ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing ArtsISSN (Online): 2582-7472
Cultures of Orality and Performativity in the Performing Art Tradition of Purulia Chhau Maheshwar Kumar 1 1 PhD
Research Scholar, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute
of Science Education and Research (NISER) Bhubaneswar, an OCC of Homi Bhabha
National Institute (HBNI), Odisha, India 2 Reader-F,
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Science
Education and Research (NISER) Bhubaneswar, an OCC of Homi Bhabha National
Institute (HBNI), Odisha, India 3 Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) Bhubaneswar, an
OCC of Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI), Odisha, India
1. INTRODUCTION Oral
tradition, an intangible form of human communication and a representation of
shared beliefs, is expressed in community ideals and embodied in material
forms, such as dance and music. For ages, the indigenous modes of
communication, created and transformed in and through the cultures of orality
and other symbolic forms, have kept a better expression of human existence
alive. Before the written word came into existence, as Elizabeth Bell rightly
pointed out, “the information was stored in bodies, in cultural memories, and
oral traditions” Bell (2008), p. 57 and enacted in the forms of
performances. These performances are commonly associated with means of orally
transmitted cultures and are constituted in and through the folkloric
tradition. According to Alan Dundes, folklore can
refer to “any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common
factor…traditions which help the group have a sense of group identity” (1965,
p. 2). Folklore depends upon the criterion of oral transmission and generally
reflects history, human fantasy, objective reality, and psychological reality Dundes (1965). Folklore includes myths, legends,
folktales, jokes, proverbs, riddles, chants, folk costumes, folk dances, folk
drama, folk art, folk belief, folk medicine, folk songs, and so on. One such
folklore tradition of oral expression realized in performance is the performing
art tradition of Purulia Chhau, a tribal,
martial, masked dance-drama form of Eastern India. India, with its various
races and conditions, has been a veritable treasure house of dance forms for
centuries, and the folk dance of Purulia Chhau
is not an exception. In a pamphlet on Folk Dances of India, published by
the Publication Division of India, it has been asserted that “the Indian
folk dance is simple without being naive, for behind its simplicity lie both a
profundity of conception and a directness of expression which are of a great
value” (1965, p. 3). Similarly, the folk dance of Purulia Chhau
is woven into the lives of the people who invariably derive their primary
inspiration from the movements associated with the performance of daily tasks
and the physical environment, which, by and large guides their development and
provides the fitting stage for their performances. Within
this context, since primeval times, Purulia Chhau
has been transmitted orally over generations, and it has remained the same in
the present times. Having no written performance text available, all the
actions of Purulia Chhau, such as
gestures, postures, dance movements, and so on, are materialized through the
various performative utterances by the vocalist, who provide the storyline of
the Chhau repertoires; musicians, who bring
musical tempo into dance movements; and the dancers, who are dressed in big
headgear masks and dynamic costumes enact the actual Chhau
performances. Referring to the social and cultural perspectives and employing a
qualitative approach as the primary methodological tool, the present paper, at
the first level, seeks to explore how the cultures of orality are handed down
in Purulia Chhau from one generation to the
other through the Guru-Shishya-Parampara (succession of teachers and
disciples) and discusses the Chhau repertoires
enacted during the actual performances. It also examines how this
folk-dance form manifests cultural values, shared beliefs, and customs and
creates a cultural identity for the concerned people. At the second level, this
paper analyses how the idea of performativity works on its reflexive level in
Purulia Chhau and creates meaning for the
audiences. It also emphasizes the performative procedure invoked and executed
by all the performers wholly and correctly. 2. Cultures of Orality Oral
cultures, whose thoughts and experiences are based on oral traditions, are
believed to be as old as humanity. Oral traditions/expressions are created by
people or communities, associated with rituals and social events, and handed
down from our ancestors through word of mouth. Oral traditions generally
include songs, tales, dance, chant, riddles, proverbs, etc., which work as the
connecting thread of history, knowledge, traditions, rituals, medicines, world
views, and so on. Since orality is defined as the thought and verbal
expressions in a society, remembered mnemonically, and performed by the people
collectively, they do not have single authorship. Ong (1982) in his famous book Orality and
Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982) discusses quite a few
unique aspects of orality- (i) oral cultures follow
additive patterns to memorize and recall the narrative, (ii) oral societies rely on general aggregative
formula to describe the characters or events in a performance, (iii) oral
narratives use repetition and use epithets and adjective phrases to describe a
person and to remember the storylines, (iv) oral communities tend to be
conservative and traditional in order to preserve the tune and put new words
into the tune, (v) oral narratives are closely related to the human lifeworld
and its elements are drawn from the milieu of the people who are part of the
custom, knowledge, and the environment, (vi) orality is agnostically toned
which situates knowledge within a context struggle, (vii) oral cultures are
empathetic and participatory as they are closely linked to the community,
represent communal voices, subjective in nature, identify themselves with the communities,
find elements in cultural practices, and reflect certain food habit or ritual
of a community, (viii) oral societies are homeostatic in nature and thus we
find happy resolution at the end in almost all oral narratives which
establishes an equilibrium, (ix) oral thoughts are situational rather than
abstract and that is why they are drawn from the life and environment of the
communities. Ong has also detailed three kinds of thought or consciousness tied
to cultural knowledge- mnemonic thought based on memory, chirographic thought
based on handwriting, and typographic thought based on print and the production
of writing through mechanical means. Ong also anticipated the fourth
consciousness that he called ‘post-typography: electronics’
or the electronic transformation of verbal expression through television,
radio, and sound recordings. Within
this framework, in this paper, we propose to contextualize the performing art
tradition of Purulia Chhau, which is entirely
based on mnemonic thought. Purulia Chhau, over
the years, almost as old as 150 years, has been passed on through guru-shishya
Parampara or the master-disciple tradition. This folk-dance tradition has
the oral characteristics of being collective, having auditory experiences,
being engaged and stored through contextualized impersonal dynamics, being
primarily communal and participatory, having a folk style of composition and
practice, being associated with performance, having rituals and ceremonies, and
based on the temporal nature termed as events. In its primeval times, this
folk-dance form was primarily performed by the scheduled tribes and castes;
among those, the Bhumij, the Mura, the Santal, and the Kurmi were the crucial
stakeholders Bhattacharyya (1972). However, in contemporary times,
Purulia Chhau has been performed by various ‘jatis or biocultural formations of
communities’ Rao (2020) through mnemonic thought. Venkat
Rao has specified mnemocultural affirmations into two
distinct technics of memory: lithic and alithic
(2015, p. 25). On the one hand, “lithic technic prefers inscribing articulated
memories in external retentional systems”, and on the other hand, “alithic memories perennially nurture and retain memory in
the complex apparatus of the body in which they emerge” Rao (2015), p. 25. Within these mnemocultural affirmations, the Purulia Chhau
tradition falls under the alithic modes, which embody
and enact memories through acoustic and gestural performative technics. Having
no written literature available, Purulia Chhau
mainly relies on the art of storytelling (see Figure 1). In its primaeval times, no
particular themes were assigned to performing Chhau.
However, with the emergence of Hinduism, Purulia Chhau
adopted its themes from the Hindu epics of The Ramayana or the story of
the prince Rama and his wife Sita, and their quest to defeat the demon king
Ravana; The Mahabharata or the epic poem that covers a wide range of
subjects, including the history of the world, the adventures of great heroes,
and the morality of war; and The Puranas or the Hindu folktales that are
centered around the gods and goddesses of Hinduism and characterized by their
use of divine characters and supernatural events Pillai (2023). It is worth mentioning that
manifold contemporary themes have also become an integral part of Purulia Chhau's repertoires for non-event performance calls.
Figure 1
This mnemocultural form of Purulia Chhau
is mainly characterized by its improvisational nature, with the storyteller
often adapting the story to suit the audience and the situation. There are
quite a few mnemonic devices used in the form of musical instruments, such as dhol, dhumsha, shehnai,
modern synthesizer, and so on. However, as the faces of the dancers are
attired with big headgear masks, they cannot speak any dialogue during
performances. Therefore, they communicate all the meanings through their richly
adorned gestures, postures, and various body movements. The dancers are
actively driven by the storyteller in Purulia Chhau,
known as the Jhumuria or the Jhumur singer, who, during a performance, recites
the storyline to the audience and sings the folk song of Jhumur.
Jhumur is an integral part of Purulia Chhau as it serves as an essential means of passing
down every day cultural values and beliefs from one generation to the other. One
such Jhumur song composition used during the beginning
of any performances of Purulia Chhau named as Sabha
Bandana or welcome song is mentioned below: “Suno suno
sovajone Sobe kori nibedon he Nibedon sovar majhare he Aar apnader
amantrone Amra eikhane
korechi agomon he Suno suno sovajon” (Our request to all the attendees of the
meeting We are here at your invitation To serve our dances) The
characters of Purulia Chhau are mainly divided
into gods and goddesses, who serve as powerful and benevolent forces; demons
and monsters, who serve as the means of exploring the darker side of human
nature and represent the forces of evil; birds and animals, who are often
depicted as anthropomorphic and possessing human-like qualities and abilities;
and the recent interventions of contemporary heroes and heroines, who are
depicted as brave, resourceful, and virtuous, serving as examples of best
qualities of human nature. Moreover, the Purulia Chhau
repertoires of Hindu epics and contemporary tales are characterized by their
grand and heroic representations, often centered around adventures and
struggles, and explore important themes such as love, loyalty, courage,
determination, and so on. In due course of performing Chhau,
this tradition brings to life the essence of our culture, collecting from the
Hindu epics of Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, and contemporary themes,
which we shall address by analyzing one repertoire of Purulia Chhau from each category in the following sections.
The below analysis of repertoires is important because they formulate the main
plot of the Chhau performances and work as
performance text, and also drive the performers to enact the theatrical
language through gestures, postures, and dance movements. 2.1. Sitaharan or Abduction of Sita (collected from the Ramayana) 1)
The Precise Story: Sita is
the daughter of King Janak of Mithila and the wife of Ram Chandra. Immediately
after marriage, to respect his father Dashrath’s promises, Lord Ram, his wife
Sita, and his brother Lakshman had to go into exile for fourteen years. They
moved from one place to another in the forest and finally reached Panchavati,
located on the banks of river Godavari, where they built their hut to live
along the riverside, having pleasant surroundings and greenery. One day, the
demon Shurpanakha, sister of Ravana, was stuck by the adorable looks of Ram and
Lakshman in the forest, and she immediately fell in love. She first approached
Ram and requested to marry her, but Ram informed her about his wife, Sita. She
then approached Lakshman, who rejected her, and out of jealousy, she pounced
upon Sita. Seeing this, Lakshman angrily drew out his sword and cut off
Shurpanakha’s nose. Shurpanakha flew to Lanka to seek protection from his
brother, Ravana and pleaded to him for revenge. 2)
Main Storyline: Ravana,
desperate to avenge the insult of his sister, Shurpanakha, reached out to demon
Maricha, the master of disguise. Maricha, disguising himself as a golden deer,
started roaming in front of Sita, who asked Ram to catch it for her. Ram ran
after the deer, who led him deep into the forest and was finally struck by an
arrow of Ram. Maricha, then, according to Ravana’s plan, screamed, imitating
Ram and asking for help from Sita and Lakshman. Hearing the scream, Sita got
tensed and requested Lakshman to look after his brother, Ram. Anxious for the
safety of Sita, Lakshman drew a line across Sita and asked her not to cross it
until he returned. From a distance, Ravana watched all this, and as soon as
Lakshman left the hut in search of Ram, Ravana disguised himself as a hermit
and approached Sita, asking for food. Ravana cleverly insisted Sita to come out
of the Lakshman’s rekhha (safety line) and
offer him the food. Before Sita could realize the truth, as soon as she came
out of the line, Ravana transformed into his original form, abducted Sita, and
took her in his chariot towards Lanka. Sita screamed for help. The great eagle,
Jatayu, fought with Ravana to save her, but Ravana mercilessly cut Jatayu off
his wing. Sita made all sorts of attempts to escape, but all went in vain. She
took off her jewelry and threw it down, hoping that her husband Ram may see it
and come to save her from Ravana’s abduction. 2.2. Abhimanyu
Badh or Killing of Abhimanyu (collected from the Mahabharata) 1)
The Precise Story: Abhimanyu
is the son of great Arjuna and Subhadra. While in his mother’s womb, Abhimanyu
learned to enter chakravyuha, or a
circular battle formation, while Arjuna discussed this with Subhadra. However,
after listening to it, Subhadra dozed to sleep, and Arjuna stopped telling the
technique of escaping from the chakravyuha.
Therefore, the baby in the womb, Abhimanyu, remained unlearned from the
escape route of chakravyuha. Gradually,
Arjuna was grown up and trained under Pradyumna and his father and was brought
up under Lord Krishna’s guidance. Unlike his father, Abhimanyu was considered a
courageous and dashing warrior with incredible prodigious feats. As a warrior,
he had killed important personalities in the war of Mahabharata and showed
great valor. On the 13th day of the Mahabharat war, the Kauravas
challenged the Pandavas to break chakravyuha,
which they accepted, knowing that Krishna and Arjuna knew to empower it. 2)
Main Storyline: On the
battle day of chakravyuha during the
Mahabharata war, Krishna and Arjuna were dragged into fighting a war with the
Samsaptaka army on another front. Finding no respite, the Pandavas, having
accepted the challenge, had to use young Abhimanyu’s knowledge of breaking chakravyuha. This chakravyuha
was tactically designed by Dronacharya, the royal
preceptor, by building a maze with thousands of soldiers to trap Abhimanyu.
Abhimanyu was successful in breaking the chakravyuha.
However, the other Pandavas who came to assist Abhimunya
were effectively cut off by the Kauravas. Thus, only Abhimanyu was left to fend
for himself against the entire army of the Kauravas. Before he began fighting
with the Kauravas, Dronacharya requested Abhimanyu to
rethink about his decision. The 16-year-old fearless Abhimanyu charged up with
his bravery, invited the Kauravas to fight with him. Abhimanyu valiantly fought
single-handedly with the saptarathi, or
the seven warriors, including Dronacharya, Duryadhan, Dussasan, Aswathama, Joyadrath, Sakuni, and Karna. With relentless ferocity, the mighty
battle that followed Abhimanyu, slaughtered the ordinary and mighty warriors of
the Kauravas, including Dronacharya’s son, Laxman.
Upon witnessing the death of his beloved son, Dronacharya
got furious and ordered the entire Kauravas to attack Abhimanyu. Beyond the
ethics of warships, all the Kauravas simultaneously fought with Abhimanyu.
Finally, Abhimanyu, who had the knowledge of entering the chakravyuha
but not the knowledge to escape from chakravyuha,
was killed by the Kauravas shortly after his skull was crushed with a mace. 2.3. Santhal Bidroha or Santhal Rebellion (collected from the contemporary themes) 1)
The Precise Story: The
Santhal tribe is spread across three states- West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Odisha
in India. They are mostly remembered for their first revolt against the British
and landlords for their right to live on their land without paying hefty taxes.
Back in the nineteenth century, when the Santhal uprising began to emerge due
to the fact that the tribe members were asked to leave their hills and the
Britishers imposed huge taxes on land, the tribe members were treated as
enslaved people. The united efforts of the British and the landlords snatched
away the peaceful existence of the tribe members. The landlords provided them
with high-interest loans and gradually caught them in a debt trap. Their land
properties were confiscated as foreclosure and used by the landlords for their
sheer benefit. 2)
Main Storyline: Two fiery
leaders, namely Sidho and Kanho
Murmu, hailed from the Santhal clan and led the movement of the Santhal
rebellion against the landlords and British tax regime on June 30, 1855. They
used their uniquely folded Sal leaves as their symbol of communication system
and mobilized ten thousand people to begin their rebellion. Along with them
joined their brothers Chand and Bhairab and sisters Phulo
and Jhano Murmu, who inspired other women to join the
rebellion against the Britishers. They installed their administration by
denying to pay taxes to the Britishers and money to the landlords. The Santhals
started getting support from other tribes and backward communities,
intensifying their rebellion. The Britishers got furious to see its grave
intensity and started arresting the Santhal leaders. Soon, the rebellion spread
like wildfire as the Santhals refused to submit before the British rifles and
artillery. Almost 60,000 people joined this rebellion, and over 10,000 Santhals
were martyred. The Britishers even used elephants to destroy the huts of the
tribal people. In response to it, Sidho and Kanho fought valiantly against all the odds till their last
breath. Finally, the Britishers trapped Sidho and Kanho with their colonial powers, and were hanged publicly.
There are
manifold repertoires present in the Purulia Chhau
tradition. The above-discussed three repertoires are the exemplum of the themes
mainly collected from the Hindu epics and the contemporary themes based on
social, political, biodiversity, and cultural aspects. It is worth mentioning
that both the Chhau performance artists and
the audience are pretty familiar with those repertoires through the mnemocultural affirmations passed on through various modes
of storytelling. Because of this familiarity, the audience generally does not
face any difficulty in decoding meanings of the performances and socio-cultural
messages inherent in a Chhau repertoires.
These messages are mainly decodified in the forms of masks, costumes, gestures,
postures, and the movements of the head, chest, hands, waist, and legs of the
performers. Therefore, these mediums create the basic ideas of performativity
among the performers and the audience. Moreover, how these ideas of
performativity work at their reflexive level and generate meaning is what we
shall critically analyze in the following sections of this paper. 3. Cultures of Performativity The word
‘performative’ indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of
an action. ‘Performative’ word was first coined by J. L. Austin in 1955 in his
Harvard lectures published as How to Do Things with Words (1962). The
term, in general, is used both as a noun and an adjective. However, its meaning
in performance theory has been used adjectively “to denote the performance
aspect of any object or practice under consideration”
Loxley (2007), p. 140. It may be seen as a vast
array of actions, ways of speaking and writing, simulations, fiction, and
hyperrealities. Performative, a particular type of utterance in the Austinian
sense, means “to say something is to do something; or in which by saying or in
saying something we are doing something” Austin (1962), p. 12. Austin gives examples of
utterances such as, “I take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife”, or “I name
this ship the Queen Elizabeth”, or “I give and bequeath my watch to my
brother”, or “I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow” (1962, p. 5). In these
examples, to utter sentences in appropriate circumstances is not just to
describe the doings, but it is actually to do it- as uttered in the course of
the marriage ceremony, as uttered when smashing the bottle against the stem, as
occurring in a will, and so on. Therefore, performatives can be seen as a
promise, command, create, contract, bet, deliver verdicts, christen ships, etc.
Consequently, the allied term ‘performativity’ came into general use later for
this more general application of the performative. However, it is worth
mentioning that since the primary purpose of performativity was to do
something, “its success had to be judged not on the basis of truth or falsity,
as was the case with assertion, but on whether the intended act was in fact
successfully achieved or not” Carlson (2018), p. 68. Moreover, performativity as
a means of doing a performance or performing, as rightly pronounced by Simon
Shepherd that “it is the assimilation of performativity to the activity of
performing that prepares the ground for process by which everything can with
apparent legitimacy be called ‘performance’” (2016, p. 197). Along with the
emergence of performance studies, especially after the 1960s, performativity
has become an important theoretical aspect of performance analysis to address
questions of embodiment, social relations, ideological interpellation,
emotional and political effects, etc. Even the tendency to see theatrical
performance as merely the reiteration of dramatic text has significantly
changed. Now, the text does not prescribe meanings of the performance rather,
“it is the construction of the text within the specific apparatus of the
ceremony that creates performative force” Shepherd (2016), p. 192. Within this theoretical
framework, we critically look at the folk performances of Purulia Chhau as a performance text since there is no
dramatic text available and how the performative utterances in the form of
acting styles, directorial conventions, and scenography are created to do the
performed activity or performativity. 4. Performing Performativity In oral
tradition cultures, the primary orality of speech is based on sound, and “the
basic characteristic of sound which frames orality is movement” Mahapatra (1994), p. 77. The sound cannot be
picturized in immobility, but they are performed in symbolic actions,
materialization of objects, or variously loaded gestures and corresponding
meanings. In the Purulia Chhau tradition,
those meanings, in the form of sound, have been conveyed by the Jhumuria or the vocalist present during a
live performance. The vocalist has the creative technique of making a tale
alive through sound and sight and the active involvement of the dancers; Chhau's repertoires take a meaningful form of
dramatization. However, the repertoires of Purulia Chhau,
mainly collected from the Hindu epics, are already well known to the public. In
order to make a performance successful, the audience’s previous knowledge helps
them enjoy the “renderings of various episodes, appreciate the innovations, and
anticipate the thrills to come” Vansina (1985), p. 35. Still, performing a
meaningful dance through various modes of gestures, postures, and body
movements remains a performative challenge for the dancers. Therefore, to
materialize all these challenges, the dancers had to adopt a lot of
improvisations to bring the performative gist of performed actions. In the
process of creating performativity, the most significant role is played by the Chhau dancers, who could specialize in particular
types of dancing. The dancers gain that knowledge from their ancestors
mnemonically, and after years of practice, one becomes an expert. For example,
the dance of Ganesha by Gopal Suri, the monkey dance by Lal Mahato, the Shiva
dance by Anil Mahato, the tiger dance by Nepal Mahto, the dance of Ravana by
Patal Mahato, the Peacock dance by Chepa Bauri, the dance of Abhimanyu by
Satish Mahato, and so on, are known for their dance expertise. The late
Padmashree awardee, Gambhir Singh Mura from Charida
village, had no formal teacher to teach him Chhau.
He had learned the techniques of Chhau when he
used to take the cows into the jungle to grease grass, where he witnessed real
birds and animals and tried to imitate their gestural actions. However, the
present generation of Purulia Chhau artists
has the privilege to know the art of dancing Chhau
from their masters or ancestors or even from the various Chhau
dance academies. After receiving basic and advanced training in performing Chhau, the audience judges a dancer’s efficiency
during the full-fledged performance events. Purulia Chhau,
for ages, is ceremonially performed during Chaitra Parva as a ritual
dance form in front of a Shiva temple because Lord Shiva in Hindu mythology is
considered the Lord of Dancers. Interestingly, Chhau
has been performed throughout the year in religious and non-religious events
with the advancement of time and space. However, how the dancers create a
meaningful performance and generate performativity is what we shall analyze in
the following sections, in sequences of Chhau
repertoires. To yield
new information, various mnemonic devices are used as cues destined to recall a
memory. Among those mnemonic aids, in the form of music, rhythm, and melody are
the most important. In Purulia Chhau, the
elements of melody are provided by shehnai, and rhythms are generated by
dhol and dhumsha.
Before the actual performances of Chhau begin,
two dhol artists enter the dancing arena and
invoke the performing landscape for the upcoming dance to happen. The dhol artists and their drum rhythms work as an
invitation to the surrounding village audiences to come and witness Chhau. It is only through the dhol
artists that the initial tonal language of the performance is set up and
subsequently invites the characters to come forward in the dancing arena. After
this inaugural setup, the vocalist begins his welcome address by uttering the
names of the Chhau troupe and their village,
the name of the Chhau repertoire to be
performed, and the dancers and musicians who take part. Then, he invokes Lord
Ganesha, asks for blessings for a successful performance, and finally invites
the dancers to begin their performances. Immediately after, the Chhau dancers, according to their serials of
role-playing, assemble at the entrance corridor, which leads to the main
dancing arena. The vocalist then, in the form of jhumur
songs, utters the story's backdrop and invites the first character to enact the
performed actions. Thus, the utterances of the vocalist direct the dancers to
enact particular dance movements. Simultaneously, on the one hand, the
vocalist, with his tonal language, utters the main storyline. On the other
hand, the dancers, by listening to those mnemonic aids, enact the gestural
actions to create meaning for the performed acts. For example, when the
vocalist gives cues for a battle, the Chhau
dancers start fighting with one another, and the musicians provide a
high-pitched tone to create the battle mood. When the storyline demands
resolution among the characters, the dancers enact their head, chest, hands,
waist, and various leg movements, and the shehnai and a modern
synthesizer provide the musical tone for the atmosphere. Therefore, without any
utterance from the dancer’s side, they are actively channelized to do some
performed actions when the vocalist, with his storyline, and the musicians,
with their performative tempo, provide them cues for respective performances
(see Figure 2). Moreover, the vocalist’s
performative utterances of plots in the form of jhumur
songs lead to incidents in the act's performance in appropriate circumstances.
For example, in the Sitaharan episode,
when the vocalist utters that Laxman drew a safety line for Sita and leaves in
search of Ram, Lakshman actually drew a line in the dancing arena and warns
Sita through his gestures and body movements not to come out of it at any cost.
In the Abhimanyu Badh episode, when the
vocalist utters that Abhimanyu’s body was left unattended on the battlefield,
the Chhau character playing the role of
Abhimanyu actually lies in the dancing arena by simulating death. In the
contemporary episode of Santhal Bidroha,
simultaneous utterances of the vocalist about Sidho
and Kanho’s public hanging and the theatrical
symbolic representations of the same are performed with a gloomy musical tonal
language provided by the musicians. Thus, all performers in Purulia Chhau are not always doing the things they are
merely playing at; they actually cry, laugh, feel sad, get angry, etc., in
actual means. In such ways, the audience becomes aware of the plots of the Chhau repertoires and witnesses those stories
enacted in the form of theatrical performances. Figure 2
To
provide the performances with proper acting styles, directorial conventions,
and scenography, the dancers are dressed up with big headgear masks and the
desired costumes of the respective characters. Therefore, Ganesha enters the
stage with an elephant-headed mask and two additional artificial hands, Shiva
with his matted hair mask and trident in his hand, Kartika with his vehicle
peacock, Durga with her ten hands and arms, and so on, which provides a proper
scenography of the performed event in respective repertoires. This informs the
audience of proper cues about the performing character’s identity fixed within
the Chhau masks. The vocalist and the
musicians correctly communicate their theatrical directions as per the
repertoires' requirements. Thus, the whole idea of performative utterance in
Purulia Chhau lies behind the performance of
an action or act. When we say something in order to do something, we do so by
saying three kinds of acts as proposed by J. L. Austin: Locutionary act, which is roughly
equivalent to uttering certain sentence with a certain sense and reference…
illocutionary acts such as informing, ordering, warning, undertaking, &c.,
i.e., utterances which have certain (conventional) force… perlocutionary acts:
what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing,
persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading. (1962, p. 108) These
acts have different senses or dimensions of using utterances in a sentence or
language, but all are simply actions. To describe it explicitly in the context
of Purulia Chhau, the locutionary act can be
the welcome address of the vocalist, which contains certain kinds of meaning to
the audience about the Chhau troupe and their
performance to be enacted. Illocutionary acts may contain the force behind the
performative utterances of the vocalist and the solid musical ensemble, which
actively drives the dancers to perform dance enactments. Finally, the
perlocutionary act can be achieved when the audience witnesses the dancers’
theatrical improvisations in the form of enacting the acts of realities of the
imaginary and highlighting theatrical symbolic structures of the Chhau repertoire in question. Therefore, we may say
that the collectively performed acts of the vocalist and musicians who create
vocal and tonal utterances and the performed actions of the dancers are
incidentally saying something as well as doing something. However, as Austin
opines, “we may feel that they are not essentially true or false as statements
are” (p. 139). Since communication is considered an intended meaning,
“performative communication depends significantly on intentional meaning; it is
structured on the basis of the presence of a speaking subject” Sirey (2009), p. 133. Therefore, we may say that
performative utterances created by the vocalist, musicians, and dancers in the
Purulia Chhau tradition do not describe or
represent something; instead, they are public performances that do something by
confirming a conventional procedure. N. D. (1956) 5. Conclusion An oral
tradition's key processes/experiences are mainly based on composition,
transmission, and memory Finnegan (1992), p. 106. These experiences, in the
Purulia Chhau tradition, are intellectualized
mnemonically through years of practice, repetition, memory, and retention that
only exist in performance. They do not have any written text, but the form of
performance is “developed in and through improvisation, plans, action in flow,
and repeated enactments” Bell (2008), p. 74, considering the whole
culture of the respective community as an ensemble of texts. The tales of
Purulia Chhau, collected from the Hindu epics,
are related to myth and legend, based on the people’s day-to-day life. At
present, quite a few Purulia Chhau artists
have started writing and composing their own Chhau
repertoires, to name a few are- Bikal Rajak from Shitalpur, Nipen Sahis from Baligara, Baghambar Singh Mura from Gobindapur,
Kartik Singh Mura from Charida, Shibcharan
Mahato from Sindri, Kanchan Roy from Dumurdi, Brindaban Kumar from Kochahatu, Binadhar Kumar from Bamnia,
Jagannath Choudhury from Maldi, Hem Chandra Mahato
from Palma, Giasuddin Ansary from Palma, and so on.
They write their self-innovative Chhau
repertoires and practice it until they achieve close resemblance of the
storylines in regards with its performed actions. Due to the ongoing demands of
frequent event managements, those repertoires may vary in terms of the duration
of the performances. Moreover, in Purulia Chhau
repertoires, instead of the direct language of the Hindu epics, the “local
lexicon is used to give it a local flavour so that
the story becomes their own story” Kumar (2018), p. 251. The jhumur
songs also aid these stories as the collective memory of our forgotten past and
glorious history and also deal with social life and everyday problems the
people face. Concerning the relationship between human beings and nature and
the socio-cultural and moral values of these tales, Anand Mahanand has rightly
pointed out that: The religious tales are told not to
entertain the audience but to evoke a feeling of devotion and fear for the
deities. These tales make the audience listen to the tales with attention and
devotion and practice things they learn in everyday life. From these tales we
come to know the relationship between humans and the supernatural. They tell us
about the unlimited power and capabilities of God and goddesses and the
miracles performed by them. Mahanand (2018), p. 56 On the other hand, the sense of performativity is created among the audience when they can decode the inherent symbolic meanings between a tale and its performed acts. They look at the stage like the spectator looking into the frame of a naturalistic, perspectival painting. On the other hand, the Chhau performers try their best to create lifelike representations of the mythological and contemporary characters, “inhabiting spaces configured to resemble those inhabited in real life. What one saw onstage, therefore, could be described as an ‘iconic sign’, a representation that resembled what it stood for” Loxley (2007), p. 146. In this line of thought, J. L. Austin’s idea of performativity has been very instrumental in understanding how saying or uttering something in the form of outlining the storyline, singing jhumur, and providing musical language leads to do something or what we may call the performed act of actions of the respective Purulia Chhau repertoire. Therefore, intersecting orality and performativity, the performance of Purulia Chhau is seen as a mode of communication or a way of speaking, which mnemonically brings various performative utterances to create a meaningful symbolic performance to the audience. Moreover, oral traditions, as a fundamental key to human action and culture, “always had and continue to have a deeper and more sensual awareness of our uncreated selves and its symbolisation through gestures and therein lies their continued relevance” Mahapatra (1994), p. 78.
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