Theatre and Its Other

Commentaries on literary texts, be they Kāvyas or Nāṭyas, are a prolific though still much understudied genre in South Asia. The stress on the literary text as the achieved and circumscribed “work of art” has undermined studies on the reception history, transmission, and composing and staging of literary texts, where the poem or drama in its entirety is not always the main unit to be considered. Along these lines, literary commentaries are crucial for understanding the relation between theoretical prescriptions and compositional/performative practices, as they often put these two dimensions of literature (the theoretical and the practical) into dialogue. Moreover, a host of knowledge systems (nāṭyaśāstra, alaṃkāraśāstra, vyākaraṇa, mīmāṃsā, etc.), along with their philosophical insights, technical vocabulary, and hermeneutical techniques, are employed, combined, and creatively refunctionalized in literary commentaries, which therefore represent a liminal genre of śāstra that crosses the seemingly well-established boundaries among disciplines and offers to the modern scholar a unique window into the intellectual life of premodern South Asia.

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A Prolegomenon to the Visual Language of Dance in Gandhāra

Lakshminarayanan

2024

Religions

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Pre-modern Indian subcontinent provides a treasure trove of art historical data in the form of stone sculptures and reliefs to study dance. While significant steps towards understanding the literary and visual language of dance have been made, artistic production from Gandhāra (the ancient region broadly covering the northwestern part of the subcontinent) largely remains absent in scholarly discussions. Ancient Gandhāra readily lends itself to a global approach as an active participant alongside the so-called ancient Silk Roads connecting the Mediterranean regions with China. Furthermore, as part of the Buddhist pilgrimage routes, Gandhāra also developed ties with Buddhist sites located further east and participated in the spread of Buddhism to China. Within this context, this article discusses the most common dance depicted in Gandhāran art to understand how artists represented dance in the static medium. Using this dance as an illustration, this article also argues that the iconographic conventions of the Gandhāran artistic repertoire for dance are shared outside the region, notably in Kizil, which is located alongside the northern branch of the Silk Roads.

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Theatre and Its Other

Abstract: viii contents part 2 Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of Abhinavabhāratī ad Nāṭyaśāstra 4.261cd-269ab 4 Introduction to the Edition 215 4.1 General Remarks on the Transmission of the Abhinavabhāratī 215 4.

Cited by 3 publications

References 17 publications

Elisa Ganser, Theatre and Its Other: Abhinavagupta on Dance and Dramatic Acting. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 2021. Gonda Indological Studies 23.XII, pp. 412. ISBN9789004449817 (hardback).—Reviewed by Halina Marlewicz

Elisa Ganser, Theatre and Its Other: Abhinavagupta on Dance and Dramatic Acting. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 2021. Gonda Indological Studies 23.XII, pp. 412. ISBN9789004449817 (hardback).—Reviewed by Halina Marlewicz

Gracefully twisting the neck: literary commentaries as a (meta)genre of scholarly discourse

A Prolegomenon to the Visual Language of Dance in Gandhāra

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