Indian dancing

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF INDIAN DANCING

were well pleased to be painted in rosy tints, the demons were hortified at the lurid overtones in which they were presented. Outraged, they cast their evil spells on the players, who found their senses befogged and themselves deprived of the powers of nazya.

To this incident dates back the Pole Dance of Indra, its modern counterpart being the chanting of mantras, ot prayers, before a petformance so as to watd off evil. Indra ordered a pole to be wrapped up in cloths of five different colours, each being dedicated to a deity. The first was white for Brahma; next came blue for Vishnu; then green for Shiva; the fourth was red for Kartikeya, the God of War; and last came a multicoloured wrapping for Naga Raj, or King of the Snakes.

Indra’s Pole Dance has its counterpart in Western countries, but while revelry and robust fun attend the latter, the former is marked by a singular decorum. The modern Indian dancer substitutes a puja, ot offering of prayer, for the Pole dance, but the significance remains the same.

From Bhatata’s Natya Shastra it is clear that various styles of dancing existed in India from legendary times, each being, presumably, a modified version of the original. Thus the people of Hastinaput, Panchala, and Kashmir adhered to a form of drama called Panchala-madhyam, its name springing from the soil of its birth. In central and eastern India, the Avanti, Malwa, and Sindhu tribes followed the Avanta technique. The people of Dakshinapatha, the modern Deccan, favoured their own style called Dakshinatya, while the Oudra-Magadbi technique flourished among the races of Anga, Nepal, Tamralipta, Astagiri, and Magadha.

Panini, the grammarian who lived almost two thousand five hundred years before Christ, mentions the names of two other dramatists, Shilali and Krishaswa — a proof of the antiquity of the dancedrama of India.

In the Epic Period of Rama and Krishna, natya flourished. Hence many of its themes to this day narrate episodes from Valmiki’s Ramayana, the epic poem of Ram’s days. Lord Krishna, yet another incarnation of Vishnu the Preserver, is also a very popular character in dance-drama, wherein he is usually depicted as a playful being

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