The book, Folk Theatre, Pandwani, based on the epic Mahabharat, documents evolution of a tribal ballad into a flourishing folk theatre form of central India and through the journey, how the narratives of tribal mystics and myths of the performing art gave way to epic Mahabharat as the theme of its present form of “Pandwani”.
Pandwani is a mono-dramatic folk art of Chhattisgarh which can be traced to tribal epic Pandwani, a ballad sung by Pradhan Gonds of Central India. The tribal performing art used to thrive on oral tradition.
Pradhan Gond, a community of bards, is a sub-tribe of Gond. The Gonds are originally a hunter community inhabiting in the region extending from Vindhyanchal hills to Godavari river, known as Gondwana or land of Gonds.
The balladeers move Gond villages and recite their sonnets.
The ballads revolved round Gond myths and ethnographic elements. Gradually, the balladeers started adapting verses of the Mahabharat, penned by 16th century poet Sabal Singh Chauhan, in Mandlahi Chhattisgarhi, a colloquial language.
This is known as Gondi version of Mahabharat, which instead of adapting the epic Mahabharat in whole, continued to incorporate Gondi myths and ethnographic elements.
There is another community of balladeers “Dewar”. They picked up Pradhan ballads and spread them throughout Chhattisgarh.
Gradually, the ballad evolved into folk theatre form and the theatre communities started weeding out Gond elements from the lyrics and replaced them with the Mahabharat of Sabal Singh Chauhan, which is in Avadhi language and written in “Doha-Choupai” style.
The beauty of the form is every performer improvises the text in his or her own way and everyone has his own style of performance.
Pandwani, which literally means the Pandawa-vani, narrates the legend of Pandawas of Mahabharat.
The performing art has now has now received recognition at the national as well as international levels.
Most of the Pandwani artistes belong to backward communities.
Padma Bhusan awardee and exponent of Pandawani Teejan Bai comes from a tribal community. Celebrated artist of Pandawani Laxmi Bai and Shanti Bai Chelak hail from Satnami community, categorised as scheduled caste. Similarly, exponents of the performing art Jhada Ram Dewangan and Puna Ram Nisad come from other backward community (OBC).
“Technological development has changed entertainment medium drastically posing serious threat to the existence of the performing arts in the country. My work is aimed at preserving the forms as documentation whatever existed now. As a mission, I have taken up this task of documenting folk theatre forms from all over the country, especially, the Central India”, 75-year-old Niranjan Mahawar, who authored the book, says.
His another literary work “Bastar Bronzes, Tribal Religion and Art” was published last year.
The work is said to be the first authentic documentation of art and culture of tribals of Bastar in Chhattisgarh.
He has also written monographs on Nachha theatre, Rahas theatre, Macha theatre of Malwa and is currently working on his book on folk theatre of India, in which more than 70 theatre forms are being documented in independent chapters. The book is planned in five volumes.