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Nandikeshvara (; 5th century – 4th century BC) was a major theatrologist of ancient India. He was the author of the Abhinaya Darpana .
Although Bharata's texts had mysteriously disappeared, his contributions had been, however, remembered by Kalidasa himself in the 4th century in his play malavikagnimitra,translated into French by P. Foucaux, 1877, Bibliothèque orientale Elz., Leroux by Banabhatta in the 7th century in his harshacharita and, early in the 8th century, by Bhavabhuti (author of the play malatimadhava). Thus, Bharata had remained not only a model for his posterity but, in the 4th century BC – out of the theme of Charudatta accredited to him -, Shudraka had recreated the famous play known as the mrit-shakaTika.Le chariot de terre cuite ("The Baked Clay Chariot"), translated into French by P. Regnaud, Paris, 1876 Even in the 12th century, Jayadeva, author of the gita govinda, had hailed Bharata as the "smile of the Goddess of Poetry".
Between the two land-marks – Bharata's Natya Shastra (2nd century BCE) and Matanga Muni's Brihaddeshi (c. 5th century) -, majestic stands out Nandikeshvara's Abhinaya Darpana.A.K. Coomaraswamy & G.H. Duggirala, The Mirror of Gesture, Londres, 1917, New York 1936; abhinayamkuram, Gopinath & Naghbhushan, Madras, 1946; abhinaya-darpana, Manmohan Ghosh, Calcutta Sanskrit Series, 1954; abhinaya-darpana, Pandit Ashokenath Shastri, foreword by Abanindranath Tagore, Calcutta, 1991 (repr.) Although the final penning of this work was known to have been completed after that of the natya-shastra, Indian and Western historians place Nandikeshvara's school between the 5th and the 2nd centuries BC.Swami Prajnanananda, bharatiya samgitera itihasa, Calcutta, 1961, Vol. II (2nd ed.), p.387 (quotation by Alain Danielou) After Matanga, Damodara Mishra in the Kuttini Mata (8th century), Rajasekhara in his Kavya Mimamsa (9th century), Abhinavagupta in the Abhinava Bharati (11th century), Sharngadeva in the Sangita Ratnakara (13th century) – among others – have continued paying tribute to Nandikeshvara's specific contributions.
A number of details in the staging of the Kutiyattam affirm first of all specialists' opinion that Nandikeshvara's influence had been deeper and wider on the concerned population than that of Bharata, at least owing to the geographical distance. Moreover, these very details refer so often to passages of the Abhinaya Darpana that there is no hesitation in recognising the proximity of this theatre with the place and the epoch that were Nandikeshvara's. It has been demonstrated that the actors of the Kutiyattam willingly learn by heart and put into practice instructions formulated by Nandikeshvara, without always knowing or acknowledging their source. This is, however, an unexpected yet irrefutable confirmation of my hypothesis about the relationship existing between Nandikeshvara and this traditional abhinaya.Quoted by Abanindranath Tagore in SaDanga ou les Six canons de la peinture hindoue, translated into French by Andree Karpelès, Paris, 1984, p.21 (reprinted)
Nandikeshvara distinguishes two sources of pleasure in the spectacle: first of all, a visual support; and another, auditory. The former is composed of dance, mimes, gestures, dramatic expressions of the eyes and the face. The second explores the innate and potential wealth of a language, phonic as well as semantic, and transfigures everything in contact with music : horizontally, owing to the rhythmic diversities (situated in Time) and, vertically, thanks to the ascending and descending impulses, as well as to the overtones on the scale of the microtones (situated in Space).
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