A temple dance renamed in 1932 still shapes classical India
British officials banned Sadiraattam in 1910. Protest and stage work carried it beyond Tamil temples, and in 1932 reformers renamed it Bharatanatyam. The form still rests on bent knees, fixed torso, and a dense hand-and-eye vocabulary older than that new name.
Bharatanatyam is a Tamil Nadu classical dance recognized by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, long used to stage South Indian religious and spiritual themes, especially Shaiva and broader Hindu ideas. Precursors appear in the Natya Shastra (roughly 500 BCE–500 CE) and in the Tamil epic Silappatikaram around 171 CE. Sixth-to-ninth-century temple sculpture already shows a polished performance art, and many writers call the Sadiraattam lineage—renamed in 1932—the oldest classical dance tradition in India.
Technique travels in banis: school or guru styles often named for a village. The body stays upright above aramandi (flexed knees), while feet, hands, eyes, and face carry a signed vocabulary. A full recital runs about two hours with a single dancer who never leaves the stage or changes costume, while drums, a drone, and a singer sit at the back under the guru acting as nattuvanar. The programme moves between nrita (pure movement), nritya (gesture that tells), and natya (drama). A popular backronym splits Bharata into bhavam, ragam, and talam—feeling, melody, and rhythm.
An old theory made the dance a direct heir of devadasi temple servants from as early as 300 BCE. Modern scholars doubt it for lack of textual or archaeological proof; Davesh Soneji dates courtesan dancing only to the Nayaka era of the late 1500s or 1600s. Missionaries nonetheless launched an anti-dance campaign in 1892, and in 1910 the Madras Presidency banned temple dancing outright.
The ban provoked protest. E. Krishna Iyer, a lawyer jailed for nationalism, even recruited fellow prisoners to the cause, and with Rukmini Devi Arundale he pushed the 1932 Madras Music Academy rename while reshaping mainly the Pandanallur line. Balasaraswati and Yamini Krishnamurti helped carry the revival onto public stages, building on repertoire the Thanjavur Quartet had formalized. Chidambaram’s twelfth-century southern gateway still freezes 108 Natya Shastra karanas in stone.
Source: Bharatanatyam
