YAKSHAGANA
Main Themes : Fights & Warfare
Belongs To : South Canara
''Yaksha
Gana'' is a kind of dramatic composition suitable for recitation before
the rustic audiences by professional and amateur actors. This belongs to
Karnataka and has a rural origin. It is an admixture of dance and drama.
Its heart lies in 'Gana' meaning music. It is about 400 years old. The
language is Kannada and the themes are based on Hindu epics. The costumes
are almost akin to the
Kathakali
ones and the style seems to have drawn inspiration from Kathakali.
As prescribed in the Natya Shastra, it has the 'Suthra Dhara' (conductor)
and the 'Vidhushaka' (the Jester). The 'Yaksha Gana' seems to be named
after the form of music employed in it, which is said to be originally
called ''Yaksha Gana''.
The 'Yaksha Gana' must have originally been a faithful form of Bharata's
theatre in respect of 'Abhinaya'. As was to be seen till recently in Tamil
street-plays, 'Abhinaya' or 'Nritya' must have been present to a large
extent in the 'Yaksha Gana'.
But now, it has become considerably reduced, chiefly on account of the
introduction of speech in an elaborate manner. It is in this respect that
it differs from the
Kathakali
of Malabar and resembles the Tamil variety. In the Tamil play, the whole
theme is in the form of songs and verses, both of which are sung.
There are occasional prose lines, which the chorus-like 'Kattiyakkaran'
speaks, conveying information to the audience about what follows next and
giving similar links. In a way the 'Yaksha Gana' as it has developed now,
has approached the modern drama in having a lot of prose dialogue which
the actors themselves speak.
When the actors stop the speech, the musical theme is sung, and while it
is sung the ancient practice must have been to render every word of it
through 'Abhinaya' as in
Kathakali
and Nautch.
The History
The 'Yaksha Gana' is possibly the common name of an old type of
traditional, popular vernacular drama of South India, a name common to the
three linguistic areas of Tamil, Telugu and Kannada and absent only in
Malayalam.
In subsequent times the name 'Yaksha Gana' gave place to the two names
'Nataka' and 'Vilasa' in
Tamil Nadu
and Andhra
Pradesh, but it continued in South Canara.
In the Madras and Tanjore libraries there are many Tamil and Telugu
'Yaksha ganas, though none of them can be dated beyond the eighteenth
century. The 'Yaksha Gana' belongs to the South Canara in the Kannada
area, where other forms of Natya like 'Nautch' must have flourished in
other places.
In South Canara, the 'Yaksha Gana' is one of the two most widespread
popular dramatic entertainments, the other being the puppet-play, called
as in Tamil by the name 'Bommalattam'. The vernacular name of the 'Yaksha
Gana' is 'Bayal Attam' i.e. open-air play, a name which corresponds to the
Tamil 'Terukkoottu' and the Telugu 'Veethinataka' both of which mean
street-play.
The 'Yaksha Gana' troupes are attached to particular shrines, even as at
the village of Ootukkadu etc., in Tanjore district, where the 'Bhagavata'
troupes play only at the temples.
The 'Yaksha Gana' players of South Canara travel from place to place and
people even pray to their gods in times of distress that they will order
an 'Yaksha Gana' performance as offering.
The Themes
The themes of all the dramas of 'Yaksha Gana' are fights and warfare,
stories of 'veera' and 'raudra' rasas from our puranic legends.
In 'Girija Kalyana', Parvati's wedding the love-incident forms but the
central event in a long drama beginning with the destruction of Daksha's
sacrifice by the terrific Veerabhadra and ending with boy-War-God Kumara
annihilating demon Taraka and his hordes.
'Valinigraha', 'Draupadi-pratapa', 'Bhishma Vijaya', 'Virata-parva' or
'Keechaka-vadha', 'Karna-Arjuna-Yuddha', 'Atikayavada' are some of the
other plays, all of which are stories of fight and war.
The Dance Drama
The actors roar and do robust dances in weird costumes. The drums are
beaten loudly and 'veera' and 'raudra' rasas are portrayed most
successfully. The make-up of the Rakshasas and other wild characters is in
keeping with this atmosphere.
In the play called 'Draupadi-pratapa', it is a very effective, powerful
and wonderful scene, which forms the climax of the drama at its end.
'Chandi' and 'Kali' appear in terrific attire, roar, and upon a background
of war-beats on a drum in the orchestra at the back, they wheel round in a
hand-to-hand fight.
There is 'Lasya' in 'Bhishma Vijaya' where the princesses bathe, and the
'Rukmangada' has some fine playing of 'Sringara' or love between King
Rukmangada and Mohini. But the prevailing atmosphere is the 'Arabhati
Vritti', the forceful manner.
Even a play like 'Rukmangada', whose rasa is the quietistic 'Santa', is
played in such a manner as to contain mostly fights, and this is done by
the introduction of conquest expeditions ('Digvijaya') of the crown
prince, who defeats various kings, Asuras and God Yama.
The clown has great liberty and he is responsible for too much extempore
comic speech appearing often. In the themes that are mainly puranic,
occasional inventions occur and the 'Draupadi-pratapa' is a fine specimen
of an imaginative creation spun out of a puranic nucleus.
On the whole, they play about fifty dramas; the whole of the 'Ramayana'
and the 'Mahabharata' done episode by episode, as also other plays.
The Make Up
Surely, the 'Yaksha Gana' make up is as epic as its theme. It is decidedly
more graceful, richer and more closely related to the ornamentation found
in our sculpture than the
Kathakali
make-up.
The chief male characters, the hero and his son, or the king and his
minister or prince, have a fine 'Makuta', and together with other
characters belonging to the sublime type called 'Maha-purusha', and
'Dhirodatta', have a uniform kind of exalted make-up with 'Bhujakirti',
'Kataka', 'Virakaccha' etc. The head dress of the wild characters, the
'Dhiroddhatas' is of a different type, an arch-like head dress, which is
prepared then and there on each occasion.
The 'Prati-Nayaka' or the villain, Rakshasas, Asuras and God Yama appear
in the weirdest dress of the 'Yaksha Gana'. Their 'Makuta' is bigger and
is of wood studded with glass and somewhat resembles some of the Kathakali
headgears. King Salva in 'Bhishma-Vijaya', Mahishasura and Yama in
'Rukmangada' and Ravana in 'Atikayavadha' appear in this dress.
The face is masked, the lip hangs low and red; there are two carnivorous
teeth; the nose is enlarged with some white matter, and long locks of hair
hanging behind complete this male weird dress. There is a corresponding
female weird dress; Chandi and Kali in 'Draupadi-pratapa' and Surpanaka in
'Atikayavadha' appear in it.
Lion's teeth, blood-red artificial tongue drawn-out and dangling, huge
breasts and lengthy locks of hair at the back characterise this female
weird make-up.
All the actors wear trousers to enable them to dance and over them a
'saree' is tied in the form of a 'Kaccha' with girdle ornaments. The faces
of kings and princes have a rosy paint; king Bali appears with a green
face, Yama with a black one, and Krishna and Vishnu, blue.
Hunters appear in some plays like the 'Rukmangada' and the
'Bhishma-vijaya' and they tie to their bodies some amount of green twigs
to suggest that they are forest people; they first make a bonfire and
dance around it before their action begins.
All royal characters have a bow and arrow in their hands; Vishnu and
Krishna bring a chakra (disc) and Narada a bunch of peacock feathers. The
costume of Narada has been modernised and along with it that of women
characters also to a very large extent.
In the midst of old picturesque make-up, the heroine now appears
discordantly dressed up in a modern make-up imitative of coquettish
society women appearing on the modern stage. The old female make-up was
full of old jewellery with 'Makuta' or 'Kirita' etc. resembling female
figures in our sculpture.
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