Chāyā-nāṭakas
Neither the Nāṭya-śāstra nor the treatises composed in later periods mention the chāyā-nāṭakas. Different scholars have defined the term chāyā-nāṭaka in different ways. Shadow play on a screen, puppet presentations, or mute plays such as Kathakali are, at times, classified as chāyā-nāṭakas. The narration by the bhāgavatas during a performance is also classified under this category. These are not real plays; the text of the chāyā-nāṭakas only played a secondary role in staging a presentation. It is also possible that the bhāgavatas of Yakṣagāna and Tāla-maddale used the chāyās, i.e., peak points of play, as the locus and developed the story as per their creative imagination; this constituted a prasaṅga. These are just the possibilities. It is hard to say when the genre called chāyā-nāṭaka actually originated. The few examples available to us today are not very old; we don’t know how they were used either. We can estimate the structure and value of such plays from the description of Mahānāṭāka provided previously. Many authors have claimed their plays to be chāyā-nāṭakas; but we don’t know what exactly they had in their minds when they termed their plays so. Among them, Dūtāṅgada is a famous play. Other plays that claim to be long to this genre are –
Ānanda-tilakā, Citra-yajña, Chāyā-nāṭaka, Dharmābhyudaya, Pāṇḍavābhyudaya, Rāmābhyudaya, Sāvitrī-carita, Subhadrā-pariṇaya, Hari-dūta
Miscellaneous Nāṭakas
It appears that with time, playwrights and directors forgot the very purpose of a nāṭaka. There are quite a few Sanskrit plays that do not even have a storyline, but are structured to communicate principles of linguistics, grammar, medicine, and other technical subjects. In a seventeenth-century play titled Jīvānanda, a fight ensues between jīva (lifeforce) and kṣaya-roga (tuberculosis). Jñāna and Vijñāna, i.e., spiritual and transcendental knowledge, fight on the side of jīva against fever and gastric troubles, which fight for kṣaya-roga. Finally, the jīva is free of diseases and is spiritually liberated. The play is devoid of rasa and poetic thrill; nevertheless, it may be useful for people who have some knowledge of medicine. Similarly, Antarvyākaraṇa-nāṭya-pariśiṣṭa is a play filled with numerous verses; the play is full of puns. The verses contribute to the double entendre – they hint at the vyākaraṇa-sūtras on the one hand, and at dhārmic and philosophical concepts on the other.
Vāsantikā-svapna is a Sanskrit adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was published in 1892.
Kiṃpañca-carita, Nagna-bhūpati-graha, Vṛtti-vallabha, and Śārṅgadharīya are amongst the other miscellaneous nāṭakas.
Prakaraṇas
There are very few prakaraṇas in the Sanskrit language. Most available ones are imitations of Mālatī-mādhava; the play Mallikā-māruta penned by Uddaṇḍi (also called Uddaṇḍa-nātha) in the seventeenth Century CE, belongs to this genre. In the play, Mallikā, the daughter of a minister of the vidyādharas marries the prince Māruta with the help of a magician named Mandākinī. The twelfth-century playwright, Rāmacandra, has authored a play called Kaumudī-mitrānanda; in the story, Mitrānanda, the son of a merchant, marries Kaumudī; the play is filled with magical episodes created by siddhas, vidyādharas, rākṣasas, kāpālikas and others; it is the tale of ego and jealousy of the kings and ministers; the hero and the heroine are caught in this web of emotions and finally free themselves.
Rāmabhadra’s Prabuddha-rauhiṇeya is a prakaraṇa of only six acts; a thief by the name Rauhiṇeya abducts a woman named Madanavatī and a boy called Manoratha; he gets caught by the guards and is about to be punished; however, he recollects a verse that Vardhamāna Svāmī had taught him and repents for his deeds; he hands over the woman, the boy, and the money he had stolen to the king. The play was composed in the twelfth century.
Mudrita-kumudacandra is a play that captures the debate that ensued between Śvetāmbara-deva-sūri and Kumudacandra in 1124 CE; the latter lost the debate.
It is strange that no later-day playwright has even tried as much as a faint imitation of the Mṛcchakaṭika.
Atandra-candrikā, Kaumudī-sudhākara-prakaraṇa, Taraṅga-datta, Puṣpa-dūṣitaka (-bhūṣitaka), and Vakratuṇḍa-gaṇanāyaka are the other prakaraṇas that we hear of. There could be other prakaraṇas as well, especially among the numerous nāṭakas, whose titles we hear of.
Bhāṇa
The word bhāṇa means speech; thus, everything that occurs in this genre of plays is based on speech; the speech is in the form of a monologue – the bhāṇa is thus a single-actor presentation. It does not have the holistic aspects of abhinaya and a well-rounded storyline as we see in the nāṭakas; as spoken word comes to the fore in this genre of plays, it naturally gets filled with flowery descriptions.
Bharata lists bhāṇa among the daśa-rūpakas; it must, therefore, have been in currency even before his time. However, the examples of plays under the category of bhāṇa, that are available to us today are rather recent; and most of them are from the Southern regions of the country. Thus, we can safely presume that this genre was in popular circulation in South India. Vāmana Bhaṭṭa-bhāṇa’s Śṛṅgāra-bhūṣaṇa (of about 1500 CE) is amongst the oldest bhāṇas available to us today.
The theme and structure of most of the bhāṇas are similar; the events take place in brothels; the protagonist is usually a viṭa; he describes his surroundings using the technique of ākāṣa-bhāṣita; he brings to the streets everyone he sees around; the śṛṅgāra and hāsya that occur as a part of bhāṇa are, in most cases, distasteful; they lack refinement and go well with viṭa’s character; in fact, at times, it is embarrassing and unsettling to even read it; these bhāṇas abound in all the shortcomings of modern-day plays. They are more products of scholarship and less of creative talent; in many cases, they are pedantic. In the play Mukundānanda-bhāṇa authored by Kāśīpati-kavirāja (who is said to belong to the 13th Century CE), the playwright has used double entendre to make it sound like kṛṣṇa-gopī-vilāsa – the romantic joys of Śrī-kṛṣṇa and the gopikās. It is probably because the play is embedded with a second layer of meaning that it can be classified as miśra-bhāṇa.
To be continued ...
The current series of articles is an enlarged adaptation of Prof. A. R. Krishnasastri's Kannada treatise Saṃskṛta-nāṭaka. They are presented along with additional information and footnotes by Arjun Bharadwaj.
