Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Kuchipudi and Perini: the dance-dramas of the Telugu country

How the Brahmin performers (Bhagavatulu) of Kuchipudi village in Krishna district told stories in dance and song: the Bhama Kalapam and Golla Kalapam, their night-long shows in the street, their training and their patrons from Golconda to Thanjavur, their decline after 1880 and their revival as a classical dance. Also the warriors' dance Perini, rebuilt from Kakatiya sculpture.

Kuchipudi is a village in Krishna district whose Brahmin men, the Bhagavatulu (performers of sacred stories), told stories in dance, song and speech.12 For centuries their shows were part of royal courts, temple festivals and village fairs across the Telugu country.1 Today the name of the village is also the name of a classical dance.3 This page tells how that happened, from the sources in the library. See also Telugu folk arts and Music & dance.

The village

Kuchipudi lies about fifteen miles from Machilipatnam. It is close to Srikakulam in the same district, which Mikkilineni calls a chief town of the Satavahana kings.2 It is also near Movva, said to be the home of the poet-composer Kshetrayya.2 Mikkilineni Radhakrishna Murthy, the historian of Telugu folk arts, describes it as a Brahmin agraharam (a village granted to Brahmins). He says it was once also called Kuchelapuram.2 According to him, historians say the dance began there about five hundred years ago.2

Siddhendra Yogi’s gift

Ask the people of Kuchipudi where their art came from, and they tell of Siddhendra Yogi.2 Some say he was born in the village, and others that he was a wanderer who came there. No one can fix his home or his date.2

In one story, Siddhayya was a simple, idle youth of the village. After his marriage he went across the Krishna to study, and came back a scholar.4 On the way home a flood caught him while he prayed in the river, and he vowed to give up family life. A wave carried him safely to the bank.4 He then wrote the Bhama Kalapam and taught it to the Bhagavatulu.4

In another story, he came to the village as a wandering monk. The Brahmins invited him to a meal, and he would eat only if they promised to perform the play he had written.5 They agreed. Every Brahmin boy of Kuchipudi then had his nose and ears pierced, so that he could wear the jewels of his stage parts, and tied on ankle bells to dance before the god Nataraja at least once.56

The Bhama Kalapam and the Golla Kalapam

The Bhama Kalapam tells of Satyabhama, a wife of Krishna. She quarrels with him because he loves Rukmini more, and then she cannot bear the separation. She sends her maid with a message, and the maid comforts her.67 Satyabhama is the only main role. The sutradhara (leader) acts as narrator and also as her maid Madhavi, and keeps the audience laughing.78 The opening verse names “Siddhendra Yogi” as the poet.7

The second famous piece is the Golla Kalapam. In it a milkmaid argues with a Brahmin about whose birth is higher.9 She holds that all people were created equal and that Brahmins are not superior.9 Tradition credits it to Bhagavatula Ramalinga Sastri, and Vempati Venkatanarayana was the most famous actor of both pieces.9

The Bhagavatulu also played many yakshaganas (song-and-dance dramas) on stories from the epics. Mikkilineni names Prahlada, Usha Parinayam, Harischandra, Lava Kusa and Sasirekha Parinayam among them.910 They sang the songs of Kshetrayya, Annamacharya, Ramadasu and Narayana Tirtha in their shows.1110

A night in the street

The plays were given in the street: at a crossroads, in the main bazaar or on open ground outside the village.12 There was no stage, so they chose a high spot or built one of planks. Above it went a pandal (shelter) of palm leaves.12 The curtain was a painted cloth held up by two men, and two brass oil torches gave the light.1213 When a king or a demon entered, resin was thrown on the torch, and he appeared in a sudden flash.13

The show began at about ten at night and went on without a break until morning.1314 The village elders and scholars sat in front, and the show did not start until they came.13 Comic characters explained the Sanskrit verses that most people could not follow.14

Training

A Kuchipudi pupil began with exercise: push-ups and other drills to make the body strong.15 Then came abhinaya (expressive acting), footwork, hand gestures and steps in three speeds. In the fourth stage he learned to show the feelings of each song.1511 Mikkilineni says the Kuchipudi masters joined nritta (pure dance) and nritya (dance that shows meaning).11

Patrons, from Golconda to Thanjavur

The performers toured widely. Mikkilineni names the courts of Hyderabad, Vizianagaram and Thanjavur, and many kings and chiefs who supported them.16 He writes that Abul Hasan Tana Shah of Golconda gave Kuchipudi village to the artists as an agraharam in 1687.16 The grant was for all the Brahmin families who gave their lives to the dance, and their descendants still held it when he wrote.16

Prabhu Kumari Vanama, writing in 2010, tells the same story. Citing the Machupalle kaifiyat (a village record), she says Tana Shah saw the Bhagavatulu dance in 1687 and granted them the village.17 She adds that his ministers Akkanna and Madanna also supported the art.17

When they played before Muslim nawabs, the performers ended songs to Rama or Krishna with the words “Saheba salamura”, a salute to the ruler.1618 Mikkilineni says the Nawab of Banganapalle gave them villages, among them Kotakonda.18 The Kurnool district manual of 1886 says the main actors of the Bhagavatam plays there were a Brahmin family of Kotakonda, “whose ancestors originally came from Kúchipadi”.19 In the 18th century, Mikkilineni adds, the dancer Vedantam Sambayya so pleased the Maharaja of Ananthasayanam that he was seated on the king’s throne for an hour.18

Decline and revival

Mikkilineni says the Kuchipudi art was at its height until about 1880.20 Then the Dharwar drama companies came to the Telugu country, with new stage effects and glittering costumes. Educated drama societies sprang up in the towns to copy them, and people lost interest in the old shows.2021 Later the cinema hurt both the stage and the Kuchipudi plays.21 (On the new stage, see Telugu theatre and early cinema.)

The Bhagavatulu answered by changing. They added curtains, the harmonium, verses and glittering costumes.213 Two teachers stand out in this period. Chinta Venkataramayya ran a troupe from 1875 and trained almost every dancer of the village.22 Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastri made new dances for songs that had never been danced before.23 Several Kuchipudi masters also became dance directors in Telugu films.24

Writing in 1944, P. T. Raju saw the Kuchipudi plays as the living form of old Telugu drama.25 In his view no other form joined poetry, music, acting and dance so well.25 Some people later called Kuchipudi only a folk dance. Mikkilineni says that work through the Sangeet Natak Akademi established it as a classical dance.3 By 1992 Telugu University had taken over the Siddhendra Kalakshetram at Kuchipudi, which trained pupils in the old way of living with the teacher.3

Perini, the warriors’ dance

Perini belongs to a different line: the Shaiva temple dance of the Kakatiya age.2627 Jaya, a general of Ganapatideva, described the local dances of his day in his Nrittaratnavali. Perini is one of them.28 He says a Perini dancer must be handsome, sensitive, skilled in rhythm and music, and strong of body.2729

Mikkilineni says Perini was danced before the gods at Macherla, and some of its steps at the Shivaratri festivals of Kotappakonda and Srisailam.30 He saw some Perini steps himself at the yearly festival of the Palnadu heroes at Karempudi. By his time, he says, it survived only as the dance of the ganacharis (Shaiva devotees).30

Only Jaya’s description and a few other mentions survive.29 From these and the dance poses carved in the Ramappa temple, the dancer Nataraja Ramakrishna rebuilt Perini as a stage dance.2731 He said he learned the drum strokes from the carvings and taught them to his drummer.31

Where the sources disagree

Which Kuchipudi the Vijayanagara record means. Mikkilineni cites the Machupalle kaifiyat of 1502 as proof that the dancers were famous by then.6 Sishta Ramakrishna Sastri reads it the same way: the Kuchipudi Bhagavatulu performed before Vira Narasimha Raya of Vijayanagara.32 Arudra pointed out that the kaifiyat names a Kuchipudi “near Vinukonda and Bellamkonda”, not the village in Krishna district.3334 He found that written records of the dance families of the Krishna district village begin only on 24 August 1763.35

Siddhendra’s date. Mikkilineni reports that some people believe Siddhendra was still alive in 1687, and wrote Tana Shah’s grant himself.16 Sishta Ramakrishna Sastri placed him before 1500, because the Bhagavatulu were already famous at Vijayanagara.32

Folk or classical. P. T. Raju wrote in 1944 that their dance “is technically called Bharatanatyam”.25 Mikkilineni reports that others called it a folk dance with no classical basis, before the Sangeet Natak Akademi accepted it as classical.3

Footnotes

  1. Mikkilineni Radhakrishna Murthy, Teluguvari Janapada Kalarupalu (Hyderabad: Telugu University, 1992), p. 190 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  2. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 191 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  3. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 224 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 192 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 193 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  6. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 194 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 195 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 196 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  9. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 197 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  10. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 203 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  11. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 199 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  12. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 200 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  13. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 201 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  14. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 202 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  15. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 198 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  16. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 213 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  17. Prabhu Kumari Vanama, “Performing Arts under the Patronage of Qutubshahi Rulers”, Kakatiya Journal of Historical Studies, Vol. V, No. 1 (May 2010), p. 38 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  18. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 214 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  19. N. G. Chetty, A Manual of the Kurnool District (1886), p. 157 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  20. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 222 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  21. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 223 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  22. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 217 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  23. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 219 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  24. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 208 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  25. P. T. Raju, Telugu Literature (Andhra Literature) (Bombay: International Book House, 1944), p. 71 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  26. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 238 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  27. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 240 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  28. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 239 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  29. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 241 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  30. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 244 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  31. Mikkilineni, Janapada Kalarupalu (1992), p. 242 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  32. Sishta Ramakrishna Sastri, “Siddhendrayogi Padunaidava Satabdivade”, Bharati, Vol. 37, No. 3 (March 1960), p. 37 (in Telugu) (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  33. Arudra, Samagra Andhra Sahityam, p. 1029, quoting the Machupalle kaifiyat (in Telugu) (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  34. Arudra, Samagra Andhra Sahityam, p. 1030 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  35. Arudra, Samagra Andhra Sahityam, p. 1032 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

People

Chinta Venkataramayya

1860–1949 CE

Chinta Venkataramayya (1860–1949) was a Kuchipudi dancer and teacher who ran a Bhagavata troupe from 1875 to about 1936. His Venkatarama Natya Mandali toured the Andhra country by bullock cart, and Mikkilineni Radhakrishna Murthy writes that every Kuchipudi dancer of his time learned from him.

Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastri

before 1957 CE

Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastri (died 1957), honoured as Natyakala Nidhi, was a leading Kuchipudi dancer and teacher. He was famed as Satyabhama in the Bhama Kalapam, made new dances for the songs of Narayana Tirtha, Jayadeva and Kshetrayya, and taught many of the dancers who carried Kuchipudi into the cinema and onto the concert stage.

References

Sources (6)
  1. Mikkilineni Radhakrishna Murthy, Teluguvari Janapada Kalarupalu (తెలుగువారి జానపద కళారూపాలు) (opens in a new tab), Telugu University, Hyderabad (publication no. 129), 1992, pp. 190–226, 238–245. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  2. Arudra, Samagra Andhra Sahityam (సమగ్ర ఆంధ్ర సాహిత్యం) (opens in a new tab), pp. 1028–1032. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  3. P. T. Raju, Telugu Literature (Andhra Literature) (The P. E. N. Books, The Indian Literatures, No. XV) (opens in a new tab), International Book House, Bombay, for the P. E. N. All-India Centre, 1944, pp. 70–71. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  4. S. Mahaboob Basha (article); Thallapally Manohar and K. Vijaya Babu (eds.), Kakatiya Journal of Historical Studies, Vol. V, No. 1 (May 2010), incl. S. Mahaboob Basha, 'Flagging off the Marathon: Print Culture and Women's Intellectual Movement in Colonial Andhra: Story of the Hindu Sundari, 1902-1947' (opens in a new tab), 2010, pp. 38–39. Prabhu Kumari Vanama, 'Performing Arts under the Patronage of Qutubshahi Rulers', pp. 35–39. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  5. Narahari Gopalakristnamah Chetty, A Manual of the Kurnool District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1886, pp. 157. [Public domain]
  6. Sishta Ramakrishna Sastri (article), Bharati (భారతి), Vol. 37, No. 3 (March 1960), incl. Sishta Ramakrishna Sastri, 'Siddhendrayogi Padunaidava Satabdivade' (opens in a new tab), 1960, pp. 37. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]

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