கூத்த நூல் - முனைவர் எஸ். ரகுராமன்

Kootha-nool by Saththanar, is the earliest Tamil work on dramaturgy and might have been written during the Tolkapiyam period. Some scholars consider that this formed the basis for Bharata’s Natyasastra. Passages from this are found quoted and commented upon by Arumpada-urai-asiriyar, Adiyarkku-nallar, Nachinaari-kiniyar etc. The author mentions that he made use of 18 earlier works, which are no more available. The work consists of 9 chapters of which the last three is not available. A number of terms used in this work, like uLLALam, ALatti, nALatti, are no more in currency. This is the earliest work that differentiates talam for dance from talam for music.

Dr Raghuraman is an Associate professor in Tamil in A.M.Jain college, Chennai and a visiting faculty of the Kalakshetra, Chennai. He is a research guide for Bharata natyam in Bharatiyar University, Coimbatore. He has given a number of lec-dems on dance, rasa, ashta naayakis of Sangam age, sensualities, mother godess worship, Tholkaapiya meypaatiyal etc.  He is the author of Tamizhar natana varalaaru and Natana kalaichol kaLanjiyam.  He has so far produced 200 dance dramas, of which 120 were written by him.  He has received many awards like Bhaskara puraskaar award as Ilakkiya Bhaaskara, Senthamizh chemmal by Thiru kural aayvu maiyyam, Natonal award for script writting theatre drama for Andhi veLi and was awarded for his outstanding services to the art of dance and for his lyrics by Sailasudha organization, 2010