Chapter 4

Nāṭya Maṇḍapa: The Classical Playhouse

Nāṭyaśāstra, the treatise on theatre attributed to Bharata, gives the proportions of a playhouse in its second chapter. The engine holds two rules from it, one for the size of the hall and one for how it is divided, and reads a proposed hall against them.

NāṭyaśāstraChapter 2, vv. 8–18 and 33–42, as the rule corpus cites them

B · Classical commentary

Cited for: The playhouse's size and its division into hall, stage and dressing rooms. The text sorts playhouses by size into large (Jyeṣṭha), medium (Madhyama) and small (Kaniṣṭha).

The wording is not quoted here: the locus has not been checked against an edition.

1. The medium playhouse

The rule (NATYA-MANDAPA-001). The medium rectangular playhouse, 64 by 32 hastas, is the one the text prescribes for human drama; its length is twice its width. The corpus cites vv. 8–18 without having checked them against an edition, and holds the rule as class C with low confidence: something measurement could test, and which has not been measured here. Its design note is the honest one — a hall of this size may keep unamplified speech within reach, and should be confirmed with an acoustic model of reverberation and speech transmission, not by proportion alone.

The 64 by 32 rectangle

At the engine's default hasta of 0.4572 m

Length = 64 hastas × 0.4572 m = 29.26 m

Breadth = 32 hastas × 0.4572 m = 14.63 m

Length : Breadth = 2 : 1

Halved lengthwise, the rectangle makes two squares of 32 by 32 hastas. The metre figures are derived, because no text gives the hasta in metres; a different hasta gives a different hall.

Parameters & variables

hasta: Cubit: The engine's default is the 24-aṅgula kiṣku, 0.4572 m(metres)

2. Hall, stage and dressing rooms

The rule (NATYA-MANDAPA-002). The hall is divided into equal halves: the front half for stepped seating for the audience, the rear half shared between the stage and the dressing rooms behind it (nepathya). The corpus cites vv. 33–42, again unchecked, and holds this as class B, a traditional practice whose source is not located. The design note is practical: connect the dressing rooms to the rear of the stage by double doors with acoustic baffling.

See how each rule is graded, and which citations were checked, in the rule corpus.