India is a land full of cultural diversities. This diversity can be seen in every sphere of Indian life. This makes Indian culture unique and distinct. Like these aspects, Indian culture has many types of dance forms. Which is geographically, culturally, religiously and occasionally entrenched in the people. Indian dance and dramas are mostly from mythologies and Vedic scriptures. Furthermore, It amalgamates the philosophy, music, literature and sculptural posses. To understand the origin of dance in India one has to look to the past of its roots.
Dance in India is categorized into three primary sections: Natya (dramatic elements), Nritta (pure dance) and Nrithya (sentiment and mood). Nritta is the pure dance movements, which are performed with rhythm. It does not use any facial expression. The abstract gestures of the body, hands, and footwork reproduce the rhythm and movements by creating several patterns and lines. Hence, it doesn’t convey any mood and emotions. Nritya is the blend of elements of Rasa and Bhava.
The facial expressions and motions convey these elements. The Amalgam of these three forms Natya, Nritta and Nrithya creates Abhinaya. It means carrying an act, mood to the viewers. As Natya Shastra was one of the earliest works in performing arts, therefore, it has provided a huge influence to the development of the performing arts such as dance, drama, music, and theatre through the history of India
Furthermore, the most ancient evidence of dance in Indian civilization documented is from the Harappan period. The picture shows ‘Dancing Girl’of Mohenjo-Daro from the Indus Valley Civilisation is the most ancient proof of dance in the ancient civilization that was discovered by R.D Banerjee in 1919.
This sculpture is 10.8 cm and was made in around 2500 BC. If looked in the details then can be seen it is a freestanding bronze figure of a woman, which has 25 bangles on her left arm and 4 bangles on her right arm. Her right arm is bent and placed on her hip and her left leg is also bent at the knee. She wears a necklace with three large pendants. The whole body is naked. She was named ‘Dancing Girl’ by archeologist John Marshall because he believed the sculpture represents “Nautch”, which means Nrtya or Nritya in Sanskrit language. During this civilization of Indian dance has achieved a considerable discipline without any influence of religion. Although there is nothing known about the techniques of the dances.
In addition to this, there scenes of communal dancers and musicians found prehistoric rock paintings in the of Bhimbetka1 caves which are around 30,000 years old. According to the archeological survey of India, humans settled in this cave for shelter for 100,000 years. It can be seen in drawings from different cave shelters that men and women are shown dancing together in rows with holding each other’s arms and geographical location . Other than dance and music there were additional ritual performances, everyday life activities, hunting, horseriding, battle, and execution of different types of animals can also be seen.
When the Aryans2 from Persia3 came to the subcontinent in 2000 BC from the northwestern side of India. They invaded the indigenous inhabitants of the Indus valley civilization. As the Aryans were the fair-skinned race they suppressed darkerskinned Dravidians4. They established a caste system on the basis of skin color to establish them permanently and their own culture and religion were introduced. This caste system was wide in structure as there were four main caste and many subcastes.
So, in the topmost position of the caste system hierarchy were the Brahmins5 with their white complexion and they were considered intellectuals. Followed by second were the Kshatriyas6 represented by color red for energy. They were the warriors and their responsibility was to defend from the enemy. Then were the Vaishyas7 and they were represented by yellow color and their work was agriculture and trading. The color yellow was associated because of yellow corn and ghee8 or butter, wearable gold in hands and body. Lastly, the lowest rank in the caste system is Shudras9 because of their skin color was black and their purpose is for labor work. They were often regarded as the untouchables. There were sub-castes in main castes, which were based on the professions such as cobblers considered very low and physicians considered high in caste. Influence of this caste system can be seen in the dance. Traditionally dancing professions is considered inferior so it was the lowest in the caste system. Also, it was very common that a female dancer can be a prostitute.
The Aryans were great scholars; they studied about things in a scientific method but they never wrote the anything about history. Instead, more importance was given to the mythology about the gods and goddesses and stories of gods fighting demons where gods always winning. During this time many scholars together composed the first Veda10 known as the Rigveda (Gods and Goddesses) in the Indo-European language. Which presented the two mythological epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. Moreover, there were three other Vedas were also written after which were the Yajurveda (sacrifices, a performance of rituals and ceremonies), Samveda (chanting, melodies and music) and Atharvaveda (Ayurvedic, health, and longetivity). These Vedas together with the two epics concerning with the legends of gods have given links to the classical dance and drama. Which leads to the writing of the Natya Shastra and it is considered as the fifth Veda. Natya Shastra has acquired information from all the four Vedas. Therfore most of the dances, music and drama performance in India came from the Natya Shastra.