Kathakali Dance-Drama

Where Gods and Demons Come to Play

Phillip Zarrilli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134651108
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Kathakali Dance-Drama provides a comprehensive introduction to the distinctive and colourful dance-drama of Kerala in South-West India for the first time. This landmark volume:
* explores Kathakali's reception as it reaches new audiences both in India and the west
* includes two cases of controversial of Kathakali experiments
* explores the implications for Kathakali of Keralan politics
During these performances heroes, heroines, gods and demons tell their stories of traditional Indian epics. The four Kathakali plays included in this anthology, translated from actual performances into English are:
* The Flower of Good Fortune
* The Killing of Kirmmira
* The Progeny of Krishna
* King Rugmamgada's Law
Each play has an introduction and detailed commentary and is illustrated by stunning photographs taken during performances. An introduction to Kathakali stage conventions, make-up, music, acting, and training is also provided, making this an ideal volume for both the specialist and non-specialist reader.

1
an ‘ocean of possibilities’

Kathakali dance-drama is like a vast and deep ocean. Some may come to a performance with their hands cupped and only be able to take away what doesn’t slip through their fingers. Others may come with a small vessel, and be able to drink that: And still others may come with a huge cooking pot and take away so much more!

KATHAKALI AND ITS MANY AUDIENCES

My paraphrase of this highly reflective story about kathakali and its relationship to its audiences was told to me during my 1993 trip to Kerala, India, by my friend and colleague, V.R. Prabodhachandran Nayar—a life-long appreciator of kathakali and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Kerala. Sitting on the veranda of his wife’s family home on a quiet back street in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, he told me this story as we continued our work of translating The Progeny of Krishna (Santanagopalam)—a kathakali play text (attakatha, literally, ‘enacted story’) authored by Mandavappalli Ittiraricha Menon (c. 1747–94).

I had selected The Progeny of Krishna as the first play for us to translate for all the ‘wrong’ literary reasons. As Prabodhachandran Nayar explained when wearing his dual hats of linguist and appreciator of good Sanskrit and Malayalam poetry, The Progeny of Krishna simply ‘isn’t great poetry. There’s too much repetition, and the vocabulary is meagre. It’s just not rich!’ In fact, such ‘bad’ poetry was The Progeny of Krishna that Prabodhachandran Nayar had never read a printed version of the text before I convinced him to read it with me. As a text on the page, The Progeny of Krishna simply cannot compare to the poetic richness and beauty of the four formative kathakali texts (Bakavadham, Kirmiravadham, Kalyanasaugandhikam, and Kalakeyavadham) by Kottayam Tampuran (c. 1645–1716), or Unnayi Variyar’s (c.1675–1716) much heralded four-part version of the Nala/Damayanti story. Variyar’s Nalacaritam in particular has been singled out as ‘the highest peak in kathakali literature’ (George 1968:102),¹ and therefore, along with the Kottayam plays, finds its way into the required syllabi of Malayalam literature courses and/or critical editions and commentaries.

Although Prabodhachandran Nayar had never read the text of The Progeny of Krishna before, he knew the text-in-performance by heart and, like some other life-long appreciators among a Malayali audience, might be heard humming the well-loved if simple language beautifully set to appropriate musical modes (ragas). Quite simply, even if he did not think much of the poetry of the play, he loved attending a good performance. Moreover, he cherished a life-long set of memories of The Progeny of Krishna in performance—from those sponsored in family house compounds or local temples as an auspicious act by childless couples hoping to secure future progeny, to performances of the renowned actor-dancer Krishnan Nayar, whose genius left its stamp, along with Kunju Nayar, on contemporary interpretations and conventions for acting the main role of the Brahmin.²

What struck me most about the performances of The Progeny of Krishna that I saw at village temples during 1993 were the many levels of appreciation and pleasure available to audiences attending this ‘vast and deep ocean’ of performance. Those who showed up with their ‘huge cooking pots’ were like 78-year-old Ganesha Iyer—life-long connoisseurs educated by years of attendance to respond with appreciation and/or criticism to the nuances and virtuosity of each performance. As Ganesha Iyer explained to me:

From six years of age I was taken to see kathakali performances by my father and older brothers. I’ve read all the plays, can appreciate performances, and point out all the defects! But real appreciation requires critical study and drawing on knowledge of actors and other experts.

Traditionally known as being ‘kathakali mad,’ connoisseurs like Ganesha Iyer used to travel far and wide during the ‘season’ from January through April/May to attend as many performances as possible by their favorite actor-dancers. The ideal connoisseur is knowledgeable in Sanskrit, enculturated into the finest nuances of each poetic text, and able to appreciate and criticize each performer’s style and approach to performing particular roles. Today he is known as a rasika (‘taster of rasa’) or sahrdaya—one whose heart/mind (hrdaya) is so attuned and able to respond intuitively to a performance that he is able to ‘take away so much.’

But also in attendance were children and the child-like—those with little to no education in kathakali’s nuances—who came with ‘cupped hands’ only able to drink what did not ‘slip through their fingers’ or could be held in their ‘small vessels.’ This drama’s pleasures included:

1. interest in the story and its drama of a couple’s love and loss of their children;
2. empathy for the main character of the Brahmin;
3. enjoyment of the beautiful musical modes to which the text is sung;
4. raucous laughter at the Brahmin’s all too human foibles;
5. a sense of devotion (bhakti) for Krishna;
6. a sense of affirmation that human suffering is subsumed within the workings of lord Vishnu’s cosmic ‘play.’

Although from a literary point of view The Progeny of Krishna was the ‘wrong’ play to translate, from a folkloristic point of view foregrounding performance context and effect,³ The Progeny of Krishna was a good candidate for translation because its pleasures are accessible and popular.

Another good candidate would have been the very popular play The Killing of Duryodhana (Duryodhanavadham) by Vayaskara Aryan Narayanan Moosad (1841–1902). This enacts that part of the Mahabharata in which the Pandavas achieve victory over their cousins, the Kauravas, when their leader, Duryodhana, is killed on the great Kurukshetra battlefield. In a discussion, Prabodhachandran Nayar vividly recalled the response two popular scenes used to elicit from their audiences. In the scene at court, the Pandavas seek to defuse the impending crisis, which will lead to a division of their property, by making an increasingly meagre set of requests of Duryodhana. The first request is for him just to give them ‘five villages’ to rule. Duryodhana refuses with a simple ‘no.’ The second request is for ‘five houses’ to which he again responds ‘no.’ And the final request is for only ‘one house’ to which he also responds ‘no.’ At this moment during some performances in the past, a member of the audience occasionally stood up to proclaim, ‘Then I will give!’

A second example of commonplace audience-performer interaction which Prabodhachandran Nayar recalls is the electrifying scene of banishment at Duryodhana’s court, especially when the title role of Duryodhana was played by the once popular southern actor Mankulham Vishnu Namboodiri. As the scene opens, the hand-held curtain is lowered to reveal Duryodhana at his court accompanied by his family and counselors—his brother Dussassana, as well as the strong Karna and wise Bhisma. He announces that Krishna will soon arrive, but that absolutely no one at court should show Krishna any respect at all.

When Mankulham Vishnu Namboodiri acted the role of Duryodhana, he used to make the audience part of the play! He’d just told no one in the court to stand when Krishna arrived. And then, when Krishna comes onto the stage, many in the audience would stand!

During the run-up to Indian Independence in 1947 and immediately after, for those in the audience active in the nationalist movement, this simple act of defiance to the authority represented by Duryodhana symbolized their resistance to British colonial rule.

In a separate discussion of this play’s popularity, life-long connoisseur G.S.Warrier recalled another resonance that made The Killing of Duryodhana so popular in the 1930s and 1940s:

Among Nayars…the request to ‘give a portion of the kingdom’ was precisely the situation they faced at the time since Nayar extended families were deciding whether and how to divide their property!

Warrier’s reference is to the effect that changing socio-economic conditions and colonial legislation about marriage and property rights were having on large, matrilineal Nayar families. Before the development of a marketplace economy, these families lived on commonly owned property under the leadership of the eldest male. Changes in marriage and inheritance patterns were causing these families to divide their ‘kingdoms’ (householding) into ever smaller parcels.

Unfortunately, descriptions of such immediate responses and popular pleasures that make kathakali such a ‘vast and deep ocean’ for its indigenous audiences have often been missing from accounts of kathakali, including my own, which have problematically represented kathakali either as a ‘classical’ performing art or as an art exclusively intended for its patron-connoisseurs.⁴ Where Gods and Demons Come to Play is intended to reveal some of kathakali’s numerous pleasures and ‘attractions.’ As Prabodhachandran Nayar comments:

At old feasts there were always supposed to be sixty-four items served with rice. Kathakali is like that—it’s got sixty-four attractions. If you like one thing, you can fix your attention on that!

THE HISTORY OF KATHAKALI IN KERALA: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

At the historical moment of its emergence as a distinct genre of performance in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, kathakali was given its present name, which literally means ‘story play’ and refers to the performance of dramas written by playwright-composers in highly Sanskritized Malayalam. Like most traditional modes of storytelling and performance in India, kathakali plays enact one or more episodes from regional versions of the pan-Indian religious epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata) and puranas, the ‘bibles of popular Hinduism’ (De Bary 1958:23).⁵ In The God of Small Things, Kerala-born contemporary novelist Arundhati Roy describes in vivid prose the ‘secret’ of these ‘Great Stories’ adapted for kathakali performance, and their popular appeal:

the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.

(1997:229)

As discussed in detail in Chapter 2, kathakali was given birth, nurtured, patronized, and increasingly refined by its traditional patrons—those ‘non-polluting’ high-caste ruling and/or landholding extended families, especially titled royal lineages of Nayars (Samantans) and the highest ranking Namboodiri brahmins. These castes were most directly charged with and invested in the sensibilities and socio-political order reflected in the epic and puranic literatures enacted on the kathakali stage.

By the end of the eighteenth century, most of the distinctive performance techniques and conventions that still characterize kathakali as a regional genre of performance had evolved. On a bare outdoor stage cleared of underbrush and defined only by a temporary canopy of four poles with cloth hung overhead, using only a few stools and properties, three groups of performers collectively create kathakali performances: actor-dancers, percussionists, and vocalists. Traditionally an all-male⁶ company of actor-dancers drawn originally from the ranks of martial practitioners pledged to death in service to their patron-rulers, the performers use a highly physical style of performance embodied through years of training to play its many and varied roles. Each role is easily identifiable to many in a Malayali audience since each character type has its own distinctive make-up, elaborate costume, and characteristic behavior. The actor-dancers create their roles by using a repertory of dance steps, choreographed patterns of stage movement, an intricate and complex language of hand gestures (mudras) for literally ‘speaking’ their character’s dialogue with their hands, and a pliable use of the face and eyes to express the internal states (bhava) of each character. The percussion orchestra consists of three types of drums (centa, maddalam, and itekka) each with its own distinctive sound and role in the ensemble, and brass cymbals which maintain the basic rhythmic cycles around which the dance-drama is structured. The two on-stage vocalists play the basic time patterns on their cymbals and sing the entire text, including both third person narration and first person dialogue, in a vocal style characterized by elaboration and repetition.

A kathakali performance traditionally served as a pleasurable form of education into these well-known stories and their implicit values and meanings. As Wendy O’Flaherty argues

Myths are not written by gods and demons, nor for them; they are by, for, and about men. Gods and demons serve as metaphors for human situations… Myth is a two-way mirror in which ritual and philosophy may regard one another. It is the moment when people normally caught up in everyday banalities are suddenly (perhaps because of some personal upheaval) confronted with problems that they have hitherto left to the bickerings of the philosophers; and it is the moment when philosophers, too, come to terms with the darker, flesh-and-blood aspects of their abstract inquiries.

(1976:8–9)

One of the major ‘macrostructural narratives’⁷ that informs kathakali’s staging of these mythic stories is the notion of ‘divine play’ (lila). Norvin Hein explains the theological significance of this central notion of ‘play’ in Hindu thought:

[Lila…is] the central term in the Hindu elaboration of the idea that God in his creating and governing world is moved not by need or necessity but by a free and joyous creativity that is integral to his own nature. He acts in a state of rapt absorption comparable to that of an artist possessed by his creative vision or that of a child caught up in the delight of a game played for its own sake.

(in Sax 1995:13)

In addition to God’s creative dimension, lila also refers to the various forms or incarnations the divine takes ‘in order to sustain and protect the world; thus, the lilas of such deities as Rama and especially as Krishna are the subject of much devotional art and literature’ which have been adapted and ‘elaborated by various Indian religious traditions’ including Vaishnava, Saiva, and Sakta (Sax 1995:4).

In Kerala, the Krishna cult and the fundamental theological concept of lila grew in importance between the sixth and ninth centuries as part of the Alvar devotional (bhakti) movement throughout Tamil country. Spurred on by such early devotional works as the Malabar (Kerala) King Kulashekhara’s collection of hymns (Mukunda Mala), by the twelfth century the movement was ensconsed in Kerala’s Vaishnavite temples, where Jayadeva’s popular Sanskrit work Gitagovinda was introduced. It was sung and danced to allow an audience to enter a devotional as well as aesthetic experience of the amorous ‘sport’ (lila) of Krishna’s love-play with Radha (Varadpande 1982:87ff.). In 1650 the deep devotionalism of Jayadeva’s original work inspired the ruler of Kozhikode, Manaveda, to compose and stage a cycle of eight dance-dramas (Krishnagiti) in Sanskrit and based, like the Gitagovinda, on the life of Krishna. The genre eventually became known as Krishnattam (Krishna’s dance) and was performed only within the confines of the Guruvayur temple as an offering to the primary deity, Lord Krishna. The eight dramatic episodes are traditionally performed on eight consecutive nights, beginning with the birth of Krishna, continuing through Krishna’s absorption into his divine form (Mahavishnu), and concluding on the ninth night with the repetition of the drama of Krishna’s birth, symbolizing and actualizing for devotees Krishna’s eternal presence.

Unlike Krishnattam, which restricted itself to performances of Manaveda’s eight plays enacting the life and grace of Krishna, when kathakali was given birth it drew on a wide range of epic and puranic sources. The serious ‘sport’ of all the gods and their agents became the cosmic backdrop against which traditional kathakali performances are staged. Kathakali’s temporarily sancti...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• illustrations
• preface
• acknowledgments
• 1 an ‘ocean of possibilities’
• part i: performance in the kerala context
• part ii: plays from the traditional repertory
• part iii: contested narratives: new plays, discourses and contexts
• afterword: whose gods, and whose demons dance?
• appendix: kathakali performances on video
• notes
• bibliography: and references cited
• glossary: and table of transliteration