Devadasi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Devadasis in Tamil Nadu around 1920
John Gleich : Two nights with a musician

Devadasis (देवदासी) were Indian temple dancers who performed as “servants of God” at church services or at secular events. The Devadasis belonged to a caste of their own, which had come to an end with the collapse of the caste system - the millennia-old dance art, including Bharatnatyam , was not lost.

Names in the environment of the Devadasis

  • Bajadere was the romanticizing term in Europe for Indian temple dancers or girls of pleasure, which appears in Goethe's poem The God and the Bajadere , among others.
  • Ganika called Kautilya in his textbook Arthashastra from the 4th century BC. A young beautiful dancer. It was after the Kamasutra an elegant courtesan and differed from the simple prostitutes Veshya because they dominated the 64 Arts.
  • Devadasis in Orissa were called Mahari . The word is a composition of the Oriya words mahan and nari and means "divine ladies". According to their areas of responsibility, they had additional names: Bhitara Gauni, Bhahara Gauni, Nachuni, Patuari, Raj Angila, Gahana Mahari and Rudra Ganika.
  • In the popular religion of the West Indian state of Maharashtra, Murali is the name of a dance girl consecrated to the regional family god Khandoba . Its male counterpart in the service of the deity is the Vaghya .
  • Nati (male form Nata ) is a temple dancer and was often synonymous with a Devadasi.
  • Nautch , derived from Sanskrit nritya ("dance"), describes the secular counterpart to the Devadasis: beautiful girls who appeared as professional entertainers not to please the gods, but the rulers at the Indian courts. In the 1930s, this led to the development of elegant danceinterludes, which particularlyadaptedthe Nautanki folk theater,which is part of the Swang tradition, tothe male zeitgeist.
  • Stree Preksha has been called dance theater since ancient Indian times and was only performed by female dancers ( ganikas ). The Ganikas appeared in temples, palaces or at large festivals. The Stree Preksha tradition gradually disappeared after the Islamic conquest of India.
  • Tawaif , from Arabic taifa ("group", "community"), in the 18./19. Century highly respected entertainers with poetry, dance, singing and erotic at the North Indian royal courts. The tawaif became the nautch dancers in the course of the 19th century . From what was once a wide and valued field of activity, only the linguistic reduction to “prostitutes” is preserved today.
  • Veshya , a simple prostitute in the Kamasutra

The Devadasi system as a way to prostitution

The religious background of this old tradition is now often only a minor issue. Instead of venerable temple dancers, Devadasi are mostly only victims of an abuse system that turns young people into prostitutes and their parents into their pimps. Children are introduced to this system through a ritual at an early age, return to their families and then, when they are old enough, are sold for money. Often they are only 10 to 13 years old. They are given to a man, so their families are guaranteed an income. The majority of their customers are truck drivers, who have a particularly high HIV infection rate. The Devadasi system runs through generations.

See also

literature

  • Davesh Soneji: Unfinished Gestures: Devadāsīs, Memory, and Modernity in South India. (Social and Cultural History of the Devadasi in South India in the 19th and 20th Centuries) Chicago University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-226-76809-0

Web links

Commons : Devadasi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manohar Laxman Varadpande: History of Indian Theater. Classical Theater. Abhinav Publications, New Delhi 2005, p. 155
  2. ↑ Rahul Acharya: Mahari: The Divine Damsels. ( Memento from January 31, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) boloji.com
  3. ↑ Mrudula Tere: Vaghya Murali folk tradition in Western Maharashtra. Third International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Prato (Tuscany), 22. – 25. July 2008 ( summary of the lecture ( memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
  4. ↑ Darius L. Swann: Nautanki. In: Farley P. Richmond, Darius L. Swann, Phillip B. Zarrilli (Eds.): Indian Theater. Traditions of Performance. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 1990, p. 253
  5. ↑ Manohar Laxman Varadpande: History of Indian Theater. Abhinav Publications, New Delhi 1987, pp. 185-197
  6. ^ David Courtney: The Tawaif, the Anti-Nautch Movement, and the Development of North Indian Classical Music: Part 2 - The Tawaifs. chandrakantha.com
  7. ^ Prostitutes of God (Vice Documentary) accessed on YouTube November 1, 2013