Devalok
Folk tale · 1 telling · South India

The Puranas played till dawn

Coastal Karnataka's Yakshagana restages epic and Puranic episodes as night-long prasangas; Bhasmasura and Mohini is one of its favourites.

Who is in it

  • Yakshagana the performance form
  • Bhasmasura the demon of a stock prasanga
  • Mohini Vishnu's enchantress in the same piece
  • Shiva the boon-giver whom Bhasmasura turns on

The story, beat by beat

  1. A troupe sets up an open-air stage in a coastal Karnataka village at dusk.
  2. Singers and drummers recite a prasanga drawn from the epics or the Puranas.
  3. Costumed dancers act the episode out through the night in speech, song and dance.
  4. A favourite piece shows Bhasmasura winning a boon from Shiva, chasing him, and being tricked into burning himself by Mohini.

performance disguise dance

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Folk documentation

Yakshagana, coastal Karnataka

South India · Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Uttara Kannada Folk Kannada and Tulu troupes

Yakshagana grew up on the Karnataka coast some time between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries as a way of playing the Puranas to a village. A performance starts at dusk and can run until first light: a lead singer carries the story, drummers keep time, and painted, crowned dancers speak their own lines. The episodes, called prasangas, come from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas, and more than three hundred prasanga texts survive. Bhasmasura and Mohini, in which a demon with the power to burn anyone he touches chases Shiva and is danced into touching his own head, is one of the standard pieces, which is why Vishnu's enchantress form is a familiar figure on these stages.

Yakshagana: the performance; Yakshagana — Wikipedia; Yakshagana poetry — Wikipedia

Sources: Yakshagana: the performance; Yakshagana — Wikipedia; Yakshagana poetry — Wikipedia

More stories with the same people

Folk tale

Mohini and the demon who burned himself

A demon wins from Shiva the power to destroy whoever he touches on the head and turns on the giver; Vishnu, as Mohini or as a young brahmachari, tricks him into testing the boon on himself.
Temple legend

The birth of Ayyappa

Brahma's boon to Mahishi — that only a child of Vishnu and Shiva can kill her — forces Vishnu to take the Mohini form; Shiva's desire for Mohini yields a son, found and raised by the king of Pandalam, who kills Mahishi and takes his seat at Sabarimala.
Folk tale

The demon who could burn with a touch

A demon worships Shiva with terrible austerities, offering pieces of his own body.
Folk tale

Aiyanar, the horseman at the village edge

The Tamil village guardian on horseback was absorbed over the medieval centuries into Shasta, the son of Shiva and Mohini, and the Sanskritising continues today.
Local story

Ayyappa and his companion Vavar

Kerala's Ayyappa, born of Shiva and Mohini, grows up in Pandalam, defeats the demoness Mahishi and keeps a Muslim companion whose mosque still faces his temple at Erumely.
Legend

The churning of the ocean of milk

Gods and demons churn the milk ocean with Mount Mandara on the tortoise's back; poison, treasures, Lakshmi and the nectar emerge, and Vishnu as Mohini keeps the nectar for the gods.
Folk tale

Mohini, the self-burning demon and the birth of Ayyappa

Vishnu as the enchantress Mohini dances a demon into touching his own head, and in Kerala tradition bears Shiva's son Ayyappa; the full record is I-4 in the interactions file.
How a tradition frames it

One being, three functions: the Trimurti idea

The Maitri Upanishad names Brahma, Rudra and Vishnu together as portions of one being, matched to the three gunas.