3. Odissi, temple rituals and temple sculptures

(1) O’Shea has recently suggested, not without some controversy, with reference to bharatanatyam - thus by extension applicable to other Indian classical genres, that this practice reflects an orientalist attitude to the dance: “This kind of pre-performance synopsis lines up two thought-systems: an English verbal framework and a South Indian choreographic one. The explanation of mudras in succession interprets the ‘Eastern’ choreography through the ‘Western’ linguistic system” . She concedes however that “although verbal interlocution reiterates an orientalist problematic, the factors that foster the appearance of interlocution unsettle orientalist notions of a static tradition” (O’Shea 2003).

(2) Meduri has explored the formation of the temple stage in the work of Rukmini Devi and its significance for bharatanatyam (Meduri 2006). The temple-stage devised by Devi has been transferred to all the other solo forms of Indian classical dance, hence to odissi, but substituting the Nataraja icon with that of Jagannath.

(3) Sometimes written as ‘orissi’ depending on the spelling given to the transliteration of the original Oriya.

(4) Odissi is not and never was a ritual temple dance, as I will argue. Nevertheless there is a notional convergence between ritual and odissi performance, found in the performativity of both. This raises another order of questions which will not be dealt with in this context: “the central issue of performativity” warns Schieffelin “whether in ritual performance, theatrical entertainment or the social articulation of ordinary human situations is the imaginative creation of a human world. The creation of human realities entails ontological issues” (Schieffelin 1998, 205).

(5) See for example Indoclassical

(6) See Lopez y Royo 2004 for a discussion of south asian diaspora

(7) Pamela Moro, among others, has examined the process of classicization and its link with nation and nation building policies in South and Southeast Asia (Moro 2004). A discussion of classicism and classicization is taken up, in greater depth, in chapter 4.

(8) The dance of the maharis , interpreted in a tantric way, was symbolic of sexual intercourse: “ the association between dance and sex is very strong…the dance ritual is also known to stand for the last ‘m’ in the five ‘m’ offerings of the tantric sakta ritual. This last ‘m’ is maithuna: sexual intercourse (Marglin 1985,95)

(9) Marglin has commented that a form of male dancing must have been performed in temples, perhaps only Siva temples, because one can see reliefs of male dancers sculpted on the Bhubaneshwar Saiva temples . However the custom of young men dancing dressed like women seems to have been introduced by the vaishnavites in the 16th century, worshipping Krishna in a sakhi bhava fashion- as a female friend of Radha's (sakhi). The gotipuas were young boys linked with the akhadas where they practiced combat and on festival days in Puri they danced the Radha Krishna story dressed like maharis (Marglin 1985,317; Kothari 1968,32).

(10) It took much effort and imagination to establish odissi as a classical dance throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Initially, it was viewed by purists as a hybridised bharatanatyam and Rukmini Devi, the bharatanatyam reformer, founder of the famous Kalakshetra school in present day Chennai was reported to have frowned on the "vulgarity" of the odissi repertoire when she first saw it (Citaristi 2001, 119)

(11) The case of the Abhinaya Chandrika, a manuscript discovered by D.N. Pattnaik is notorious. Pattnaik fixed its date to the 12th century (Pattnaik 1958, 10) . later dating it 17th century in a new edition of the same work. More recently Das has given the date of the Chandrika as 1750 (Das 2001, x)

(12) See for example odissi dancer and academic Ratna Roy’s homepage

(13) The akhadas are part of the traditional culture of Puri which revolves around the temple of Jagannath. The majority of Puri’s inhabitants are sevayats, people who perform a seva (service) at the temple. Bhang, a drink made out of a concotion of cannabis and milk, is freely available in Puri, one of the holiest cities of India - it is said that cannabis is dear to Lord Shiva and sadhus (holy men) are known to be great consumers of thandai (drink similar to bhang). Puri, as a holy city, is full of itinerant sadhus, who have contributed to the development of a ‘bhang culture’.

(14) As seen in chapter 2. The notion of karana as dance unit is further elaborated in chapter 4 and I will not preempt that discussion here.

(15) With funding obtained from the British Academy in 2005 I have written and directed a DVD film about the odissi of Guru Surendranath Jena and its relationship with both Konarak and Hirapur. This was done in collaboration with Rajyashree Ramamurthi, an odissi dancer and an award winning film maker. The DVD is distributed by the AHRC Research Centre for Cross-cultural Music and Dance Performance, SOAS.

(16) Tantrism was a Hindu and also Buddhist religious sectarian movement which celebrated the superiority of female spiritual energy; one of the ways of worship was through sexual intercourse, which allowed for a realization of divinity.

(17) see also Kersemboom’s Nityasumangali, 1987 on the devadasis of Tiruvarur, in Tamilnadu

(18) Marglin gives the subdivisions among devadasis as bhitara gauni and bhahara gauni, also called nacuni (dancers) (Marglin 1985).

(19) It should be noted that in all her writings Marglin prefers to call them devadasis, avoiding the term mahari , as requested by the old maharis themselves, in view of the association of the Oriya term with prostitution.

(20) However Surendranath Jena, whom I interviewed in connection with the documentary I made in 2005 recounted a different trajectory. He began as a yatra actor, went to Calcutta to study kathakali and then returned in the mid 1950s to Cuttack where he learnt odissi from the gurus of the Jayantika, quickly mastering the new form, and himself joining this group. He then went to New Delhi in the early 1960s together with Mayadhar Rout to teach odissi. At no point did Surendranath Jena talk about a connection with maharis.

(21) Some odissi gurus trained in kathakali (and also bharatanatyam), for example, Mayadhar Rout was at the famous Kalakshetra school in Madras (Chennai) and Surendranath Jena went to Calcutta.

(22) Minneapolis based odissi dancer and scholar Ananya Chatterjea should be mentioned here for her emotionally powerful work, coming out of her interrogation of odissi classicism.

(23) Unlike Hindustani or Carnatic music, odissi music does not have a concert tradition and is not supported by an equivalent systematic classification, and, hence, a specific theoretical knowledge of ragas, talas and their nuances, on the part of its musicians. This is perceived as a lack of classicism and it has prompted a number of non-Oriya dancers to rely more explicitly on Hindustani musical accompaniment, to classicize the music and the dance further, thereby subtly modifying the odissi form.

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