Bhāsa

Bhāsa is one of the earliest and most celebrated Indian playwrights in Sanskrit, predating Kalidasa. His plays had been lost for centuries until the manuscripts were rediscovered in the early 20th century. Bhāsa had previously only been known from mentions in other works, like the Kavyamimamsa on poetics from 880–920 AD. In the Kavyamimamsa, Rajashekhara attributes the play Swapnavasavadattam to Bhāsa.

In the introduction to his first play Malavikagnimitram, Kālidāsa wrote: "Shall we neglect the works of such illustrious authors as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and Kaviputra? Can the audience feel any respect for the work of a modern poet, a Kālidāsa?"[1]

Date

Bhāsa's date of birth is uncertain, but it most likely falls within the third or fourth century CE.[2][3][4] Bhāsa's language is closer to Kālidāsa (5th century) than it is to Aśvaghoṣa (1st-2nd century CE).[5] Suggestions of dates in the early 4th century BCE have been dismissed as "fantastical" by the Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock.[6]

Bhāsa's works do not follow all the dictates of the Natya Shastra. This has been taken as a proof of their antiquity; no post-Kālidāsa play has been found to break the rules of the Natya Shastra's. Scenes from Bhāsa present signs of physical violence on the stage, as in plays like Urubhanga. This is strictly frowned upon by Natya Shastra.[7] However, these facts alone don't make chronology certain. Indu Shekhar states that, "Whatever the exact date [of Natya Shastra] may have been, it is significant that no direct reference to NS was made before the seventh century," when it became accepted as the subject of attention for many poets, writers, and theorists.[8]

Discovery of his plays

In the year 1909 the play Swapnavasavadatta was discovered by Pandit Anandalvar of the Archeological Survey of Mysore, two years later the Mahamahopadhyaya T. Ganapati Sastri came upon 13 Sanskrit plays that were used in the Koodiyattam plays. The first discovery yielded ten complete manuscripts (Svapnavasavadattam, Pratijnayaugandharayana, Pancharatra, Charudatta, Dootaghatotkacha, Avimaraka, Balacharita, Madhyamavyayoga, Karnabhara and Urubhanga) and fragments of one. Later, he found two more: Abhisheka and Pratimanataka. Finally, he found intact manuscript of Dootavakyam, adding up to total thirteen plays believed to be authored by Bhasa. Unlike other classical plays, none of them mentioned the author, but one was the Swapnavāsavadatta. Comparing the style of writing and techniques employed in these plays and based on the knowledge that Swapnavāsavadatta was Bhāsa's work, all of them were credited to him. Some scholars have disputed Bhāsa's authorship of all the plays but over the years the plays have generally come to be ascribed to Bhāsa.

Plays of Bhāsa

The Uru-Bhanga and Karna-bhara are the only known tragic Sanskrit plays in ancient India. Though branded the villain of the Mahabharata, Duryodhana is the actual hero in Uru-Bhanga shown repenting his past as he lies with his thighs crushed awaiting death. His relations with his family are shown with great pathos. The epic contains no reference to such repentance. The Karna-bhara ends with the premonitions of the sad end of Karna, another epic character from Mahabharata. Early plays in India, inspired by Natya Shastra, strictly considered sad endings inappropriate.[9]

The plays are generally short compared to later playwrights and most of them draw the theme from the Indian epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana.Though he is firmly on the side of the heroes of the epic, Bhāsa treats their opponents with great sympathy. He takes a lot of liberties with the story to achieve this. In the Pratima-nataka, Kaikeyi who is responsible for the tragic events in the Ramayana is shown as enduring the calumny of all so that a far noble end is achieved.[10]

Plays based on Ramayana

Pratima-nataka: The statues
Yagna-Phalam:[11]
Abhisheka-natka: The coronation

Plays based on Mahabharata

Panch-ratra: The five-nights
Madhyama-vyayoga: The middle one
Duta-Ghattotkacha: Ghattotkacha as envoy
Duta-Vakya : The envoy's message
Urubhanga: The broken thigh
Karnabharam: Karna's burden
Harivamsa or Bala-charita: Hari's dynasty or the tale of Childhood

The Duta-Vakya and Bala-charita are perhaps the only Sanskrit plays by a famous playwright with Krishna as the central character.

His other plays are not epic based. Avimaraka is a fairy tale, which later became part of a Mani Kaul film, The Cloud Door (1994).[12] The unfinished Daridra-Charudatta (Charudatta in poverty) tells the story of the courtesan Vasantasena and is interesting for the same story was developed by Śhudraka into the more famous Mrichakatika on which 1984 film, Utsav by Girish Karnad is based.

His most famous plays Pratigya Yaugandharayanam[13] (the vow of Yaugandharayana) and Swapnavāsavadattam (Vasavadatta in the dream) are based on the legends that had grown around the legendary King Udayana, probably a contemporary of the Buddha. The first play tells the story of how the king Udayana married the princess Vasavadatta (his first wife).The second play tells the story of how the king Udayana, with the help of his loyal minister Yaugandharayana, later married the princess Padmavati, a daughter of the king of Magadha, and thus made this king his ally rather than enemy.

Though his plays were discovered only in the 20th century, two of them Uru-Bhanga and Karna-bhara, have become popular due to their appeal to modern tastes and performed in translation and Sanskrit.

Many of Bhasa's plays are staged in Koodiyattam even now, like parts of Pratijna-Yaugandharayana, Abhisheka-nataka etc.

Modern revival

The first person to revive Bhasa in modern Indian theatre was a Professor of Ancient Indian Drama at National School of Drama, and theatre director, Shanta Gandhi, who first directed productions of Madhyamavyayoga (1966) ("The Middle One") and Urubhanga ("The Broken Thigh") in Hindi. A decade later, his work was approached by playwright Kavalam Narayan Panikkar and theatre director, Ratan Thiyam using Manipuri dance and theatre traditions, and traditional martial art of Thang-Ta, who first performed Karna-bhara ("Karna's burden") in 1976, and later Urubhanga.[14][15]

Waman Kendre did an adaptation of Madhyama Vyāyoga in three different languages - O My Love in English, Mohe Piya in Hindi and Piya Bawari in Marathi.[16]

The legendary Natyasastra scholar and Koodiyattam maestro Guru Mani Madhava Chakyar choreographed and started to perform Swapnavāsadatta and Pancharātra for the first time in the history of Koodiyattam.

Notes

C. R. Devadhar (1966) "Malavikagnimitram of Kalidasa", p.3
Keith, Arthur Berriedale (1992), The Sanskrit Drama in Its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice, Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 95–, ISBN 978-81-208-0977-2
Kroeber, Alfred Louis (1944), Configurations of Culture Growth, University of California Press, pp. 419–, GGKEY:Q5N845X8FFF
Goodwin, Robert E. (1998), The Playworld of Sanskrit Drama, Motilal Banarsidass, p. xviii, ISBN 978-81-208-1589-6
Winternitz, Maurice; Winternitz, Moriz (1985), History of Indian Literature, Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 204–205, ISBN 978-81-208-0056-4
Pollock, Sheldon (2009), The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India, Univ of California Press, pp. 81–, ISBN 978-0-520-26003-0
V. Venkatachalam (1986) "Bhāsa", p.14
Īndū Shekhar (1 May 1978). Sanskrit Drama: Its Origin and Decline. Brill Archive. pp. 44–. GGKEY:3TX00B7LD6T.
K. P. A. Menon (1996) "Complete plays of Bhāsa", p.28
Govind Keshav Bhat(1968) "Bhāsa-studies", p.47
"The Yajnaphala Of Mahakavi Bhasa".
Bhāsa at IMDb
Ahlborn, Matthias (2006) Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa : digitalisierte Textkonstitution, Übersetzung und Annotierung, Universität Würzburg, Dissertation (German translation)
Dharwadker, p. 167
Dharwadker, p. 105
"Interview with Waman Kendre". Mumbai Theatre Guide. Retrieved 25 July 2015.

References

Thirteen Trivandrum plays ascribed to Bhāsa( 2 Vols), translated by H.C.Woolner, Lakshman Sarup, 193
Māni Mādhava Chākyār (1975), Nātyakalpadruma, Kerala Kalamandalam, Vallathol Nagar
Dharwadker, Aparna Bhargava (2005). Theatres of independence: drama, theory, and urban performance in India since 1947. University of Iowa Press. ISBN 0-87745-961-4.
Encyclopaedia of Indian Theatre: Bhasa, by Biswajit Sinha, Ashok Kumar Choudhury. Raj Publications, 2000. ISBN 81-86208-11-9.