Selected Performance

Dharmiklal Pandya and sons performing on the man, tabla, and harmonium. Manbhatt akhyan, "Draupadi svayamvara" performed in the courtyard of a private home in Vadodara, Gujarat, June 1982. [Thompson 1982 AC57]

The manbhatt [Gujarati man "a spherical metal or clay pot with a short and narrow neck" (synonym ghagharo) + bhatt Sanskrit "lord" and Gujarati "learned literary man"] is a kirtankar who accompanies himself on the a metal pot. In Gujarat, these hereditary performers are commonly brahmans who tell religious stories or akhyan [Sanskrit "telling, communication"; Gujarati dramatic story] embellishing them with music and dramatic gesture.

The manbhatt is a Gujarati institution. The tradition draws on verses from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and the Puranas translated into Gujarati from Brajbhasa by the poet Premanand (ca. 1636-1734). Scholars credit manbhatts with having helped to standardize the Gujarati language. They travelled from town to town earning their living performing Hinduism's great stories in extract or in whole for middle-class audiences. Travelling from region to region, they learned to standardize the grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation of Gujarati so that they needed to alter their presentation less than was already necessary when performing for diverse audiences and still have these audiences understand them.

In the video example, Dharmiklal Pandya — the premier manbhatt or our time — begins his presentation of the betrothal of Draupadi by invoking the god, Ganesh. Tradition describes Ganesh — the elephant-headed son of Siva and Parvati — as the author of the Mahabharata or perhaps the god who inspired the bards who told the story and the scribes who wrote it down. In Dharmiklal's video presentation he not only sings an invocation to Ganesh, he explains the importance of Ganesh to the history of the story. As a kirtankar, his role is not only to tell the story, but also to explain the significance of the elements.

Another characteristic of a kirtankar's presentation is to make the legendary figures seem more real to his audience. In the video presentation, he goes into some detail, describing how the Pandava brothers are disguised, their appearance, what they might look like in a contemporary setting, and so forth.

In this recording, Dharmiklal sings from a later part of the same episode. Here he describes the feast presented at the svayamvara: the different kinds of chutney, vegetables, and sweets spread before the guests. Note an important difference between the video and audio presentations. The video presentation is for a largely middle-class audience. The audio presentation is from a private recording session. In the audio recording he sings sargam tans for the musicologist. In the video recording he sings no such classical conceits, instead concentrating on storytelling.

Sources of Indian Music | Kirtan