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Issues in Dance Reconstruction: Karaṇas as Dance Texts in a Cross-cultural Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Alessandra Lopez y Royo
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Abstract

The Nāṭyaśāstra is a Sanskrit work on drama, dance, and music of uncertain date, which has acquired the status of Ur-text of Indian classical dance. It was in the twentieth century, through the modernization process of bharatanatyam, that the Nāṭyaśāstra and its related texts came to be regarded as setting out the grammar of Indian dance classicism (Coorlawala 1994; Meduri 1996; O'Shea 2001).

Chapter 4 of the Nāṭyaśāstra deals specifically with dance, here distinct from acting, and describes the 108 dance units—Karaṇas—of the tāṇḍava dance of Śiva and their combinations, dance phrases named aṇgahāras (NS 1988–89, 4, w. 1–245). This particular chapter of the Nāṭyaśāstra has attracted attention ever since Naidu, Naidu, and Pantulu published its translation into English, Tānḍavalakṇaṣam, in 1936. Since then there have been other translations of the Nāṭyaśāstra, among which the two volumes by Manmohan Ghosh, in 1951 and 1956 respectively, and different interpretations of the Karaṇas of chapter 4. Readings have drawn on the iconography of the Karaṇas as found at the temples at Thanjavur, Kumbakonam, and Chidambaram in southern India. The karana reliefs on the walls of Kumbakonam and Chidambaram have been identified by inscriptions found on each karaṇa slab, that give the Sanskrit name of the karaṇa as recorded in the Nāṭyaśāstra.

Type
Research Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , Winter 2004 , pp. 64 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2004

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