The Nāṭyaśāstra

The Nāṭyaśāstra (“Treatise on Theatre”), attributed to the sage Bharata, is an encyclopaedic Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts, compiled probably between the second century BCE and the second century CE. In some six thousand verses it covers almost everything about theatre: its divine origin, the construction of playhouses, rituals before performance, the kinds of plays, plot structure, dramatic genres, poetic metre and figures of speech, language and dialects, acting technique, gesture (including detailed descriptions of hand gestures, eye movements and gaits), dance, music and musical instruments, costume, make-up, and the training of actors. Its sixth and seventh chapters contain the theory of Rasa, the foundation of all later Indian aesthetics. Indian tradition calls it the “fifth Veda”.

The origin of theatre

The first chapter tells how theatre began. In the Treta age, when people had become subject to pleasure and pain, desire and greed, the gods asked Brahmā for an entertainment that could be seen as well as heard, and that would be open to all, since the Vedas could not be heard by Śūdras. Brahmā created the Nāṭyaveda, the fifth Veda, taking recitation from the Ṛg Veda, song from the Sāma Veda, acting from the Yajur Veda and emotion (rasa) from the Atharva Veda. He gave it to the sage Bharata, who performed the first play with his hundred sons, at the festival of Indra’s banner: the victory of the gods over the demons. The demons, offended, disrupted it with magic; Indra beat them off with the banner-staff; and the gods built a theatre to protect performances.

Brahmā then explained theatre’s purpose: it represents “the whole of the three worlds” — “sometimes dharma, sometimes play, sometimes wealth, sometimes peace, sometimes laughter, sometimes war, sometimes love, sometimes killing… It will give comfort to the suffering, rest to the weary, courage to the timid, pleasure to the lovers, wisdom to the ignorant… There is no knowledge, no craft, no learning, no art, no yoga, no action that is not found in theatre.”

Rasa

The heart of the treatise is the theory of rasa (chapter 6): “rasa arises from the combination of determinants, consequents and transitory states” (vibhāvānubhāvavyabhicārisaṃyogād rasaniṣpattiḥ). Bharata lists eight rasas — erotic, comic, pathetic, furious, heroic, terrible, odious and marvellous — with their stable emotions and colours (the erotic is dark blue, the comic white, the pathetic grey, the furious red…). Chapter 7 describes the stable emotions, the thirty-three transitory states and the eight involuntary physical responses (sāttvika bhāvas): paralysis, sweating, horripilation, change of voice, trembling, change of colour, tears and fainting.

Acting and dance

Bharata distinguishes four kinds of abhinaya (“bringing forward”, acting): āṅgika, through the body — gestures of the head, eyes, eyebrows, hands, feet; vācika, through speech and song; āhārya, through costume and make-up; and sāttvika, through the inner emotional states shown involuntarily. His catalogue of hand gestures (hastas) and body movements is the basis of all classical Indian dance — Bharatanāṭyam, Kathakali, Odissi, Kathak.

Significance

The Nāṭyaśāstra is one of the oldest and most comprehensive treatises on theatre in the world, comparable with Aristotle’s Poetics but far more practical. Through the commentaries — especially Abhinavagupta‘s Abhinavabhāratī — its theory of rasa became the dominant aesthetic of Indian civilisation.