Theatre and dance, which are inseparable art forms in Indian culture, are present even in the earliest works of Indian literature. The Veda<\/i> literature, or the four Vedas<\/i>, which forms the basis of early Brahmanism and later Hinduism, mentions dance and open-air theatrical performance. Otherwise, the Vedas<\/i> mainly include invocations and hymns to the gods, ritual formulas, and short stories.<\/p>\n
The Vedic<\/i> tradition evolved orally through the centuries and received its written form much later in the post-Vedic period. Towards the end of the Vedic period, various gods, which were originally rather simple personifications of aspects of nature, began to acquire complicated mythologies, which personalised them. These mythologies were further elaborated in the early centuries AD by the Purana<\/i> literature, while at the same these mythical stories became the main theme for much of the Indian theatrical arts.<\/p>\nSanskrit, The Classical Language<\/h2>\n
The classical language of Indian civilisation is Sanskrit. The four Vedas<\/i> were written in Sanskrit, and later an enormous corpus of literary works of various kinds, including the so-called Sanskrit Dramas<\/i>, which will be discussed later, were written in Sanskrit. Panini, the great grammarian of Sanskrit, mentions a short text on acting in the 5th<\/sup> century BC.<\/p>\n Sanskrit remained the language of the educated elite until the Indian Medieval Period. The way people informally spoke Sanskrit, however, changed through the centuries. Thus Sanskrit ceased to be a natural, spoken language, a process similar to the fate of Latin in Medieval Europe.<\/p>\n The opposite of standard Sanskrit is Prakrit, varieties of dialects, which evolved from Sanskrit. For example, one revolutionary aspect of the Buddha\u2019s career as a teacher was that he preached in Prakrit, which was understood by ordinary people too. Prakrit became an important element in classical Sanskrit Drama, since the clown and many minor characters spoke vernacular Prakrit.<\/p>\n India now has dozens of languages, including English, which, alongside Hindi, is a kind of universal language throughout the country. Sanskrit, however, remains an important key to understanding India\u2019s religions and philosophy, as well as classical literature and theatre.<\/p>\n Buddhist literature indicates that early Buddhism also created a rich theatrical tradition. For example, the Pali Suttas<\/i> (c. 5th<\/sup>\u20132nd<\/sup> centuries BC) mention theatre groups and various kinds of performers. It was by no means forbidden to portray the Buddha himself on stage, as has been sometimes the case later.<\/p>\n The Buddhist theatrical tradition spread later via the caravan route network, or the \u201cNorthern Silk Road\u201d, to East Asia, and influenced the development of early theatre in Central Asia, China, Korea and even Japan. Another wave of influence spread to the regions of the Himalayas, where a rich tradition of monastery dramas evolved.<\/p>\n The Indian cultural sphere was the source of important Buddhist literature, which has been employed by numerous theatrical traditions both in ancient India and present-day Southeast Asia. The Buddhist Jataka<\/i> or Birth Stories<\/i> are morally instructive stories that came about at different times, in which the main character is an animal, a human being or a superhuman being seeking to do good.<\/p>\n They were gathered into a collection of 547 (or 550) stories in the Pali language, the sacred language of Buddhism. The main characters were described as early incarnations of the Buddha. The Jatakas<\/i><\/a> give much valuable information about various theatrical practices from the period they were written, i.e. c. 600\u2013200 BC.<\/a><\/p>\n The great Hindu epics of India, the Mahabharata<\/i> and the Ramayana<\/i>, are of enormous importance for the whole culture, not only of India but also of other parts of Asia, particularly in Southeast Asia. They were originally conveyed orally, but they received their written forms in the early centuries AD. Since that time numerous variations have been written in India and other parts of Asia and, for example, the Ramayana<\/i> has been set in Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia in a Buddhist context, while in Malaysia it is set in an Islamic context.<\/p>\n The epics are of crucial importance to the theatrical arts, in two ways. Firstly, they give different kinds of information about theatrical practices from the periods in which they were formulated. Secondly, they provide plots for hundreds of different kinds of theatrical traditions, from simple storytelling to shadow theatre, classical Sanskrit dramas, various forms of dance-dramas, pilgrimage plays, and hundreds of folk traditions.<\/p>\nTheatre and Buddhism<\/h2>\n
The Great Epics, The Mahabharata<\/i> and the Ramayana<\/i><\/h2>\n
The Mahabharata<\/i><\/h2>\n