What is...?

What is Puppet?

A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, which is a very ancient form of theatre.

There are many different varieties of puppets, and they are made of a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use. They can be extremely complex or very simple in their construction. 

( Wikipedia )

A toy, usually shaped like and animal or human that is controlled by either a hand up its ass or from strings attached to its limbs and body. 

( Urban Dictionary )

What is Origin?

Puppetry was practised in Ancient Greece and the oldest written records of puppetry can be found in the works of Herodotus and Xenophon, dating from the 5th century BC. The Greek word translated as "puppet" is "νευρόσπαστος" (nevrospastos), which literally means "drawn by strings, string-pulling", from "νεῦρον" (nevron), meaning either "sinew, tendon, muscle, string", or "wire", and "σπάω" (spaō), meaning "draw, pull".

Aristotle (384–322 BC) discusses puppets in his work On the Motion of Animals.

The movements of animals may be compared with those of automatic puppets, which are set going on the occasion of a tiny movement; the levers are released, and strike the twisted strings against one another.

In India puppetry was practised from ancient times and is known by different names in different parts of the country. Excavation of clay dolls fromIndus valley sites serve as an indication. The art of puppetry called Bommalattam is mentioned in Tamil literature Silappadikaram, which is written around 2nd century B.C.

( Wikipedia )