Marga Natya

Marga and the deshis

In the centuries after the Natya Shastra, writers treated the performing arts and literature of India as sharing one grammar. They called that shared grammar Marga. Alongside it sat the deshis, the regional ways of dancing, singing and acting. Each deshi grew out of local taste, so the same broad rules could be worked differently from place to place. Marga Natya takes its name from the shared grammar and sets out to rebuild the tradition that the grammar came from, working from Bharata's treatise as the source.

The origin story

The Natya Shastra gives the beginning of this art in a story about the ages. According to Bharata's account, the world moved from the Krita or Satya Yuga, the golden age, ruled by Svayambhuva Manu, into the Treta Yuga under Vaivasvata Manu. In Jambudvipa people became caught up in everyday wants, a condition the text calls Gramya Dharma. Feelings such as joy, sorrow, envy, rage and longing crowded in and unsettled the mind. That disturbed the calm that study of the Vedas required.

An art for everyone

In the story, the gods turn to Brahma. Indra and the other deities ask him for something the people of Jambudvipa can enjoy, and they ask that it please both eye and ear. More than that, they want it to carry Vedic knowledge and to stir spiritual understanding. The new art was meant to reach everyone, and the text calls it sarvavarnika, meaning open to all the varnas. Study of the Vedas was at that time open only to the three upper varnas. This medium was to include Brahmanas, Ksatriyas, Vaisyas and Sudras alike, so teaching that had been narrow would circulate through performance.

Dance, song and gesture

The tradition Bharata set down has three parts, named in the source as natya, geeta and abhinaya and rendered there as dance, music and acting. A full performance draws on all three at once, so the form is not simply movement, nor simply song. To rebuild it, each part has to be worked on. A passage staged with the steps but without the music, or sung without the acting that carries its sense, would hold only a fragment of what the text sets out. Researchers treat the three as one body of work, and a reconstruction stands or falls by how well they hold together.

The work today

Marga Natya today is a work of reconstruction. Researchers read the Natya Shastra closely and set out to recover the dance, song and acting it describes, with performers bringing the results to an audience. Piyal Bhattacharya has worked on the treatise for years; his research was backed by the Sangeet Natak Akademi through a scheme for protecting India's intangible cultural heritage. Others credited alongside him are Sayak Mitra, Subhendu Ghosh, Deep Ghosh, Akash Mallick and Rik Amrit, also called Amritanath Bhattacharya. Pandurang Vaman Kane's History of Sanskrit Poetics of 1971 appears in the list of sources.

How Marga Natya is kept

Today the keeping of Marga Natya is study as much as performance. Researchers begin with the text, reading the Natya Shastra and comparing what it says about dance, music and acting. From that reading they reconstruct pieces, working out steps, songs and gestures and joining them into something that can be staged. Performers then take the results before an audience. The material names the specialists involved in this work, and lists Piyal Bhattacharya among them. Their aim is to let a very old account of performance be seen and heard again.

When and where

The sources give no fixed date for Marga Natya. The Natya Shastra sets its beginning in the passage from the Krita, or Satya, Yuga under Svayambhuva Manu to the Treta Yuga under Vaivasvata Manu, which is a frame of ages rather than a month or a day. The research and reconstruction described here belong to the present, with no season attached.

India is the country named in the sources. The story in the Natya Shastra is set in Jambudvipa, where the deities put their request to Brahma, and the people it concerns are the people of that land. The reconstruction work described is Indian, carried out by scholars and performers there. No other country, city or region is named in the material.

What Marga Natya means

For those who keep it, the form carries more than entertainment. In the story the gods ask for something that pleases the eye and ear and also passes on Vedic wisdom and wakes spiritual understanding. That double purpose gives the dancing and singing a serious weight. The art was also meant to cross the lines of caste, so that knowledge which study of the Vedas had kept narrow could reach Brahmanas, Ksatriyas, Vaisyas and Sudras alike through performance.

Questions people ask about Marga Natya

See also

GhazalA short rhyming poem of love and parting, recited and sung from Arabia to South AsiaPulikaliPainted tigers and leopards dance through Thrissur on the fourth day of OnamBhangraA Punjabi harvest dance, first kept by farmers and now performed worldwideQawwaliDevotional Sufi singing from South Asia, led by hereditary parties at shrines

Good reading and sources

• Marga Natya on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-10.