Indian Puppets

About Indian Puppets

Puppetry originated in India and travelled across the seven seas to the Eastern and Western world as vouched by many scholars. Puppets dated back to a period well before Bharata's Natya Shastra and have continued unabated throughout the centuries in almost all Indian states. Puppetry is one enduring form which has entertained masses and educated people. The famous puppeteers of Rajasthan are really acrobats, who only put on puppet shows when they move out of villages. These and a thousand other scintillating facts come out of this exciting book for the reader's entertainment and elucidation. Puppets are by no means for only children—as the puppeteers of Orissa sing and dance about the romantic love of Radha and Krishna, and Keralan puppets narrate Kathakali stories in the same make-up and costumes. The book aims at giving a connected account of the Indian puppets: their variety, their multiple functions, their craft, their animation and their connections with other related arts in five separate parts. The book also contains—for the first time in any book on puppetry—four important appendices: Museums in India containing puppets, Directory of Indian Puppeteers, Global Bibliography on Puppets and a relevant Glossary. The world of Indian puppets is seen in vivid colours—with scores of coloured photographs and many line-drawings and half­tone pictures—in their many-sided splendour: variety of the glove, rod, string, shadow, and human puppets and a myriad background stories of the puppet-masters and their imaginative landscape of free creativity.