Can Bihar Save Yampuri

Author: Dr. Nalini Ranjan

Until a few decades ago, no Bihar fair was complete without a trip to Yampuri. Grandparents, parents and children crowded around the stage, ticket in hand, to watch a spectacle that had no rival in an age before television and smartphones.

The show carried a warning: your deeds follow you beyond death. Yampuri is a form of rod puppetry named after Yama, the Hindu god of death, and its stage is a tour of the afterlife.

Its purpose was moral instruction. By picturing judgment, heaven and hell, the performers hoped to nudge audiences toward honest living. The puppets set it apart from neighbouring traditions. Odisha's Kathi Kundhei and Bengal's Danger Putul use jointed figures.

Yampuri's are carved from a single piece of wood, with no moving limbs, and are steered with rods across wheeled platforms. The stage measures twenty feet by twenty feet and rises two to three feet off the ground.

Puppeteers crouch in trenches cut into it, hidden from view, while musicians seated outside the pits drive the drama with harmonium, dholak and jhanjh.

Performances run about an hour in Hindi and Bhojpuri. The story follows a fixed order. Yama arrives with his attendants, followed by Chitragupta, the divine accountant who records every human act. One by one, the recently deceased are brought forward. Each is weighed against the ledger and sent to baikunth or narak. Nobody knows exactly when this tradition began.

One troupe from Uttar Pradesh, the Karmagat Yampuri Baikunth Pradarshak Natak Mandali, is said to be over two centuries old. Companies once played fairs across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. Today the art is on the brink of vanishing. The reasons are not mysterious. Screens have taken over leisure time, and a fairground puppet show cannot compete with a phone.

Carving, painting, rehearsing and travelling demand heavy investment, yet bookings are scarce and pay is thin, so children of performing families look for steadier work. Since the craft passes from master to apprentice, every retirement removes skills that no manual records. Mainstream cultural programming rarely features Yampuri, and the fairs that once sustained it are shrinking.

What is at stake goes beyond a show: woodcarving, puppet design, music, narration and stagecraft all go with it. Yet extinction is not inevitable. Revival needs work on several fronts. Record everything first: full performances, scripts, songs, costumes, puppet-making methods and the testimony of elderly artists, stored in an open digital archive. Pay the artists next, through grants, pensions, fees and help with materials and travel, and book them into state festivals and cultural centres.

Bring them into classrooms: schools and colleges can host workshops where students carve and handle puppets, and the Bihar government could screen the show alongside its moral education lessons as values erode. The stories can also grow.

Yama's court could take up conservation, public health, education and civic duty, provided veteran performers shape the scripts. Videos and cultural tourism can widen the audience, though they must supplement live shows, not substitute for them or for fair pay.

The artists should lead. They are the custodians; their judgment should steer how the tradition is taught and shown. An art form can sit safely in archives and still die on the ground. Yampuri survives only if performers perform, audiences watch and apprentices learn.

Nalini Ranjan is a communication expert and presently working as the PRO of IP University, Delhi; Views presented are personal.