Dharmiklal Chunilal Pandya

In Gujarat’s Maanbhatt tradition, a storyteller recites the epics in verse and song while tapping out the rhythm with rings on a large copper vessel called the maan. Dharmiklal Chunilal Pandya is its best-known living master. In 2026 he was named for the Padma Shri in the field of art, from Gujarat ^[1].

An inherited art

Pandya was born in Vadodara on 11 August 1932 and learned the art from his father, Chunilal Pandya ^[2]. He began performing in the early 1950s, when the tradition was close to dying out ^[2]. Its stories come from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata and the Puranas, carrying moral lessons along with the drama ^[2].

Seventy years of telling

He has performed across Gujarat and India, including at Rashtrapati Bhavan, often in long series that run over many sittings ^[2]. He has also toured the UK, the US, Canada, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nepal and Thailand ^[2]. For All India Radio and Doordarshan he recorded the complete Harivansh Puran, the Shiv Mahapuran and all forty aakhyans of the medieval Gujarati poet Premanand ^[2].

Pandya has also written new aakhyans on present-day concerns such as saving water and protecting the environment ^[2]. He set up a training centre, the Shree Maan Aakhyankala Shikshan Kendra, and his sons Pradyumn and Mayank now perform too ^[2].

He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1983, the only Maanbhatt artist to have done so ^[2].