Sattriya takes its name from the sattras, the Vaishnava monasteries of Assam. Traditionally it was danced by male monks inside these institutions as part of worship and religious drama. Over the twentieth century it also became a stage art, and the two lives continue side by side.
The sattras and Sankaradeva
The sattras look back to Srimanta Sankaradeva, traditionally dated 1449 to 1568, the saint, poet and playwright whose teaching spread Vaishnava devotion across Assam. Sankaradeva wrote one-act plays, the Ankiya Nat, performed in a form called bhaona, with the audience seated around the stage. A bhaona traditionally opens with the gayan-bayan, the singers (gayan) and instrumentalists (bayan) who play the khol drum.
From drama to dance
The dances grew out of these plays. Characters had their own entrance and exit dances, and the sutradhara, the narrator who guides the performance, had a dance of his own. The repertoire also includes items such as Chali and Jhumura. In the sattras, the dance was performed by male devotees, in some sattras celibate monks, who were also expected to learn the khol and to sing and play. Stage dancers are not required to do so.
Leaving the monastery
Sattriya began to move outward in the 1920s, when Pitambar Deva Goswami, head of Garamur Sattra, presented it on a public stage and began to include women. Rasheswar Saikia Barbayan later trained women at the Sangeet Sattra in Guwahati. Accounts differ on dates, but from the 1950s women, many already trained in other classical forms, did much to bring the dance to wider audiences. On November 15, 2000, the Sangeet Natak Akademi announced in Guwahati that it recognized Sattriya as a classical dance, the eighth form it had so recognized.
What the stage changes
The proscenium has brought changes in costume, make-up and presentation. The guru Jatin Goswami has described adapting costume, music, presentation and repertoire for women dancers, for example by trimming repetitions. Women now perform Sattriya widely. Inside the sattras the ritual practice continues, and practices vary from one sattra to another.
A Sattriya item on a stage program has been shaped for the proscenium. For another Vaishnava tradition from northeast India, see Manipuri: Music, Movement and Performance Context.
For short introductions to Sattriya and other forms, see Meet the Art Forms.
Image: A Sattriya dancer in Assam, 2026. Photo: Joydeep Chakraborty, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
