This paper deals with the translation of Agha Hasan Amanat’s Urdu play Indersabha (1863) into Marathi by Vasudev Narayan Dongre (1850-1905) in 1884. With the analysis of Dongre’s translation, I intend to discuss different ideas, practices and systems that were in circulation in the nineteenth century Maharashtra. Extending the discussion on Dongre’s play, I would like to reflect upon how the Parsi-Urdu drama has influenced the Marathi theatre. I address the following questions in this paper: What kind of playwriting and theatre-making practices were in circulation? In which ways, the theatre artists and groups generate new ideas and practices? What was Dongre’s dramaturgical response to the Indersabha form of expression? How have the audiences responded to the interplay of performance practices between Parsi-Urdu and Marathi drama?

The time in which Dongre wrote Sangeet Indrasabha was fertile for circulation and cross-pollination of ideas. Cities were growing. The villagers were running towards cities for jobs in different institutional setups, mills and factories. New courts emerged. There were newer generations of English, Parsi, Gujarati and other traders. The tastes of people living in cities and towns began changing. Coinciding with the aspirations of new middle classes, the changing education system along with the social reforms, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of creative expression went through a transformation. The debates on the issues of other forms of literature such as prose, poetry and fiction opened up newer ideas regarding creative expressions. The existing patronage of the royal and aristocratic families as well as the informal network of support was extended to the ticket-paying urban classes. In response, it required a different language of expression in drama to attract the ticket-playing class. 

Broadly, the circulation was manifested through the intra-territory and inter-territory performance dispersion: in and out of Maharashtra and in Marathi while covering theatrical and non-theatrical ideas and practices. The intra and the inter were not exclusive processes. The processes involved a range of practices, including performing pauranik stories (mythological stories) while looking at the Bhagwat melas or developing the theatre-making processes anchored in the bookish drama while getting exposed to the cosmopolitan performance practices in a city like Bombay. In addition, circulation was not only within the theatrical sphere but also between the theatrical sphere and the outside world. For instance, the minimalist spatial layout of the pauranik drama referred to as the Kacheri (courthouse), shows how the vocabulary of administrative practices has travelled to theatre practices. 

The simultaneous process of circulation, transgression of boundaries of forms of expression, and hybridity could be seen through three examples. First, the bookish drama’s establishment emerged through translations and literary practices and the changing needs of theatre artists. Second, the newer articulation of social complexities and artistic practices was seen through the combination of ideology and popular traditions, as seen in Satyashodhak jalsas. Third, the emergence of new theatre technologies through the mobility between narrative, musical and popular traditions in Sanskrit, Kannada, parsi-urdu theatre practiced by Bhave, Kirloskar, Kolhatkar and Patankar. 

Vasudev Dongre, seven years younger than the iconic Annasaheb Kirloskar (1843-1885), did not write plays for a long time or could not establish himself or his Bombay Royal Company in the time when Kirloskar and his theatre company overwhelmed the theatre-going audiences. However, his play Sangeet Indrasabha was an explicit and bold step toward a more plural practice of theatre-making and presentation by including song, dance and music. Madhavrao Patankar and Shripad Krushna Kolhatkar further explored the Sangeet Indrasabha experiment. As it was practised in 19th century Maharashtra, Dongre also translated Sanskrit plays for his theatre company. He was also known for writing Sangeet Ranginayakin, a farce on prostitution that was widely performed and his performance of Kalidasa’s Shakuntal in Mumbai. As Appaji Vishnu Kulkarni in Marathi Rangbhoomi (1903) writes, “The actors in Dongre’s theatre company were trained in classical music and effectively performed the characters on the stage in the plays that included raga-based compositions. And, of course, since the actors were well-trained to sing on the stage, they entertained the masses as well as trained vocalists with their stage performances.”¹ At times, Dongre’s plays were so well-attended that, as Kulkarni has noted in his book, the audience would inquire on ‘why there is no bigger theatre’ to fit everyone inside the auditorium to see his plays. 

Dongre, Kolhatkar and Patankar, all having creative connections with parsi-urdu-gujarati theatre, represent the influx of ideas, enthusiasm and cross-pollination in the nineteenth century. The form of the pauranik drama (mythological plays) had started going through significant changes during Kirloskar-Dongre’s time. Although the pauranik dramas remained traditional in stories and forms, they were opened to several possibilities and transformed by secular, commercial and professional changes coming through the circulation of different ideas.  On the one hand, the Reformation spirit and on the other, evolving technologies began to pump new energies into theatre-making. Dongre represents a generation that, with new opportunities, practised innovative ways of staging. Scholar Baburao Joshi, in his book Sagitane Bharleli Rangbhoomi, calls it an experimental phase of music drama. According to Joshi, “Kirloskar’s work was limited to a very few in the upper strata of the society. Artists after Kirloskar wanted to hold onto the masses with easy and attractive music. Furthermore, they felt the radical change was required to bring new music on the stage. It would be appropriate. That was the experimental phase as they experimented toward this direction of bringing change.”² Later, as Joshi notes the fascination with Parsi tunes, the ‘Once More’ phase in theatre culture arrived. 

Most theatre historians agree on the significant role of the Parsi tune on the nineteenth century stage theatre in introducing the audio and video spectacle to attract the masses. Shripad Krishna Kolhatkar wanted to give his play Veertanaya to a Parsi theatre company to produce because he admired the beautiful plays of Parsi companies. Ashok Da Ranade, the musicologist and vocalist in his book, Stage Music of Maharashtra has identified four dramatic variants that have impacted Marathi theatre. Among these, Dongre and Patankar have, as he has shown, “depended on the Parsi-Urdu stage” for the stage-craft, dance-music spectacle, audio-visual sensuality and devices such as jhagda songs (action-songs) sequences enacted by male and female leads. Madhavrao Patankar’s Sangit Natak Mandali was known for experimenting with Parsi tunes to entertain factory workers (Giran Babus) in Mumbai. Shripad Krushna Kolhatkar, in his play, Veertanay (1896) intended to “bring into circulation the verses with new tunes”. Out of the total 104 songs that he had composed, 88 were based on the Parsi tunes of Veertanay. Arvind Waman Kulkarni has written a separate chapter on Sangit Indrasabha in his book Forgotten Plays. However, J. F. Blumhardt in both the catalogues: Catalogue of Marathi and Gujarati Printed Books in the Library of the British Museum and its supplementary catalogue published in 1892 and 1915 respectively, do not mention this play. M. G. Ranade’s A Note on the Growth of Marathi Literature published in 1913, does not mention Sangeet Indrasabha. 

Vasudev Dongre performed Sangeet Indrasabha in 1884. The original play, Indersabha was composed/written by Agha Hasan Amanat (1816-1859) in 1853 and Alfred Natak Mandali performed it in 1864. Amanat was a poet attached to the court of Wajid Ali Shah at Lucknow. Amanat assimilated Ghazals, Thumris, and Awadhi folk songs to a narrative base drawn from several popular masnavis, creating an original work still counted as the first drama in Urdu literary history.  In the introduction to Sangeet Indrasabha printed by Induprakash Chapkhana, Dongre writes that he wanted to perform an “imagined sangit drama”, moved by the attractive and fantastic scenes in Amanat’s play. As Dongre clarifies in the introduction, he adapted the Urdu play in Marathi because it has Sanskrit play format. This was not Dongre’s first dramaturgical experiment as he had written a performance script for the play, Sangeet Ratnavali based on Shivram Shastri Khare’s translation of Sanskrit play written by Harsha for a performance in 1893. Dongre in this play wanted “our people” to benefit from this play. As a result, Dongre’s adaptation follows the format of the Nati-Sutradhar exposition within the generic setting of a pauranik natak while influenced by Kirloskar’s Shakuntal. 

Sangeet Indrasabha’s story is about Tilottama, an Apsara in Indra’s darbar and her love for Chandrakant. It is the narrative not of a male lover running away with a female. Tillottama dares to get hold of the man she wants. She declares her love and attraction openly and also touches male lovers unabashedly. She exerts her control over the lover. She is not distant or inaccessible with her emotions. She is forward-looking, overpowering, daring and determined. Dongre tries to bring sensuality and boldness to the adaptation. This was groundbreaking especially at a time when Marathi theatre was witnessing pauranik (myth-based) drama.

Though the play’s exposition reminds us of Kirloskar’s iconic play Shakuntal, it is more mature than Shakuntal in building the dissolving scenes and characters. The play begins with a scene between Sutradhar and Nati and seamlessly introduces Tilottama by replacing Nati. Sharply written, the impressive stage direction characterises the text. One of the peculiar features of the play is that there are dance and song sequences in the play that show the direct influence of Amanat’s Indersabha that was first performed in the Parsi theatre in 1864. However, I could not get information on who trained artists in dance or the existing dance form available for them to follow.

While adapting, Dongre changed the names of the fairies by creating an acquaintance with the pauranik drama. Thus, four fairies named after monocoloured gemstones – Pukhraj (topaz), Nilam (sapphire), Lal (ruby), and Sabz (emerald) are changed into four apsaras named Bhamini, Kalavati, Vasantika and Tilottama, respectively. Language use in Amanat’s Indrasabha is dynamic. It uses a form of women’s speech called zanana boli, usually employed by courtesans. The language of the songs and verses moves back and forth quickly between Urdu, Braj, Awadhi and Khan Boli. However, Dongre sticks to standard, sanskritised urban Marathi.There was an opportunity of introducing the bilingual pattern like Kirloskar uses Hindustani and Marathi: “अजि महाराज, अबतक रस्ता बहुत खाचखड्डेका था, इसीलिये घोडेके बागदवल जोरसे खिचकार रथ आहिस्ते आहिस्ते चलाया.”³  

Unlike fairies in Amanat’s play, Dongre’s adaptation does not describe the uniqueness of each apsara, and her attire or the songs and colours are not attributed to them to narrate their beauty and their association with different elements of nature. Dongre limits the singing part to eulogising Indra. In Amanat’s play, one also gets a sense of aristocratic aesthetic in sets, costumes and etiquettes and masculine responses to feminine beauty in Indra’s darbar. However, Indra in the Marathi adaptation remains one of the characters from the pauranik drama created to entertain middle-class society.

Although there is a give and take of techniques and forms of writing and playmaking, newly emerged sangeet natak has not been an intermediary form of theatre, a conduit in the cultural flow connecting the developing urbanised areas with the hinterland through stories, poetic genres. The middle classes and upper castes did the consumption of these forms mainly within the cities in Maharashtra. It did not bridge the villager and the city-dweller, the educated and the illiterate, the Hindu and the Muslim. 

Baburao Joshi, in his analysis of the dramatic work published in the post-Kirloskar period, states that “The audience welcomed new attempts of playwrights in this time. Everyone felt the need to transgress the boundaries…and thus the conversion began.”⁴ One could see Baburao Joshi’s point that the circulation of ideas and practices between Marathi-Urdu-Parsi enabled the nineteenth century theatre to seek change on their own in search of newness. Dongre, Patankar and others reacted to the established order of form and presentation through Parsi tunes and the spectacular scenery. One could see that the search was well within the larger context of the middle classes and their relation to economics. However, it was not in response to the intricacies of relations between individuals and society. Dongre and others seem to have gone out of their way by adapting to the strong, outgoing and dominating female character of Tilottama.Nevertheless, the concept was not ingrained in the artists’ belief system. They adapted something that did not fit into the existing hierarchical structure of the male and the female. It pushed the limits of existing pauranik and bookish drama to cross over them for short durations. Therefore, it remained as an experiment and did not absorb into the theatrical culture. Hybrid experiments like Indersabha did not remain organic to the culture, and thus, social drama or comedies have remained at the heart of Marathi theatrical culture. Transgression served the purpose of reinforcing our cultural boundaries of men and women or real and fantastic. Thus, towards the beginning of the 20th century, theatre stayed to preserve and entertain the Marathi middle-class theatre within the new avatar of nationalism.