Download Lecture 14 Hayavadan..

Characters
Bhagavata
Devadatta
Kapila
Padmini
Actor I
Actor II
Hayavadana
Doll I
Doll II
Kali
Child
Girish Karnad is a great dramatic genius who has explored traditional Indian
theatre in order to give expression to modern man’s dilemma in his
Hayavadana. In fact he has blended the traditional folk drama with the
modern western theatre to dramatise the conflict between tradition and
desire, perfection and imperfection, mind and body, repression and
expression, social reality and individually experienced reality, rational truth
and experiential truth and Dionysian view of life and Apollonian view of life
in his play Hayavadana. To give a vivid description to the underlying clashes in
human life, Karnad makes use of the various elements of Yakshagana of
Karnataka, a lively performance having dance, drama and songs as its main
constituent components. He has very finely woven into the fabric of his plot
the various elements of folk drama like masks, Bhagavata ( Sutradhara or
Commentator), device of half-curtain, talking dolls, chorus, mime, comic
interlude etc.
 Hayavadana is one of Karnad’s most remarkable works.
The plot of Hayavadana comes from Kathasaritsagara,
an ancient compilation of stories in Sanskrit. The
central event in the play-the story of Devadatta and
Kapila- is based on a tale from the
Vetalapanchavimshika, but he has borrowed it
through
Thomas Mann’s retelling of the story in The
Transported Heads.
The Sanskrit tale, told by a ghost to an adventurous king,
gains a further mock –heroic dimension in Mann’s version.
The original story poses a moral problem whereas Mann uses
it to ridicule the mechanical notion of life which
differentiates between body and soul. He ridicules the
philosophy which holds the head superior to the body.
The human body, Mann argues, is a device for the completion
of human destiny. Even the transposition of heads did not
liberate the protagonists from the psychological limits
imposed by nature. Karnad’s play poses a different problem,
that of human identity in a world of tangled relationships.
When the play opens, Devadatta and Kapila are the closer of
friends-‘one mind, one heart’, as the Bhagavata describes
them. Devadatta is a man of intellect, Kapila a ‘man of the
body’. Their relations get complicated when Devadatta
marries Padmini.
Kapila falls in love with Padmini and she too starts drifting towards him. The
friends kill themselves and in a scene, hilariously comic but at the same time full
of dramatic connotation, Padmini transposes their heads, giving Devadatta
Kapila’s body and Kapila Devadatta’s. As a result Padmini gets the desired ‘Man’.
Kali understood each individuals moral fibre and was indifferent than the usual
stereotypical portrayal of god and goddesses.
The result is a confusion of identities which reveals the ambiguous nature of
human personality. Initially Devadatta- actually the head of Devadatta on
Kapila’s body- behaves differently from what he was before. But slowly he
changes to his former self. So does Kapila, faster than Devadatta. But there is a
difference. Devadatta stops reading texts, does not write poetry while Kapila is
haunted by the memories in Devadatta’s body.
Padmini, after the exchange of heads, had felt that she had the best of both
the men, gets slowly disappointed. Of the three only she has the capacity for
complete experience. She understands but cannot control the circumstances
in which she is placed. Her situation is beautifully summed up by the image
of river and the scarecrow in the choric songs.
A swordfight that leaves both the friends dead brings the baffling story to
end. The death of the three protagonists was not portrayed tragically; the
deaths serve only to emphasize the logic behind the absurdity of the
situation.
The sub plot of ‘Hayavadana’, the horse-man, deepens the significance of the
main theme of incompleteness by looking at it from different perspective.
The horse man’s search for completeness ends comically, with his becoming a
complete horse. The animal body triumphs over what is considered, the best
in man, the Uttamaga, the human heads! Probably to make a point Karnad
names the play ‘Hayavadana’, human’s search for completeness.
Karnad uses the conventions and motifs of folk tales and folk theatre – masks,
curtain, dolls, and the story-within-a-story-to create a bizarre world. His plays
plot revolves around a world of incomplete individuals, indifferent gods, dolls
that speak and children who cannot, a world unsympathetic to the desire and
frustration, joys and sorrows of human beings. What is real is only the
tremendous, absurd energy of the horse and its rider who move around the
stage symbolizing the powerful but monotonous rhythm of life.
Karnad’s work has the tone and expression of great drama. He has the
outstanding ability and the power to transform any situation into an aesthetic
experience.
Form of the Play
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Karnad builds on Indian performance tradition in
Hayavadana when throughout the play he employs
numerous folk theatre devices such as entry curtains,
songs, puppets, masks, story-within-a-story
plotlines, and a storyteller character, the
Bhagavata. The Bhagavata acts as narrator and sings
for and about the characters in both first and third
person, often revealing their thoughts, and producing
the dances and prose exchanges of the performers. He
is in effect a stage manager who appears onstage and
directs the action of the play by providing narration.
Yakshagana
 The particular form of Indian folk drama that Karnad
draws upon in Hayavadana is “Yakshagana” of
karnataka, a lively performance having dance, drama
and songs as its main constituents. Karnad has made
use of all the theatrical devices used in Yakshgana like
masks, Bhagvata (the Sutradhara or Commentator),
half-curtain, Chorus and story within story or subplot.
Subplot
Hayavadana, as the name suggests, is a man with a horse's
head (Haya = horse and vadana = face; Dodiya 191). (His
mother, a princess, had fallen in love with and been
impregnated by a stallion.) Hayavadana is desperately
seeking to get rid of this strange head when he stumbles on
to the stage where the play about the transposed heads is
about to be performed. The Bhagavata of the play then
guides him to the same temple of Kali where the characters
in the play will get their heads transposed. This incident
forms the introduction for the tale of transposed heads
that follows.
Karnad has also made use of sub–plot or story-withinstory to highlight the conflict in the main plot. The
sub-plot of Hayavadana, the man with the horse-head
deepens the significance of the main theme of
incompleteness. The personality of Hayavadana itself
highlights the conflict between the body and the
mind. He wants to shed off his horse-head and
become a complete human. There is conflict shown
between Devadatta’s head and Kapila’s body and vice
versa till the end when his search for completeness
ends with his becoming a complete horse. Karnad does
succeeds in using the techniques of the story-withinstory effectively to bring to the fore the core of the
main plot.
Relevance of Dolls: Folk Tales
Karnad introduces two dolls that Devadatta presents to
Padmini as gifts for the expected child. Through their own
dialogues, the dolls describe the dynamic changes
occurring in the family. They document the change of
Devadatta's body from its rough muscular Kapila-nature to
a soft, pot-bellied Brahmin body. They reveal that Padmini
has given birth to a disfigured son and that she has now
begun dreaming about Kapila again. The dolls also become
the theatrical device through which Padmini sends
Devadatta to Ujjain, so she can use his absence to sneak
away with the child to the forest where Kapila resides .
Sutradhar: Ancient Theatre
 Bhagvata plays the multiple roles of a stage manager, a musical
director and a narrator. He introduces the characters and
comments on the action of the play and also mediates between
the audiences and the fictional characters. It is Bhagavata who,
in the beginning of the play, brings out the paradox in Lord
Ganesha: An elephant’s head on a human body, a broken tusk
and a cracked belly- whichever way you look at him he seems the
embodiment of imperfection,of incompleteness. How indeed
can one fathom the mystery that this very Vakratunda–
Mahakavya, with his crooked face and distorted body, is Lord
and Master of Success and Perfection. (Karnad 73) Bhagavata
plays a crucial role in bringing out the conflict going on in the
mind and body of Kapila, Devadatta and Hayavadana.
Masks
 Mask is an excellent device to represent the conflict
going within and without a dramatic personage, and
Karnad has very well made use of this device to
dramatise the conflict between body and mind. At the
juncture, of transposition of heads, Karnad has made
an artistic use of mask-swapping to signify the
switching of Kapila’s and Devadatta’s head and the
consequent conflict between Kapila’s head and
Devadatta’s body and vice versa.
Techniques in Nutshell
 Yakshagana: Mask of Ganesha, Bhagwata’s role, rich costumes, masks
 Folk Tale: No formal division of scenes, curtains, folk device of
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speaking dolls, story-within-story, Bhagwata’s style of narration.
Sanskrit Theatre: Underplayed action, emphasized mood
Folk Theatre: Religious myths, local legends, mime, half-curtains,
painted curtains.
Western Theatre: Chorus, Theatre of Absurd style ending, Dionysian &
Appolonian Ego concepts. – Dionysian: Harmony of body & mind;
ego follows id & superego accepts hence unified body-mind.
Appolonian: Body is under mind; mind under morals, i.e. ego is
dictated by superego hence mind is independent of body leading
to self alienation.
Brechtian Theatre: Narrator, linear & loose plot, no climax.
Parsi Theatre: Music, mime, comic interlude.
Ending of the Play: Theatre of
Absurd
 Padmini decides to commit Sati after Kapila and Devdutta kill each other in sword dual.
She entrusts the boy to Bhagavata and leaves instructions for him to be raised both as
Kapila's son and as Devadatta's son. Here the Bhagavata ends the story, and Karnad
suggests in his stage directions that the audience should feel that the play has ended
(2:64). However, the frame story involving Hayavadana begins again. An actor stumbles
on the stage screaming that a horse has been singing the National Anthem, while another
actor leads in Padmini's son-a mute, serious boy clutching his two dirty dolls. No amount
of clowning and questioning by the actors elicits a response from the boy. Hayavadana
returns to the stage, now with the body, as well as the head, of a horse. Kali has answered
his prayers, it seems, by eliminating his human physical characteristics altogether.
Nevertheless, he still has a human voice and is singing patriotic songs. Hayavadana
begins laughing when he sees the actors and Bhagavata. His laughter and human voice
infect the mute child with laughter, and the child begins to speak and laugh normally. In
a cyclic transformation, the child's laughter causes Hayavadana to lose the last shreds of
his human nature and he begins to neigh like a horse. Karnard thus uses the logic of
myth to create a double, reciprocal exchange of functions that allows for resolution (LeviStrauss 227). Hayavadana and the boy in effect complete each other: the one, as a human
child returned to the fold of society and the other, as fully animal...........
Themes
 Incompleteness
 Quest for Identity
 Alienation
 Absurdity of life
 Tangled web of human relations
 In this play, Karnad has presented the theme of incompleteness at three levelsDivine, Human and Animal. When the play begins, “ a mask of Ganesha is
brought on the stage and kept on the chair. The Bhagavata sings verses in praise
of Ganesha, accompanied by his musicians: O Elephant- headed Herambha
whose flag is victory, and who shines like a thousand suns. o husband of Riddhi
and Siddhi, seated on a mouse and decorated with a snake. o single-tusked
destroyer of incompleteness, we pay homage to you and start our play. “ So
from the very beginning we see the use of the word ‘incompleteness’. Ganesha
is worshipped as the destroyer of incompleteness. Then Bhagavatta says: “ An
elephant’s head on a human body, a broken tusk and a cracked belly whichever
way you look at him he seems the embodiment of imperfection, of
incompleteness…” Here the Bhagavatta regards Ganesha the embodiment of
incompleteness because Ganesha has an elephant head and a human body. The
theme of incompleteness has been presented at three levels- Divine level
includes Ganesha, Human level includes Devadatta, Kapila and Padmini and
Animal level includes Hayavadana.
. “Hayavadana achieves
completeness when finally he becomes a complete horse
and loses the human voice through singing the Indian National Anthem. But
this is one-sided completeness. But for human being, who is a combination of
flesh and spirit, body and mind, completeness requires a harmonical
relationship between body and mind but Cartesian division seems to be a
perennial irresolvable problem for man. The major reality of this world is selfdivision. Both man and society are self-divided and disturbing antinomies
struggle for supremacy. The problem of Hayavadana, alienation, absurdity,
incompleteness and search for identity are central of the plays of Karnad.
Incompleteness is an inescapable and insurmountable reality. This concept
helps to solve such riddles in Hayavadana as why Hayavadana’s mother chooses
for her husband a stallion rather than a man and why Goddess Kali makes
Hayavadana a complete horse instead of a complete man.”In his ‘Introduction’ to
Hayavadana, Kirtinath Kurkoti writes: “The sub-plot of Hayavadana , the horseman, deepens the significance of the main theme of incompleteness by treating
it on a different plane. The horse-man’s search for completeness ends comically,
with his becoming a complete horse. The animal body triumphs over what is
considered the best in man, the Uttamanga, the human head!”