Natya Shastra

What defines it

1. 01

   Rasa sutra: vibhava, anubhava, vyabhichari bhava

2. 02

   Four kinds of abhinaya: angika, vachika, aharya, sattvika

3. 03

   108 karanas of dance

4. 04

   Rules for the natya-mandapa, the theatre hall

5. 05

   Theory of svara, shruti and the drum

01The fifth Veda

The first chapter tells how the devas asked Bhagwan Brahma for something that could be seen and heard by all, since the four Vedas were closed to many. Brahma made the Natyaveda, taking recitation from the Rig Veda, song from the Sama Veda, abhinaya from the Yajur Veda and rasa from the Atharva Veda, and gave it to Bharata, who staged the first play with his hundred sons. The text runs to some 36 chapters and about 6,000 shlokas, covering the stage building, the actors, gesture, costume, metre, music and the drum.

02Rasa and the 108 karanas

Chapter six gives the sutra every Indian aesthete knows: rasa arises from the union of vibhava, anubhava and vyabhichari bhava. Bharata names eight rasas, from shringara to adbhuta; Abhinavagupta of Kashmir, writing the Abhinavabharati around 1000 CE, argued for shanta as the ninth. Chapter four lists the 108 karanas, the units of dance movement. Rajaraja Chola had 81 of them carved in the upper corridor of the Brihadeeswara temple at Thanjavur, and the gopurams of Chidambaram show the full set with their verses.

03The text today

Manuscripts survive in Kerala, Nepal and elsewhere; the Kashi Sanskrit Series and the Gaekwad’s Oriental Series printed the text, the latter with Abhinavagupta’s commentary edited by M. Ramakrishna Kavi. In April 2025 UNESCO entered manuscripts of the Natya Shastra, together with the Bhagavad Gita, in its Memory of the World register. Every Bharatanatyam, Odissi and Kuchipudi student still learns its hastas, and dancers open a performance with a shloka to Nataraja that Nandikeshvara’s Abhinaya Darpana preserves.

Great masters

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