Mantrāṅkam

Abstract

The author focuses on a tiny segment of the long performance of Mantrāṅkam, trying to use it as a magnifying glass to read the wide open structure of this work. The aim is to see how in the initial moment of the act, the fixed structure is not respected, and also to account for the apparently unmotivated shift between ritual and theatrical parts. If we are facing a fluid text that has always refused to be concluded, do we need to draw a division between what is theatrical and what is ritual? Are these two terms really of use when we deal with ‘non-discrete’ textual traditions? The author argues that to account for fluidity, we must look at the history of this corpus, which clearly retains traces of an earlier stage in the development of this art form.