Living History, Performing Memory: Devads Women in Telugu-Speaking South India Author(s): Davesh Soneji Source: Dance Research

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Living History, Performing Memory: Devadisi Women inTelugu-Speaking South India'

Davesh Soneji

way it really To articulate the past historicallydoesnotmean to recognize"the was." at a moment of danger. It means to seize holdof a memory as itflashesup Walter Benjamin (I955,255) Wait, Now we only have ourmemories left, isn'tit?Who knows about thefuture. letme tellyou a storyabout aperformance inBallipadu .... Saride Varahalu (Duvva, West Godavari District)

West Godavari district inAndhra Pradesh, South In Ballipadu is a small village in the dia. One of the most prominent markers in the village landscape is theMadanago palasvami temple (Fig. i). Pemmaraju Konayamatya constructed the temple sometime in the late eighteenth century (exact dates unknown).2 The central image in the temple is that of Krsna as Madanagopalasvami, The Cowherd Beautiful as theGod of Desire (Fig. 2). From the time of its consecration, the Ballipadu Madanagopalasvami temple had supported over fifteen devaddsis (women artists who served in temples and/or courts) by providing them with tax-free land,money, and a platform to present their art. In return, some of thewomen performed ritual tasks such as thewaving of the five flames (panca-harati) and the pot lamp (kumbha-harati), as ritual duties in the temple. In I948, at the end of a long strugglewith the discursive contours of social reform, five expelled women-Manikyam, Anusuya, Varahalu, Seshachalam andMaithili-were from the temple. These fivewomen from Ballipadu subsequentlymoved to the small town of Duvva, where theymaintain a smallmatrifocal home, adhering to their tradi of South Davesh Soneji is AssistantProfessor Religions at theFacultyof Religious Indian His ex McGill University, Canada. Studies,
tensive fieldwork in rural South India has fo cused on studies of performance and cultural constructions of gender. He also is the founder of TheMangala Initiative, a non-profit NGO

thatprovideseconomicassistanceto disenfran artists of South chisedhereditary performing

India. He is currently co-editing a volume with

Indira Viswanathan PetersonentitledPerform

ing Pasts: Reinventing theArts in South India, an anthology of critical scholarship on the per

formingartsof South India.

30

Figure i: The entrance to te Ballipadu Madana go1~asva?mi temple. Photo by author. Figure2.*The .. .. .. .. ..
.... .. .. ...............pdlasvam .......... .... . .. i padu in B the

image of
alli Photo by

as Madanago ~~~~~~~~~~Krishna
temple.

tional patterns vaddsi ples,

of kinship as devaddsis. They do not ostensibly retain any markers of de identity: they no longer sing or dance in public, have any ritual duties in tem receive tax-free land (mdnydlu) from temples or feudal kingdoms (zaminddri and bless homes as devaddsis, during auspicious the extreme occasions. Yet, social stigma they insist on referring attached to this identity. and

samasthanas), to themselves

despite

WVhat is it, then, about devaddsi Whereas moral homes, discourses

culture

that persists? oscillate a highly in and out of sets of historical contested subject position, in their

in public culture devaddsis in which they embody

devaddsis embrace fragments of the past by remembering (and contemporary in some cases re-enacting) precisely those aspects of their identity which they can no longer express or display in public. Their music and dance repertory, extra-domestic devotional lives, lack of menstrual movement private taboo in their community, and experiences the anti-devaddsi in these in the early part of the twentieth century figure of recollection. my fieldwork with During

sexuality, during devaddsi observe

prominently

journeys

I have had the good fortune of being able to some of these private journeys of recollection that take place often at late hours of the night amidst nostalgic spontaneously, longings. These are not into the reservoirs of memory plunges nourishing clearly merely fleeting nor are communities in coastal Andhra, and document they simply retrospective narrations. In the latter part of this essay, I chart these journeys, noting that they are embodied memories. and provide insights They are an invaluable source for the ethnographer, into devaddsi culture that cannot be found elsewhere. I focus specifically on some of the most characteristic in which performance genres of the Andhra nurture devaddsi repertory to examine I show that these journeys of memory also highlight the disjunctures between past and present. They resist at tempts to erase or deny the past. In this essay, I argue that identity can be produced and that devaddsis in coastal Andhra wistftully and nostalgi through acts of memory, the ways identity. cally elaborate upon identity to affirm their subjectivity in the present. these acts of recollection

Before I begin the formal part of this essay, I would like to address the issue of "naming" in the devaddsi traditions of contemporaryAndhra. The women with whom I haveworked, belong to a class of persons who call themselves kalavantulu (receptacles of the arts or kalavati in the singular), i.e.,women trained in the performance of music and dance. As such, theywere a sub-set of the largercategory of women called bhogam (embodiments of enjoyment),3 a reference to their non-normative sexuality. Not all women, some will be trained women are kaldvantulu. In one family of bhogam bhogam in the performing arts,whereas their sistersmight not be. I point this out only tomove away from both homogenized and to some extent, romanticized understandings of de as an umbrella vaddsi cultures in South India. The use of the Sanskritword "devaddsi" term referring towomen with temple associations throughout various parts of South India,Maharashtra, and Orissa, is rooted in colonial attempts to classify data on such communities (Orr 200I; Vijaisri 2003). However, throughout this essay, Iwill be using the terms devadasi and kaldvantulu (or its singular form, kaldvati), largelybecause this is how contemporarywomen in the community wish to refer to themselves4At the same time, I am conscious that the use of the term devaddsi in particular is problematic in that it connotes a pan-Indian tradition, evoking Sanskritic categories over vernacular ones. In doing so, it looses the specificity of Telugu bhogamculture by homogenizing all South Indian devaddsi cultures; and in theAndhra context, it collapses the distinc tion I have made between bhogamand kaldvantulu. In late nineteenth and early twentieth century coastalAndhra, the public presence of devaddsi-culture was located in bands or troupes of devaddsis (known as bhogam melams). These troupeswere, in a sense, professional guilds made of several kaldvan tulu,most of whom were trained inmusic and dance by one community elder, who would usually be the troupe leader.Troupe leaders (nayakuralu,)procured and negoti ated performance contracts and played the tdlam or cymbals during the performance. and at private These troupes (melams)performed during temple processions (uiregimpu) soirees hosted by landowning communities, and by the early twentieth century, there was no distinction in the concert repertoryperformed at these sites.Unlike many parts of Tamilnadu, after theMadras Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act of I947was melams continued in coastalAndhra, as these did passed, salon performances of bhogam with the prohibition on "temple dancing" as described by theAct. not seem to interfere However, on August I4th, I956, the Andhra government carried out a final amend ment to theAct, which outlawed dancing at marriages and other private social events aswell. melam?Did it What then happened to the dance troupes, the institution of bhogam simply disappear after I956, and is devaddsi performance culture in South India really melams still take place, but behind closed doors. dead? Iwould argue that today bhogam have gone "underground,"finding a safe haven inside the homes of the devaddsis They themselves.Today there is no audience, but this isnot a criterion for performance. The melams have become part of the interiorworld; they have moved from the realm of public spectacle into the realm of nostalgia andmemory.

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Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

Contexts of Devaddsi Performance in Premodern Telugu-Speaking South India In precolonial South India, devaddsi-sin coastalAndhra performed in three contexts: the temple, the court, and the private home of a patron. The temple performances could be further sub-divided according to the siteswhere performance took place: the and the temple procession. temple sanctum, the temple pavilion (man.dapa) Table i represents the nature of devaddsi performance culture in eastern Andhra Pradesh. As of the nineteenth century, devaddsisperformances took place in three sites: (i) the temple,where performancewas referred to as gutdiseva (temple service); (2) the and (3) the homes of royal court,where the performance was called "concert" (kacceri) feudal landlords or other wealthy patrons, where the performance was called "meju As we vani" or "mezuvani,"from theUrdu word mezbdn,meaning "host"or "landlord." shall see, the actual repertoryperformed inmany of these sites however, was fluid. In the temple context, ritual dance that complemented or mirrored the ritual se was perhaps the leastwide quence of events inside the temple sanctum (garbha-grha) spread of all the traditions. By early twentieth century, devaddsi participation in daily ritualhad been severely curtailed on account of colonial critiques and the reform tenmple movement. However, dancing with the deity as itwas taken on procession (uregimpu melam)was common, even amongwomen in the communitywho had not been dedicated to deities. The processional performances consisted of a random selection of songs and dances from the kaccerior concert repertory thatwould be performed for both the deity and devotees,when the deitywould periodically stop along the route of the procession. The devaddsi bhdgavatam or kaldpam,consisted of night-long performances about the archetypal female characters Satyabhama, awife of the god Krsna (calledBhdma ka/apam), and Gollabhama, an intellectualmilkmaid (calledGollakaldpam).These per formancesborrowed technique and other conventions from the temple and court reper tory, but were performed on temporary,makeshift open-air structures called pandals, usually set up inside theman .dapas (pavilions) of temple complexes, or temples.The de vaddsi bhdgavatam was considered a dramatic idiom (na-takamu)5 and their public per formances helped generate income for the temple.Devaddsi bhdgavatam,a popular en tertainment, attracted pilgrims from around the Godavari delta region, who would Table I:Contextsof Devadasi PerformanceinNineteenth-CenturyAndhra
upper-caste devaddsi troupe (bhogammeeam)

temple a) sanctum ritual(gudiseva) b) procession ritual/entertainment (uiregimpu)

c) man.dapa/pandal

court kacceri

homes zamindaris/private mejuvani

entertainment (kalapam)

Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

33

come to temples such as the Madanagopalasvami a temple inBallipadu and the Satyan arayaniasvamitemple inAnnavaram specifically towatch them. The devadds- kaldpam was also very closely connected to the culture of the literati.The kalapam textswere composed by or commissioned from upper-caste poets by the devaddsis.6 In many cases, thesemen would analyze themeaning of the poetry with the devaddsi and offer suggestions as to how it should be interpreted through abbinaya. Most devaddsi bhdga vatam texts are divided into smaller sections or episodes calledpattu (acts).Often, a full evening would be dedicated to the performance of only one or two pattus and the full textwould be performed over a span of many nights. The most common featureof devaddsiperformance culture however,was the concert repertorycalled kacceri. The Andhra devadisi court repertoryaswe encounter it in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century builds largelyupon theTanjavur court repertory as it developed underMaratha patronage in nineteenth-century Tamilnadu. By the late nineteenth century, theAndhra kaldvantuluwere performing some of the genres that had been systematized by the Tanjavur Quartet (four dance masters whose ancestors had been serving in the court since the seventeenth century)7 inTamilnadu, such as the and tillldna.In addition, theyperformed genres such as the sabdam,varnam,jpadam,javva/i to pallavi8 thatwere specific their communities. The padams or erotic poems of the sev enteenth-century composer Ksetrayyawere also an integral part of devaddsi public per formances, especially in the court and home contexts. In the Maratha-period Tanjavur court, the practice of dance-particularly the court traditions, known variously as melam (band), catir or caduru (performed in public) or kelikkai (performance)-had been fosteredwith great care. For our purposes, it is im portant to know that the cultural transformations ushered in by the Tanjavur court re verberated throughout much of South India, including the coastal Andhra region. During my fieldworkwith devaddsis in coastalAndhra in 2002, 1 observed thatmany of the compositions, particularly those in the genres known as varnam and saldm-daru, had been taken directly from the Tanjavur court. For example, the Telugu varnams9 composed by the Tanjavur Quartet in praise of theMaratha rulers, aswell as "saluta tion" songs10on the kings Pratapasimha (r. I740-I763) and Sarabhoji II (r. I798-I832)11 seem to have been regularlyperformed by thewomen and their ancestors, even in the nineteenth century.The Tanjavur court dance of nineteenth century South India has a long and complex socio-artistic history that dates back to the seventeenth century. It was also a hybrid dance culture that brought together aspects of indigenous Tamil cul ture, the newMaratha culture from the northern Deccan, Telugu literarypractice, and eventually colonial modernity. In the early twentieth century, devaddsis inTelugu-speaking South India performed in homes (mejuvani) largely in the salons of zaminddrs and other influential individuals. would receive an obligatory fee or gifts (osalgulu)for The devadiisiand her troupe (melam) their performances in this context. Here, the singing and dancing of compositions calledpadams andmore importantlyjava/is created the public persona of the devadasi. Devaddsi melams could be called upon to perform inside the homes of patrons on two occasions: as part of a life-cycle (samskdra) celebration such as a birth orwedding; and as

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Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

part an evening of entertainment for guests (mejuva-ni)in a salon setting. Salon perform ances in the homes of wealthy zaminddrs are significant-the salon is the last context in women claim to have had a public identity. which the kaldvantulu With the collapse of the zaminddripatronage in South India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen turies, this typeof salon performance shifted to the homes of otherwealthy persons. Until recently, the presence of devaddsisatweddings was extremely importantandwas a clear visual marker of high-society weddings in the Godavari delta. Most of the metal platters), women Iworked with referred to this as kamta, after the kamta (or kamca, given to them by the hosts at this time.This was the timewhen the devaddsis' status as an "ever-auspiciouswoman" (nityapunistri)was most evident. The devaddsis danced padams, javalis, and other erotic compositions at weddings andwere also involved in her powers of aus providing blessings to the bride in a process of symbolically transferring ofthe bride's orwedding piciousness. By tying the black beads (nallapusam) ma.ngalasutra necklace, the devaddsiwould ensure the longevity of thewoman's husband. This was a transaction thatwas at once economic, social, and religious.The following, inKotipalli Rajahamsa'swords, is a brief description of a typical kamta ritual: After thewedding ritual, large amounts of kumkum,fruits, sweets and a silk shawl (pattu sdlva)would be placed on largeplatters (kamta).People carry the kamtas, andwe follow them, doing melam [ie. singing and dancing] in procession to the bride's new home.When we finally reach the house, the bride and groom are seated on a cot. The hosts will ask the ndyakurdlu[troupe leader] to take one of the kamtas, andwill also give her a large sum of money and several sets of new clothes. Then themejuva-ni [performanceof dance andmusic as entertainment for the guests] begins. Only we can tie the nallapasam [blackbeads on themarriage necklace] because we are nityapunistris. We never [experience]widowhood. So, we tie the beads for whoever calls upon us, and bestow blessings so that theywill also remainpunistris like us. Although many of the songs and dances performed here are taken from the court repertory, certain types of compositions are unique to such performances. A parallel traditionwas present in theTamilnadu-Andhra border regions. P. Ranganayaki, a de vaddsi from Tiruttani (Telugu, Cirutanni), mentions distinct compositions that Ker senboom calls samskdrasambandham(related to rites-of-passage). These include com positions such as swing-songs (anjal-pdtu), lullabies (lali-pdtu), and marriage songs (Kersenboom I99I, 145-146).On such occasions, the devaddsiswould also perform the ritualof waving the pot-lamp (kumbha-hdrati)to protect the family of the patron from All of these activities have also been any ill-fortune or potential negativity (d.r.sfi-dosa). described by the devaddsis I haveworked with. However, devadasis in coastalAndhra often used theword mejuvani (entertainment of guests) in the context of salon per formances, implying that after ritual activities were over, a formal concert of dance would follow.Many women, for example, remember performing elaborate court com positions such as varnams andpadams at these private soirees.

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Impoverishment, andProstitution Disenfranchisement,

Manikyam, Anusuya, Varahalu, Seshachalam, Maithili and their familieswere formally expelled from temple service in the late I940S. Manikyam (Fig. 3), the
.....-. a a " ^., .. ..............~.... .. ... 8 .... ... . and .. eldest of the Ba lipadu women, owned over one hundred acres of land several residential properties as well as over one hundred kdsulu of

gold (one k-su roughly equals eight to ten grams).After I948, this de vaddsi familywas no longer entitled topatram (land ownership) from the temple. The women attempted to win back their rights through
litigation but were unsuccessful. With no money, continued
as

they moved

to the

nearby village of Duvva (about six kilometers away), and formed a

small melam
performing

(dance
mejuvani

troupe). They
(concert

to tour rural Andhra,

entertainment) at births,

repertory

I Xt 0 marriages, and other festive occasions. They would occasionally per form court repertory at the Ballipadu temple in the context of the (temple processions) but only after the temple had obtained 'uregimpu permission from the district authorities.
The social reform movement in general and theMadras Devadasis

(Prevention of Dedication) Act of I947 in particular, not only dis

lodged devaddsis from public culture by outlawing their art but also

Figure3 Saride Manikyam outside her home in

drove them into dire poverty. Saride Anusuya (Fig. 4), now eighty two years old, remembers: We became beggars (mustivdllu). The temple trustees (dhar We were born for the temple, for makartdlu) took all our land. God. We danced forGod. But they took our land andmade us Whatever was there is gone. Even Krsna has forsaken beggars. us! I don'twant to go back into that temple.

West Kapileswarapuram, Godavari District.Photo byauthor.

SarideManikyam, Anusuya's cousin, also remembers: I remember, about fifty years ago. Suddenly the temple staffwas dismantled. I had nowhere to go. Iwas miserable.We appealed, but fought a losing battle in the courts.The case eventually reached the high court, butwith no results.Fi nally, Imoved toDuvva, another nearby village after sellingmy I36 acres of prop erty.Then, eventually Imoved from there toKapileswarapuram. Saride Varahalu, seventy-six years old and another cousin of Manikyam, who took to performing devotional storytelling (harikathdor kathakd1aksepa) outside temples after the ban, toldme: 'We are the sistersof [the goddess] Laksmi, but we have been treated worse than animals!"Saride Seshachalam, now seventy,who was on the brink of begin ning her performing careerat the time of the reforms remembers: "Allwe did was sign a bond promising to stop even our private (home) performances after the closure of the temple services. I have nothing but one room in this small house tomy name." What then did the social reformmovement mean for devadisis in ruralSouth In

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Dance Research Journal 36/2 (WJinter 2004)

dia? If theymanaged to escape being forcibly institutionalized in reform homes called Saranmlayams (centersof refuge),'2 the dismantling of the economic support of the tem ple and the feudal kingdoms left the devaddsis in a liminal, vulnera ble position. Many younger devaddsis began to dance to popular
songs at public events, industry (Srinivasan and, as in Tamilnadu, I984, i6). Nayudu many entered the film Chilakamma, a devadasi

from Mandapeta village remembers:

The land my elder sisters owned was given by the devasthdna

[both her sisterswere dedicated devaddsis].During [the lunar observance of] tdli-ekddaft,they performed bhdgavatam [Bhamakalapam] at theGudivada temple.They also did melam. When the older people used to do melam, * itwas good. * 4: Saride Anusuya ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Fiure But then younger ones started to dance formoney, and did plays the talam(handcym "record" dance (dancing to filmmusic). The olderwomen such bals)duringan evening melam at herhome in asmy sisterswouldn't allow thesewomen to dance in the Duvva village (West Go melamwith them, so they didn't. They went into "business"
(vji.rtti,prostitution) instead. davari district). Photo by

author.

Kola Somasundaram, a devaddsi fromMuramanda village (East Godavari district)who was a ndyakurdlu (troupe leader), remembers the threatof pros ecution, and how shewould pray for the success and protection of her melam in light of efforts by the police tomonitor and raidmelam performances: When theAct came, I secretly took bookings formelam. If Iwas caught, Iwas arrestedby the police. This happened a few times. I didn't knowwhat to do should I leavebehind melam or not? I remember, in those days,Vinayaka Caturthi [Festival dedicated to the god Ganaesa] was very important.The gajja (ankle bells), tdla (hand cymbals),mad dala (mrdanigam, double headed barrel drum), harmonium andpitha-karra (wooden board and stick used to keep rhythm)were all placed in front of Lord would gather Ganapati. All the sdnis (devaddsis)from one neighbourhood (basti) at one woman's home.We broke coconuts, performedpu-jaand danced forGana pati, to ensure thatwe had success in the future, andmore importantly, to ensure that therewould be no breaks or halts in our performances [becauseof the reform movement]. Muramanda, described theways inwhich the Kotipalli Haimavati, a devaddsi also from mdnyam (rent and tax collection from the lands she owned) were slow to come, or sometimes never came at all because of the reformmovement. Eventually her mother sold all her mdnyam land, and todayHaimavati and her sister, Sitaramalakshmi, live in a small home in Muramanda, with no property of their own: My mother isKotipalliManikyam. She toldme that sometimes themanyam money would come in once a year.Until that time, theywould live by borrowing

Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

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money throughout the year, and clear the debtwhen they received themanyam. With themoney they received on loan, theywould sometimes have jewellery made for the performances. They dancedwhen andwhere the nayakurdlutold them. The ndyakurdlu would fetch an advance for the performance. She would di vide themoney as follows: Fifteen rupees for the orchestra, ten rupees (one share or vata) for the melam artists, five rupees (half a share) for child-artists, and thirty rupees for the ndyakurdlu, who was a "classartist" [English term used]. My mother sold the temple macnyamshe received so thatwe could eat. Itwas a We simply could not perform in public.My mother also very difficult time for us. had many students [Haimavati looks around the room, atRajahamsa, Somasun daram and Krishnaveni, all of whom were students of hermother, Kotipalli Manikyam] Haimavati also remembers that often men would come to the melam performances led by her sister after having seen the performances ofjogins (Dalit prostitutes dedicated to the Goddess Yellamma) at funerals and expect the same from them. In her younger days, she had herself performed snake-dances, summersaults, and other forms of enter tainment for money. She told me how requests for songs that subtly implicated the identities of devaddsis as prostitutes became frequent.As an example, she sang the fol lowing song forme: You've done somuch, you've ruinedmy house, you whore I'm shocked by all this, here and there, there and here, you whore'3 The context for the song is actually a quarrel between twowomen who are fighting for the love of the sameman. However, the crude language (thewords lamja, damga and munda, all synonyms for "whore") serve a reflexive function when the devadcsi-s are made to perform the composition. The song continues, You've caught [the Brahmin] by his tuft of hair and you're swinging on it, playing
on it, swinging on it, playing on it . . . 14

The sexual overtones of the song are clear.As Haimavati explained, "They enjoyed see ing us talk about each other in thatway."Most of thesemen were businessmen from the city, tax collectors, and ministers. Undoubtedly, therewas an almost indisputable publicization of the kaldvantulawoman's new identity as "whore" in the post-social re form period. Unlike in Tamilnadu, inAndhra, opportunities for devaddsis to teach their art to non-devaddsi women formoney were rare. In the I930s, therewas amovement to cre ate a regional dance form forAndhra, much like the newly created Bharatanatyam, which had become a national symbol of Tamil culture (Meduri, I996;O'Shea 200I). Nationalists and elite philanthropists accorded this status to a re-worked version of the Brahmin male dance tradition fromKuchipudi village,'5 and not to the indigenous de vaddsi dance of Andhra. From I940 onward, girls came in large numbers to study from

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the traditionalgurus fromKuchipudi village, but the devaddsi art of Andhra remained marginalized and was not re-fashioned or re-constituted by the upper classes as the catir dance of the Tamilnadu devadisis was in Madras."6 According to Maddula Venkataratnam, a devaddsi from Tatipaka village (West Godavari district), the few women who tried to start dance schools in theirvillages had to obtain a certificate from the police and hang the certificate in a visible spot outside their homes. The certificate legitimated the fact that they were bonafide dance teachers and were not bringing young girls into their homes for other purposes. In the early twentieth century,when traditional systems of patronage such asmdn yam were dismantled, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, some younger devaddsis indeed turned to prostitution. As a result, devaddsis in general were seen as prostitutes and their art, once a central aspect of cultural experience in South India,was seen as unfit for consumption by respectable people. This was also a time when the kaldvantulu was targetedby variousNorth American Christian missionary community in particular groupswho sought to rescue the "fallen"devaddsisof coastalAndhra. By themiddle of the twentieth century, a large number of women in the kaldvantulu community had converted to Christianity, because this promised them a stable monthly income as members of the new rehabilitationprograms of themissions.

Dancing Disjunctures: Contemporary Devaddsi Melams and Memory Maithili (Fig. 5) introducedme to the In February of 2002,when I firstmet her, Saride performance culture of Andhra devaddsis by singing java/is'7 for me. It was around II:30pm, andwas perhaps at the height of an evening of remembering-a melam inside her own house. Spontaneously, her nephew picked up a and a violin player from a few houses drum (mrdanigam) down was called in.Maithili began to sing a salutation
(saldm-daru) dedicated to the King Sarabhoji II of Tan javur, and interpreted its text through gesture (abhinaya). are living In this section, I posit that such performances

artefacts of devaddsi performance culture. Devaddsi per

formances in South India are indeed still alive, in spite of at large. the fact that they are not acknowledged by society

In this section, I present some observations made during a Maithili performs the melam performances at the homes of Kotipalli HaimaFigures:Saride at an melam Muramanda village, in January2002) javaliduring evening vati and her family (in Duvva village (West and the Saride family (Duwa village in February 2002). I herhome in Godavari district). Photobyauthor. wish to demonstrate that for these women, performance, memory, and identity are inextricably linked. It is in the context of these spontaneous melam performances inside the devaddsis' homes that I have been able to gather themost interesting socio-historical and artistic data about de vaddsis, and hear their articulate ideas about devaddsi identity.

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Sdnis and Samsaris: Devaddsis Articulate Ideas About Womanhood In this section, I examine the ways that contemporary kaldvantulu in coastalAndhra articulate their own identities aswomen and represent the ambivalent nature of the de vaddsi lifestyle. Two features of devaddsiwomanhood were described tome: the rela tionships that devaddsis had with (usually) upper-caste men; and the lack of menstrual pollution in their community. In both cases, devaddsis spoke about themselves as being distinct from other women. Iwould argue that even these are insufficient to reverse or overthrow popular constructions of themselves as "prostitutes," such features could nevertheless be effective as positive expressions of identity for individualwomen. A couple of generations ago, itwas not at all uncommon for upper-caste married men in South India to have relationshipswith devaddsis. Maintaining a devaddsi as a with her,was not considered anything out of the ordinary. lover,or having a second family The sexuality of the devaddsiwas the nodal issue throughout the social reformmove ment led by Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi in the early part of the twentieth century (Meduri, I996).As SrividyaNatarajan notes, Reddi's use of the rhetoric of victimization of devaddsiswas dependent upon her imaging of the devaddsi's sexuality as oppressive: Both themedical discourse of the time and the ideology of theVictorian middle class held that sexual agencywas incompatiblewith femininity. The fact that the devadasis as a community customarily invited sexual relationships (rather than acquiesced in them, as the farmore abject upper-class girl-bride was bound to do) had to be interpreted as sexual exploitation by men of the devadasis; once this was established, the devadasis could be saved by right-thinking people. Through out the anti-nautch campaign, and especially in the speeches ofMuthulakshmi motif of "rescue": Reddi, we have the recurrent upper-caste, enlightened people devadasis from from priests, saving the patrons, from olderwomen in their com munity, from disease, from sin, from themselves. (Natarajan I997, II6-II7) Throughout coastal Andhra, contemporary devaddsis very clearly distinguish their lifestyles from those of householders (grhasthins, that ismarried couples and their ex tended families). In devaddsi homes, the term samsari(from samsara, worldly existence) is used to refer to householders and the term sani (from the word svamini, female leader,wife of the Lord) to refer to themselves. The clear distinction between house holder and sa-niismaintained in nearly all devaddsi households. Devaddsis do not use theword p.lii (marriage), and householders do not use theword kannerikam (initiation of a virgin). The spheres of dedicated dancing and worldly family life are consciously kept apart. Dedication ceremonies were often accompanied by the simultaneous commence ment of training inmusic and dance.Maddula Ramatulasi fromTatipaka describes this

process:
First the elders of the village were called. Permission had to be obtained from them. The girl goes to the templewith her guru [usually an elderwoman from the

40

Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

community]. Thepu-ja/materials arekept in front of the deity; p-ja is performed, and the girl begins to learndance. Then daksina is given to the guru. In our community, m6kku [votive offering of a daughter toGod] was common. Sometimes, if one has asked am6kku fromGod, then one girl in the family is ded icated.That girl stays in the temple for three days and nights. Her firsthusband is God (m&dati bhartadevude). She can be dedicated toKrsna orYefikanna-babu [Vefikatesvara].Some people think thatwe give all the children.This isnot true. Only one daughter can become a devaddsi from one family. Unlike the devaddsis of Puri, Orissa, for example, devaddsis in coastalAndhra were less restricted in their sexual relations. FrederiqueMarglin mentions, for instance, an officer called dosandhipariccha, whose responsibility itwas to ensure that the devaddsis of Puri did not have relationswith males from non-water-giving castes (Marglin I985, InAndhra, where the hierarchical systemwas not as highly structured, the patron 91).18 King/zaminddr (landowner) was less influential in the social organization of devaddsi households. Restrictions on sexual relationswere rare, and if at all present, were dic tated by the parents of the girl. Often the devaddsimother and her male partner (usu ally the biological father of the girl)would choose the firstman the girlwould have re lationswith, in a process much like an arrangedwedding. This was usually the case in coastalAndhra by the early I920s,when the imaging of devaddsis as prostitutes had al ready crystallized, and social reformmovements had made a significant impact in the region. Saride Varahalu, for example,mentioned that her father had chosen appropri ate partners for her and her sisters, and that each of thesemen came from different class backgrounds: Let me give you the example of my own family. We all had relationswith men, but all of ourmen were from different communities [althoughwe should note that these are all from elite class backgrounds].My man was a saukdr,a komati (a vaisya, businessman). Anusuya had aBrahmin, Seshachalam had a kamma (also known as caudhari, influential agriculturalcommunity) man, and Maithili had a yelama doralu (averywealthy landlord). Most of thewomen I have encountered have had only one partner in their lives. In most cases, the male partners die long before the devaddsiwomen themselves. The partnerwill usually leave some percentage of his wealth and/or lands for the devaddsi and her children. If this is not the case, the devaddsiwill move back into the home of her akka (elder sister). Many devaddsisdid not want children, especially thosewho were actively involved in performing dance andmusic in public. They employed indigenous forms of contraception. The standardway of expressing this was pi.llalni puttanivva ledu (I did not let children be born) and usually involved the insertion of homemade pessaries into the vagina near the cervix. In post-social reformAndhra, kannerikam ceremonies (inwhich devaddsiswould be ritually dedicated to gods in temples) became conflated with the pedda-manusi or the rite-of-passage celebrating the onset of menarche. The obvious reasons samskdra,

Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

41

for the domestication of this public ritual relate to the legal sanctions imposed on the dedication of girls to temple premises. The majority of devaddsis I have worked with who were below the age of seventywere thus not married to temple deities. Instead, and their embodiment of eternal auspiciousness (nityapuzyatva) their ritual "marriage" were symbolically conferred upon them during theirpedda-mdnusi ceremony. Muramanda village) During a conversationwith Kotipalli Haimavati (devaddsifrom after her mother's funeral inMarch 2002, I noticed that Haimavati and her half sister Sitaramalakshmi were not observing any kind of mourning ritualsor post-mortem pollution. I askedHaimavati about maila (pollution) in general. She toldme that her family does not observemaila of any sort, likemany of the untouchable communities in Andhra. I later decided to ask other members of the devaddsi community inAndhra about pollution. I beganwith one of the senior-most women I had been working with, Maddula Venkataratnam (Fig. 6).When I asked her aboutmenstruation in themidst of amelam performance, she said: We have no restrictions to go into the temple during our periods (makuad.duledu).Ifwe have a five night-long per formance andwe get our period in between, we bathe and
continue with our performance. We sion of turmeric and kumkum. We our man dies. always are in posses do not remove itwhen

Surprised, I continued to askwomen from other devadisi families K the same questions about pollution and menstruation. Saride Anusuya, the eldest of the Saridewomen living in theirDuwa home, confirmedVenkataratnam's answers: Maddula Figure6:The late a Venkataratnam performs
padam depicting the heroine

We can dance during ourmonthly periods (nela nela). There is nothing wrong for us [to do this] (makuyemi
ta

parting herhairduringa melam in Manepaii village Photo Photo (West Godavaridistrict).

a hyes odavari.district).

tappuledu). Later, my research assistant asked Kotipalli Rajahamsa, aged

at the Somesvarasvami dedicated sixty-four, temple, Mura the same questions and received similar answers: manda,

RANGAMANI: Do you dancewhen you arehaving yourmonthly periods (nela nela)? RAJAHAMSA: There is nothing wrong for us to do this (tappu ledu). RANGAMANI: How aboutwhen someone dies, there is pollution (maila) from that, do you observe that? We have no suchmaila. RAJAHAMSA: It quickly became apparent tome that devaddsis inAndhra did not observemenstrual pollution. ForMaddula Venkataratnam, there is a direct link between the lackof men strual taboo and the concept of the devaddsi as nityapunistri. Because she is an ever auspiciouswoman, she need not bother with mundane and temporary forms of pollu

42

Dance Research Journal 36/2 (Winter2004)

tion such as those caused bymenstruation and death.Months later, all of thewomen of the Saride family inDuvva villagewould tellme that thiswas one of the primary differ ences between sanis and samsaris:"Butwho among the samsaris will talk about such Maithili asked. things?"Saride The most forceful accusationsmade by colonial administrations and social reform ers against devaddsis inAndhra in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centurieswas that their songs and dances were "lewd"and somehow were indices of amorally de graded lifestyle. Inmy work with the community, I found several aspects of the deva ddsi dance that have been consciously erased from the re-worked,modern versions of these dances practiced under the name "Bharatanatyam"in various centers across South India.Among thesewas the usage of rati-mudras, that is, hand-gestures that depict the various positions of sexual union (rati-bandhas) described inmedieval Sanskritworks on erotics (Kamasastra)such asAnanigaRaniga andRatirahasyam. Most devaddsis invoked the taxonomies of Kamasastrawhen performing padams and sometimes javalis. Terms such as samarati (man on top), uparati (woman on top, also viparitarati), and ndgabandhamu(bodies coiled in the serpent position) were com mon parlance among thewomen. Iwitnessed one of themost elaborate of such per formances by the late Maddula Venkataratnam in Januaryof 2002. In themidst of the rich repertoire thatVenkataratnam possessed was a beautiful Ksetrayya padam, in the rdga Mohana. In this uniquepadam, the heroine mocks her Lover for not being able to satisfy her sexually. It is a rareexample of the explicit expression of awoman's own sex ual desire. The refrain (pallavi) of thepadam reads: ratira okkasarikeyildgainanohoyideti makkuva dircard ma muvvagopdla If only one round of love-makingmakes you so tired, what [kind of love] is this? Come, fulfillmy desires, my Krsna-Muwagopala! In her performance, Venkataratnam sang thewords makkuva dircard (come fulfillmy desires) over fifty times, and provided a new hand gesture to depict sexual union each time. "Onlywe can sing and dance like this. I'm still alive so you've come to seeme and hear these songs. If I die, who will come? What will happen to these songs?"Venka taratnam said after performing this padam. For Venkataratnam, her devaddsi identity clearly hinges on the fact that she alone possesses the hereditary knowledge of "these which she sees as clearmarkers of being a devaddsi. songs" Muramanda village makes Ajavali performed by Kotipalli Haimavati at amelam in a similar point. Composed in the early twentieth century by an unknown author, it be came one of the staple compositions performed in the salon performances hosted by landowners (zaminddrs).The devaddsi would request the host to be seated, thenwould proceed to anoint his upper body with sandalwood paste, while interpreting the text

Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

43

of the song. The song makes an interesting reference to the "motorcar",an element of colonial modernity that attracted a significant amount of attention in nineteenth and twentieth century South India. 0 Great Lover! I'm applying fragrant sandalpaste to your body! Leave your doubtsbehind,my beloved,and come! Don't you have any love forme? Come to look aftermy needs, come! Leaveyour doubtsbehind We can live like a pair of love-birds in our love nest, come! Leaveyour doubtsbehind Let's go for a spin in yourMotor Car! Leaveyour doubtsbehind We canmake a boat ofjasmine flowers, and sleep in it! Leaveyour doubtsbehind mandaragandham idi tisragatiadi riga: sefcurutti, tada: After performing the ja-vali,Haimavati turned tome and said "This is how we used to What do I have other dance! This is the bhogammelam! I trymy best to preserve it. than this?" What do such private journeys of performative recollection tell us about devaddsi identity in contemporary South India? Such acts of memory may not be socially effec tive, but are certainly effective at the level of individual identity. They keep thematri focal home of these women intact; they ensure that devaddsis remember who they are and fromwhere they have come. Such recollections confer positive self-worth and enable devaddsis to retain and express some sense of their fractured identities. In a re cent essay,Margaret Meibohm (2002, 6i) suggests that the core questions of identity formation, 'Who am I?"and 'What do I do?" can be partially addressed through the additional queries of "From where have I come?" and "Who have I been?" For devaddsis inAndhra today, the answers to thesequestions can only come from behind closed doors, from what we might call "deepmemory"-a process that "remakes the self," and reconstructs identity from scattered fragments of remembrance, knowledge, and experience.

Notes
i. Research vari districts in the East andWest of Andhra Pradesh Goda search Council Indo-Canadian Voleti of Canada Institute. and the Shastri

from

2002-2003 was supported by grants from Re the Social Sciences and Humanities

Rangamani for their assistance

I am grateful to and Kotipalli Haimavati in the collection of this

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Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

data, and would like to thank Saskia Kersenboom, Hari Krishnan, Srividya Natarajan, Leslie Orr, Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Tanisha Ramachandran, Archana Venkatesan, and Katherine Young for careful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this essay. earliest surviving records of the in the form of written docu exist temple or ments called paditaram padikattu, which outline the administrative and ritual processes of the temple. These were edited and published by Dronam Venkat?calapati Sarma in the year 1909. Another major tex tual source for understanding the culture of this temple comes from theMadanagop?la Vil?sam. This Telugu text was written by Poduri Mritunjaya Kavi and Pemmaraju Sumitramba, the wife of Pemmaraju Lak shminarasimha, who was in charge of the temple when its dhvajastambha (flag staff) was erected in 1901,when the was temple was me in the form consecrated. It given to of a handwritten when I visited copy by Saride Varahalu the home of the Saride fam Godavari text consists 2.The

3-Telugu literary scholar Arudra insisted that this word comes from the Sanskrit "lady of enjoyment" (Aru bhogin?, meaning dra 1990; 1995). The Sanskrit word bhogin? is also found in classical Telugu literary contexts. For example, the poet Bamm?ra (1450-1510) who wrote the Telugu Pur?na called Mah?bh?gavatamu, is also at Potana tributed with the composition of a poem called Bhogini Dandakam, which he is said to have composed in praise of the lover of a local king named Sarvaj?a Si?gama N?yudu.
4. Most contemporary women recognize

the social value of the terms devad?st and kal?vati. Devad?st links them to spirituality and temple traditions, while kal?vati marks them as artists, women with special skill. women I have worked with did not the use of the words

Most

or appreciate bhogam s?ni, with a few exceptions. These terms appear to have acquired amore severely pe in the early part of the jorative connotation century. involvement in dramas was 5.Devad?si common inTamilnadu in the late fairly nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For ex devad?sis in ample, many disenfranchised or founded Tamilnadu joined drama com who either Kattaikk?ttu panies performed cites deva "Special N?takam." DeBruin d?si troupes who performed dramas such as Pavalakkoti, Valli Tirumanam, Alii Arjunan, Kaly?nam, Tamayanti, C?rpanakai N?l?yani Parikam, C?t? Carittiram, Naja P?tukai Carittiram 1999, or twentieth

ily of devad?sis inDuwa, West district, in February 2002. The of a series of musical

appar compositions, ently written by the authors, that delineate the religio-artistic contours of ritual per

formance

in the temple. The text contains in the daruvu genre (the compositions
most commonly used in the devadasi

genre

bh?gavatam performances), poetic verses in various Telugu meters, aswell as other including mangalah?rati p?tulu (auspicious songs to accompany the ritual waving of lamps), l?li-p?tulu and jola-p?tulu (lullabies), and heccarikalu ("warning" songs meant to be performed as part of the rituals called baliharana, to pro compositions

Cattiyan Cavittiri, and Vell?lar?jan Patt?picekam in the Kattaikk?ttu

101).

idiom (deBruin

Godavari

pitiate the astadikp?lasy guardian deities of the eight directions). Though much work needs to be done on the compositions in this text, some discussion of it can be found in Suvarchala Devi (2001).

6. For example the famous poet of the delta, Gaddam Subbarayudu Sastri (d. 1940), composed individual Bh?

m?kal?pam librettos for fourteen devad?st women in the East Godavari region includ ing the famed Maddula Lakshminarayana andMaddula Venkataratnam. Atkuri Sub

Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

45

baravu,

contemporary

of

Sastri,

composed

similar librettos for the devad?sts mous Annabhatula

varam.

of the fa

family ofMummidi Brothers (Tamil, tan?ai

(rhythmic syllables), and in the rare s?hitya pallaviy there is one line of text {s?hitya). I have also heard from some devad?sis in coastal Andhra that pal/avis used to be per formed doing the b?labhoga or morning meal offering to the deity in the temple context
century. 9. The varnam or padavarnam is a mu

7. The Tanjavur

(1802-1856), Ponnaiy? n?lvar)?Cinnaiy? Civ?nantam (1804-1864), (1808-1863) and (1810-1847)?descended of musicians who were patronized by the courts. In the mid N?yaka andMar?th? nineteenth Vativ?l from a clan

in the early part of the twentieth

century, the Tanjavur Quartet systematized the court dance traditions of Tanjavur, including both repertory and the abstract dance technique represented by units of movement called atavus. Building on the as the already existing genres such padams of Ksetrayya, the Tanjavur Brothers created a systematized format for the hith erto diffused and somewhat random pres entation
re-visioning

sic genre that figures prominently in the de vadasi dance repertoire in present-day Tamilnadu, Andhra and Kerala. The Tan composed several for dance, usually addressed padavarnams to localized deities such as Siva of Tanjavur or Krsna or to of R?jagop?la Mannargudi, kings and feudal landlowners (zam?ndars). Brhadisvara
10. These are the sal?m-darus, also called

javur Brothers

of court (or concert) dance. Their

of the court repertoire con

sisted of seven primary genres: al?rippu,

jatisvaram, sabdam, varnam, padamJ?vaH

or sabdam. Usually addressed a local to a of king deity, they involve the recitation of rhythmic utterances (colkattu) t?la-colkattu and epithets of the hero. They usually end with Urdu words like sal?m (hence the name of the genre, sal?m-daru) or s?b?s ("well done!" or "bravo!"), reflective of the nature of the Tanjavur court. multilingual For details, see N. Visvanathan's Tamil work (1985), S abdam alias Tala Solkattu of Bharatam Kasinathakavi, Bharatam Narana Kavi t?laccorkattu
mannar cakaci,

and till?n?. The

ethos of this repertory, like that of the padams of Ksetrayya, situated it self very much within the ethos of bhoga with the primary

(pleasure, enjoyment), agent in the narratives being the dancing woman herself. The brothers were initially patronized by King Sarabhoj? II, and later
moved on to serve in the courts of Travan

Sahaji and [Captam ennum King

naranakavi

core and Mysore.

For details,

see Krishnan

paratam k?cin?takavi,
paratam ?kiy?r

(forthcoming). 8. (lit, "sprout") is a nrtta or Thepallavi abstract dance composition that usually does not contain text (s?hitya). In the one line of music is over repeated pallavi and over again, and the devad?sl performs sets of specific choreographed movement. are three types o?pallavi found in There

iyarriyavai]. n. King Sarabhoj? II's contribution to the evolution of the systematized concert He was dance repertory inTanjavur is significant. the author and/or patron of a clus ter ofMarathi texts for dance called nir?

pana in theMarathi language that pre the living performance traditions: svara sented a series of new dance genres such as serv?, tar?n? and triputa along with existing pallavi\ sabda pallavi\ and s?hitya pallavi. * most The first of these is the such as varnam, and common, and genres abhinayapada consists of a line of svaras (solfa syllables or sabday couched in the context of a linear narrative presentation similar to the Telugu notes). In the sabda pallavi, the svaras are a line of colkattu or sabda replaced by yaksag?na court-dramas of the N?yaka and

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Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

were written earlyMar?th? periods. These texts referred down in the form ofMarathi to by their Tamil name, k?rvai ("links" or "chain"). Details on the evolution of these genres are found in Krishnan (forthcoming). 12.These rehabilitation centers existed for over a decade in cities such asMadras, and Narsapur. For example, in

a gether with many kal?vantulu, he coined art for the of the costal syllabus teaching Andhra tened devad?sl tradition, which he chris 'Andhra N?tyam," modeled after the new name to the re-worked form given of the devad?sl Bharatanatyam.
sundari, an

art from further south, From 1993-94, Swapna

woman who was

Guntur, 1922, the earliest such institution, the Hindu Yuvati Saranalayam, was built. As a rehabilitation center set up for devadas?s, the Hindu Yuvati Saranalayam saw to the "moral, vocational and literary instruction of the inmates to wean them away from their traditional lives . . . the vocational part of the instruction ning, weaving, ing." Although received much the memories still recounted consisted of spin and garden have not

upper-caste

famous dancers, embarked on a project that contested codification of the Nataraja Ramakrishna's Andhra music devad?sl art. She studied dance and repertoire under several kal?vantulu, women of including the Saride Ballipadu, de

one of the nation's most

and named her version of the Andhra

basket-making these institutions attention

vad?sl art "Vil?sim N?tyam." 17.The j?vali is aTelugu literary and performance genre created in the early nineteenth origin, the late nineteenth it had century, by become an almost completely Telugu language genre. The earliest surviving j?vali is inTelugu, and is attributed to Vativ?l of the Tanjavur Quartet (1810-1847) or sometimes his patron, Sv?ti Tirun?l structure of the j?vali is The (1813-1846). modeled after that of the older Tel likely the century. Though many claim that the genre is of Kannada scholars

from scholars, it is of these institutions that are

by of many contemporary devadas?s, particularly those from the coastal Andhra region. For details see Soneji (2004,120 fl). 13.The first two lines of the song run as follows: emtojesin?ve elamadi k?mpam?pitivi, 0 lamjamunda
amtaku vint?ye viramari emtaku emtauno,

damgamunda uy?lalo, mari

. . .

ugu music genre known zspadam, with three sections pallavi, anupallavl and caranam. As amusical genre specifically created for use in dance,
represent devad?sl dance

14. v?di pilakapattukoni

jhamp?lalo, mari uy?lalo

the j?vali
culture

came to
as a whole,

15.For details on the history, content and technique of the dance traditions at Kuchipudi village, see Arudra (1994) and Jonnalagadda a 16. In 1972,Nataraja Ramakrishna, inHyderbad held an abhi dance-teacher naya sadas (gathering o?abhinaya artists) and brought many kal?vantulu together in for the first time after the Anti Hyderabad Devadasi Act the women students. He had been passed. He urged to come forth to teach his own (1996).

particularly in the early twentieth century. In coastal Andhra, j?valikartas (composers) such as Vidyala Narayanasvami Nayudu of (1875-1942) and Neti Subbaraya Tirupati Sastri (c. 1880-1940) became gion composed j?va/is that re tremendously popular in this (Arudra 1986b). These j?va/is are

completely unabashed in terms of their uses of and commentaries on sexuality, which raises the issue of whether or not scholars composed theses songs in consultation with to devad?sl women. According popular bi as ographies, poets such Narayanasvami

aided many of them finan To cially, including Saride Manikyam.

Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

47

Nayudu
times.

are said to have had intimate the devad?st women

rela

Works Cited
Arudra. 1986a. "Javalis: Jewels of the Dance
Sruti, 23-23S: 43-46.

tionships with

of their

In 1915, out of fear that this tradition was slowly disappearing because of the social reform movement, Devulapalli Virar?ghava S?stri, a Brahmin poet from the Kakinada region, attempted to preserve this tradition in the form of a book, which he called Ab

Repertoire."

-. 1986b. "Javalis: Jewels of the Dance Repertoire II: Salvaging After the Decline
_. 1990.

and Fall." Sruti, 25: 33-36.

"Kalavantulu of Andhra

("Teach Yourself _. hinaya Svayambodhini In his preface, he notes that the Abhinaya). kal?vantulu technique of textual interpreta tion {abhinaya) is fast disappearing, and that his primary aim in collecting and pub is to document lishing these compositions them for the benefit of future generations. Svayambodhini provides the each word is a list

Natyam." Sangeet Natak, 97: 46-55. 1994. "Kuchipudi: The Abode of Dance." In 1994 World Telugu Conference
Souvenir, 236-234.

1955. Illuminations. Benjamin, Walter. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books. 1999. Kattaikk?ttu: a South Indian Theatre of Egbert Forsten. 1996. "Traditions Dance." DeBruin, The Flexibility Hanne M.

The Abhinaya song-texts; underneath

of possible ways to interpret it through mimesis. An analysis of selections of the Abhinaya Svayambodhini nan (forthcoming). In the somewhat disparate devadas? per formances that continued in the twentieth century, usually in salon settings, repertory was more and more limited. becoming J?valis acquired a special status in this pe riod, because they were more accessible to -. lay audiences more longer,
court repertory

Tradition. Groningen: Jonnalagadda, Anuradha. and Innovations Ph.D.

is found

in Krish

in Kuchipudi

dissertation, Sarojini Naidu School of Performing Arts, Fine Arts and Communication, University of

Hyderabad. Saskia. 1987.Nityasuma?gali: Kersenboom, Devadasi Tradition in South India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 1990. "The Traditional Repertoire of the Tiruttani Temple Dancers." In Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women. Edited by Julia Leslie. Rutherford: Fair leigh Dickinson University Press. 1995. Word, Sound, Image: The Life of the Tamil Text. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Krishnan, Hari. Forthcoming. Practice: Reconfigurations izations of Devadasi Nineteenth "Inscribing and Textual

in comparison to other in the technical compositions

such as the varnam. Indeed,

by the 1930s, the j?valis had become mainstay of devadas? performances

the -.

throughout Andhra. 18. In Oriya, this term isp?nisprusya and refers to all the castes (water-touching) that can give water to Brahmins. It refers to the fact that the devadas?s of Puri must come from families Untouchables of these castes only. and other non-water giving devadas?s (Marglin

castes cannot become 1985, 68).

in Repertoire and Early Twentieth Cen tury South India." In Performing Pasts: theArts in South India. Reinventing Edited

Peterson by Indira Viswanathan and Devesh Soneji. Vil?sam. Handwritten Madanagop?la copy provided (Telugu). by Smt. Saride Varahalu

48

Dance Research Journal36/2 (Winter2004)

Marglin, Frederique-Apffel. the God-King: The Rituals dasis ofPuri. Delhi:

Press.

1985.Wives of theDeva

of

Vepery, p?lasv?mi Devasth?nam). Madras: Vivek?nanda Mudr?ksaras?l? (Telugu). S?stri, Devulapalli

Oxford University

Meduri,

1996. "Nation, Woman, The Sutured History Representation: the Devadasi and Her Dance." Ph.D. dissertation, New York University. 2002. "Past Selves Margaret.

Avanthi.

of

Abhi 1915. Virar?ghava. naya Svayambodhini. K?kin?d?: Saras vati Mudr?ksara S?l?. (Telugu).

Soneji, Davesh.

Meibohm, and Present Others: The Ritual Con

struction of Identity at a Catholic Festi val in India." In Popular Christianity in India: Riting Between the Lines. Edited by Selva J. Raj and Corinne Dempsey. Albany: State University of New York
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