but impersonal form. The image is not the historical figure – it is and it is not the culture-specific in which it is articulated: a Kuṣāṇa, Gupta, Pāla, or for that matter, an Indonesian, a Khmer, Japanese and Chinese Buddha are clearly identifiable. They are distinguishable and dateable, but in the last analysis, they are beyond their cultural boundaries and are each a hypothesis, an aspect of the vast ocean of karuṇā (compassion) in all its multitudes of shades, tones and subtleties.

    The dominant mood of compassion (karuṇa) is encircled sometimes with many transient states, represented as the vegetation, flora, fauna, yakṣis dryads, gandharvas and apsarās, each playing a specific role in building the totality, or it may be the single austere simple statement of the still center of peace and enlightenment, suggested through the symbols of the Buddha, the Bodhi tree, sandals, etc., or the human figure.

    Some contain the variety and some eschew it, but the impersonalized intensity of the mood of compassion is the residual taste, everlasting and universal.

    The images of Śiva and Viṣṇu in their benign or demonic moods, as yogis or sadāśivas, as lovers or ascetics containing bi-unity as androgynes (Ardhanārīśvara) or combining the three principles of involution, evolution and devolution, as conjoined images of Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Maheśa or only the principle of creation and destruction as Harihara, or as four-faced or three-faced liṅgas, all articulate, once again, the same attribute of the internalized intangible experience of the unmanifested unity.

    The multiple faces and arms of the image are parts of the whole and vehicles for the final evocation of the transcendental experience of bliss (rasa). The famous image of Śiva in Elephanta called ‘Trimūrti’, is Śiva as sadāśiva, as Pārvatī and as aghora, the fierce one. Through a juxtaposition of three impersonalized states, a fourth – that of complete equanimity – is evoked. The multiple faces, the multiple arms, are the artistic expression of this without form, beyond form oneness and unity, which is reflected through a spectrum of multiple forms, each interlocked in a cohesive meaningful structure. In its totality, whether the an-iconical liṅgam or the Trimūrti or the images with many faces, all evoke the response of an aesthetic experience heightened, subtle and chiselled.

    The sculptural form, the particular stalk of the lotus, the contours of the vegetative creeper, the aquatic and terrestrial animals, the gandharvas and apsarās and the human form, accompanied by them or in isolation, standing, sitting or lying upon these or serpents, animals or dwarfs, are all the now the transient states (vyabhicāri bhāva) – all vehicles of a soul state.

    They are a concrete embodiment of an inner psychic experience of significance and universal validity and meaning. Everything, whether in the sculptural relief or the individual stone or bronze image, the monumental reliefs of Sanchi, Amaravati, Halebid, Belur, Hampi, Konarak, are constituents of a cosmic design, almost a geometric diagram or symbols of an impersonalized state, an archetypal dominant mood with its concomitant transient emotions.

    In turn, the relief or the image evokes an analogues state whether of love sṛṅgāra or heroism or valor, of fierceness or humour or sheer joy. One has only to look at the images of the dancing Naṭarāja of Śiva or the figures of Durgā slaying the demon Mahiṣa and the vast variety of Viṣṇu images, to be convinced of the fact that as in architecture, the sculpture begins from a still center, builds upon a central axis and again makes a construct of expanding circles with diameters, radii, all moving into the center and moving out of the center. In short, the theory and technique of plastic expression is based on a system of multilayered correspondences.

    There is a correspondence between lines, straight, erect, symmetrical, diagonal or curved, spiral or otherwise, and impersonalized mood or emotion, as also between certain proportions and attitudes of standing, sitting and lying and certain moods – dominant or subsidiary. Each part of the relief or each micro-unit of the human figure plays its role – the eyes, nose, ears, face, torso and limbs, and each physical gesture, singly and in combination, is suggestive of an inner meaning which, in its totality, suggests an impersonal emotion and thus evokes a transcendental heightened experience.

    The content, the particular motif, the style, the costume and coiffure, all have an individuality, enabling the spectator to date and localize these reliefs, images within their cultural boundaries, but the ultimate taste and relish of rasa (experience) is trans-cultural or trans-national. Drama evokes rasa in time and sequence. Sculpture does it through mass, volume, and measure in space.

    Painting schools and styles, ranging from those of Ajanata, Ellora to the caves of Bagh and murals of Alchi, give further evidence of this avowed faith and commitment to the impersonalized dominant moods (archetypal) first identified by Bharata, which have been and are expressed in cultural specifics. At one level, there are as many schools of paintings as there are dynasties; at another level, each is the reflector of an impersonalization which has been the beginning and is the ultimate goal. Again, the range is staggering in its multiplicity, ranging from Ajanta to Sittanavasal to even the Islamic geometrical designs.

    However, once again, in each of these, the archetypal dominant states, the reaching out to infinity and the expression through culture-specific idiom is vital and fundamental. Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina figurative art is as abstract as Islamic calligraphy. Lines alone, with or without color in their use, as straight, terse, diagonal, ascending or descending, curved lines as intertwined spirals or half-crescents, are all symbolic of inner states of mind, dominant and subsidiary emotions: in their totality, whether as figurative art or as abstract lines, they embody the archetypal universal and follow the same principle.

    The characters – heroes and heroines of epic poetry and drama – are also archetypes as is the world of flora, fauna, animal or bird life. The mythic image is its universe through a formal language of symbols, signs and motifs; it conveys universal meaning within and outside cultural boundaries. The inner dynamics of the poetry of Vālmīki, Kālidāsa and the isometrical shapes of Islamic calligraphy are comparable. Again, the abstract and the concrete move together.

    Indian poetry transforms the notion of ecological balances into the recurrent rhythm of the seasons: plant, animal, human, water, earth, fire, sky, are again in dialogue. The passage of annual time, the seasons, acquire deep meaning and so spring, summer, autumn and winter are valid for themselves but more for what they convey beyond themselves. They are all like the sculptures on walls of temples, vehicles and tools for evoking a unified experience. Neither character nor plot is important in itself. They are interwebbed as a labyrinth and drama is always cyclic in nature. These are the more permanent arts, frozen at a moment of time for posterity. What about the occurrent arts – music and dance, oral recitations and the dramatic experience? They are shaped and formed in the art of creation, live for the moment in specific duration. Now, instead of time being frozen in consecrated space, space is consecrated in time of fixed duration. The beginning and end of the performance in sound or movement is a consecration when the cosmos is made anew for that duration:

    It is complete and whole, whether of five minutes or two hours or five days’ enactment. The beginning is the same – the still center, the immutable invariable inwardness; the fixed note of the scale or the stances of the dancer. Thereupon is an enlargement in expanding concentric circles of the cosmos, whether through one or three octaves, the exploration of space in all its variety of shades of tonality, micro-units of sound, light, shade, stresses, accents, and discriminating exclusion of particular notes.

    The edifice is built with sound; it is architectural in character. Now, both the musician and the listener circumambulates as the pilgrim did the stūpa, in clockwise but ascending direction. Through the structured patterning of sound, the multitude of life in its endless variety is presented, and a dominant mood is created; together, the still center and its flowerings like a lotus petal, evoke the state of heightened aesthetic experience. While the creator-performer begins with the state of internalized yoga and expresses through consummate skill the dominant mood, the listener responds by returning to the state of bliss where the artist had begun.

    Again, impersonalized emotion, a dominant mood, a multiplicity of sound, symbols and motifs combined with intensity create an icon in music which the listener can worship, as he could the sculptural image in stone or bronze. Little wonder that images are called mantra mūrtis (images of chants) and music is the ultimate Nāda Brahman contained in a single sound ‘aum’ or its elaboration. And finally, through a beautiful and complete language of movement, Indian dance provides the most concrete manifestation of the inner state and vision. The dance, like poetry, music and sculpture, seeks to communicate universal, impersonal emotion and through the very medium of the human form, it transcends the physical plane; in its technique, it employs the technique of all arts and it is impossible to comprehend the architectonic structure of this form without being aware of the complex techniques of the other arts which it constantly and faithfully employs and synthesizes.

    The themes which the Indian dancer portrays are not only the raw material of literature, but are also the finished products of literary creation; the music which seems to accompany the dance is actually the life-breath of its structure and, indeed, dance interprets in movement what music interprets in sound; the postures and the stances it attains are the poses which the sculptor models; all these the dancer imbues with a living spirit of movement in a composition of form which is both sensuous and spiritual. The body is the medium to transcend the ‘body’.

    Bharata had inherited a ‘vision’; he gave it form as concepts and framework. The creative artist, in turn, internalized the vision of the inner and outer life he had experienced. The principles of structure enumerated by Bharata were inherited directly or assimilated as part of a larger ambience, gave the artist the tools for creating a variegated world of ‘forms’ and multiple forms only to evoke the beyond form (parārūpa).

[This article is an excerpt from the book titled Bharata: The Nāṭyaśāstra (1996), published by the Sahitya Akademi. The author, Kapila Vatsyayan, has discussed in detail the various aspects of Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra with subtle nuances. This excerpt can be browsed in the book from page no. 102-112 (2018 reprint ed.). The title of the article is provided by Tirtha, editor at the Indic Varta.]

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