The earliest form of theatre in India was Sanskrit theatre between the 2nd century BCE and 1st century CE. It flourished until the 10th century but then declined with Islamic conquests. Contemporary Indian theatre faces competition from television and Bollywood films. The Ramayana is an important ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the sage Valmiki about the journey of Rama. It has been performed throughout Asia in many theatrical styles like dance dramas depicting the struggle between good and evil forces.
The earliest form of theatre in India was Sanskrit theatre between the 2nd century BCE and 1st century CE. It flourished until the 10th century but then declined with Islamic conquests. Contemporary Indian theatre faces competition from television and Bollywood films. The Ramayana is an important ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the sage Valmiki about the journey of Rama. It has been performed throughout Asia in many theatrical styles like dance dramas depicting the struggle between good and evil forces.
The earliest form of theatre in India was Sanskrit theatre between the 2nd century BCE and 1st century CE. It flourished until the 10th century but then declined with Islamic conquests. Contemporary Indian theatre faces competition from television and Bollywood films. The Ramayana is an important ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the sage Valmiki about the journey of Rama. It has been performed throughout Asia in many theatrical styles like dance dramas depicting the struggle between good and evil forces.
The earliest form of theatre in India was Sanskrit theatre between the 2nd century BCE and 1st century CE. It flourished until the 10th century but then declined with Islamic conquests. Contemporary Indian theatre faces competition from television and Bollywood films. The Ramayana is an important ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the sage Valmiki about the journey of Rama. It has been performed throughout Asia in many theatrical styles like dance dramas depicting the struggle between good and evil forces.
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The earliest form of the theatre of
India was the Sanskrit theatre. It began
after the development of Greek and Roman theatre and before the development of theatre in other parts of Asia.It emerged sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE and flourished between the 1st century CE and the 10th, which was a period of relative peace in the history of India during which hundreds of plays were written. With the Islamic conquests that began in the 10th and 11th centuries, theatre was discouraged or forbidden entirely. Later, in an attempt to re-a India as one of the means of entertainment. As a diverse, multi-cultural nation, the theatre of India cannot be reduced to a single, homogenous trend.
In contemporary India, the major competition with its theatre is that represented by growing television industry and the spread of films produced in the Indian film industry based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), known as "Bollywood". Lack of finance is another major obstacle.
The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon (smti), considered to be itihsa. The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India, the other being the Mahabharata. It depicts the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters like the ideal father, ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife and the ideal king.
The name Ramayana is a tatpurusha compound of Rma and ayana ("going, advancing"), translating to "Rama's Journey". The Ramayana is performed in most countries having the Ramayana tradition. The performing tradition of the Ramayana has manifested itself in a great range and variety of forms, having regional and stylistic variations from the dramatic recitation of the epic story with simple mime to the highly stylised and codified forms of dance and theatre and several forms of the puppet theatre the processional and ritualistic "Ramlila" of North India and in the highly stylised and codified dance theatre "Kathakali" of Kerala; in the highly theatrical "Khon" mask plays of Thailand and in the extremely lyrical dance drama of Bali and the "Wayang Kulit", the puppet theatre of Indonesia and Malaysia. While the Ramayana theatre is an integral part of the colourful and multiform traditional theatre of Asia, it is distinguished by many technical features. It is the most representative and artistically rich sector of the traditional theatre often adding a new dimension to the epic story and giving new interpretations to the characters. The epic story with its legendary and mythical motives, eminently suits the stylised and convention-based traditional theatre of Asian countries. In the Ramayana tradition, the idea of struggle between the forces of good and evil is so basic that it greatly influences the structure and nature of theatrical forms of various types. This idea of struggle is maintained and conveyed through a structuring of the form, peculiar to the Ramayana Theatre The general pattern is that in the first stage there is confrontation between the two forces; in the second stage, challenge; in the third, conflict and combat; and in the fourth, the victory of the good forces and defeat of the evil forces. This pattern is followed in a variety of forms of theatre dealing with the Ramayana theme. It is to highlight this idea of a spiritual conflict that in almost all the forms of the Ramayana theatre, combat scenes dominate the performance, and are the most important and dramatic. In many cases, these are also most beautifully choreographed. The performers as well as the audience take great delight in these scenes and get a kind of spiritual satisfaction in witnessing the defeat of the evil characters. In India, the burning of huge effigies of Ravana and his allies on the day of the enactment of the battle between Rama and Ravana is a grand ritualisation of this theme of the struggle between good and evil. In the Wayang Kulit of Indonesia, the Dalang introduces the principal characters and suggests the beginning of the plot, a fight between good and evil forces is the climax scene. At the end, good triumphs over evil.
The original Ramayana was a 24,000 couplet-long epic poem attributed to the Sanskrit poet Valmiki. Oral versions of Rama's story circulated for centuries, and the epic was probably first written down sometime around the start of the Common Era. It has since been told, retold, translated and transcreated throughout South and Southeast Asia, and the Ramayana continues to be performed in dance, drama, puppet shows, songs and movies all across Asia.
Mahabharata, ( Sanskrit: Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty) one of the two Sanskrit great epic poems of ancient India (the other being the Ramayana). TheMahabharata is an important source of information on the development ofHinduism between 400 BCE and 200 CE and is regarded by Hindus as both a text about dharma (Hindu moral law) and a history (itihasa, literally thats what happened). Appearing in its present form about 400 CE, the Mahabharataconsists of a mass of mythological and didactic material arranged around a central heroic narrative that tells of the struggle for sovereignty between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas (sons of Dhritarashtra, the descendant of Kuru) and the Pandavas (sons of Pandu). The poem is made up of almost 100,000 couplets about seven times the length of the Iliadand the Odyssey combineddivided into 18 parvans, or sections, plus a supplement titledHarivamsha (Genealogy of the God Hari; i.e., of Vishnu). Although it is unlikely that any single person wrote the poem, its authorship is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa, who appears in the work as the grandfather of the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The date for the war that is the central event of the Mahabharata is much debated, but it must have taken place sometime before 500 BCE. The story begins when the blindness of Dhritarashtra, the elder of two princes, causes him to be passed over in favour of his brother Pandu as king on their fathers death. A curse prevents Pandu from fathering children, however, and his wife Kunti asks the gods to father children in Pandus name. As a result, Dharma fathers Yudhishtira, the Wind fathers Bhima, Indra fathers Arjuna, and the Ashvins (twins) father Nakula and Sahadeva (also twins; born to Pandus second wife, Madri). The enmity and jealousy that develops between the cousins forces the Pandavas to leave the kingdom when their father dies. During their exile the five jointly marry Draupadi (who is born out of a sacrificial fire and whom Arjuna wins by shooting an arrow through a row of targets) and meet their cousin Krishna, who remains their friend and companion thereafter. Although the Pandavas return to the kingdom, they are again exiled to the forest, this time for 12 years, when Yudhishthira loses everything in a game of dice with Duryodhana, the eldest of the Kauravas.
Along with its basic plot and accounts of numerous myths, the Mahabharata reveals the evolution of Hinduism and its relations with other religions during its composition. The period during which the epic took shape was one of transition from Vedic sacrifice to sectarian Hinduism, as well as a time of interactionsometimes friendly, sometimes hostilewith Buddhism and Jainism. Different sections of the poem express varying beliefs, often in creative tension. Some sections, such as theNarayaniya (a part of book 13), the Bhagavadgita (book 6), the Anugita (book 14), and theHarivamsha, are important sources of early Vaishnava theology, in which Krishna is an avatar of the god Vishnu. Above all, the Mahabharata is an exposition of dharma (codes of conduct), including the proper conduct of a king, of a warrior, of an individual living in times of calamity, and of a person seeking to attain freedom from rebirth. The poem repeatedly demonstrates that the conflicting codes of dharma are so subtle that, in some situations, the hero cannot help but violate them in some respect, no matter what choice he makes.