Ritualizing Performance in the Nāṭyaśāstra: Stage Worship, Auspiciousness, and Social Order

Abstract

This paper examines how the Nāṭyaśāstra—a treatise on drama, performance, music, gesture, and theatrical practice (circa 2nd century CE)—integrates ritual into the theory and practice of theatre. Its central argument is that ritual prescriptions in the text have several functions—they authorize performance, protect the theatrical space, and regulate the social order surrounding the stage. The paper focuses on the construction and consecration of the playhouse, the worship of stage deities, the distribution of offerings, the pūrvaraṅga (preliminary rites before performance), and the consequences attached to correct or incorrect ritual performance. By analyzing these passages, the paper shows that the Nāṭyaśāstra treats theatre as a technically complex art whose efficacy depends not only on dramaturgy, music, gesture, and rasa (aesthetic sentiment) but also on ritual acts that confer auspiciousness and guard against obstruction by divine and potentially disruptive beings. The paper, therefore, argues that the Nāṭyaśāstra sacralizes performance while also presenting ritual as one component within a broader śāstric (treatise-based) framework of theatrical practice, rather than as the whole of performance.

1. Introduction

Performance, in its broad sense, refers to the act of presenting dramatic or artistic material before an audience. In this paper, however, the term is used more narrowly to denote theatrical practice as theorized in the Nāṭyaśāstra, particularly the rules concerning the playhouse, stage worship, preliminary rites, and the organization of performance. Ritual is similarly defined in a specific sense, referring to prescribed acts of consecration, offering, worship, purification, propitiation, and auspicious preparation. This clarification aims to avoid treating performance as a vague modern category or ritual as a general expression of devotion. The focus is on how the Nāṭyaśāstra itself situates ritual within the broader framework of theatrical practice.

The central question is what function ritual serves in the Nāṭyaśāstra. I argue that rituals authorize the stage, protect the theatrical space, propitiate divine and potentially disruptive beings, and situate performance within a social order shaped by patrons, brāhmaṇas, kings, performers, and socially excluded figures. The analysis does not suggest that theatre in the Nāṭyaśāstra consists solely of ritual. The text also focuses on rasa, bhāva, gesture, music, dance, costume, architecture, and dramatic representation. Ritual is one significant component within a broader śāstric framework of performance, not the entirety of it.

The paper is organized into four main sections. The first situates the Nāṭyaśāstra historically and discusses its claim to authority, including its presentation as a fifth Veda and its traditional attribution to Bharata. The second section considers the relation between dance, theatre, and ritual without reducing the origin of drama to ritual dance alone. The third section turns to the ritual passages themselves, especially stage-deity worship, the distribution of offerings, the pūrvaraṅga, consecration, auspicious timing, exclusion at the foundation rite, and the consequences attached to correct or incorrect ritual performance. The conclusion returns to the central point, where the Nāṭyaśāstra sacralizes performance, but it does so within a technical and normative theory of theatre. For a consolidated overview of the principal passages discussed, selected Sanskrit phrases, and the offerings prescribed in Nāṭyaśāstra III.36–44, see Appendix A, Appendix B and Appendix C.

Recent scholarship is useful here because it helps clarify how ritual materials, offerings, and theatrical boundaries have been studied, while the main argument of this paper remains grounded in the primary text, the Nāṭyaśāstra. Kintaert’s work is significant for demonstrating that the systematic inclusion of ritual items and food offerings in the Nāṭyaśāstra can be examined as part of an organized ritual system rather than as incidental details. Drawing on this scholarship, my paper asks how such ritual ordering authorizes theatrical performance, protects the stage, regulates sacred and social relations around performance, and ritually maps the theatrical space (Nāṭyaśāstra III.36–44; Kintaert 2017, pp. 83–86; Kintaert 2018, pp. 145–57). I examine and distinguish how invocation and consecration create a protected theatrical space where differentiated offerings help organize relationships among recipients in different roles. The pūrvaraṅga sets the stage for the transition into public performance, while the foundation rite connects the process to the ‘correct’ timing and social rules. Lastly, with omens and their consequences, all these prescriptions place these rituals in their normative context.

Lidova’s discussion of ritual boundaries helps us think about the genesis of early Indian theatre in relation to pūjā as a space where ritual and aesthetic practice meet without becoming identical (Lidova 2017, pp. 1–7). Ferrara’s argument about modern uses of “performance” and “performativity” is important because this paper does not impose a general theory of performance onto the Nāṭyaśāstra, but it reads the specific theatrical practice regulated by the text (Ferrara 2017, pp. 25–29). Ganser’s discussion on dance and the pūrvaraṅga, in turn, shows how bodily practice, ritual offering, and auspiciousness can intersect as both technical and ritually meaningful, without being treated as a singular category (Ganser 2023, pp. 137–42).

These works are crucial in situating the ritual framing of theatre in the Nāṭyaśāstra, but the argument developed here is shaped by a close reading of the primary passages cited from the text. My focus is on how these passages present ritual as a means of authorizing performance, protecting the stage, and organizing the sacred and social relations around theatrical practice.1

2. Text and Context

Given the centrality of the Nāṭyaśāstra to this paper and to the history of Indian performing arts, it is useful to begin with the text and the issues that surround it. The Nāṭyaśāstra, traditionally ascribed to Bharata, is a theoretical treatise on the craft of dramaturgy and other performing arts, roughly dated to the second century CE (Warder 1989, p. 21). Recent studies place the work broadly around the beginning of the Common Era, while recognizing the complexity of its textual history (Kintaert 2017, p. 83; 2018, p. 145). Ghosh also places the text before Kālidāsa (c. fifth century CE), noting that Kālidāsa refers to Bharata in the play Vikramorvaśīyam (c. fourth–fifth centuries CE) (Nāṭyaśāstra 1950, pp. lxxxii–lxxxiii). The Nāṭyaśāstra consists of thirty-six chapters covering diverse aspects of stagecraft, dramaturgy, music, dance, and other aspects of theatrical production.

The Nāṭyaśāstra is the earliest extant systematic and comprehensive treatise on Indian dramaturgy. Rangacharya argues that its significance lies not in being the first book on dramaturgy, but in being the first comprehensive treatise on dance, drama, and music. To establish authority, the text presents itself as the fifth Veda, a Veda accessible to all social groups (Rangacharya 2003, p. xxi).

Similar claims to textual supremacy occur elsewhere in the Sanskritic tradition. In the Mahābhārata, also characterized as a fifth Veda, Vyāsa tells Brahmā that he has composed a great poem containing valuable knowledge and surpassing earlier forms of knowledge. Calling a work a fifth Veda, therefore, functions as a metaphorical claim to authoritative knowledge rather than as a neutral description (Fitzgerald 1985, p. 135).

Rangacharya notes that the traditional attribution to Bharata is open to doubt. In the final chapter, the text says that, for the terrestrial world, it was re-composed or edited by Kohala, Vātsya, Śāṇḍilya, and Dattila, who are described as both sons and disciples of Bharata (Rangacharya 2003, p. xvii). Lidova likewise notes the lack of consensus about whether the Nāṭyaśāstra is a single, cohesive work or a composite compilation (Lidova 1996, p. viii). Vatsyayan suggests that Bharata may have been explained through the syllables bha (bhāva), ra (rāga), and ta (tāla), and also notes that before the Nāṭyaśāstra, Bharata was not used to denote dramatic conventions (Vatsyayan 2001, p. 6). These points make composite authorship likely, though the precise history of compilation cannot be fixed with certainty.

The text attributes its origin to Brahmā. Its mythical origin helps establish its divine status, legitimates the claim that the work is a fifth Veda, and brings theatrical practice within a brāhmaṇical śāstric frame as sages approach Bharata and ask him to explain the Nāṭyaveda. Within this narrative, Brahmā creates the Nāṭyaveda, then directs Bharata to promulgate the Nāṭyaveda among the sages who surround him. Brahmā first addresses Indra, who proclaims that sages who know the Vedas are capable of maintaining the Nāṭyaveda and putting it into practice. Brahmā further commands Bharata and his hundred sons to put it to use (Nāṭyaśāstra I.2–5, I.19–25; Shekhar 1960, pp. 34, 41). Bharata then says that he learned it from Brahmā and taught his sons its proper application (Nāṭyaśāstra I.23–25).

The historical context in which the text can be placed is one in which knowledge about aesthetics and performance was being organized in the form of śāstra. This context highlights that the Nāṭyaśāstra does not simply describe performance; it codifies performance through prescriptions, classifications, warnings, and ritual procedures. The ritual material should therefore be read as part of the text’s larger attempt to regulate theatrical practice and to give it normative authority. Pollock’s discussion of Sanskrit culture and power is important because it helps locate such textual production within a broader Sanskritic intellectual and political culture of codification and authority (Pollock 2006).

This śāstric character is methodologically important for how the ritual passages are read in this paper. A śāstra does not merely record an already existing practice in a neutral way; it organizes practice through categories, procedures, ideal sequences, and warnings. For that reason, the ritual prescriptions in the Nāṭyaśāstra are not read as simple evidence that every historical performance necessarily followed these rules exactly. They are better read as normative statements about how performance ought to be authorized and protected within the conceptual world of the text. The same point applies to the mythical origin narrative. The claim that the Nāṭyaveda was created by Brahmā and made available through Bharata might not be useful as a historical biography, but it is highly significant as a claim to authority.

It places theatre within a sacred genealogy and allows the text to describe dramatic practice as something that can be taught, transmitted, regulated, and ritually safeguarded. This is also why the treatise’s fifth-Veda status is significant. In the Nāṭyaśāstra, this rhetoric supports a similar elevation of theatrical knowledge. The text’s authority is therefore built by presenting theatre as divinely sanctioned knowledge and by providing detailed prescriptions for the material, ritual, musical, bodily, and social organization of performance. For the purposes of this paper, I do not treat the ritual passages of the Nāṭyaśāstra as separate additions to its discussion of theatre. Rather, I read them as part of the text’s larger śāstric framework, in which performance is governed by rules of “correct” practice, ritual authority, auspicious timing, and social hierarchy.

3. Performing Art (Theatre) and Rituals

In this section, I approach theatre not as a general category of performance, but through the ritual frame that the Nāṭyaśāstra itself places around theatrical practice. Kuiper’s reconstruction belongs to the Vedic-ritual line of argument (Kuiper 1979), while Keith and Shekhar survey a broader range of theories concerning the origins of Sanskrit drama (Keith 1924; Shekhar 1960, pp. 53–68). Earlier scholars have noted links between dance, sacred movement, and the emergence of drama; Tarlekar, for instance, discusses Ghosh’s and Oldenberg’s views that drama developed in relation to ritual or sacred dance (Tarlekar 1975, pp. 10–12). That connection is important, but it is difficult to use it as substantial evidence that drama as a whole originated from ritual dance. The more limited argument I make is that performance is presented as something that must be ritually prepared and protected through stage worship, offerings, consecration, and the preliminary rites before the staging of the play proper begins (Nāṭyaśāstra I.123–126; III.1–8; III.36–44; V.8–30).

The early history of dance in the subcontinent can be traced through literary references to performance terminology. In the Ṛgveda, nṛtu occurs in the sense of “dancer,” and Uṣas is compared to a dancer revealing her beauty by removing the garment of darkness. The Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā refers to nṛtta (dance) and gīta (song or vocal music), while the Atharvaveda preserves the root nṛt (“to dance”). In the Śāṅkhāyana Brāhmaṇa and Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa, śilpa (art or craft) is described in relation to dance, vocal music, and instrumental music. Over time, dance developed more complex movement vocabularies, later treated systematically in the Nāṭyaśāstra through the classification of karaṇas (coordinated dance movements) and aṅgahāras (sequences or combinations of such movements) (Tarlekar 1975, pp. 11–12).

Ghosh holds that a ritual dance connected with Śiva gradually gave rise to drama. Oldenberg similarly traces the origin of drama to sacred dance, later combined with song and enriched by dialogue. Dance, denoted by nṛtta or nṛtya, is therefore an older category than nāṭya, the dramatic art, which is first referred to by Pāṇini (Tarlekar 1975, pp. 10–12). Shekhar argues that Bharata’s use of gesture in dramatic representation presupposes established traditions of choreographic dramaturgy. These arguments make a connection between dance and drama plausible, but they do not prove that all aspects of drama originated from ritual dance.

Tarlekar also describes an earlier view in which dance may have begun as an expression of joy through rhythmic bodily movement, often accompanied by song. Over time, such movement could become more complex and expressive, with words, emotions, and actions communicated through hand gestures, facial expressions, and rhythm. In this account, dance and abhinaya developed alongside one another (Tarlekar 1975, p. 14).

In the Nāṭyaśāstra, the discussion of stage-deity worship follows the rules for constructing the theatre. The deities are to be worshipped because they are believed to occupy and protect different sections of the stage. Before their worship, they are represented on the stage through a sacred diagram made with powders of rice and other pigments (Nāṭyaśāstra III.18–20), and the deities are subsequently installed in prescribed positions within a maṇḍala (Nāṭyaśāstra III.21–32). The deities named in this context include Mahādeva (Śiva), Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Indra, Subrahmaṇya, Sarasvatī, Lakṣmī, Mati, Smṛti, Nāgas, Asuras, the Nāṭyamātṛs, and others (Nāṭyaśāstra III.1–8). This is followed by worship of the flagstaff, the jarjarapūjā, through which Mahendra is invoked to prevent obstacles during the performance (Nāṭyaśāstra III.11–13). Kintaert’s study of ritual items provides a useful lens for reading these objects and procedures as part of a larger ritual vocabulary within the text, especially because his survey includes offerings, ritual substances, ritual implements, and the supernatural beings addressed by such acts (Kintaert 2017, pp. 83–86). It is interesting to analyze this as a foolproof manual where obeisance and jarjara worship seek protection and success, whereas installation in the maṇḍala spatially orders the beings whose presence is recognized within the consecrated theatre.

Furthermore, the offerings are not assigned uniformly to all the major gods. Brahmā is assigned madhuparka, a respectful Vedic offering that Ghosh elsewhere glosses as consisting of curd, ghee, water, honey, and white sugar; Sarasvatī is assigned pāyasa (milk-rice pudding), and Śiva, Viṣṇu, Indra, and related deities are assigned modakas (sweetmeats) (Nāṭyaśāstra III.36; see also Nāṭyaśāstra II.41–42 n. 26). The same ritual sequence (Nāṭyaśāstra III.36–44) assigns different offerings to other beings; for instance, the bhūtas (spirits or beings) receive raw and cooked meat, different kinds of wine, and grams covered with thick milk; in the Mattavāraṇī worship/area, rākṣasas (potentially disruptive beings often represented as demonic) receive raw and cooked meat, while dānavas (another class of powerful non-divine beings) receive wine and meat. This distribution of offerings shows that the ritual frame of theatre includes both gods and potentially disruptive beings, anti-gods, who are propitiated so that the performance may proceed without obstruction.

Kintaert’s detailed table of the same offering sequence is helpful here because it shows a differentiated and directional pattern, and clarifies particular substances such as phalāsava (Kintaert 2018, pp. 152–57, esp. p. 155).

This point, however, requires qualification. Ritual is central in the passages discussed here, but it is not the whole of performance in the Nāṭyaśāstra. The text also gives detailed treatment to rasa and bhāva, bodily and facial gestures, music, dance, costume, theatre architecture, social roles, and rules about what can be staged. The ritualization of theatre, therefore, has three specific functions in the argument of this paper: first, it gives performance śāstric and sacred legitimacy; second, it aligns performance with patrons, brāhmaṇas, and other figures of authority; and third, it introduces a strong logic of auspiciousness and inauspiciousness, by which correct performance produces protection while incorrect performance produces danger.

The fact that the text specifies particular materials, spaces, agents, and recipients rather than merely talking about devotion in general makes it possible to support this narrow argument. Kintaert’s more comprehensive examination also demonstrates that ritual materials are not limited to a single chapter of the Nāṭyaśāstra, but are found in the preliminary rites, in the ritual elements presented in the plays, and in other instructions relating to ritual actions (Kintaert 2017, pp. 83–86). In the sequence of offerings, different kinds of substances are assigned to the major gods, the ancestral beings and the serpent beings, the spirits, and to powers which might obstruct the ritual. The importance of this distinction is that it does not mean that these recipients are to be regarded as equal, but rather that they are placed within an ordered ritual framework. The theatrical space is therefore seen as one in which the relationships between the stage, the officiant, the patron, the offerings, and the various categories of recipients must be properly arranged if the performance is to proceed without obstruction.

4. Rituals and Performing Tradition: The Sacred and the Social

The pūrvaraṅga rites (preliminary rites that are to be performed before the staging of a play) are essential for the dramatic performance, and not incidental, as we have observed and argued in the previous section. These rituals distinguish the space from an ordinary space to one specially prepared for the theatrical representation. The repeated references to sacred fire, offerings, food, drink, music, benediction, and praise show that performance is preceded by acts that ritually authorize the stage before the dramatic action begins. Lidova notes that chapter five of the Nāṭyaśāstra, which deals with the pūrvaraṅga, has been central to discussions of the ritual background of “Sanskrit theatre”2 (Lidova 2017, pp. 3–4). Ganser’s recent discussion of dance and the pūrvaraṅga further supports this reading by showing that dance in this context is not only a mimetic technique but is also associated with beauty, auspiciousness, and the ritualized bodily practices of the preliminary rite (Ganser 2023, pp. 137–42). The sequence is treated in Nāṭyaśāstra V.8–30.

The Nāṭyaśāstra instructs that proper worship is to be performed in the playhouse and that this worship includes offerings, sacrifices in the sacred fire, foodstuffs, and drinks (Nāṭyaśāstra I.123–126). The point is not only that offerings are made, but that performance is made dependent on a prior ritual order.

The ritual sequence is divided between acts performed behind the curtain and acts performed after the curtain has been removed. This distinction is important because it shows that ritual operates both within the technical preparation of performance and in the visible ceremonial frame presented before spectators.

There are nine elements to be performed behind the curtain, which include: pratyāhāra, the arranging of the musical instruments; avataraṇa, the seating of the singers; ārambha, the commencement of vocal exercise for singing; āśrāvaṇā, the adjustment of the musical instruments; vaktrapāṇi, the rehearsal of different styles of instrumental playing; parighaṭṭanā, the adjustment of the strings; saṃghoṭanā, rehearsal of hand-poses used in marking time; mārgāsārita, the coordinated playing of drums and stringed instruments; and āsārita, practice in the division of kalās. After this sequence, the curtain is removed, and dances, recitals, and further preliminary items are performed (Nāṭyaśāstra V.8–30).

After the curtain is removed, dances and recitals are performed with instrumental music; a song of the Madraka class, or one of the Vardhamānaka class together with the appropriate Class Dance, may follow. The subsequent preliminaries include utthāpana (literally, “raising”), parivartana (walking-round), nāndī (“Benediction”), śuṣkāvakṛṣṭā (an Avakṛṣṭā Dhruvā composed with meaningless sounds and associated with verses praising the Jarjara), raṅgadvāra (literally, entry into the performance, from which the performance involving words and gestures begins), cārī (dynamic simultaneous feet and limb movements), mahācārī (movements delineating the forceful movement of limbs), trigata (“Three Men’s Talk,” the conversation of the Director [sūtradhāra], an Assistant [pāripārśvaka], and the Jester [vidūṣaka]), and prarocanā (laudation) (Nāṭyaśāstra V.22–30). In the Walking-round, the guardian deities of the different worlds are praised as the Director moves around the stage, while the benediction invokes the blessings of gods, brāhmaṇas, and kings (Nāṭyaśāstra V.23–25). The last ritual that has been pointed out is very interesting, where, along with the gods and kings, brāhmaṇas are also supposed to be praised. The gods, kings, and brāhmaṇas have been consciously distinguished in the Nāṭyaśāstra. Thus, a hierarchy couched in these performances (at least insofar as they are laid down as norms) is noteworthy. The ritualization of performance is therefore also a social act— it marks the theatre as a space ordered by divine protection, royal patronage, and brāhmaṇical authority (Nāṭyaśāstra V.13–25).

The same logic appears in the third chapter of the Nāṭyaśāstra, which describes the worship of the stage deities. It describes a sequence in which, after the homa (ritual offering into the sacred fire), the nāṭyācārya (theatre preceptor) breaks the jar and interprets the omen—if the jar remains unbroken, danger from enemies is indicated for the patron; if it breaks, the destruction of the patron’s enemies is indicated. The nāṭyācārya then takes a lighted lamp and illuminates the auditorium. The ritual is therefore explicitly framed in a cause-and-effect formula, where the rite is not only performed but is read as producing and revealing consequences for the patron and the performance (Nāṭyaśāstra III.87–91).

The king also belongs within this ritual structure, not merely as an external patron. The theatre is protected by deities, but its ritual success is also tied to royal security, social order, and public auspiciousness. The presence of dancing girls in the ritual frame further shows that aesthetic display and ritual auspiciousness are not separate categories in the text; and hence, they should be blessed by the nāṭyācārya.

The significance of rituals being not just restricted to the realm of divinity but also having social repercussions is also noticed when the selection of the proposed site for stage construction is done. The social implications of ritual are also visible in the rules for selecting and consecrating the site of the playhouse. Before the measuring line is tied to the corners of the proposed site, brāhmaṇas are to recite the puṇyāha3 (chanting of Vedic hymns wishing an auspicious day) at an auspicious time of a chosen tithi (lunar day), and sanctified water must be sprinkled on the site (Nāṭyaśāstra II.32–38).

At the laying of the foundation, instruments such as the śaṅkha, dundubhi, mṛdaṅga, and paṇava may be sounded. The text also instructs that persons considered ritually inauspicious for this occasion—heretics, recluses, those wearing kāṣāya (ochre or reddish-brown robes associated with renunciant or ascetic identity, possibly including śramaṇa mendicants) garments, and people with physical impairments—should be excluded (Nāṭyaśāstra II.32–38).

The rules on social exclusion need to be read carefully. They do not prove that every theatrical space in early India excluded the same groups in the same way. What this shows, however, is more clearly how the Nāṭyaśāstra imagines a particular ritual moment—the laying of the playhouse foundation ritual. At this point, the site is treated as vulnerable and in need of protection. Brāhmaṇas recite the puṇyāha (auspicious proclamation), sanctified water is sprinkled, musical instruments are sounded, and certain persons marked as inauspicious for the rite are kept away. The playhouse, then, is not simply measured and built. It is made ritually suitable and controlled for performance. In this sense, the social rules attached to the foundation ritual are part of the same process by which the text seeks to produce an auspicious and protected theatrical space.

After every rule regarding the worship of the deities is codified, the text issues warnings to emphasize its importance; if ignored, it will lead to serious consequences. Various strategies are employed in the text to justify its significance and ritual logic. For instance, it has been stated that an improperly consecrated playhouse, one not presided over by the deities, is said to endanger the performance and bring calamity to the king. The performer who disregards the rules is threatened with decline, even to the extent of an unfavourable rebirth, while the one who follows them avoids inauspiciousness and gains a favourable posthumous outcome. Within the treatise’s normative model, these sanctions make correct ritual observance a stated condition of auspicious and protected performance (Nāṭyaśāstra III.94–99; V.175–177).

The pūrvaraṅga is important because it shows how closely technical preparation and ritual preparation are connected in the Nāṭyaśāstra. The elements performed behind the curtain are not only practical arrangements for music and performance; they also belong to a prescribed sequence through which the play is gradually prepared before it becomes visible to the audience. The instrumentalists are seated, the singers are arranged, the strings are tuned, percussion is sounded, and rhythm is set in motion before the curtain is raised. After this, the visible part of the ritual brings in song, movement, benediction, and praise. The play, therefore, does not begin suddenly as a dramatic spectacle. It is introduced through a carefully ordered movement from preparation to public performance (Nāṭyaśāstra V.8–30). In this context, Ganser’s discussion of dance and the pūrvaraṅga demonstrates how bodily practice in the Nāṭyaśāstra is connected not only to representation but also to beauty, auspiciousness, ritual offerings, devotion, and discipline, showing how bodily practice can acquire ritual and auspicious functions within the preliminary sequence (Ganser 2023, pp. 137–42).

The stage-consecration passages make this link even clearer (Nāṭyaśāstra III.87–91). The broken or unbroken jar is interpreted as a sign concerning the patron’s enemies, while the lamp ritually lights and activates the stage. The ritual is therefore both protective and prescriptive. It also connects theatrical success with the welfare of the king or patron, a point made more explicitly when the text states that proper consecration brings good fortune, while defective ritual may bring danger or calamity, thereby linking the ritual status of performance to the welfare of its patron (Nāṭyaśāstra III.93–99). In this sense, ritual does not replace theatre, but it helps organize the conditions under which theatre becomes legitimate, protected, and ready to begin. Thus, it also clarifies what is at stake in observing or violating the prescriptions.

5. Conclusions

What emerges from these passages is that ritual does not have a single function in the Nāṭyaśāstra. Invocation and the worship of the jarjara seek protection and success; the maṇḍala gives order to the theatrical space by locating different beings within it; offerings are differentiated according to their recipients; and the foundation rite connects the construction of the playhouse with auspicious timing and particular social restrictions. The pūrvaraṅga does something rather different. It regulates the movement from technical preparation to public performance. Omens and sanctions, in turn, make clear what the text considers to be at stake when these procedures are observed correctly, or not. Theatre, in this sense, does not simply take place in a space that has already been made sacred. The preparation of that space is itself part of the conditions under which performance can properly begin.

There is also a social dimension to this ritual ordering, and this is important to the paper’s argument. The nāndī, for instance, brings gods, brāhmaṇas, and kings together as recipients of benediction within the public preliminary sequence (Nāṭyaśāstra V.24–25). Elsewhere, the welfare of the king or patron becomes bound up with the consecration of the stage and with the interpretation of omens (Nāṭyaśāstra III.87–99). Brāhmaṇas appear again in the auspicious preparation of the playhouse, while the foundation rite also draws a boundary by excluding particular categories of persons from that ceremony (Nāṭyaśāstra II.32–38). The offerings make another kind of distinction, since divine, potentially obstructive, and other beings are not addressed in the same way. What these passages give us, then, is not simply a sacred theatre, but a theatre in which ritual positions people and other beings differently in relation to the stage. I read this as part of the normative social world imagined by the text. Whether such prescriptions were followed uniformly in practice is another question, and the Nāṭyaśāstra by itself cannot answer it.

The text does, in fact, raise a more general historical question concerning the relationship between worship and performed movement in the later Indian traditions. The Devadāsī tradition applies here since it embodies a later and separately organised form of practice in which singing and dancing could be incorporated as part of ritual service directed towards a deity (Kersenboom-Story 1987; Marglin 1985; Orr 2000); at the Jagannath temple, a morning dance rite is separated from an evening singing rite which is associated with Devadāsī service (Rout 2008, pp. 462–63). Even though the chronological and institutional gap makes it impossible to assert a simple direct continuity from the Nāṭyaśāstra, the comparison is still of historical value since it demonstrates that the relationship between worship and performed movement could take on different forms under changing socio-religious conditions.

How closely, then, were the prescriptions of the Nāṭyaśāstra followed in actual theatrical practice? How much room was there for variation? The text leaves us without firm answers. Later temple traditions cannot fill that evidentiary gap, but they do show that relations between worship and performance appear in more than one historical and institutional setting. The more limited conclusion that can be drawn from the Nāṭyaśāstra itself is that ritual forms part of the way in which the treatise imagines legitimate performance; it prepares and protects the theatrical space, gives auspicious force to performance, and places that performance within a particular configuration of sacred and social relations.