Natya Shastra
Ancient performance treatise
The Natya Shastra is an ancient Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts, attributed to the sage Bharata and composed roughly two thousand years ago.
It covers drama, dance, music, stagecraft, and aesthetic theory in exhaustive detail—everything from hand gestures to emotional states to theater architecture.
The text introduced the concept of *rasa*, the aesthetic flavor or emotional essence that performance should evoke in audiences.
It remains foundational to Indian classical dance and drama traditions.
- dramaturgyArt of theatrical structure
- temple danceCeremonial worship through movement
- dance dramaTheatrical choreographed narrative
- poetic meterRhythmic structure of verse
- Indian mythologySacred stories from subcontinent
makeup · expression · devotion · stage · classical · mudra · gesture · emotion · theatre · Indian · performance · Mahabharata · costume · storytelling · Ramayana · pose · ornament · aesthetic
- SanskritPanini, Sanskrit, om, Vedas, root words
- rasaserotic, comic, heroic, furious, terrible
- Sanskrit textsVedas, Upanishads, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita
- Shastras
- Hindu ScripturesVedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata, Ramayana
- Sanskrit metersquantitative meter
Natya ShastraDadaism
Absurdist artistic rebellion
anti-art · automatic writing · art for art's sake · punk ethos · outsider art