Gonu jha biography of mahatma

The tradition of the court jester was codified in the Natyashastra much before Shakespeare, between 200 BCE and 200 CE. Called vidushaka (the clown), the character was a bumbling oddity but trusted by the king or the hero, depending on the narrative.

He was usually a Brahmin but beyond the physical trait of a sacred thread, the vidushaka was anything but. He was not scholarly but street-smart, could be seemingly facile but not lacking in practical wisdom and a great diplomat in matters of statecraft.

And among the echo chambers of fawning courtiers, his was the voice of reason.

In fact, the vidushaka, though depicted as a Brahmin, was an antithesis to the starchy stiffness of the upper caste that had societal control.

He presented himself as an eccentric with physical oddities — he was either pot-bellied, a glutton, hunch-backed, bald or a dwarf. But in his angularity and imperfection, he was actually