Bharatha Natyam in ancient temple sculptures

Subashini Pathmanathan

One can easily notice most Sri Lankan sculptures are divided into different categories. Some are stone-made sculptures, metal sculptures including copper, gold, silver and five mixed metal sculptures which are known as iyempon sculptures in Tamil. Even the stone sculptures are further divided into granite stone sculptures, modern cement made sculptures and marble sculptures.

Archeological and Hindu temple sculptures of Sri Lanka play an important role in the field of Bharatha Natyam

These sculptures are long-lasting. However there are ivory sculptures, wooden sculptures and clay sculptures available in the ancient archeological sites and ancient temple sculptures. Bharatha Natyam, which is the classical dance form of Tamil community all over the world, derives its source from the Hinduism. Archeological and Hindu temple sculptures of Sri Lanka play an important role in the field of Bharatha Natyam.

These temple sculptures could be divided into different categories. One is worshipping temple sculptures and the other is the temple decorative sculptures which could be seen on the temple pillars, on the rooftop sculptures, temple tower sculptures, carved in the temple wall sculptures and temple pillar carved sculptures. The Hindu temples are famous for tower sculptures referred to as temple Kopuram sculptures in Tamil.

The tall kopurams (towers) of the temples are full of sculptures. Within temples, on temple pillars, walls and rooftops there are plenty of sculptures and in and around the mandapams and madams. Most temple tower sculptures depict the puranic stories and epics related to the main presiding deity of the temple. While the sculptures inside the temples mainly depict the dance poses of various gods as well as humans. Among all these temple sculptures, the most famous sculptures depict the female dancing figures. Almost every Hindu temple structure all over the world follows the South Indian temple structural architecture and style. Even the Hindu temple architecture of Sri Lanka more or less follows the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Hindu temple structure. According to Hinduism the temple architectural pattern and structure should follow certain Hindu Sastras and Agamas. Even the Bharatha Natyam repertoire also should follow the same architectural structural order of Hindu temples.

The Bharatha Natyam queen late Balasarswathi said that the fundamental basic order of a dance recital should follow the temple architecture. According to Balasarswathi ‘the Bharatha Natyam recital is structured like a great temple: enter through Gopuram (outer hall), the Allarippu, cross through Arthamandapam, (halfway hall) the jetheeswaram, then the mandapam, (the great hall), Sabtham, and the holy precinct of the deity is Varnam’.

The sculptures last long

The Indian Hindu temples as compared to Sri Lankan temples are quite large. And these Indian Hindu temples have large corridors and have fairly big temple art galleries. Bharatha Natyam is originated from the temple Sathir, hence naturally it derived its soul and source from temple sculptures. Some temple sculptures are only in standing positions. Some sculptures are in full sitting positions, while another set of sculptures are in half sitting positions. And these sculptures have different body positions, neck positions, glances, hand positions, hand gestures and stands, and foot positions.

Bharatha Natyam derives the sources for the costume patterns and the designs from temple sculptures. Similarly different patterns of ornaments for Bharatha Natyam are also derived from temple sculptural ornaments. Ultimately one can come to the conclusion that temple sculptures provide considerable amount of source for development of Bharatha Natyam in general.

In Bharatha Natyam there are altogether 30 single hand gestures and 28 double hand gestures in use today. But the hand gestures used for the temple sculptures are called sculptural hands. It is described in Tamil as sitpa hands or kai Amaithi. But these hands almost resemble dance hand gestures, but practically only a few sculptural hands are used in Bharatha Natyam.

Same stands and postures of the same sculptural statues differ from one era to another, and the whole sculptural statues also differ from one area to another. One may predict these differences might occur due to different influences of the different regimes, as well as the role and the styles of the individual sculptural artistes.

These factors reveal individual imaginative creativity of each sculptural artiste. That might vary from one another to certain extent, without changing the basic Shastas and Agama traditions of the statues. These must be the main responsible causes for the differences which arise to analyse how the same sculptural images differ from one another in different areas and different eras. The systematic analytical study will help researchers understand the subject deeply.

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