Bharata: The Natyasastra

Natya Shastra is one of the ancient and complete treatises on the performing arts. Written in Sanskrit and composed around two millennia ago, the book consists of 36 chapters with a cumulative total of 6000 poetic verses and covers almost all aspects of performances. In this seminal work, Dr Kapil Vatsayan provides an in-depth analysis of Bharata's Natya Sastra and asks fundamental questions not only on the Natyasastra but on the nature of the Indian textual tradition. The book re-examines issues of authorship, dating, primary material, orality and text and it places the text in the context of an overarching worldview and analyses with incisive sharpness, the structure of the text.