Another stupid article: Indian dance was invented in 1929!

[Sachi_R]

http://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/a ... 318621.ece

I must give it to the combination of media, organisers, and these gents busy in demolishing our "stupid beliefs".

This guy says, in summary, three things:


1. Glorifying the figurine excavated in Mohenjadaro as the dancing girl is stupid.

2.

ENTERTAINMENT ART
ART
Cultural wars and history as amnesia
A replica of the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai.
Sadanand Menon
09 DECEMBER 2017 16:20 IST
UPDATED: 09 DECEMBER 2017 18:40 IST


Isn’t it time we began to trace the origin of our arts without the baggage of hypocrisy?

Carnatic vocalist T.M. Krishna has a penchant for saying things that trigger deep anxiety within his fraternity. At a recent event in Hyderabad, a comment about the caste divide in the world of Carnatic music sent several tails up and much acrimony has been generated without people even trying to ascertain what exactly he said. The rush to counter him on social (or is it anti-social) media has resulted in some very strange chatter. The most pathetic being a set of people rushing to claim, ‘I’m proud to be Brahmin.’

Really? You want to claim credit for some accident of birth? It’s like crowing, ‘I’m proud to have two legs.’ Or ‘I’m proud my intestines are pink.’ You get what I mean? You can be proud of something you make yourself — like your music. But to be proud of the soles of your feet or other appendages like caste is being a bit disingenuous. Caste is toxic and intelligent artists should actually be asking for its annihilation.

The reason many classical artists get on this slippery slope is due to an absence of contact with history in their artistic formation. Art history, particularly in music and dance, is notoriously infantile and undeveloped, tantamount to a kind of speculative indulgence.

‘Divine’ arts

The core of the problem might be the self-congratulatory aura of a fake spirituality they like to envelop themselves in, and make claims on its behalf. This, in turn, springs from the narcissistic notion of the ‘divine origin’ of their art form.

3. Bharatanatyam was invented in 1929.

I am actually feeling very good. I feel superior to this guy because I know that
A. FROM Bharata's Natya shastra and Nandikeshwara's Abhinaya Darpana (both more than 1900 years old as per historians of all hues), Indian dance has had a continual tradition, and yes, rooted in religious beliefs.
B. Both Brihadeeshwara and Chennakeshava Temples have murals/sculpture of dancers in various poses and karanas. Ask Dr. Padma Subramanyam or Dr. Ganesh.
C. Aesthetic impulses are mentioned even in the Upanishads, eg "RASO VY SAHA".

For me the only thing difficult to understand is why The Hindu is giving space and coverage for such stupidity.

I think it is far worse to be mendacious and proud of one's stupidity than to be so of one's caste. Because stupidity is not an accident.

[sureshvv]

His callous denigration of E.Krishna Iyer makes him a worthy TMK chela.

[Sachi_R]

A scholar has called to my attention that Sadanand Menon is most upset about only one thing: That Marshall and co. were influenced by the "media frenzy" about the abolition of Devadasi system in 1920's and hence chose to call the figurine a dancing girl and created the "hyprocrisy" of Indian dance being dated back to 5000 years from 2000 years.
Phew. So the real hypocrisy is backdating and connecting it with religion.

Can't get more stupid. Any scholar would know that treatises like Natya Shastra and Abhinaya Darpana would only systematise and theorise about extant traditions in dance and art culture. So is it difficult to understand that such a sophisticated art form that was documented 2000 years ago had had its beginnings in something 5000 years ago?
Is there any intelligence in conjecturing that Indus Valley had warriors and pestle women and not dancers?
If Vedas are considered ancient (shall we say 5000 years?) and they mention artistic activities, could a dancing girl not have stood in that posture 5000 years ago? Who can mandate that all our art should be dated not before 2000 years ago, otherwise some people will be offended and call it hypocrisy.
I think hypocrisy needs to be redefined. We like culture, we dislike the traditions. We like music, we dislike the literature connected with it. We like to debate, but we don't like some pieces of logic but we like our own "logic".

And I urge scholars and researchers to go and study our scriptures, and literature, and artifacts and arts, to develop analysis and theory on what happened between 5000 years ago and 2000 years ago.
My surmise is that many wonderful things happened. Our epics happened. There is a link here to all this, my friends.

[shankarank]

I tried to post some replies with my pseudonym. But they were not taken yet. In dating anything significant, everything intellectual is mostly 2000 years old. Doesn't that tell you of the bias.

Let the Sanskrit scholar story stand as it is. They have responded - but that is going to fall in deaf years.

So we have to descend to the stench and argue - there is no other way.

First off the nATya SAStra is an intellectual imprint and grammar of the prevailing forms. Even if that is a Sanskritic absorption of the prevailing forms, to divine a conflict between the grammarian and some subaltern practitioners is the leftist trick. Intellectualism is their sole preserve, and they have achieved this by reducing Brahminism to untouchability. All intellectual traditions of India are hollow and rendered invalid, as they did not ruminate on the plight of the subaltern and marginalized.

Also the female figurine or statue has to be a toiling peasantry Women. Who knows no happiness! How could she have danced. It was all misery. This is how Left has trained itself to view human condition! That's why he divines that she is holding a pestle and grinding grains! So if we have a pride bias, he has a left bias - shall we say.

This is all extrapolated by observing the subaltern of today. Invasions, colonialism and their wealth reducing effects are never discussed or even mentioned. Indians after all hoarded the wealth only in Temples - so natural that they will be plundered by politically ( not religiously) minded invaders. if we criticize them, however we are denying minority religions their pride of history - then the politics vanishes , religion comes in. Their actions are political, but their history has to be sensitive to the people of religions. This is the Chicanery practiced by the Left.

Then the divine thing and the origin thing. "Art forms have a divine origin"! This origin thin as another theological import. When we also talk of anAditva, apauruShEya as much as actual rishis and authors at the same time, that is an injunction to the receiver to treat it as divine irrespective how it might have originated. No they don't have a divine origin , they are inherently divine - a concept not existing elsewhere. Otherwise all the purANAs which talk of creation stories would all contradict each other. So even if the divine stance is cited, it is mis-cited! The distinction between narrative method and larger concept is missed.

To treat something as divine is intended as to practice it with a sense of perfection and preserve it. It is a sense of sacredness. This is subverted into an allegation that people are trying to connect it to a religion. And people also play along to help them with this argument. Is nATya SAStra a religious book, in the normal usage of the word? How many people read it and follow it? How many that call themselves Hindus today read manu dharma SAStra to inform themselves daily?

And this pride thing - Proud to be Brahmin. First lets be allowed to represent the heritage effectively in today's debating table. if people are wanting to be stuck in old language , then that's all they get, their Pride of Brahminism which they can hold within their conclaves. Who cares! This is a strawman plucked out to counter - so he can make an argument.

Irrespective of what E.Krishna Iyer and Rukmini Devi took from the dEvadAsi heritage, the fact is dEvadAsi system was abolished and TMK praises Muthulakshmi Reddy as a model tamizh politician in his articles. So what if it was reconstructed in 1929, it was not out of thin air. It follows a sanskritic method. And after all kalakshEtra bANi has its own differences from other non kalakshEtra ones I am hearing - from those that teach. So saying it is 2000 or 5000 years old does not contradict that it was re-assembled in 1929 - not in the Sanskritic dRSTi.

caturASra triSram was not in vogue before it was put together in 20th century sometime. But it is also old in terms of it's character and principle. It is an inversion of triSram. It's basic first form is embedded in all arutis and in many compositions.

And Sanskriti does not imply brahminism all the time! That is another intellectual subversion. Because of the family method of passing knowledge it ended up like that, when families of devAdAsi traditions were disbanded and their descendents merged into other vocations. We did have universities at one time, they were all burnt down!

In the Indian Traditions, even if a community practices something exclusively the fruits were available to all other communities - so this Caste oppression extrapolated from today to the past is a false argument.

The only thing to be proud about is that the knowledge was dispersed into family traditions, so they did not get erased like when libraries and buddha vihArAs were demolished, like museums are targetted today!

And today's Caste footprint is not exclusive to arts, it is there everywhere. Everywhere else opportunities are out there utilized by people across Castes. So first do the other Castes want to pursue this music? TMK claims that they are all there in music Colleges! But the music colleges don't strive for excellence because they cannot reinforce the sense of sacred beyond a point, due to the very nature of institutions and their structure. What is the intent of the student to come there?

How many institutions pursue excellence in any other thing(Science, Humanities) for that matter? So we can blame the institutional structure and not Caste?

There are Victims of Caste system, but they are the ones to persevere and their focus should not be about annihilation of Caste, but rather fight it's ill effects. If they are viewed as NOT qualified now, they first qualify themselves by engaging and fighting for their own betterment. This is uniquely true of every injustice of the past.

Blacks got their place by fighting for it and qualified themselves in the process - where qualification could mean many things , to start with: they can survive alongside whites without enduring conflict and bitterness about the past.

Indians and other colonies fought for their own, and can anybody claim that were were qualified to be what we are today before that time. We learnt thru the process of fighting! But this is now turned to India was created by the British , or at the best Akbhar, as if Kingdom under one power control can define nations.

I don't buy this upper caste obligation to reach out!! First even to call ourselves as Upper Castes is not taken lightly - there a political correctness issue right there! We don't have anything to annihilate!

[Sachi_R]

Shankarank,. You write well! Such lovely lines there!
No need for any pseudonym.

[Nick H]

sent several tails up

Does The Hindu now mandate that those who write for it can't actually speak the language that it claims to be written in? I suppose he means put people's backs up. As far as I know it originates in the action of a dog raising its hackles. Someone here may no better, as most speak English better, and many are more learned in it, than me. No chance of them getting jobs on today's The Hindu!

At least this mangling of metaphor and ignorance of idiom gives me an insight into how rasikas feel when the see their mother tongues massacred by artists who sing in, but do not speak, that language.

Am I a nit-picking grammar Nazi and language bigot? Well, yes... but should I expect less from those who speak or write as supposedly learned persons? I don't think so.

[Sachi_R]

Nick,

Dictionary:
with your tail up
If you do something with your tail up, you are happy and confident when you do it. We'll go to court with our tails up. Note: People sometimes vary this expression, for example by saying that someone has their tail up or that something puts their tail up. They have their tails up being ahead of us in the league. There was no doubt that Mary Rand's outstanding performance on the first day put everybody's tails up. Note: Dogs often raise their tails and wag them when they are happy or excited.

I think Menon meant to say "get their goat".

Honestly, bad English is the least of the problems in this piece.

[sureshvv]

He doesn't know his back from his tail

Good catch Nick!

[sankark]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=30283&sid=88eabe706 ... 4c3e61667b these two threads to be merged

[MaheshS]

Shankarank / Sachi - Cna you please write an article rebutting this nonsense written by Menon. Maybe we can contact Swarajya mag or something and get them to publish it as I don't think The Hindu will accept your comments.

[uday_shankar]

I don't think the article is stupid and I don't share the sentiments of the rest of you folks in this echo chamber. That's OK, people need not agree.

Those heavy rings around the lady's arm intrigued me and so I spoke to a good Bharatanatyam dancer to see how restrictive they would be to perform any kind of "traditional" dance. She said it appears even the Naatyaarambham pose would be impossible leave along any number of very important things she does. Even mudras would not be possible with that hand. In short, those rings would be a severe impediment. Arm movement is the cornerstone of any dance form, folk or classical, Indian or western or far eastern. So the warrior woman story, with some kind of protection/bracing/deliberate restriction sounds more plausible.

Back to the echo chamber... just a little extraneous noise...

[sureshvv]

I think the thrust of the echo chamber is that the profession of that lady figurine has very little to do with the history of dance. Sadanand picks on this as if this were the most important evidence of dance practice in ancient India.

Plus this nut job harangues about how irrelevant caste is until he gets to the Isai Vellalars. Once he lands there, he can't get enough of caste.

[Sachi_R]

Uday, I had another look.
It is now crystal clear to me that her left arm is in a prosthesis, fixed poorly by a doctor in Max Hospital, Mohenjadaro. The woman is well to do, but hurt herself on her motorcycle, and unfortunately chose this bad doctor.
The hand hasn't healed after several months. She has come and confronted the doctor, saying she would sue him.

The women in Indus valley didn't care for some sissy dance. They drove motor cycles, wore prostheses, and sued doctors.
Hope you can check out this hypothesis outside of this echo chamber.

[uday_shankar]

Sadanand picks on this as if this were the most important evidence of dance practice in ancient India.

And it may well be. It may be the only piece of "evidence" that connects the dots between extant accounts, carvings, etc of Indian dance, the oldest of which may date to 2000 to 3000 years ago, to the Harappan civilization of 5000 years ago. Thereby we gratuitously backdated the age of the "tradition" by a few millennia, to be mouthed with hushed whispers by dancers everywhere, based on this figurine. It would be more credible and factual if dancers stated "our tradition is more than 2000 years old". But facts don't matter I suppose...

[sureshvv]

He seems to want it to be 1929. Just as true as that it is dominated by the elite caste. Hope you have'nt joined that other echo chamber.

[Sachi_R]

Sadanand Menon is perhaps going to be upset by this woman:

Caption in alamy:
Lady shepherd standing in front of her house in Rajasthan.

[uday_shankar]

He seems to want it to be 1929.

Maybe you didn't read the article. People in echo chambers often don't. 99% of the people who went on rampage after Salman Rushdie's book never read it.

Quoting from the article (bold mine):

"....
What this naming helped do was to ‘invent’ a tradition. Suddenly, Indian dance became 5,000 years old. Until then, the evidence of Indian dance was derived from Ajanta frescos or temple sculptures. That evidence took us back maybe 2,000 years. We have a written text, the Natya Shastra, which too is dated somewhere around then. But suddenly, here is evidence that not only our civilisation, but even our dance is among the oldest in the world. It prefigured the civilisation of the colonial ruler by millennia. So that became an argument..."

[uday_shankar]

Sadanand Menon is perhaps going to be upset by this woman:

Caption in alamy:
Lady shepherd standing in front of her house in Rajasthan.

And the point is... ?

[Nick H]

I'll have another go. My head gets derailed by stuff that school teachers would put a red line through. It may be petty, but the more the author thinks of themselves, the worse the effect on me. I don't know who this guy is, except his name has come up before in the feeding frenzy, but, like somebody else I could mention, he puts on academic airs.

Good catch Nick!

Hits one in the face.

Sachi, I think he meant back, because getting word wrong is easier than getting a whole construct wrong. I know: I'm an expert at making stupid mistakes. Just... I don't pretend to be an academic or an author.
Anyway

She ... could be any woman standing at a bus stand or waiting at an ATM machine.

Really? I wonder at what ATMs and bus stops Mr Menon stands? More interesting than mine, I guess.

[shankarank]

"....
What this naming helped do was to ‘invent’ a tradition. Suddenly, Indian dance became 5,000 years old. Until then, the evidence of Indian dance was derived from Ajanta frescos or temple sculptures. That evidence took us back maybe 2,000 years. We have a written text, the Natya Shastra, which too is dated somewhere around then. But suddenly, here is evidence that not only our civilisation, but even our dance is among the oldest in the world. It prefigured the civilisation of the colonial ruler by millennia. So that became an argument..."

The thrust of my argument is nATya SAStra is a written text which may be dated to certain point. We cannot discount oral traditions preceding that. Which is why in some sense dating using available evidence , which is useful for Left propaganda, may not be relevant to us. The figurine is being used only as an evidence of antiquity, a knee jerk reaction , with Indian half baked intellectual class being defensive, falling into the trap of archaeology. And then we take it to the level of Mudra and try to respond to it.

But then if Left extrapolates its oppressive theories, which may be valid only since the 18th or 19th century Industrial era, back to antiquity and Menon divines a pestle grinder on this figurine, we should allow the same to the Dancers to do some propaganda too, to impress upon the apathetic adults and young impressionable ones. We should let them have at it - shall we?

Secondly by tracing to antiquity and a SAStra text, it does not become a property of Brahmins - which is what the left seem to imply, because unfortunately that's what happened due to circumstances. The implication is that, this is a ploy to deny the devadAsis their history.

Far from it, everything from temple architecture, to arts, to Atharva is originating from subaltern classes of various levels. Srauta smArta itihAsA acknowledges that, per one blogger, and itihAs at a minimum can be taken as an indication - if not an admissible evidence of historiography.

Today a devadAsi narrative will put off any other caste member more than anything else! Tracing to antiquity is a method of narration in the face of apathy for people to get engaged. And that is possible today. Why don't we leave it at that?


Just 15 years back or so, TRS could not make a positive narration of dEvadAsi tradition in front of parents of children learning from his student , in a Lec Dem. But I heard a brilliant one from a person of my age group, a member of a prominent musical family : Women taking to arts in Europe, were economically Independent and they didn't have a need to be in a family setup! Sufficient??

But now parents of every hue in america who are facing the prospect of their children not going into marriage, will be able to relate to it, won't they?

That the art is rooted in a devotional or spiritual tradition is not an impediment to it's dissemination anymore. The guys are behind by 30 years. There is no artificial requirement to bring in all this to draw the attention of half literate educated people - because the focus will be more on atrocity literature than on promotion of the art itself. In an academic research setting, these can be discussed, but not in cultural art promotion forums. Interested people can read on their own and have their impish glee to themselves in their private space.

[Sachi_R]

Uday,
Bangles worn on either hand (mostly left hand since people are right-handed) from shoulder to wrist is a tradition I have seen among Rajasthani dancers. The bangles are made of shellac or some light material and allow for twirling of hands.

5000 years ago a dancing girl with bangles on her left hand is eminently possible. Definitely this interpretation is not laughable.

Anyone, even a Bharatanatyam dancer, who discounts it, needs a rethink.

You see this line in Sadanand Menon's article:

But divested of hypocrisy, it would be interesting to use the ‘dancing girl’ figurine to probably prove that ‘our’ dance is, in fact, a modern dance, invented in 1929.

What does this sentence mean?

I don't usually call people stupid. I call this article stupid because:
1. It cannot deal with a possibility of a figurine being called a dancing girl, when it is the most likely explanation. The posture and ornamentation do not to me look like that of a warrior. Or a pestle woman.
2. It goes on to circumstantially prove a bias because of Devadasi stuff going on in 1920's. Such explaining away is an act of stupidity. A parallel would be, one evening, you are busy reading about prohibition being implemented in Madras. Then you look out of the window and see your neighbour staggering on the road. You call out that the man looks drunk. Your wife says it is your bias because you're reading about prohibition. But what is the most likely explanation? At a minimum, there is to my mind a 75% probability the man is drunk. 25% that he is practising to take over Keshto Mukherjee's role or has been hit on the head with a pestle.
3. It is stupid to be unable to connect a highly codified dance form from 2000 years ago to a possible evolution from dances that could very well have existed 5000 years ago in a civilisation of great sophistication and urbanisation. Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohenjo-daro

4. Somebody did some scrubbing of a dance form in 1929.There is a recorded history of civilisation and art and literature from 5000 years ago in that country. Dancers start saying our art has a tradition dating back 5000 years ago. At this, someone laughs. To me that is stupid. Because India has scriptures, puranas, vedas, itihasas, that we all say go back to long before CE, all of which mention music and dance. Buddha's life has references to music and dance. That was part of a tradition.

By the way I was reading some discussion whether Krishna could have played the flute 5000 years ago (next week Sadanand Menon may write about it). Then I found that they have discovered wind instruments made of bone even more ancient in some Eurpoean caves.

It's a connected world and a connected history. We need to deal with dates and ideas of antiquity with some imagination. Because the key idea behind all that is that mankind has evolutionary development in all fields, in performing arts especially so.

[shankarank]

If Sadanand wants, he can ask for pestle grinding to be art-ified and presented in a theater or dance! if nobody shows up, he can cry hoarse that marginalized art forms are not being recognized!

E. Krishna Iyer brought the temple to the dancer's body, when temple dancers were abolished. Were they dancing in temples or no? The word dEvadAsi has that in itself! Every artifact worn by the dancers are in the temple architecture , with the same meta-physics! That is not even getting to the level of sculptures and postures!

We who failed to take that back to the temples, and cannot see it's relationship with the Temple by using the European word "art" for it, and cannot bring people to attend a dance performance, cannot even defend him now!!

if the United States higher education and its scholarship funding did not subsidize this art, we won't be getting these attacks! This is just an attack on a success story!

[sureshvv]

He seems to want it to be 1929.

Maybe you didn't read the article. People in echo chambers often don't. 99% of the people who went on rampage after Salman Rushdie's book never read it.

Quoting from the article (bold mine):

<irrelevant quote snipped>

Please quote the 1929 part and then try to defend it. That is what we are talking about.

[sureshvv]

if the United States higher education and its scholarship funding did not subsidize this art, we won't be getting these attacks! This is just an attack on a success story!

Plausible. Here is a quote from the bottom of the article:

The writer is concerned that the finest research on the history of Indian dance is being generated from universities abroad.

May be we should make all "Isai Vellalars" professors!

Pinhead

[Nick H]

OJ, so I don't get the article... or the ensuing conversation.

Is he saying dance, as we know it, is ancient because of a) religion/myth, b) archaeology, c) something else, and that to think it because of one is correct, but to think it because of another is not correct?

Either, or whatever way, I don't think that Sadanand Menon is worth the brain effort to decode, I'm filing his article, along with recent written offerings from TMK, in the round thing under the desk.

I think it quite remarkable that a small, yellow, American, cartoon-character boy has redefined an English word for me. In the voice of Bart Simpson... Whatever

[varsha]

Looks like Sadanand Menon was goaded into writing this innocuous piece. The opening paragraph has little relevance to what he may have intended as the main thrust of that article . And what was that I pray ?
Mr Menon has succeeded in keeping it well hidden.
He, like TMK , succeeds in firing a sten gun , incapable of handling the recoil and so ends up firing aimlessly in all directions.
Just poor writing , folks.

[uday_shankar]

Please quote the 1929 part and then try to defend it. That is what we are talking about.

Just to be clear, I have no interest in "defending" anything, including anything I may have said. I sometimes get asked in design meetings by marketeers, "are you sure you've got it right"... and my reply is always "yes, we're sure...until we're not! Then we will modify our theory and we will be sure again, until we're not again!". That really messes those marketing people up. But the real point is, one has to exercise the utmost due diligence, without biases, and get the best possible perspective at any given time so the odds of you being right is maxed, knowing that one's understanding may yet be incomplete or perhaps outright wrong.

So to quote again from the article:

"...Now every Indian classical dancer loves to say ‘Our dance is 5,000 years old.’ But divested of hypocrisy, it would be interesting to use the ‘dancing girl’ figurine to probably prove that ‘our’ dance is, in fact, a modern dance, invented in 1929. We can work with it to deal with contemporary themes and contemporary society. This could also lead to critical debates around what the old information has erased from public memory..."

I think there's merit here.

What I get out of it is:

1) Early 1900's: For who knows how many centuries, Sadir dance (and its pan Indian counterparts) was the exclusive preserve of devadasis and nobody presumably spoke of a 5000 year old tradition. They were just engaged in a hereditary occupation, perhaps constantly improvising and changing in some sort of dynamic way to keep it fresh. More importantly not a single person outside the hereditary caste probably practised it.

2) Early 2000's: There's nothing called Sadir dance, no devadasi caste, and all dancers are of upper caste, well spoken, and "preserving" a 5000 year old tradition with a different name, "Bharatanatyam".

So there's merit to suggest, tongue in cheek, that Bharatanatyam was invented sometime in this intervening period. Never mind they are dancing the same Sadir dance, perhaps "sanitized", under a different name.

Why stop with 5000 ? We can go back many yugas, back to krtha yuga and there were dancers. In Kathopanishad, Yama tries to entice Nachiketas "with dancing girls playing musical instruments" (paraphrasing from memory) away from that most important question... So it would be more truthful to assert that our dance is timeless. But then, that would be true of most things in other ancient cultures too, say Chinese.

People can cling to the "5000 years" idea or go where the truth takes them. It is a very spiritually weak position to seek solace from the notion of "ancientness" of something in human culture. 5000 years is a ridiculously meaningless instant in the universe. Judaeo Christian fundamentalist kooks think that 6000 years is a very long time! Islamic fundamentalists do even worse. In fact, only the Hindu theory of yugas comes closest in scale to modern reckonings of astronomical time... I think Carl Sagan even mentioned that in one of his books.

I am happy to be a Hindu not because something has been "preserved" over time but because in every age, there are new figures that breathe fresh life into its core essence. In relatively modern times we have had Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and of course Ramana Maharshi.

The "shastras" are neither "holy" nor concrete. They may be indicators, suggestions. And sometimes plain wrong, For example, I have pondered for a long time over the 22 shrutis part of the Natya shastra and have come to the conclusion that Bharata was winging that part. No physical experiment can be performed with actual strings wherein a string's pitch can be lowered or increased by a pramana shruti. That's not how tuning works. All tuning is relative, especially at this microscopic scale, and to change the pitch accurately by one pramana shruti at each steps is a non-trivial, near impossible, exercise even for trained tuners, leave alone musicians. This part of the natya shastra are the words of somebody who never performed an experiment with actual strings, that too with crude tuning pegs and guts strings of 2000 years ago.

[sureshvv]

Ok. If what he meant to say was that the term "Bharathanatyam" was invented around 1929, he may not get much argument. Or readers


Whether it is 2000 years old or 5000 is largely irrelevant except for the conspiracy theorists. Like his guru/chela, he invents plausible causes & scenarios with primary focus on dragging thru mud dead people's reputations & intentions.

[Sachi_R]

Ok, we are getting somewhere now.

By the way, Kathak, Manipuri, Yakshagaana, Kuchupudi, Kathakali, Mohiniattom, were not the preserve of devadasis. Even Odissi was taught in temples by Brahmins to non B/Brahmins all men.

I need to check...but I think royal patronage in Mysore and Tanjore and Travancore courts elevated the dance form to a level of technical virtuosity and theory. The Tanjore Quartet were a part of that tradition.

Bharata +Natya could not have been an E Krishna Iyer invention. These terms have been everywhere in our literature. Only his formulaic approach could have been an original.

Like Samayaittu Paar may have opened many taste buds like Sadanand Menon's to south Indian cooking, but Mylapore and Maami cooking were there long before then.
So....

[sureshvv]

And even if it were, what is the problem?

[Charu Venkat]

I would like a hit of whatever Mr. Menon was high on when he wrote this article. It seems effective enough to distort history itself, so I don't think it would be impotent in distorting my husband's late-night caterwauling.

[shankarank]

2) Early 2000's: There's nothing called Sadir dance, no devadasi caste, and all dancers are of upper caste, well spoken, and "preserving" a 5000 year old tradition with a different name, "Bharatanatyam".

The caste may not have been formalized and named. But the ingredients were there! Srauta smArta itihAsam has indicators. At that time likely Bramhins were marrying from lower vaRNas. The latest genetic foot print also indicates that. We are projecting our bias of a "lower caste" not well spoken person of today back to then. That itself is a bias.

Hear this : https://youtu.be/0KVYNTlqwLA?t=229 . He starts off with kannadasan, onto Haiku imported from japan ( yeah SR used it in the paTTimanRam too!) , to tiruvalluvar , to Avvai and 1/2 chIr - that is the best vyAkyAna for the shorter second line of tyAgaraja - that leads to a kArvai, as well as the shorter first line of dIkshitar ( devi's pAdam) that has kARvai. All in the venerated venue where legendary concerts of Madurai Somu et. al. took place!

If you hear Haiku in the bus stop - would that count as well spoken for you???

[shankarank]

I sometimes get asked in design meetings by marketeers, "are you sure you've got it right"... and my reply is always "yes, we're sure...until we're not! Then we will modify our theory and we will be sure again, until we're not again!". That really messes those marketing people up.

It messed them up because they were dealing with humans!!! If they dealt with a machine that would have been fine. You are saying , causation is not a valid method as we don't know all the causes, but correlation may be more effective . Entire stock market works on that premise. Indices and their movement is used to predict stock movements many times!

After scientification now it is data-scientification : https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/rethin ... prediction

And you should watch this from beginning to have a good laugh at it: https://youtu.be/xRjEPwL8Lxk?t=1783 . Watch the whole thing folks you will laugh the belly out!!

vAAstu compass, vAAstu compliant and computerized horoscopes

Well the whole thing about vAAstu and astrology is that the bramhan ( I will use this instead of a bramhin caste person!) is more important than the truth behind Astrology or vAAstu.

The practitioner of the sense of sacred and his vAk! And the feeling of goodness of interacting with him/her!

vAAStu --> the directions ( or space) are/is sacred
Astrology --> the motion or movement of time --> is sacred!!

So if you Androidify the Bramhan and take him out of the loop , the whole thing is meaningless anyways! As it is not science.

As one Dravidian critique noted, Hindusim will absorb everything, even accept, Islam and Christianity into its fold and even reject GOD, but it will never give up it's jAti , and Bramhanism. It will say vEdas are the truth. Accept Atheists into it's fold!

I concur somewhat in a positive sense with that. Even after Sankaracarya critiqued rituals ( he critiqued them more than he criticized Buddhism), as recently as the 1980s, muKKUR Lakshmi Naramsimhacariar was performing narasimha yagna in front of our Ganesh (Saivaite ) temple. Which was also Sanitized by Brahmins after the debate with Buddhists

He would periodically go into frenzy, when they will stop the vEdic recitation and drop down to ugram vIram, SlOka! So sometimes there are instances where vEdAs are also given up!

Bramhanism will live even if you annihilate caste.

BharatanATyam is old because - it is not that it is not old - more because E. Krishna Iyer did a old Bramhan act!!

[uday_shankar]

You are saying , causation is not a valid method as we don't know all the causes, but correlation may be more effective . Entire stock market works on that premise. Indices and their movement is used to predict stock movements many times!

In designing ventilator algorithms we start at a noble place, from the fundamental equations of pressure, flow and volume, apply good measurement and signal processing techniques, but there are some things we can never measure because the damn patient is in the way of putting a sensor. So we have to estimate some quantities, often based on the hedging a single parameter. So we work on pseudo gradient descents, throw the kitchen sink at it, hedge it one way observe the behavior, then tweak it again, etc hoping for a convergence . But the patient could always turn out to be a wild card. Another thing we tell one another is "times are no good... can't find good patients any more!" :

[rshankar]

The caste may not have been formalized and named. But the ingredients were there! Srauta smArta itihAsam has indicators. At that time likely Bramhins were marrying from lower vaRNas. The latest genetic foot print also indicates that. We are projecting our bias of a "lower caste" not well spoken person of today back to then. That itself is a bias.

Endogamy - i.e., lack of flow of genetic material between different groups of people, has been traced back to have occurred some 1500-2000 years ago (The Gupta kings?), prior to which exogamy was clearly evident. So, 'inter-caste' marriages were common before that period, and not after...

[harimau]

As one Dravidian critique noted, Hindusim will absorb everything, even accept, Islam and Christianity into its fold and even reject GOD, but it will never give up it's jAti , and Bramhanism. It will say vEdas are the truth. Accept Atheists into it's fold!

Bramhanism will live even if you annihilate caste.

In the book "Castes and Tribes of South India", in talking about the various peoples of the Madras Presidency, one Christian convert who refused to eat at the same table with other Christian converts is reported to have said, "I may have changed my religion but not my caste."

Most churches in rural Tamil Nadu have separate cemeteries for Dalit Christians as others refuse to buried alongside Dalits.

Most communal clashes in northern districts of Tamil Nadu are between Vanniyars -- classified as OBCs -- and Dalits, yet the newspapers report them as clash between upper caste men and Dalits. Same deal in southern districts where the clashes are between Thevars and Dalits.

Hinduism is a religion that seeks not to convert but to absorb. Thus the local tribe that worshipped small-pox as Goddess Mariamman was allowed to retain Mariamman as their goddess but as the Tribe increasingly sought to merge with mainstream Hindus, Mariamman slowly morphed into Kali/Parvati. But the endogamous practices of each tribe was retained by merely giving it a caste name if its own. So you have Right-hand Vellalars and Left-hand Vellalars, not because of the handedness of those groups of people but because they wanted to be seen as equal to each other in the caste hierarchy yet didn't want to lose their tribal/group identity by intermarrying.

So you are wrong to say 'Brahmanism will live even if you annihilate caste'.

The correct thesis is 'caste will live even if you annihilate Brahmanism'.

[Sachi_R]

Harimau, Shankarank,...
My understanding is that in any society where knowledge, learning, purity, honesty, service, self-abnegation, contemplation, prayer, pursuit of truth, non-violence, and goodness are found, there will be people who are Brahmins - ब्राह्मणाः.

The caste system merely institutionalised this as a social organisation based on ideas of rebirth and nature+nurture leverage. But anyone who aspired and practised these values would be revered and treated as a Brahmin.

I feel as a Brahmin, I have to constantly watch my own behaviour and adhere to the code of conduct enshrined in the idea. Debating that others are not right or pure etc., and bashing castes or Hinduism is a highly unintelligent way of leading my life.

The reductionism that all evils in Hindu society come from Brahmins is a horrendous untruth and we can see the proof of it in any issue of The Hindu paper 32 pages or 48 pages. Every page. Evil is not the preserve of Brahmins.

"Brahmcriminal" Reductionism is the worst disservice one can do to our country and society.

[shankarank]

Sachi gives me more hope than harimau. Well we fall into this trap of letting them use the word Caste ( and I have to use it to communicate) , when it is a Portuguese word and has a history in South America.

If you consider the privilege aspect of Caste which draws the most attention for critique, then British society has it still! If you remove the "By Birth" aspect, a significant portion of benefits from studying in Harvard or top business schools is the social network that is carried through life long, not necessarily knowledge or self worth. This is different from other areas of excellence in Science , Engineering and arts.

So caste has to be seen in materialistic terms not as a result of a religious book or tradition. Today it is the land owning class that is in the stangle hold of Caste. You think their representatives were fools to fall at the feet of leaders. They launched a Mohini avatar on the population. In the remote Villages of West Madurai, kallars will not work for moopars but will do for tEvars. So what we see as the travesty of politics and continue our focus on leaders and the sensationalism, from our arm chairs, is actually not! There is good reason for all that!

It is a cocktail mix of electoral democracy and property management. But we cannot be so critical of it, as none of us have really gone to the woods and grown a bag of rice!

And we talk as if Constitution and its directive principles somehow operate!

My thesis was based on the far fetched possibility of a Left revolution that may equalize Castes, but still cannot suppress the Bramhanism as that is a sense of sacred and passive, and does not depend on Temples and God!

As regards untouchability, yeah the Androidization of vAstu, the vAstu compass and the proposed Data Scientific Astrology loaded into the touch screen will solve it. Now you can touch it and get your advise - you don't need the pArpAn , the forseer