इस क्षेत्र का अनुवाद अभी इस भाषा में नहीं हुआ है, इसलिए यह अंग्रेज़ी में दिखाया जा रहा है।
Chola Nadu · Eastern Coastal Plains
नृत्य
The concert order every Bharatanatyam dancer still performs — alarippu, jatiswaram, sabdam, varnam, padam, javali, tillana — was fixed by four brothers at the Thanjavur court in the first half of the nineteenth century. Before them the repertoire existed; after them it had a sequence, a syllabus of adavus and a compositional literature to fill it.
कौन करता है: Hereditary nattuvanar families and their students. मौका: Temple and concert
A masked dance-drama in Telugu performed by men in the village street in front of the temple, on a fixed annual date, by families settled here since the Nayak period. It is not a revival — the Melattur cycle has run with interruptions since the seventeenth century, and the Prahlada Charitram is performed every year.
कौन करता है: Telugu-speaking Brahmin families of Melattur and neighbouring villages. मौका: Narasimha Jayanti, in May
A dance-drama built around a gypsy fortune-teller who reads a lovelorn heroine's palm — a form the Thanjavur Maratha court cultivated heavily, with Serfoji II himself credited with the Sarabhendra Bhupala Kuravanji.
कौन करता है: Court and temple dancers. मौका: Temple festivals
The dummy-horse dance — a lightweight frame worn at the waist with wooden legs strapped to the dancer's feet, so the horse appears to prance. Thanjavur is one of its main homes, and the frames are made locally.
कौन करता है: Village troupes. मौका: Temple car festivals and village fairs
Pot-balancing and stick dance at village goddess festivals. Both are stronger further south and west, but travel into the delta with troupes hired for temple festivals.
कौन करता है: Village troupes. मौका: Amman festivals
संगीत
Syama Sastri (1762), Tyagaraja (1767) and Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775) were all born in Tiruvarur within thirteen years of one another, and between them fixed the kriti as the central form of Carnatic music. Tyagaraja's output is largely in Telugu, Dikshitar's largely in Sanskrit, Syama Sastri's in both and in Tamil — the repertoire's languages are not the region's spoken one, which is the single fact most visitors find hardest to place.
The double-reed nagaswaram with the thavil barrel drum is the temple ensemble of this belt, played standing, outdoors, without amplification, for processions that can run all night. The instruments are turned at Narasingapettai near Kumbakonam, and hereditary players from Thiruvavaduthurai and Thirumarugal carried the form onto the concert stage in the twentieth century.
Hereditary singers attached to Shaiva temples who chant the Thevaram hymns of Sambandar, Appar and Sundarar in the pann modes at fixed points in the daily ritual. It is the oldest continuously performed Tamil vocal repertoire, and Chidambaram is its institutional centre.
The Saraswathi veena as made here — twenty-four fixed frets set in wax and charcoal, four playing and three drone strings, and in the ekanda form carved from a single block of jackwood so that bowl, neck and head have no joints to damp the sound.
रंगमंच
String-and-rod puppetry performed at night at village festivals, with puppets up to a metre tall worked from a bamboo bridge above the stage and a story drawn from the epics. The puppeteer carries the rod on his head, which is what allows a single operator to manage the weight.
All-night street theatre of the Mahabharata cycle, performed in the open with painted faces and enormous headgear, most often around Draupadi Amman temples. Strongest to the north, but performed across the delta's dry margins.
शिल्प
Because the mould is destroyed to release the icon, every piece is a unique cast — there is no such thing as a reproduction, only a new carving. The sthapathis of Swamimalai work to the proportional canons of the Shilpa Shastras and trace their trade to the temple-building programmes of Rajaraja I. Registered in 2008-09.
सामग्री: Panchaloha — historically gold, silver, copper, zinc and lead; now largely copper, brass and tin. तकनीक: Lost wax, madhuchchishta vidhana. A model is made in beeswax mixed with resin and groundnut oil, coated in three graded clay layers whose innermost is Cauvery alluvium ground with charred husk and dung, fired to drain the wax, and filled with molten alloy. The mould is then broken.
The high relief is what separates it from the Mysore painting it shares an ancestry with — Mysore keeps its gesso low and its landscapes elaborate, Thanjavur raises the gesso across large areas and keeps the figure frontal and static. Developed under the Thanjavur Maratha court and registered in 2007-08.
सामग्री: Jackwood or teak plank, cotton, limestone gesso, gold leaf, glass or semi-precious stones. तकनीक: Cloth is pasted to a plank, primed with chalk, drawn, then built up in high-relief gesso before gold leaf is laid over the raised areas and stones set into them. Colour goes on last.
Registered in 2012-13, and the first musical instrument in India to receive a geographical indication.
सामग्री: Jackwood, brass frets, beeswax and charcoal. तकनीक: The ekanda veena is carved bowl, neck and yali head from one block; the sada form is made in parts and joined. Frets are bedded in a wax-and-charcoal compound that can be reseated by ear.
One village supplies most of the concert-grade nagaswarams in South India. The long pari instrument replaced the shorter timiri in the twentieth century when players began performing to larger halls. Registered in 2022.
सामग्री: Aacha wood (Hardwickia binata), metal bell. तकनीक: Seasoned hardwood bored and reamed by hand, with the bore profile set by ear rather than by gauge.
The nodding-head doll, made in pairs as a bride-and-groom set and given at weddings and at Golu. Registered in 2008-09.
सामग्री: Terracotta or papier-mâché, painted. तकनीक: A weighted, rounded base and a separately balanced head and torso, so the doll nods and rights itself.
A nineteenth-century Maratha-court presentation object that survived as a wedding gift. Registered in 2007-08.
सामग्री: Brass, copper and silver. तकनीक: Repoussé figures in silver and copper cut and set into a brass plate, so the deity stands proud of the ground in two contrasting metals.
The standing temple lamp of the Tamil house, made by the Kammalar smiths of one village. Registered in 2012-13.
सामग्री: Brass and bell metal. तकनीक: Cast in parts by the lost-wax and sand methods, then turned on a lathe and assembled by threading.
Pith models of the Big Temple and of Tirupati, made for pilgrims and for temple decoration. Registered in 2021.
सामग्री: Netti — the pith of the sola plant. तकनीक: Sheets of pith shaved thin and built up into temple models, garlands and figures without any adhesive frame.
Not a craft for sale but a live technical tradition, sustained at the Saraswathi Mahal Library, which holds tens of thousands of palm-leaf manuscripts and is one of the country's designated manuscript conservation centres.
सामग्री: Palmyra leaf, lamp black, citronella and lemongrass oils. तकनीक: Stylus incision, ink rubbed into the cut, leaves oiled and re-strung.
Chola Nadu के नृत्य, संगीत, रंगमंच और शिल्प — शास्त्रीय शैलियों से लेकर गाँव की परंपराओं तक। (20)