ABHINAYA DARPAN B.A. III By- Dr. Mansi Saxena

Since about two thousand years, among the treatises on abhinaya known in India, there has been an uninterrupted flow of compilations containing the teachings and the reflections of several prestigious masters, with commentary by other specialists of successive centuries.[5] Between the two land-marks – Bharata's Natya Shastra (2nd century AD) and Matanga Muni's Brihaddeshi (c. 5th century) -, majestic stands out Nandikeshvara's Abhinaya Darpana.

Although the final penning of this work was known to have been completed after that of the natya-shastra, Indian and Western historians place Nandikeshvara's school between the 5th and the 2nd centuries BC.[7] After Matanga, Damodara Mishra in the Kuttini Mata (8th century), Rajasekhara in his Kavya Mimamsa (9th century), Abhinavagupta in the Abhinava Bharati (11th century), Sharngadeva in the Sangita Ratnakara (13th century) – among others – have continued paying tribute to Nandikeshvara's specific contributions.

A number of details in the staging of the Kutiyattam affirm first of all specialists' opinion that Nandikeshvara's influence had been deeper and wider on the concerned population than that of Bharata, at least owing to the geographical distance. Moreover, these very details refer so often to passages of the Abhinaya Darpana that there is no hesitation in recognising the proximity of this theatre with the place and the epoch that were Nandikeshvara's.

It has been demonstrated that the actors of the Kutiyattam willingly learn by heart and put into practice instructions formulated by Nandikeshvara, without always knowing or acknowledging their source. This is, however, an unexpected yet irrefutable confirmation of my hypothesis about the relationship existing between Nandikeshvara and this traditional abhinaya. Nandikeshvara (2nd century AD) was the great theorist on stage-craft of ancient India, and a formidable rival of Bharata Muni. He was the author of the Abhinaya Darpana (The Mirror of Gesture).

Nandikeshvara seems to have preceded Bharata, according to Ramakrishna Kavi. Some consider him to be Bharata's master. The most concrete example of Nandikeshvara's teachings have survived thanks to Bhasa. The poet and playwright Bhasa who wrote in Sanskrit, scrupulously executed "in his stage direction a good number of theoretical instructions received from Nandikeshvara, overtly disregarding the strict injunctions formulated by Bharata as it is manifest in the spectacle of kutiyattam."

Bhasa’s plays had seemed, indeed, to ignore major inhibitions imposed by Bharata : for instance, that of fighting or inflicting capital punishment on the stage, etc. Even if it cannot be proved that the Kutiyattam is as old as Bhasa's texts, nobody can disregard the considerable influence of this prince among playwrights on the traditional abhinaya we are speaking of, probably the oldest in the world.