A sage (muni) in ancient Indian legend. The Nātyaśāstra, a Sanskrit text on drama and its ingredient arts composed or compiled from earlier source probably in the early centuries ce, is ascribed to him. The work was the first comprehensive treatise on the ancient Indian drama, and as music and dance were an important element in the production of such works it contains detailed chapters on the theory and practice of these arts. Like all early Sanskrit technical treatises it was traditionally ascribed to a mythical or legendary sage. There is internal evidence to show that many other treatises had been composed previously and were used for this compilation. It is thus a composite work, but in the material it describes and in its method there is also some appearance of unity and consistency; some scholars have argued that there was a strong unitary guiding authorial or editorial hand behind its composition. The Bharata-Nātyaśāstra in some form or other was cited constantly for its authority in dramaturgy, poetics, music and dance by authors from early medieval times on; it was the most influential source in the early discipline of sangīta-śāstra, and all subsequent theoreticians tended at least notionally to trace their intellectual tradition back to Bharata. However, the text as we now have it became available to modern scholarly scrutiny only over the last century. The American Sanskrit scholar Fitz-Edward Hall referred to manuscripts of the work in his 1865 edition of another Sanskrit treatise on dramaturgy. The history of the subsequent transmission of the text is related by Rocher (1981); there has not yet been sufficient clarity in the manuscript evidence for a fully critical edition and translation, and the different printed editions reflect the differences in coverage and chapter divisions between the regional manuscript recensions. Nevertheless a good idea of the scope of the Nātyaśāstra can be gained from the translations and summaries that have been published. Joanny Grosset, whose pioneering study of Indian music and its history was published in 1921 in Lavignac's Encyclopédie, based his earlier (1888) book on manuscript evidence, and in 1898 published a part of the Sanskrit text in Paris.
Musical references are scattered throughout the work in places where musical practice impinges on other topics in dramaturgy. Music is extensively and systematically treated in its own right in the last quarter of the work. This includes general theory of melody (pitch, intervals, scales and modes) and rhythm (basic concepts of time division, metrical organization, uses of metre in song compositions, tempo and punctuation), ornamentation and configuration of notes in melodic invention, formal structure of song compositions, variations of melodic style, instrumental classification and playing techniques, and qualitative criteria for assessing the characteristics of singers, players and teachers and disciples. There are many difficulties in the interpretation of this material, but English translations may be found in Ghosh (1961) and Rangacharya (1996). The musical topics are summarised in order, with comparative material from other early Indian texts, in Nijenhuis (1981).
J. Grosset: Contributions à l'étude de la musique hindoue (Paris, 1888)
J. Grosset, ed.: Bhāratīya-nātya-çāstram: traité de Bharata sur le théâtre, texte sanskrit (Paris, 1898) [with Fr. introduction]
M. Ghosh, ed.: The Nātyaśāstra: a Treatise on Hindu Dramaturgy and Histrionics (Calcutta, 1961)
G.H. Tarlekar: Studies in the Nātyaśāstra, with Special Reference to the Sanskrit Drama in Performance (Delhi, 1975, 2/1991)
E. te Nijenhuis: ‘Die Musik im altindischen Theater nach dem Nātyaśāstra’, Altindien, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, ii/8, ed. W. Kaufmann (Leipzig, 1981), 188–96
L. Rocher: ‘The Textual Tradition of the Bhāratīyanātyaśāstra: a Philological Assessment’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, xxv (1981), 107–30
A. Rangacharya, ed.: The Nātyaśāstra: English Translation with Critical Notes (rev. ed., New Delhi, 1996)
For further bibliography see India, §III, 6
JONATHAN KATZ