# PUTUL NACH
CREATOR-MR SACHIN BISWAS .
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shouldfirstexpressmygratitudeto allofyou. I havenot brought enough puppets for aproperlecture-demonstration. ThatisbecauseofdiffIculties in transportation on acountof] the politicalatmospherepre vailing in Assam.and alsobecause of some technicaldifficulties.Still,I willtrytopresenta pictureofthetraditional Assampuppetrybefore you.InAssarnese ,thepuppetpl ayiscalledPutulNach asin Bengal.MahapurnshaShankaradeva employedit to propagatethe new Vaishnavismin the fifteenth century.Inhis time thepuppeteerwas calledtatakiya bajikar.In the homes of the rich,puppetrywasalsousedinrituals. Mterwards, however,thisartwasneglected.andmanytraditionalpuppeteersgrad uallyabandoneditThere are now about thirty-fiv..traditionalperformingfamilies in bothUpperandLowerAssam.I have been interestedin thisansince my boyhood.Later. I started thinking of waystorevive puppetry. I movedtheGovernment in this matter and initiated discussions. In 1988,under[Assam's]MinistryofCulture,aPuppetryWingwas eventually established for thepromotionof thean.We are now holdingfestivalswith the help of all the traditional families;we alsoconduct workshops. We invited Suresh Duna to Assam in 1988. He cametoGuwahatiandstayed with us for ten orfifteendays,and helped us find ways to developourartI shall nowsbowyou somepuppetsfrom Assam.Thefamily of traditionalpuppeteersfrom which I haveborrowedthepuppets is still active. But nobodytalksabout theseartists... Thereis no castebarrierin Assam in regard to puppetry. Whoever is interested inpuppetrycan become apuppeteer. Among the traditional families, there are those that belongto thescheduled castes. there are alsoBrahmins and other castes..WhentheDirectorofICCR [Indian Council forCultural Relations], Ms Veena Sikri,came to Guwahati, she said she had heard thatthe waterpuppets of Vietnam originated inAssam. She asked us to do someresearchto fmdoutifthis was true. Talking to elders andrefemngto old texts. we learned that there wereindeedpuppet shows on water in earliertimes in the UpperAssamregion. We have recently submitted areporttoleCR.DISCUSSIONSureshDatta:I hadsurveyedthe wholeofAssam [inthelate 19805). We came acrossreferencestowaterpuppetsnot only in Assambut also in southern Bengal.TaI~ngtopeople there, welearnedthatwaterpuppets had indeed existed in thosepartsearlier; wemight have been able toget somesupportingtextsifwe had looked for them. We alsocameacross someoldpuppetsinmuseums.Thesepuppetsare madeofbamboorootItseemsthat they belong toancienttimes.Thelink [with Vietnam] isthroughBurma.Soifwecontinue looking for theSOUtC"CSo f waterpuppets, perhaps wewillreachsome conclusions.San,,"NaItJkVol.XXXVIII,No.1.2004