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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
growing television network systems providing numerous options for domestic and foreign cable and satellite channels has compromised the socio-cultural importance once enjoyed by the ancient performance traditions in India. While the performance forms classified as "classical by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi, enjoy relatively larger audiences and state patronage as well, those termed as "folk” traditions have suffered significant lack of patronage. Families in which particular performance traditions had passed on from generation to generation for centuries, are facing a dilemma with regards to the continuity of their family profession. Newer generations of urban and rural youth prefer to work in urbanized cities, in factories rather than in farms with an intention to make a better living for themselves and their families rather than suffer the economical inadequacies of a profession as a traditional performer.
As mentioned above, women taking up to the stage in the modern era has diminished the significance once attached to female impersonation by male actors. Jatra actors for example, particularly the male actors specializing in female impersonation are facing tough competition from female actresses. Nevertheless, the leading female role continues to be performed by the male specialist as adult women have not been able to compete with the well modulated range of the boys' falsetto singing. Since the imposition of the Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act in 1959, many dancing girls from brothers in the north took to Nautanki, compromising on its religious aspects. The all-male Nautanki theatre, in some instances, however, continues to be popular with the traditional audiences. Conclusion :
One may observe a remarkable disparity between the importance accorded to the artistic role played by women in classical Sanskrit drama as described in the Natyasastra, and the description of the status of women, particularly, female actor-dancers, provided in other sacred texts supposedly composed during more or less the same historical time period as the Natyasastra (200 BC - 200 AD), namely, the Dharmasastras (treatises on laws related to sacred duties), Mahabhasya of Patanjali (a commentary on the earlier Sanskrit grammar of Panini), and the Epics, Ramayana and the Mahabharata. I will first illustrate how the author of Natyasastra declares drama as sacred, then provide with the description of the status and role of women in Sanskrit drama and finally point out the unfavorable laws against women, most particularly women actors, as commanded by the Manusmriti and the Mahabhasya of Patanjali.
The Natyasastra legitimizes India's cultural classicity in its meticulous delineation of a poetics of dramaturgy. The massive project of translations and publications of several Sanskrit texts undertaken by The Asiatic Society founded by Sir William Jones in 1784 in Calcutta (Kolkata) broke the brahmanic monopoly and rendered the sacred knowledge accessible to the international public at large.
Natyasastra commences with the author's benediction to Gods Shiva and Brahma with claims that he narrates the canons of drama as passed on by Brahma to him. (
Ghosh 1967:1.1). The author describes himself as Bharata, a great brahmin sage and dramaturge, 20
Puh : 4.24, vis 3-8, cisal. 200C - HZ, 2006
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