Studying the images of Nataraja : how can religious art, theology, and neuropsychiatry inform one another?

ABSTRACTThe image of Nataraja is a storehouse of collective unconscious thoughts of the Indian psyche. Academicians and research scholars from around the world have extracted essentially and practically applicable derivations from several of those collective thoughts symbolically embedded in those images. This paper is a neuropsychiatric-therapy-oriented extraction of the symbolic representation of the relation of the Lord, His dance, and the dwarf devil, Apasmara, in the images of Nataraja. Ayurvedic physicians use this term Apasmara only as a diagnostic term for epilepsy, but semantic understanding of the term Apasmara, which in Sanskrit means forgetfulness or momentary loss of memory or consciousness, informs us that it can be used as a symptom/symptom-complex in various neuropsychiatric conditions. Such semantic understanding in conjunction with theological and clinical studies may help us extract Nataraja’s dance/Tandava (a mixed form of Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, and Odissi) as a therapeutic tool for promotion of prevention of various neuropsychiatric disorders.KEYWORDS: NatarajadanceBharatanatyamApasmaraforgetfulnessconsciousnessNeurologyPsychiatrymentalculturereligiontheologyspirituality AcknowledgmentsThe authors have no specific persons to acknowledge with regard to this paperDisclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.