Indian Puppetry

Art and Culture

Once Upon a Puppet: India’s First Theatres in Clay and Strings

The magical journey of Indian puppetry begins not on a modern stage, but in the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjo‑daro, where archaeologists discovered tiny figurines with hollow sockets—they hint that puppets were indeed part of public life nearly 4,000 years ago. Though we have no script to guide us, the craftsmanship speaks: a performing tradition purely tactile, deeply rooted in daily culture.

The Silappadikāram, a Tamil epic from around the 1st–2nd century BCE, offers the first written reference to puppets in Indian literature. While the Nāṭyaśāstra—the classical treatise on drama—doesn’t describe puppets directly, it mentions the sutradhāra, literally the “string‑holder,” the person who holds the story by the thread—an unmistakable nod to puppeteers’ ancestral role.

Fast‑forward to the Vijayanagara Empire (roughly 3rd–16th century CE)—pockets of puppetry began to flourish, especially around Andhra Pradesh, where storytellers turned wooden figures into live narrators of sacred tales, purāṇas, and poetic works by saints.

Inside the Puppet Box: String, Shadow, Glove, and Rod

By the middle of the 20th century, scholars had enumerated over twenty distinct forms of puppetry across India. Though diverse in style, they fall into four main categories:

2.1 String Puppets: Who Pulls the Strings?

If you walk into a performance of Kathputli in Rajasthan, the first thing you’ll notice is the tangle of colorful threads and the bright faces of wooden dolls. Carved from a single piece of mango wood, these puppets often come to around 30 cm in height, wear pleated skirts (because most have no legs), and are moved with deft jabs of fingers resting on hidden threads wrapped around bamboos and charpais—a raised bed hides the puppeteer’s body. This is the essence of Kathputli: kath (wood), putli (doll).

Kathputli is associated with the Bhat or Nat community, believed to carry traditions dating over 1,500 years, often performing royal sagas, heroic ballads, and social fables—especially stories of King Amar Singh Rathore—mixed with wit and improvisation. Audiences don’t just watch a puppet dance; they’re drawn into a musical‑narrative spell woven by the puppeteer’s voice (using a bamboo whistle), a singer, and a drummer playing the dholak or shruti.

Across South Asia, other string forms flourish:

These forms retain the physics of motion—making still wood come alive through pull‑and‑release.

2.2 Shadow Puppets: Light, Leather, Illusion

Slide a flat puppet between flickering oil-lamps and a screen—suddenly, your leather doll can transform into Ravana, a forest, or divine beings in chromatic silhouette. Shadow puppetry dates back to pre‑BCE Tamil tradition and is recognized as the root of the Indonesian Wayang system (deemed UNESCO Intangible Heritage).

Key traditions:

Shadow puppetry is essentially performance by absence: the puppet doesn’t dance—it disappears, and the light‑filled silhouette dances instead.

2.3 Glove and Rod Puppets: Touching Tales

Glove puppets—aka hand or palm puppets—are carried in the puppeteer’s literal palm. Covered with colored cloth or papier-mâché, these small babies of storytelling are used across Uttar Pradesh (for social satire) and Odisha (for Radha‑Krishna stories). Kerala’s Pavaṭu Kūṭṭhu (Put́u Kooth) blends Kathakali themes with glove techniques, narrating the Ramayana and Mahabharata—again hinting at how dance, theatre, puppet, and devotional narrative intersect.

Rod puppets have wooden dolls—sometimes life‑size—whose heads, limbs, or bodies are manipulated using one or more rods, mostly from below or the back. In West Bengal’s Putul Nāuṭch and Bihar’s Yampuri, the figures are attached to rods, enabling them to move upright across the stage area—some even equipped with spinning heads or lifting arms. These forms represent the narrative theatre of Jātrā or rural myth enactment, leaning on facial expression, stylized movement, and dramatic dialogue.

Five Stories That Puppets Tell Better Than People

  1. Divine epics and Vaishnava devotion

Puppetry brings gods and goddesses to life: Gopalila Kundhei (Odisha) uses three-stringed dolls to narrate Krishna’s childhood; Tholpava Koothu (Kerala) performs entire sections of the Rama story; Togalu Gombeyatta and Tolu Bommalattā present the war between Rama and Ravana. Puppets can embody gods without jealousy; viewers welcome the divine on the screen.

  1. Royal sagas and historical heroes

Kathputli’s most recorded story is King Amar Singh Rathore of Nagaur—a model of Rajput pride and valor. Other traveling troupes recount Prithviraj Chauhan, local warrior queens, or spiritual leaders—singing fables by storytelling masters who improvise even as they manipulate their clay-mannequins.

  1. Social satire and public awareness

Modern itinerant puppeteers—especially in Rajasthan and Odisha—use Kathputli and Sakhi Kundhei puppets to address contemporary challenges: dowry, literacy, health awareness, sanitation drives. Puppet shows become emotional appeals, comic relief, and hard lessons—without preaching, because the puppet is comedic yet honest.

  1. Religious ritual and seasonal devotion

In north Kerala’s Kali temples, Pulavars perform overnight Tholpavakūṭṭu every Kumbhābhi (merging of months) on a specially built stage, often in front of a Goddess image, offering the Ramayana story as a sacrament, complete with offerings, chanting, and even blessings for devotees in attendance.

  1. Educational theatre and community storytelling

Small village troupes—Kendrapara’s Sakhi Kundhei, Maharashtra’s Kalasūtrī Bahulya, Kerala’s Pavakali puppet plays—often combine local folktales, folk music, and instruction on communal identity. For example, Kendrapara puppeteers form groups that tour rural districts in Odisha, sharing stories via wooden dolls on string—teaching history, moral behavior, and reinforcing regional faith traditions.

The Magic Beneath: How Puppetry Worked

Across India, puppetry was grounded in codified artistry:

Puppet‑masters were traditionally apprentices who learned knot‑tying, voice‑control, stage cues, string‑handling—and stories sung by elders. They belonged to specific caste groups whose entire identity was bound with puppetry—such as the Bhats (Nats) of Rajasthan, the Kundhēi performers of Odisha, or the temple‑dedicated Pulavars of Kerala.

Fragile Heritage: Decline, Revival, and Reinvention

A. Disappearances on the horizon

From the mid-20th century onward, puppetry in India faced several existential threats:

  1. Competition from mass media: Radio, cinema, television, smartphones stole the attention of audiences, especially younger ones.
  2. Economic vulnerability: Itinerant puppeteering became less viable; many traditional performers lacked steady patronage.
  3. Urbanisation and loss of performance spaces: Village squares were replaced by concrete halls; temple stages vanished.
  4. Generational gaps: Modernists discouraged their children from continuing puppet heritage, seeing it as backward or unprofitable.

B. Awakening from the lights

In response, revivalists and cultural organizations emerged:

C. Glimmers of modern light: contemporary puppetry

Despite obstacles, over 600 puppet groups are still active across India, keeping stories alive with each tug of a string or flicker of a shadow.

Why Puppetry Still Matters

In an age of 4K screens, why should anyone look at a thread‑tangled puppet?

  1. Embodied anthropology: Puppetry preserves folk traditions, social drama, and storytelling that oral literature does not encode.
  2. Living metaphor: The puppet is our mirror: limp until someone animates us, random motion until there is guidance by a mindful hand.
  3. Sensitive medium: The same Kathputli show can celebrate cultural identity, enact mythic heroes, and critique dowry—all through satire laced with melody.
  4. Educational theatre: Puppets don’t preach—they perform; from moral stories to civic education, the image lingers after words fade.
  5. Craft lineage: Puppet‑making involves carving, painting, fabric-draping, string tie‑off, metal wire weaving—all generational skills that anchor cultural economy.

 

For more related content, explore the links below:

PDF File:

No PDF attached

Subject: Art and Culture

← Back
Chat on WhatsApp