Letting Go of the Devadasi

By Donovan Roebert

Over the past few years, as many know, I have been involved, from the sidelines, in the stringent tussle that is being played out between the supporters of what may broadly be called the ‘revivalist syndrome’ in the Sadir-Bharatanyam community, and the fighters for the socio-cultural rights of the hereditary artists and their art.

What I want to consider here, however, is the role of the image of the devadasi that has become inextricably intertwined with the unresolved problems of the hereditary system and art as they confront and challenge the dance oikumene today. And I intend to tackle this problem from the personal standpoint of one who has spent several years in an ever-intensifying search for what I have characterized for myself as the ‘face of the devadasi’.

Photographs of Goan Dancers (c.1870-1934): Image and Text

By Donovan Roebert

The chief aim of this essay is to present a set of photographs of Goan kalavant-bailadeiras that were produced in the period indicated in the title. Though these photographs are accompanied by excerpts from some relevant texts, and though, as far as possible, some brief contextual notes will be adduced, the interested reader is referred for a fuller treatment of the historical context to my earlier essay, The Kalavant-Bailadeiras of Goa from c. 1540 to c. 1880: Image and Text. In that essay, too, a list of important references is provided.

At the close of that essay I noted that, by 1895, the number of active bailadeiras in Goa had dwindled to a mere 522, and that, in the same year, statistics show that there were only 32 bhavins (female temple ritual officiants) in the whole of Portuguese India, and that both the kalavant–bailadeiras and the bhavins were confined to the territories of Nova Goa (New Goa). In Old Goa there were no hereditary temple dancers and no bhavins at all.

The Kalavant-Bailadeiras of Goa from c. 1540 to c. 1880: Image and Text

By Donovan Roebert

Pictorial data for the history of dance in Goa are relatively sparse. They do not come close to the amount of pictures, for example, that we have of dancers in Tamil Nadu. The reasons for this sparsity are not far to seek: dance in Goa, both religious and public, was restricted and persecuted from almost the beginning of Portuguese colonisation, and many dancers were forced by local circumstances to migrate elsewhere.

The State and Church in Portugal from the 16^th century and later were really part of single colonizing mission, and one of the priorities in Portuguese territories in India was the suppression of local religious beliefs and practices, and the fiercely orchestrated catholic christianization of the indigene population. This mission naturally involved the destruction of the system of ritual temple dance and its associated cultural and artistic performances. As in other areas of India under different colonial regimes, the dance praxis was viewed as tainted by sexual immorality and prostitution. This state of affairs continued for more than 300 years until suppression of the dancers was relaxed in the last quarter of the 19^th century. The law banishing dancers from Old Goa was rescinded in 1804, but the deep-rooted social prejudices stayed firmly in place.

Eight Oddments: Depictions of South Indian Dancers in the ‘Company’ Style: c. 1800-1855

By Donovan Roebert

The present article deals with an assortment of oddments, by which I mean pictures that belong to no definite pattern and which, taken together, can’t be viewed as part of an immediate contextual whole. Indeed, they are selections from a rather larger assortment of pictorial odds and ends which remains as a residual collection of images after those that do belong to a pattern have been dealt with.

One facet of these portrayals of South Indian dancers does, it seems to me, place them together in a single category of sorts, and this is their formal relationship to pictures more certainly belonging to the style of visual representation known as the ‘Company School’. (See my earlier article, Depictions of South Indian Dancers in Company Paintings: c. 1785-1870).

Twelve Miniature Paintings of Indian Dancers from the Lindenau Museum: c. 1800

By Donovan Roebert

The twelve miniature ‘company paintings’ examined in this article are in the possession of the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg. They constitute part of a set of 100 gouache miniatures that were made available online in 2015, with a fulsome commentary by Dr Werner Kraus, co-founder of the department of Asian studies at Passau University.

In dealing with these miniatures I will be doing little more in terms of description than providing translated extracts from Dr Kraus’s own commentary together with a few comments of my own.

The two-volume album in which these company paintings are found is of British origin and is dated to c.1800. The depictions of dancers present in it are therefore of relatively early date. Their place of manufacture was Tanjore in the early years of the reign of Serfoji II (ruled 1798-1832). As Dr Kraus explains, this album is of exceptionally high quality and is counted among the most treasured items in the museum.

Nine Miniature Paintings of South Indian Dancers in Procession: 1770-1785

By Donovan Roebert

The ensuing article ought to be viewed as an addendum to my earlier piece, Some Very Early Pictures of South Indian Dancers, Part 2: ca. 1695-1780, as it belongs to the same time-frame, and deals with indigenous paintings of Indian ritual and court dancers of the proto-company painting school. Indeed, it is advisable to consult the earlier article in order to gain contextual information regarding the pictures presented here.

The nine company-style miniature paintings presented in this article are found among the company paintings housed at the Bibliothèque national de France, and available for viewing online.

The album in which they are found is titled simply ‘Recueil factice . Dessins en couleurs de divinités indiennes.’, and there is no information as touching the author or the exact location in South India where these miniatures were produced. One may, however, safely conjecture that these were made in French India, and probably in Pondicherry in the last quarter of the 18^th century.

Some Very Early Pictures of South Indian Dancers, Part 2: ca. 1695-1780

By Donovan Roebert

In this second part of my article I will deal with three instances of South Indian dance representations for the indicated period. These are all depictions in what I am calling the ‘proto-company’ style, the implication being that these miniature paintings, though consonant with the style and subject matter of company paintings from British colonial India, can’t properly be included in that category because they both pre-date them and were produced outside of regions of India then under East India Company rule.

Some Very Early Depictions of South Indian Dancers, Part 1: ca. 1540-1600

By Donovan Roebert

In this two-part article I will take a cursory look at a set of depictions of South Indian dancers that were all produced in India across a period of some two centuries, beginning round the middle of the sixteenth. My first intention is to make these pictures known and available to dancers, students and researchers who may not yet have come across them, and to share the relevant sources for those who might want to discuss them in their own work.

Not Forgetting Hena and Parimal: Indian Dancers on Broadway in 1930 and 1931

By Donovan Roebert

I first came across the untold story of the Indian dancers, Hena and Parimal, in a cutting from the Arizona Republican dated 12 November 1930. This brief press report, which can be seen below, provides several pointers to the congeries of facts surrounding the scheduled performance on which it reports.

Sacred and Profane Bayadères of Villianur: photographs and texts, 1905-1906

By Donovan Roebert

In this article I deal with seven photographs of or relating to bayadères – the French word coined especially for temple, court and public dancers of India and other colonies, itself derived from the Portuguese bailadeiras, applied to dancers in Portuguese territories of India.

These photographs, dating from French publications of 1905 and 1906, though the pictures themselves may have been taken a little earlier, capture temple and court (or public) hereditary Sadir dancers from the area of Pondicherry, and in the case of the temple dancers, certainly from Villianur near Pondicherry.