Temples In India-1.pdf - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

VIVEKANANDA KENDRA PATRIKAin the temple of Puri trace their heritageto these two heavenly dancers whobrought the dance to earth. The dancerswere called ‘Maharishi’ and the traditionwas that when the food was offered toGod, the dancer and her pakhwaj playerwere the only ones to be present with theRajaguru who represented the Raja himself.The Devadasi system extended all overIndia. While in Puri they danced Jayadeva’sGeetha Govinda, their sisters in the Southdanced to the Lord Shiva, Nataraja, theGod of dance. The devadasis of SouthIndia, were the custodians of the ritualswithin the shrine and also when the deitywas taken out in procession. The dasis orhand-maidens of god had differentfunctions. In front of the dwajasthambaof the temple, danced the Rajadasis. Then,there were ‘swadasis’ who performed onspecial religious days as, for instance, whenTEMPLE INDIAthe Kumbhabhisheka was performed.Sacred duties of fanning or decorating god,lighting the Kumbharati etc., were doneby dasis called ‘adukala mahal’, ‘DevaKannigayar’ and ‘nataka mahal’, while thedevadasis performed regularly in thetemple’s dance sabha, for the people.Their dance told the stories of god andthe mood was primarily that of devotion,worship through bhakti. All through theSouth, the devadasis danced and theearliest literature tells us of the patronageof kings to the art and their endowmentsto the families who belonged to the temple.The temple was the focus of all theperforming arts and continued to be so formany centuries. In Kerala, the dance tookanother form, in the Krishnanattam andthe Kathakali.Here the dancers are usually all males andthe stories are enacted as dance-dramas.112