It was a homecoming of sorts for the work of award-winning Bharatnatyam exponent and researcher Padma Subrahmanyam as a documentary featuring her path-breaking research on the karana (dance movement) sculptures of Lord Siva, the god of dance, was launched at the Chola-era Sri Brihadeeswara Temple, more widely known as the Big Temple, in Thanjavur, where she began her decades-long journey into the subject.
“I felt very gratified because my research started 60 years ago, in the Big Temple, when I started studying the 81 karanas. It only felt right to hand over my findings to the nation here,” Ms. Subrahmanyam told The Hindu in a telephonic interview.
The documentary, titled Karana Ujjivanam, was released as part of the three-day Thanjavur Utsavam, a celebration of literature, music, dance and drama of the State organised from February 11-13 by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) for the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.
The 22-episode documentary (originally over 10 hours long) represents the wide scope of Ms. Subrahmanyam’s research that first started as a subject of her doctoral thesis from Annamalai University in the 1960s.
In Bharatnatyam, 108 karanas form the basic movements. The 81 karana sculptures were discovered inside the chamber of the first tier of the vimana (tower) above the sanctum of the Brihadeeswara Temple, by officials of Archaeological Society of India (ASI), in 1956.
Ms. Subhrahmanyam conducted a brief lec-dem on the valedictory day of the Utsavam from the tower, under the aegis of ASI and the South Zone Cultural Centre, to mark the launch of Karana Ujjivanam.
It was surmised that the sculptures were based on the fourth chapter of Bharata Muni’s Natya Shastra, considered to be the oldest extant literature on music, dance, drama, poetry and architecture for theatre.
Under the guidance of the then-ASI Joint Director-General T.N. Ramachandran, Ms. Subrahmanyam carried out her doctoral study which correlated karana sculptures found in Thanjavur with those in Sri Sarangapani Temple in Kumbakonam and Thillai Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram.
“Of the three temples, Thanjavur’s is the oldest, belonging to early 11th century. Next comes Kumbakonam, in the 12th century, followed by the Chidambaram temple in 13th century. My study was able to revive the continuous tradition of 300 years,” said Ms. Subrahmanyam.
She added, “what is interesting is that when Raja Raja Chola was building the Thanjavur temple, and the sculptures of the fourth chapter were being made, simultaneously, in Kashmir, theologian Abhinavagupta was writing a commentary on the Natya Shastra. So one can understand the pan-Indian nature of this text.”
The karana sculptures are not static, said the exponent. “There is an action that precedes and one that follows; they are like still photographs of frozen dance movements. I focused my research on which part of the action that the sculptures represented, by reconstructing the whole movement. It took me 10 years to complete this work,” said Ms. Subrahmanyam.
For the documentary, all the 108 dance movements are discussed. “IGNCA wanted me to explain the process and the methodology I used to bring the forgotten traditions of dance into practice, by the correlated study of the karana sculptures and Abhinavagupta’s commentary.”
Ms. Subrahmanyam’s dissertation was re-published as Karana – Common Dance Code of India and Indonesia, in three volumes, with additional information on 52 karana sculptures found in a ninth century temple in the southeast Asian nation.
In the documentary, filmed in Bengaluru, scholar and author ‘Shatavadhani’ R. Ganesh reads out Sanskrit texts, and her disciple Gayatri Kannan reads out Ms. Subrahmanyam’s English lines, while the exponent herself clarifies the context of the literature. Young dancer Mahati Kannan demonstrates the dance movements. “We didn’t realise that the whole project, filmed over several days, would run beyond 10 hours. But the IGNCA wanted the entire documentary for its archives. I have divided the original recording into 22 episodes, that will be streamed on the centre’s YouTube channel,” said Ms. Subrahmanyam.
The danseuse hoped that there would be a greater awareness about integration in the arts which has been immanent. “Just like Sanskrit co-existed with all the regional languages, in the performing arts, the grammar of the Natya Shastra has survived along with the regional dances. The work of Bharata Muni has connected the entire dance scene in India,” she said.
