Text · Sanskrit treatise on performance
Natya Shastra
/naːʈjɐɕaːst̪rɐ/
Also known as Nāṭya Śāstra, Nāṭyaśāstra, Natyashastra, Natyasastra, Natyaveda
The oldest surviving Indian work on the performing arts, attributed to the sage Bharata: about 6,000 verses in 36 chapters on playwriting, stagecraft, acting, gesture, costume, music and dance. It calls itself a fifth Veda, made so the Vedas could be seen and heard by every member of society, and its rasa theory makes the aim of performance not amusement but the audience's absorption in another reality. Its 108 karanas, the basic units of dance, are carved at Chidambaram.
- Date
- -200–200
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered
Worth knowing
It ranks taking part in vocal or instrumental music once above bathing in the Ganges for a thousand days. Its most studied commentary, the Abhinavabharati of Abhinavagupta (950–1020), calls it the Natyaveda, and in April 2025 its manuscript was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.
Date and authorship are unknown. Estimates run from 500 BCE to 500 CE, with the first complete compilation usually placed between 200 BCE and 200 CE; the text was revised in ninth-century Kashmir and some recensions carry interpolations. Bharat Gupt and Kapila Vatsyayan see a single compiler, others several authors.
Connections (6)
- InfluencedChidambaram
The fourth chapter of the Natya Shastra, the Tandava Lakshana, defines 108 karanas, the basic units of dance, each a combination of hand and foot movement with posture and gait. The Nataraja temple at Chidambaram carries sculptures of the full set, and its composite Tandava image of Shiva fuses many of them. In the twentieth century Padma Subrahmanyam used these carvings, with those at Thanjavur, Kumbakonam and Tiruvannamalai, to reconstruct the karanas as movements rather than poses.
- InfluencedOdissi dance
Odissi traces its theoretical foundations to the Natya Shastra, and its repertoire follows the text's three categories of nritta, nritya and natya. Its system of hand gestures comes from the Natya Shastra and Nandikeshvara's Abhinaya Darpana, and the sixteenth-century Abhinaya Chandrika of Maheshwara Mahapatra, an Odia text, describes the same repertoire. Its antiquity is argued from dance poses carved on Kalinga temples; suppressed under British rule, it was revived, reconstructed and expanded after Independence.
- InfluencedKutiyattam
Kutiyattam is the only surviving form that carries drama from ancient Sanskrit theatre, blended with the older Tamil koothu, and it is played in temple theatres called koothambalams by Chakyar men and Nangyaramma women. The Sanskrit theatre it continues is the one the Natya Shastra codifies, and it is believed to keep aspects of that performance style. Its repertoire includes Harsha's Nagananda, plays attributed to Bhasa, and two plays by the Chera king Kulasekhara Varma.
- InfluencedKuchipudi village
Kuchipudi traces its roots to the Natya Shastra, and the text in turn knows the region: Bharata credits a graceful movement, the kaishiki vritti, to Andhra and names a raga, Andhri, after it. The dance follows the text's division into nritta, nritya and natya, and its basic unit, the adugu, corresponds to the Natya Shastra's karana. Kuchipudi gurus including Vempati Chinna Satyam have attempted to reconstruct all 108 karanas, with results that differ markedly from Padma Subrahmanyam's.
- Historical linkAshtadhyayi
The Natya Shastra's roots run back at least to the Natasutras, manuals of drama dated to around the middle of the first millennium BCE and known from their mention in Panini's grammar and in other late Vedic texts, which also name the early masters Shilalin and Krishashva. The Natya Shastra still calls actors Shailalinas after Shilalin. The earliest evidence for an Indian theory of drama is thus a grammarian's passing reference, well before the treatise reached its complete form.
- InfluencedKathakali
Kathakali takes its theory of expression from the Natya Shastra, attributed to the sage Bharata and compiled between about 200 BCE and 200 CE. The performance uses the text's navarasas, the nine aesthetic emotions, and its account of rasa, bhava, gesture, acting technique, steps and postures underlies Kathakali as it does all Indian classical dance. What Kathakali added from Kerala was movement drawn from Kalarippayattu and the region's martial traditions, and an elaborate code of make-up and costume.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Natya Shastra"; "Karana (dance)". Kapila Vatsyayan, Bharata, the Nāṭyaśāstra (2001); Natalia Lidova, "Natyashastra" (2014).
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