Bharata's writings, some still preserved on palm leaves, make Indians the only people in the world to have a textbook of art as a semi-sacred book. An Indian dance, performed in temples, was not a popular pursuit for leisure hours. Skilled artists, through its movements, had to imitate the thoughts and feelings, joys and sorrows, of gods and men.

Indian dancing may well be the most complete on earth. Each part of the body has its special movements. To learn how to control them takes more than a dancing lesson once a week.

Temple dancing girls were devadasis - servants of the god. Their lives were dedicated to the dance, which was an act of worship, not entertainment. Temple carvings show devadasis as winged nymphs, asparas, strangely like the dancing angels of early Christian belief.

Today, few temple dancing girls remain, but girls still learn their art. The best age to begin is eight. The would-be pupil must find a guru (teacher), who may live in a village far away. If he accepts her, she becomes a member of his household, like an apprentice in a medieval town. The teacher then instructs his pupil in the knowledge he has gained from an unbroken chain of son-and-father links that stretches back perhaps for 80 generations.

He/she teaches her/him the movements of the anga, "limbs" - head, hands, arms, chest, hips, legs, feet; those of the pratyanga, "intermediate parts" the neck, shoulders, palms, back, stomach, thighs, ankles, knees, elbows, wrists; those of the upanga, "lesser limbs" - the eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, cheeks, nose, lips, teeth, tongue, chin, mouth, jaw. The Natya Sastra describes positions for them all, nine for the head, eight glances of the eye, six movements of the eyebrows, four of the neck and at least 4000 mudras (gestures of the hands).

A mudra may imitate an actual object; a swimming fish, a flying bird, a lotus flower in bloom. It also shows an abstract mood: love, hate, fear, surprise. A skillful dancer can tell a story without words.

The dance itself is in accordance with nine moods or rasas, which the Natya Sastra has described: fury, fear, love, heroism, comedy, pathos, admiration, revulsion, meditation. As in all ritual dances, music and dance are one. Unlike Western ballet, dancers and musicians do not repeat a ready-made pattern of steps and notes. They improvise their complex rhythm: drums, singer, and dancer's ankle-bells all blend miraculously to invoke the gods.

Many temple dancers in the past abused their calling, using gestures to display their bodies, not to express religious feeling. To Western eyes the true beauty of the dance remained obscure until the present century. Thanks largely to the enthusiasm of Anna Pavlova, the famous Russian ballerina, Indian dancing today claims countless admirers.

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