Bhasa's plays are still very much popular in Kutiyattam (only surviving Sanskrit drama tradition of 2000 year old from Kerala).
Nātyāchārya Guru Māni Mādhava Chākyār as Ravana in the play Abhiṣeka Nataka

Bhāsa is one of the earliest and most celebrated Indian playwrights in Sanskrit. However, very little is known about him.

Kālidāsa in the introduction to his first play Malavikagnimitram writes - Shall we neglect the works of such illustrious authors as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and Kaviputra? Can the audience feel any respect for the work of a modern poet, a Kālidāsa?

So we know he lived before Kālidāsa. As the date for Kālidāsa varies from the 1st century BCE to the 4th century CE, Bhāsa is dated between the 2nd century BCE and 2nd century CE. Based on the language used, his date is also supposed to be around 5th century BC. The plays of Bhāsa had been lost for centuries. He was known only from mention in other works like the famous text on poetics Kavyamimamsa written during 880-920 AD by Rajashekhara a famous poet, dramatist and critic. In the Kavyamimamsa, he attributes the play Svapnavasavadatta to Bhāsa.

Discovery of his plays[link]

In 1912, the late Mahamahopadhyaya Ganapati Sastri came upon 13 Sanskrit plays in Trivandrum that were used in the Koodiyattam plays. Unlike other classical plays, none of them mentioned the author, but one was the Swapnavāsavadatta. Comparing the style of writing and techniques employed in these plays and based on the knowledge that Swapnavāsavadatta was Bhāsa's work, all of them were credited to him. Some scholars have disputed Bhāsa's authorship of all the plays but over the years the plays have generally come to be ascribed to Bhāsa.

Plays of Bhāsa[link]

Bhāsa does not follow all the dictates of the Natya Shastra. This has been taken as a proof of their antiquity; no post-Kālidāsa play has been found to break the rules of the Natya Shastra's. Bhāsa allows scenes that contain signs of physical violence to be shown on stage in plays like Urubhanga.This is strictly frowned upon by Natya Shastra.

The Uru-Bhanga and Karna-bhara are the only known tragic Sanskrit plays in ancient India. Though branded the villain of the Mahabharata, Duryodhana is the actual hero in Uru-Bhanga shown repenting his past as he lies with his thighs crushed awaiting death. His relations with his family are shown with great pathos. The epic contains no reference to such repentance. The Karna-bhara ends with the premonitions of the sad end of Karna, another epic character from Mahabharata. Early plays in India, inspired by Natya Shastra, strictly considered sad endings inappropriate.

The plays are generally short compared to later playwrights and most of them draw the theme from the Indian epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana.Though he is firmly on the side of the heroes of the epic, Bhāsa treats their opponents with great sympathy. He takes a lot of liberties with the story to achieve this. In the Pratima-nataka, Kaikeyi who is responsible for the tragic events in the Ramayana is shown as enduring the calumny of all so that a far noble end is achieved.

Plays based on Ramayana[link]

• Pratima-nataka: The statues
• Abhisheka-natka: The coronation

Plays based on Mahabharata[link]

Mani Damodara Chakyar as King Udayana in Swapnavasavadattam Koodiyattam

• Panch-ratra: The five-nights
• Madhyama-vyayoga: The middle one
• Duta-Ghattotkacha: Ghattotkacha as envoy
• Duta-Vakya : The envoy's message
• Urubhanga: The broken thigh
• Karna-bhara: Karna's burden
• Harivamsa or Bala-charita: Hari's dynasty or the tale of Childhood

The Duta-Vakya and Bala-charita are perhaps the only Sanskrit plays by a famous playwright with Krishna as the central character.

His other plays are not epic based. Avimaraka is a fairy tale, which later became part of a Mani Kaul film , The Cloud Door (1994) ^[1]. The unfinished Daridra-Charudatta (Charudatta in poverty) tells the story of the courtesan Vasantasena and is interesting for the same story was developed by Śhudraka into the more famous Mrichakatika on which 1984 film, Utsav by Girish Karnad is based.

His most famous plays Pratijna-Yaugandharayana (the vow of Yaugandharayana) and Swapna-vasavadatta (Swapnavāsavadatta) (Vasavadatta in the dream) are based on the legends that had grown around the legendary King Udayana, probably a contemporary of the Buddha. The first play tells the story of how the king Udayana married the princess Vasavadatta (his first wife).The second play tells the story of how the king Udayana, with the help of his loyal minister Yaugandharayana, later married the princess Padmavati, a daughter of the king of Magadha, and thus made this king his ally rather than enemy.

Though his plays were discovered only in the 20th century, two of them Uru-Bhanga and Karna-bhara, have become popular due to their appeal to modern tastes and performed in translation and Sanskrit.

Many of Bhasa's plays are staged in Koodiyattams even now, like parts of Pratijna-Yaugandharayana,Abhisheka-nataka etc.

Modern revival[link]

The first person to revive Bhasa in modern Indian theatre was a Professor of Ancient Indian Drama at National School of Drama, and theatre director, Shanta Gandhi, who first directed productions of Madhyamavyayoga (1966) (The Middle One) and Urubhanga (The Broken Thigh) in Hindi. A decade later, his work was approached by playwright Kavalam Narayan Panikkar and theatre director, Ratan Thiyam using Manipuri dance and theatre traditions, and traditional martial art of Thang-Ta, who first performed Karna-bhara (Karna's burden) in 1976, and later Urubhanga. ^[2][3]

The legendary Natyasastra scholar and Koodiyattam maestro Guru Mani Madhava Chakyar choreographed and started to perform Swapnavāsadatta and Pancharātra for the first time in the history of Koodiyattam.

Swapnavasavadatta was produced in Marathi by Panaji(Goa) based theatre group;Prabhakar Sanskritik Sanstha in the year 2003 & was presented as per the conventions of the Natyashastra.The play was scripted & directed by Anagha Deshpande while the production was designed by Saish Deshpande.A separate Poorvarang was also designed.

See also[link]

• Sanskrit literature
• Sanskrit drama
• Urubhanga

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Thirteen Trivandrum plays ascribed to Bhāsa( 2 Vols), translated by H.C.Woolner, Lakshman Sarup, 193
• Chākyār, Māni Mādhava (1975), Nātyakalpadruma, Kerala Kalamandalam, Vallathol Nagar 
• Dharwadker, Aparna Bhargava (2005). Theatres of independence: drama, theory, and urban performance in India since 1947. University of Iowa Press. ISBN 0-87745-961-4. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=mLQaz-12Eo8C&pg=PA314&lpg=PA314&dq=Shanta+Gandhi&source=bl&ots=Jl3ACt4FvL&sig=nSZuy_55EQdU-Y98rXitGWPXrTU&hl=en&ei=gHq5S4CqAZHGrAeXjp3ECg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAgQ6AEwATgy#v=onepage&q=Shanta%20Gandhi&f=false. 
• Encyclopaedia of Indian Theatre: Bhasa, by Biswajit Sinha, Ashok Kumar Choudhury. Raj Publications, 2000. ISBN 81-86208-11-9.

Further reading[link]

• A.D. Pusalker : Bhasa - a study. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, India 1968
• V. Venkatachalam : Bhasa (A monograph in the ‘Indian Men of Letter Series’), Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1986; Second Edn. 1994; (pp. 16+192) (Translated into Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada and Telugu-Pub. By Sahitya Akademi)

Baburam Bhattarai बाबुराम भट्टराई
Prime Minister of Nepal (Caretaker)
Incumbent
Assumed office 29 August 2011
President	Ram Baran Yadav
Deputy	Bijaya Kumar Gachchhadar
Preceded by	Jhala Nath Khanal
Personal details
Born	(1954-06-18) 18 June 1954 (age 58)[1] Belbas, Nepal
Political party	Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
Spouse(s)	Hisila Yami
Alma mater	Tribhuvan University Chandigarh College of Architecture School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi Jawaharlal Nehru University

Dr. Baburam Bhattarai (born 18 June 1954)^[1] is a Nepalese politician who became the 36th Prime Minister of Nepal in August 2011. He is a senior Standing Committee Member and vice chairperson of Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). His party started a revolutionary People's War in Nepal in 1996 that ultimately led to the change of the political system in Nepal. The decade long civil war transformed Nepal from a monarchy into a republic. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly from Gorkha in 2008 and became Finance Minister in the Cabinet formed after the election.

Maoist insurrection[link]

Prachanda speaking at a rally in Pokhara.

On 4 February 1996, Bhattarai gave the government, led by Nepali Congress Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, a list of 40 demands, threatening civil war if they were not met. The demands related to "nationalism, democracy and livelihood" and included such line items as the "domination of foreign capital in Nepali industries, business and finance should be stopped", and "discriminatory treaties, including the 1950 Nepal-India Treaty, should be abrogated" (referring here to the 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship), and "land under the control of the feudal system should be confiscated and distributed to the landless and the homeless."^[2] After that, and until 26 April 2006, the guerilla leader Prachanda directed the military efforts of the CPN (M) towards establishing areas of control, particularly in the mountainous regions and western Nepal.

The 40 demands were whittled down to 24 in subsequent political negotiations.^[3]

Relation with Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda)[link]

Bhattarai with Prachanda and other Maoist leaders

In late 2004 or early 2005, the relations between Prachanda and Bhattarai cooled down.^[4] This was reportedly due to disagreement on power sharing inside the party. Bhattarai was unhappy with the consolidation of power under Prachanda. At one point, Prachanda expelled Bhattarai from the party, though he was later reinstated.^[5] They later reconciled at least some of their differences.^[6][7]

Twelve point agreement[link]

On 22 November 2005, Prachanda and the Seven Party Alliance released a "twelve-point agreement" that expressed areas of agreement between the CPN(M) and the parties that won a large majority in the last parliamentary election in 1999. Among other points, this document stated that a dictatorial monarchy of King Gyanendra is the chief impediment to progress in Nepal. It claimed further that the Maoists are committed to human rights and press freedoms and a multi-party system of government. It pledged self-criticism and the intention of the Maoists and the Seven Parties to not repeat past mistakes.^[8]

Ceasefires[link]

Several ceasefires have occurred over the course of the Nepalese civil war.^[9] Most recently, on 26 April 2006, Prachanda announced a ceasefire with a stated duration of 90 days. The move followed weeks of massive protests—the April 2006 Nepalese general strike— in Kathmandu and elsewhere that had forced King Gyanendra to give up the personal dictatorship he had established on the February 1, 2005, and restore the parliament that was dissolved in May 2002.

After that a new government was established by the Seven-Party Alliance. The parliament and the new government supported the ceasefire and started negotiations with the Maoists on the basis of the twelve-point agreement. The two sides agreed that a new constituent assembly will be elected to write a new constitution, and decide on the fate of monarchy. The Maoists want this process to end with Nepal becoming a republic.^[10]

Personal life[link]

Baburam Bhattarai was born in a village called Belbas in Khoplang VDC of Gorkha District. He was born in a low-middle class peasant family. He has three siblings; one elder sister, one younger sister and one younger brother.

He completed his secondary school education from Amar Jyoti High School in Luintel, Gorkha. In the School leaving Certificate (SLC) of 1970 AD, he topped the exam in Nepal. He went to high school at Amrit Science College and repeated the same feat and topped the board again.^[11] After that under the Colombo plan scholarship, he studied Bachelor of Architecture in 1977 from Chandigarh.^[12] “He had been an outstanding student,” says Lieut-Col I.J.S. Bakshi (retd), Principal of the college.^[13] It was during this time he became the founding President of All India Nepalese Student's Association. This organization ended up becoming his first step towards building his academic interests outside the field of architecture.

Bhattarai went to the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture for an M.Tech degree. He is married to Hisila Yami,a fellow maoist leader. They have a daughter, Manushi.

Dr. Bhattarai being greeted with flowers after being elected Prime Minister in August 28, 2011.

He completed his PhD degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi)in 1986.^[14] His Ph.D. thesis was later published as a book "The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional Structure of Nepal- A Marxist Analysis".

Publications[link]

Bhattarai has contributed a number of published works, including The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional structure of Nepal: A Marxist Analysis (Adroit Publishers, Delhi, 2003) which is a cursory rewriting of his PhD thesis. Other works include Politico-Economic Rationale of People's War in Nepal (Utprerak Publications, Kathmandu, 1998), and Nepal! krantika adharharu (in Nepali) (Janadisha Publications, 2004). His books and articles have had some impact on Nepalis both home and abroad, though primarily only on those who share his political beliefs . Among his many well read newspaper articles is "Let’s Give No Legitimacy to the Beneficiaries of the New Kot Massacre"^[15] written in the aftermath of Palace Massacre of 2001. Similarly, it is widely believed that he is the principal author of the most successful Election Manifesto brought out by Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) in March 2008 in preparation of the Constituent Assembly Election held in April 2008.^[16]

See also[link]

Other articles

• Marxist analysis
• Prachanda

External links

• Personal website

References[link]

v t e Prime Ministers of Nepal Kingdom of Nepal (19th century-1990) Damodar Pande Rana Bahadur Shah Deva Bhimsen Thapa Rana Jang Pande Ranga Nath Poudyal Puskar Shah Rana Jang Pande Ranga Nath Poudyal Fateh Jang Chautaria Mathabarsingh Thapa Fateh Jang Chautaria Jang Bahadur Bam Bahadur Kunwar Rana Krishna Bahadur Kunwar Rana Jang Bahadur Renaudip Singh Bahadur Bir Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana Dev Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana Chandra Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana Bhim Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana Juddha Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana Padma Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana Mohan Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana Matrika Prasad Koirala vacant (1952–1953) Matrika Prasad Koirala vacant (1955–1956) Tanka Prasad Acharya Kunwar Inderjit Singh Subarna Shamsher Rana Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala Tulsi Giri Surya Bahadur Thapa Tulsi Giri Surya Bahadur Thapa Kirti Nidhi Bista vacant (1970–1971) Kirti Nidhi Bista Nagendra Prasad Rijal Tulsi Giri Kirti Nidhi Bista Surya Bahadur Thapa Lokendra Bahadur Chand Nagendra Prasad Rijal Marich Man Singh Shrestha Lokendra Bahadur Chand Kingdom of Nepal (1990-2008) Krishna Prasad Bhattarai Girija Prasad Koirala Man Mohan Adhikari Sher Bahadur Deuba Lokendra Bahadur Chand Surya Bahadur Thapa Girija Prasad Koirala Krishna Prasad Bhattarai Sher Bahadur Deuba vacant (2002) Lokendra Bahadur Chand Surya Bahadur Thapa Sher Bahadur Deuba vacant (2005–2006) Girija Prasad Koirala Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal (2008-present) Girija Prasad Koirala Prachanda Madhav Kumar Nepal Jhala Nath Khanal Baburam Bhattarai