ABSTRACT
The classical is a contested concept in India and can be generally defined in four principal ways in the world of performing arts: (1) the practices taught through the guruśiṣyaparamparā (teacher-disciple-lineages) that claim a history going back to the ancient era and assert a connection to the Sanskrit treatise on performing arts, the Nāṭyaśāstra, along with the constellation of texts and commentaries related to it; (2) the traditional art forms revived, standardized and consolidated in the context of nationalist, anti-colonial agitations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; (3) the genres recognized and listed by the Indian government as classical forms in contemporary times; and (4) an imported, colonial, English-language term used discursively to establish equal value between Western and Indian art forms since the modern period, yet conceptually alien to Indian aesthetic imaginaries. Despite these multivalent and conflicting perspectives attached to the referent, the classical operates today as an integral part of the Indian performance glossaries and imaginaries.
