Yakshagana (lit. "Songs of the demi-gods") is a composite folk-dance-drama or folk theater of southern India which combines literature, music, dance and painting. The best-known forms of this art, written in the Kannada language, are from the Dakshina Kannada, Udupi district, Uttara Kannada and to some extent from the Shimoga district of modern Karnataka. According to the Kannada playwright and Yakshagana researcher Shivarama Karanth, there are over one hundred such plays written in Kannada in the past few centuries though not more than fifty have been staged and gained popularity. The metrical forms used to compose these plays are usually native Kannada forms such as dvipadi (couplet, 2-line verse), caupadi (4-line verse), sangatya (also 4-line) and three or four types of shatpadi (6-line