---
title: "Literature, Theatre & Performing Arts of India"
description: "Cover Indian literature, theatre and performing arts for UPSC, spanning the Sangam, Sanskrit and bhakti canons, classical dances and Natyashastra-rooted drama."
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/upsc-art-culture-literature-theatre-performing-arts"
---

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Literature, theatre & performing arts

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# Literature, theatre & performing arts

Indian literature, theatre and performing arts for UPSC: Sangam, Sanskrit and bhakti canons, the eight classical dance forms and Natyashastra-rooted drama.

## The layered canon of Indian literature

Indian literary tradition is the deepest continuous archive available to a UPSC aspirant, and the syllabus expects fluency across its language strata. The oldest layer is the **Vedic corpus** (c. 1500–500 BCE): the *Rigveda*, *Samaveda*, *Yajurveda* and *Atharvaveda*, followed by Brahmanas, Aranyakas and the philosophical *Upanishads*. These were composed in Vedic Sanskrit and transmitted orally through the *shruti* tradition.

The **epic and classical Sanskrit phase** produced the *Mahabharata* (attributed to Vyasa, containing the Bhagavad Gita) and the *Ramayana* (Valmiki). Classical Sanskrit literature peaked in the Gupta era (4th–6th century CE): **Kalidasa** wrote *Abhijnanasakuntalam*, *Meghaduta*, *Raghuvamsha* and *Kumarasambhava*; **Vishakhadatta** the political drama *Mudrarakshasa*; **Shudraka** the social play *Mrichchhakatika*; **Banabhatta**, court poet of Harshavardhana, the prose *Harshacharita* and *Kadambari*. **Vatsyayana**, **Kautilya** (*Arthashastra*) and **Patanjali** anchor the technical literature.

## Sangam, bhakti and Indo-Islamic strata

The **Sangam literature** (c. 300 BCE–300 CE) in Old Tamil is the earliest secular corpus of South India, organised into *Ettuthogai* (eight anthologies) and *Pattupattu* (ten idylls), with the grammar *Tolkappiyam* and the ethical *Tirukkural* of Tiruvalluvar. Sangam poetry is classified by *aham* (love) and *puram* (war/public life).

The **bhakti and Sufi movements** (7th–17th centuries) democratised literature in regional tongues: the Tamil *Alvars* and *Nayanars*; Kabir, Surdas, Tulsidas (*Ramcharitmanas*, 1574), Mirabai, Guru Nanak and Chaitanya in the north; Basavanna's *vachanas* in Kannada; Jnaneshwar in Marathi; Shankaradeva in Assamese. **Amir Khusrau** (1253–1325) fused Persian and Hindavi idioms, pioneering the *qawwali* and the *tarana*. Persian flourished under the Mughals—Abul Fazl's *Ain-i-Akbari* and *Akbarnama*, Babur's *Baburnama*.

The **modern phase** saw Rabindranath Tagore win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for *Gitanjali*. The **Jnanpith Award** (instituted 1965) and the **Sahitya Akademi** (founded 1954) institutionalise recognition across the 22 Eighth Schedule languages; the first Jnanpith went to G. Sankara Kurup (Malayalam) in 1965.

## Drama theory and the Natyashastra

Indian dramaturgy rests on **Bharata Muni's Natyashastra** (c. 200 BCE–200 CE), the foundational treatise theorising *rasa* (aesthetic flavour) and *bhava* (emotional state), enumerating the eight original *rasas* (later nine with *shanta*). Abhinavagupta's *Abhinavabharati* is its key commentary. This single text underpins both classical theatre and the codified gesture vocabulary (*hasta mudras*, *abhinaya*) shared across dance forms—making it among the highest-yield names in the syllabus.

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