Kohaliya 1: Nāṭyam

Long ago, as Śambhu danced at twilight, Nārada, moved by devotion, sang the destruction of Tripura with his mind on Him, in your (?) song; pleased, He performed the acting, and then He said to Taṇḍu: 'Child, join this tāṇḍava with the acting described for drama.'

Distinguished by the use of different tempos and by rāgas, with various rasas and a story well carried through: that is called kāvya [a sung poem].

Acting abounding in sattva (involuntary states) …

For the highest characters there is the dvipadī with four long syllables, since there the two feet are made by raising and lowering.

The ninth, the fifth and the sixth [are short] here; the remaining seven are long: [that is] the subhadra, in the furious and heroic [rasas]; with a pause after three morae, in the prabhāvatī [metre], in the bhāṣā of the ṭakka rāga.

Two short, two long, two short, and long at beginning and end: [this] is to be known as the slow (vilambitā) dhruvā …; for the movement of all women going to a tryst; and here the gentle dvipadī is to be sung in the mālavakaiśika [rāga].

The interlude (viṣkambhaka), to be performed by middling characters who know the counsels of the characters in the opening juncture of the play, is to be made in the course of a nāṭaka like the introductory scene (praveśaka).

Here the graceful style (kaiśikī) would be with the erotic, the comic and the pathetic.

When at the end of connected statements there is a word unconnected [with them] that yet seems connected, that is the limb of the vīthī called gaṇḍa.

Joined with characters of high, low and middle rank, to be played by one or by two [actors] — that is called the vīthī.

The act is threefold: by the transition into an act (aṅkāvatāra), by the cūḍā, or by the opening of an act (aṅkamukha). The cūḍā is the intimation of a matter by bards and heralds …; the joining of an act with another act is called avatāra; what is intimated beforehand, as a special opening of the act, by a woman or a man, is held to be the aṅkamukha.

The refined, the erotic, the mixed, the oblique, the combined and single application: these are what the wise know as the sixfold [division] in general acting.