Sunanda Nair dances a Pragalbha Nayika

Sunanda Nair, Mohiniyattam, dances to a krithi by Swathi Thirunal (1813-1846) on the occasion of the 207th anniversary of his birth.

Swathi Thirunal was the Maharaja of Travancore, a polymath, a philologist, musician, poet, scholar, a man who composed poetry even in as faraway a language as Hindi!

Sunanda writes in her caption that she’s dancing a ‘pragalbha nayika’.

A ‘pragalbha nayika’ is not one of the ashtanayikas classified by Bharata Muni in his Natyashastra. To my understanding, and please correct me someone if I err, this category of nayika comes from a parallel classification of nayikas in the Rasamanjari, a 15th century manual on love and lovemaking from the little kingdom of Basholi up north in Jammu and Kashmir. The Rasamanjari is celebrated even more for its paintings than it is as a piece of literature --- at least by me :-) The text is by the Sanskrit poet Bhanudatta. The paintings, may I say, completely out-Matisse Matisse. In the Rasamanjari’s classification of nayikas, a ‘pragalbha nayika’ is a consummate lover, one superbly skilled and practiced and proficient in the art of lovemaking.

In English, the Sanskrit word 'pragalbha' translates as 'mature', 'skillful', 'bold', and 'able', etc.