Saturday, January 31, 2015

The Rare Documents of Jayantika

  The word ‘jayantika’ rings a bell in the mind of each and every Odissi dancers, old or new, upcoming or established, professional o amateur. All of us know that towards the end of the 50’s an association was formed among the guru, intellectuals, dance researchers  and practitioners with the intent to systematize the practice and teaching of the Odissi style as it was known till then. Repertoire and technique was discussed, dress code was decided and fixed and guidelines were laid down for the future generation of Odissi dancers. In few words if we are existing today and dancing away Odissi in the four corners of the globe is largely thanks to Jayantika and the people who took part in it.
  It is then surprising that in the first two publications on Odissi dance, that is  the Marg issue on Odissi curated by M. Khokar in 1960 and the book by D. N. Patnaik published in 1971,  Jayantika and its good intents and purposes don’t find any place. In fact I should say that if I had to base my writing on the few information about it  found in the existing literature on Odissi dance, I would not have much material besides the generic data that all of us already have.
  A chance meeting a couple of years ago, in a social function, with a lady, Vijayalaxmi Das, who introduced herself as the elder daughter of guru Dayanidhi Das, prompted me to ask her if she happened to have  any documents from her father time related to Jayantika. My question it seems sparked some curiosity in her and made her go back and unearth from an old almirah a bunch of hand written loose papers which were laying down since her father death and to which until then she had not given any importance.  The discovery and my enquiries made her aware of the importance of those documents which contain detailed proceedings of all the meetings of Jayantika which took place  from June 1958 onwards, mostly hand written by her father but also by Gora Chand Misra (a journalist), guru Raghu Dutta and few others.
  Although  a teacher by profession, Vijayalaxmi is a trained Hindusthani singer and she is at the head of the Dayanidhi Sruti Kala Parishad in Cuttack which comes out every year  with an annual souvenir called Kala Srujani; in the last four issues of the souvenir,  she has published few of these documents both in the original forms and in the transliterated one.
  Mainly due to the busy schedule of her teaching assignments, it took quite sometime for me to be able to meet her and to get access and take vision of all the remaining papers and when finally it happened I was totally taken aback by the amount of work documented in it. My reviewing of the materials is certainly not over, it actually just started, but I thought it would be  interesting to bring to light whatever discovered so far.

Aims and Motivations

From the introductory speech given by the president Biranchi Narayan Routray ( a journalist who was working for the Prajatantra newspaper) during the first meeting of the association (which was known at first as Nikhila Utkala Nrutya Silpi Sangha) at 3 P.M. on the 22nd of June 1958 at Banka Bazaar, we come to know that the need of the moment was to do research on different aspects of classical and folk dances, to establish rules in the teaching system which would assure uniformity in the execution of bhangi and mudra, to aim at a broader publicity for Odissi dance, and to secure co-operation among the different guru-s and institutions. The agenda of the meeting was: to discuss   difference of opinions among the practitioners, to know the difficulties encountered by the teachers, to establish the required qualifications for becoming members and to chose a name for the new association. At this regard the names proposed were Chhanda o Kala by Mayadhar Rout, Sanja Akhada by Dev Prasad Das, Jayantika by Biranchi Routray (because all the new births are celebrated as jayanti-s), Nada Nupura by Dayanidhi Das and Nrutya Srusti by Gora Chand Misra. The governing body at this stage was formed by Biranchi Routray as president ( he will remain president for about one year until he got shifted to Rourkhela), Dayanidhi Das as general secretary (he will retain this post all through), Dev Prasad Das as joint secretary and Batakrishna Sena as treasurer.
 From the proceedings of one meeting held on the 27th of July 1958 we come to know that some members who had participated in the previous meetings and had been given traveling allowance by the association for coming to Cuttack from their respective places, started to antagonize Jayantika pretending not to know about it and declaring that they had participated only as spectators and not as  active members. In the same proceedings it is also specified that although the participation fee was of 1 Rs., Laxmipriya (Kelucharan Mohapatra’s wife) gave 2 Rs., Gora Chand Misra 3 and Biranchi Routray 5.
 In spite of all the good intentions of the founding members, it  took almost one year for the new association to consolidate and start producing some results. By July 1959 the need to become more united and to safeguard the purity of the style became more and more urgent. During a meeting held on the 3rd of July 1959, Dev Babu refers to the case of a certain Vinod Chopra who had approached him for learning Odissi in a couple of days. In spite of all the pressure put on him and also the possibility to earn good money, he refused. These and other similar episodes made the members more and more convinced of the necessity of establishing a research wing for research on Odissi and folk dances (it is interesting to notice the interest and stress put each time on the study and research on the folk dances along with Odissi which indicates that by that time the dichotomy between the two had not reached the proportion that it has nowadays) under the banner of Jayantika, to assign to each research scholar a particular topic and to ask to each of them to present their report every fortnight to Jayantika . The deliberation at this regard was taken in the meeting of the 11th of July (held in the open space of Kala Vikash Kendra new building) during which it was also decided to ask Orissa Sangeet Academi assistance for the project.
  The next meeting held on the 19th of July at Raghunathji Mandir in Telenga Bazaar, at 1 P.M., was going to be a crucial one. The 9 members present, Dayanidhi Das, Raghunath Dutta, Mayadhar Rout, Balaram Misra, Kartik Gosh, Batakrishna Sen, Kelucharan Mohapatra and Chakradhar Kwanr, signed in blood and ink (the signatures are still visible at the bottom of the paper) the following declaration: “In today meeting we promise that we will abide to the decisions and course of action deliberated by Jayantika and we will not allow any action which will negatively affect Jayantika”.

The repertoire

  Towards the end of July of the same year an other cucial meeting took place. By this time Lokanath Misra ( publisher of Ganatantra) had taken the place of Biranchi Routary as president and Dhiren Pattnaik had become vice-president (he will become the president when, in the beginning of 1960 Lokanath Misra becomes Member of Parliament and shifts to Delhi).The venue for the meeting had also changed to Lokanath Misra’s office room in Dargha bazaar. In this meeting the course of an Odissi program was discussed and the guru-s presented the following proposals: Kelu Babu proposed 5  items (bhumi pranam, batu, pallavi, abhinaya, pahapata), Dev Babu 7 items (bhumi pranam, bandana, batu, ista deva bandana, nartana, ragarupa, pallavi), Dayanidhi Das 5 items (mangala charan, batu, pallavi, abhinaya, ananda nrutya), Dhiren Patnaik 7 items (jagarana, bandana, pallavi, abhinaya, jhantari, batu, sabdam).   At the end they decided for; mangala charan, batu, pallavi, abhinaya, mokshya nata.
 In the proceedings of a meeting held on the 29th of August of the same year we find a detailed description of batu nritya, passed and signed by Batakrishna Sen, Dhayanidhi Das, Raghunath Dutta, Balaram Misra and Dhirendanath Patnaik. The main points are: the item is dedicated to Shiva in the form of Batukaishwara Bhairava, it should start by showing the musicians playing the veena, flute, mardala and manjira, it should contain the sthai ukuta (in one of his article Dhayanidhi Das declares that to chose the opening bols  for the batu both he and Kelu Babu went to Shyam Sunder Singhari and it was he who suggested the by now famous ta kadataka dhi  kadataka ta dhi kadataka jhe ) and a variety of khandi, arasa and muktai, it should contain the following bhangi accompanied by movements of eyes and neck, akunchana, nikunchana, darpana, biraja, kari hasta, kati china, abhimana, parsua mardala, it should strictly not contain the chakra bhramari. The declaration ends with the sentence that everybody should follow this pattern.
 It is well known that Dev Babu and Pankhaj Babu did not agree with this version of batu which came to be known as Kelu gharana. It is interesting to read the version of batu described by Mohan Khokar in the article ‘Technique and Repertoire’ published in the Marg magazine in 1960. This batu which starts with ritualistic actions in honor of Shiva and proceeds  almost like a varnam alternating  passages of nritta  with passages of sahitya could very well be the version which Dev Babu had in mind at that point of time, since also the rest of the repertoire described by Khokar is very similar to the one proposed by Dev Babu in the meeting of July 1959. It could also be the reason why the batu, which is an item of pure dance, is often referred to as batu nritya instead of batu nritta.
 The meetings between July and December 1959 were held almost daily as one can make out by the number of proceedings maintained, many of which are reports of what had been taught that particular day by each guru in the class at Kala Vikash Kendra. It is evident that the get together were happening late at night after all the guru came back from classes and tuitions. Many of these reports contain detailed description of technical aspects such as chari-s, banghi-s, mudra-s and tala patterns with their proper names and way of execution (in one of these reports, signed by Raghu Dutta, we find that among the teachings imparted to the first year students, there where also six types of bandha-s, something which nowadays has been totally discontinue). One wishes that the Odissi Research Centre could have been able to have  access to  these documents when in the 80’s it set about to re-write the theoretic aspects of the dance; this would have been  a deserving  tribute to the work of these   pioneers and would   have added authenticity to the effort.

Programmes

Most of the proceedings of the month of August  1959 are dealing with the organization of the first official dance demonstration curated by Jayantika. Discussions delve around content, dates and who will perform what.  The date of the 14th of September was finally decided after Chief Minister Hare Krishna Mahatab gave his consent to be the Chief Guest (it is heartening to see how at this juncture people from all walks of life, politicians, lawyers, writers, journalists, intellectuals, were sincerely involved and active in the reconstruction  of the Odissi dance, something that would be unthinkable nowadays!). During the program, which was held at the Nari Seva Sangh in Cuttack, Dev Babu gave demonstration of bhangi and pada bheda, Mayadhar Rout of hasta mudra and Jayanti Ghose and Sanjukta Misra (not yet Panigrahi at that point) danced for about 25 min. presenting mangala charan, batu, basanta pallavi, odia abhinaya and mokshya as separate items.
 One should  take note  that by this time some important events had already taken place in the history of Odissi dance; in January 1958 Kelu Babu had accompanied Kalicharan Patnaik to Madras on the occasion of  the All India Dance Seminar held during the 31st Conference of the Music Academy\. On behalf of the Kala Vikash Kendra Sanjukta danced lalita labanga lata accompanied by Kelucharan on the mardala and Balakrishna Das as vocalist while Kalicharan Patnaik read a paper on  the historical and practical aspects of Odissi. On the 5th of  April of the same  year,  Jayanty Ghose and Dev Babu presented  a demonstration  in  New Delhi during the All India Dance Seminar organised by the Sangeet Natak Academi at Bigyan Bhawan. On this occasion too Kalicharan Patnaik read a paper on the classical aspects of the dance and Jayanty danced mangala charana, batu, dekhiba para asare and mokshya although still presented as one single item of about 15 min.
Both these two programs were presented on behalf of Kala Vikash Kendra (as was also the Odissi presented in March 1959  at the All India Dance Festival in Calcutta organised by Nritya Bharati; where Kumkum Das and Krishnapriya Nanda danced  a Radha-Krishna duet accompanied by Kelucharan on the mardala). It is known that the relationship between Jayantika and Kala Vikash Kendra, although both were working towards the same goal and for more than one year the meetings of the first were held in the premises of the second, were not too friendly, or perhaps they became  such once Babulal Doshi started to fear that Jayantika would take away attention and credit from the achievements of the Kendra, to the establishment of which he had dedicated his entire life. Whatever it is, there is no doubt that both these institutions and the people involved in it, have been vital  for the reconstruction and perpetuation of the Odissi dance.
An other important program organised on behalf of Jayantika, the preparation for which started in December itself, was the one put up at Cuttack in June 1960. While on 6th of October 1959 the program put up at Puri was involving not only Odissi dance but also folk dance and classical music, the one planned for June 1960 (the date for this was changed several times) was to be a comparative demonstration between Odissi, Kathak and Bharat Natyam. From December 1959 onwards,  the meetings devoted to the planning of this important demonstration, were attended not only by the guru-s, but also by the dancers involved, Krishanapriya Nanda, Priyambada Mohanty, Jayanti Ghose and Sanjukta Misra. On 30th of June  in the program ‘Comparative study-Bharat Natyam, Kathak and Odissi’, Raghunath Dutta presented Kathak dance, Mayadhar Rout danced the ashtapadi hari riha mugdha in Bharat Natyam style and in Odissi the following items were demonstrated: mangala charan in group by all the 4 dancers, batu by Jayanti and Krishnapriya, pallavi and abhinaya by Sanjukta and Priyambada and mokshya by all the 4 dancers. Accompanying at the mardala was Dayanidhi Das instead of Kelu Babu (  he had not yet recovered from   tuberculosis by then. We know from the proceedings of a meeting held on the 24th of May 1960 that a collection of Rs. 200 had been raised among the members and donated to him for his therapy ).
A felicitation meeting in honour of Dev Babu, who had returned from a successful tour to Australia and Indonesia accompanying Indrani Rehman, was held on the 3rd of December 1959. The speech read in his honour, highlights the great sense of pride felt by all the members at the successful tour of the guru which helped in spreading the fame of the Odissi dance outside India; on the occasion the other accompanying musicians were also felicitated.
It is difficult to establish when exactly Jayantika ceased to exist. There are proceedings dated until 1963/ beginning of ‘64. In a meeting dated 8th August 1963, held at 2 P.M., the members present expressed their happiness at the establishment of the Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalay at Bhubaneswar (which will start the activity from April 1964) but at the same time passed a resolution to invite the Sangeet Natak Academi (under which the Mahavidyalay was going to function) to make sure that the syllabus and curriculum of the Odissi dance course would follow the rules established by Jayantika.
Perhaps it was too much of a dream to think that a body of this kind could maintain the control and dictate  rules  on a discipline like dance which relies so much on the individual talent  and creativity of its exponents. Disagreements and private assignments surfaced perhaps too soon and did not allow  the initial intentions to get fulfilled.  Until today the Odissi masters don’t have a common guideline book to follow  while teaching the theoretic aspects of the dance and have to rely on their individual knowledge and interpretation of the classic texts. I am sure the documents left behind by the Jayantika members, especially the ones concerning the technical aspects and definitions, would be useful in this regard.
The proposed Odissi Museum which the Department of Culture intends to put up in the precincts of the Odissi Research Centre at Bhubaneswar should definitely preserves these original manuscripts  as important documents of the history of Odissi dance. Besides a publication should be curated for the benefit of all the Odissi practitioners, by giving the duly recognition to the Dhayanidhi Sruti Kala Parishad and to its founder,  guru Dhayanidhi Das, one of the many self made artists, dancers and musicians all rolled in one, who have dedicated their entire life to the cause of Odissi dance, but have hardly received any recognition so far.   

References

-Khokar M.,1960,‘Technique and repertoire’,Marg Publications,Vol.XIII (2), Mumbai

-Patnaik D.N., 1985, ‘A History of Jayantika’, Jayantika Souvenir, New Delhi

-Patnaik D.N.,2001, ‘My work on Odissi in association with Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra’, Pradakshina Souvenir, New Delhi

-Citaristi I., 2001, ‘The making of a Guru, Kelucharan Mohapatra, His Life and Times’, Manohar, New Delhi

-Kaktihar A.,(undated) ‘Odissi Yatra, the Journey of Guru Mayadhar Rout’, B.R.Rhythms, New Delhi

-‘Kala Srujani’, 2012,2013,2014, Dayanidhi Sruti Kala Parishad, Cuttack


 ( Published in Nartanam, Vol. XIV, N. 4)