The post-Vedic literary period marks an important phase in the making of Indian drama. The epics Ramayana and Mahabharata with their dialogue oriented poetic structures, the tradition of recitation by a whole class of reciters, have enriched Indian performance tradition and have given the country a distinctive performative culture. Indian culture is essentially the product of oral tradition, which forms the blueprint of performances even today.

There are four aspects of the epic tradition, namely the oral, the literary, the pictorial and the performing. They have a shared cultural setting and have coexisted in a lively relationship of exchange and interaction for all these centuries. It is

Some topics in this essay:
Ramayana Mahabharata, , performance tradition, temple drama, tradition epic, class reciters,