Stories Of Tamil Devadasis & Dance Dramas In Rig Veda

The book titled STORIES OF TAMIL DEVADASIS & DANCE DRAMAS IN RIG VEDA has two parts. The first part deals with the Tamil Devadasis of India and Sri Lanka. I came across a rare Tamil book in the British Library in London. The authoress herself was born in a Devadasi family and had published a book in Tamil about 100 years ago. When I featured the book on Facebook, one research scholar approached me to translate it into English. I did a translation giving the gist of her writing. My thanks are due to that woman Ms Anjukam. She had collected the life stories of about 30 courtesans.

The second part of the book contains my research articles on the origin of dance and dramas. We have ample evidence for dance performances in the oldest book The Rig Veda. There are about 20 Dialogue Poems in the Rig Veda. They are actually dance dramas enacted after the Yagas and Yajnas. What we have got in those poems are the plots or themes of those dance dramas and the actors would have built full length dance dramas over those plots at that time. There are interesting articles on Bharata’s Natya shastra. Since it is a technical work, that too in Sanskrit, not many people know the contents. There are very interesting details about the origin, stage, colour of the theatre seats and actors, jewellery etc in the book.

Útgáfudagur

Rafbók: 22 december 2022