Session 84: Performative Transformations: Texts, Mimesis, and Interpretive Communities in South Indian Theater

Organizer and Chair: Indira V. Peterson, Mount Holyoke College

Discussants: Steven P. Hopkins, Swarthmore College; Lisa A. Mitchell, University of Washington

Keywords: Performance, texts, Tanjavur, Antal, devadasi, South India.

Focusing on little-studied South Indian theater genres, the papers in this panel inquire into the transformations effected by mimetic performance on texts and the communities that engender and consume them. Our investigations show that, in each of these genres performance creates new texts, which are both shaped by and transform the interpretive communities in which they function. The papers illuminate in innovative ways the premise that theater or mimetic enactment is a " . . . mode of cultural praxis through which knowledges, discourses and meanings are repositioned through the practice of performance" (P. B. Zarrilli, Kathakali Dance-Drama: Where Gods and Demons Come to Play, London: Routledge, 2000, p.10). In her study of a 17th-century Marathi dance-drama Indira Peterson argues that at the Tanjavur Maratha court, through a stress on invented, dialogic plots the Yakshagana drama was reshaped by a newly developing public culture into an instrument for enunciating local identity and courtly perspectives on socio-cultural issues. Archana Venkatesan shows that, in the Araiyar Cevai (recitation) ritual at the Srivaisnava saint Antal’s temple festival, through interpretive enactments of Antal’s poems and life the Araiyar offers performative commentary on Antal’s persona as saint-goddess. Devesh Soneji examines the articulation of a self-affirming community identity among contemporary devadasi communities in coastal Andhra Pradesh through an analysis of the performance of a court dance genre called Salam-Daru. Through an interdisciplinary focus on performance, the panel offers interconnecting perspectives on diverse arenas of cultural performance: religious ritual, drama, literary texts, and public culture and community at court and temple.

Court Theater and Cultural Politics in Maratha Tanjavur: The Debate between Ganga and Kaveri

Indira V. Peterson, Mount Holyoke College

This paper investigates the links between "social drama" (V. Turner, Dramas, Fields, Metaphors, Ithaca, 1974) and theatrical performance through a study of court theater in 18th-century south India. The Maratha kings of Tanjavur (1677–1855) oversaw a flowering of literature and the arts in South India. Notable were the innovations in the Yakshagana, a dramatic form inherited from the 17th-century Nayaka court. The Nayaka Yakshagana was a Telugu musical-dramatic poem presented in recitals at court. Towards the end of the Nayaka period, and mainly under the Maratha king Shahji II’s (1684–1711) patronage, the Yakshagana became a full-fledged dance-drama that treated a variety of mythic and invented themes in several languages (Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, Sanskrit), and that was elaborately staged at court and temple. Focusing on the Ganga-Kaveri-samvada nataka (The debate between Ganga and Kaveri), a Marathi drama from Shahji’s court, I show that theater functioned for the Tanjavur Maratha kings as a major instrument for enunciating local identity and as a forum for "staging" the court’s perspectives on social and cultural issues, such as marriage, and the encounter of languages and cultures. Focusing on popular and folkloric themes, foregrounding dialogue (samvada) and mimesis (natya), and open to audiences beyond the court, dramas such as Ganga-Kaveri were spaces in which the court rehearsed its participation in the formation of a new public culture on the eve of the colonial era.

Embodying the Devotee and Entertaining the Goddess: The Araiyar Cevai as Commentary at the Srivilliputtur Antal Temple

Archana Venkatesan, St. Lawrence University

The ritual service of recitation (Araiyar Cevai) is performed at the conclusion of all three major festivals celebrated at the Antal temple in Srivilliputtur. The Araiyar Cevai is a performative commentary peculiar to the sect of the Tamil Srivaisnavas. In this paper I analyze the muttukkuri (divination with pearls) of the Srivilliputtur Antal temple. Here the Araiyar (reciter) takes on the role of the gypsy fortune-teller to divine the fate of Antal’s love for Visnu. Combining gesture and recitation, he liberally interweaves verses from Antal’s poems with those of the other Alvars to articulate the nature of the bhakti heroine, of whom Antal is the exemplar. In this paper I apply the traditional Srivaisnava understanding of commentary as anubhava grantha (text of experience) to the muttukkuri araiyar cevai at Srivilliputtur to explore the local theology of Antal in conceptualizing her as both mortal devotee and immortal goddess.

Invoking Courtly Culture: Memory, Identity, and the Devadasis of Telugu-Speaking South India

Devesh Soneji, McGill University

Devadasi ‘troupes’ (melams) were a prominent marker of the cultural landscape in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Telugu-speaking South India. In addition to temples, devadasis also presented their performances at the courts or homes of landowners (zamindars). Such performances, called mejuvani ("performed for a host") were the sites where the most aesthetically sophisticated devadasi dance repertoire would be displayed. Much of this aesthetic culture came to coastal Andhra Pradesh from the Maratha court at Tanjavur, Tamilnadu, where radical alterations of courtly dance practice took place in the nineteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century however, social reform movements that sought to dislodge devadasi practices had already made an impact, and mejuvani performances lost much of their courtly patronage. As a result, from 1920–1950 many mejuvani performances presented popular songs from films ("record" dance) instead of the traditional erotic poetry of the court. But even in this period, mejuvani performances would begin with a composition called ‘salam-daru’ or song of salutation to the Maratha kings of Tanjavur indicating the symbolic importance of courtly culture within the devadasi community’s own perception of its history. In this paper, based on ethnographic work with devadasi communities in coastal Andhra, I read the salam-daru as an indexical sign for the devadasi dance itself, arguing that its survival in contemporary devadasi communities allows for the articulation of devadasi identity in the post-social reform period. Today ‘private mejuvanis,’ performed behind closed doors in the homes of the devadasis invoke their courtly past in the volatile conditions of the present.