Keeping alive a bygone tradition in The Hindu, Friday, October 22, 1999

Keeping alive a bygone tradition
The Hindu, Friday, October 22, 1999

In the current scene of Bharatanatyam, the subject of the 'Devadasis' arouses great interest and rhetoric on paper or in theatrical experiments. The actual inheritors, however, still remain unrecognised.
On Vijayadasami day, at a private function, Smt. P. Ranganayaki, former Devadasi attached to the Sri Subrahmanya Swam! Temple at Tiruttani, received the first "Devadasi Mural Award". This award is sponsored by IGNCA (New Delhi) and Parampara (The Netherlands) on the basis of their co-production "Devadasi Mural Remembering Devadasis", an interactive multimedia CD-ROM, released in 1998. Dr. Saskia Kersenboom presented the cash award accompanied by a congratulatory letter from His Excellency Sri Prabhakar Menon, Ambassador of India to The Netherlands.
Smt. P. Ranganayaki stands out for maintaining her tradition of ritual song and dance to this day. She was trained by her grandmother, Subburatnamma. and dedicated to Lord Murugan at the age of 17 and she performed her 'Mural', the hereditary task of song, dance and Kumbharati in daily and festival worship. In 1947, these hereditary rights were abolished by Law. Smt. Ranganayaki moved to Madras and married Sri M. C. Kannan.
In 1977, she accepted Saskia Kersenboom as her student. This relationship resulted in Saskia's Ph.D. dissertation "Nityasumangali, Devadasi Tradition in South India".

NANDINI RAMANI