Kuchipudi is a dance-drama performance, with its roots in the ancient Hindu Sanskrit text of Natya ShastraIt  developed as a religious art linked to traveling bards, temples and spiritual beliefs, like all major classical dances of India.Evidence of Kuchipudi's existence in an older version are found in copper inscriptions of the 10th century, and by the 15th century in texts such as the Machupalli Kaifat.Kuchipudi tradition holds that Tirtha Narayana Yati – a sanyassin of Advaita Vedanta persuasionand his disciple, an orphan named Siddhendra Yogi, founded and systematized the modern version of Kuchipudi in the 17th century.