BULU IMAM, Dipugarha/Hazaribagh
The Painted Houses of Hazaribagh, Jharkhand/India
With 5 figures
Additional notes and 16 photographs (plates XLIX-LVI)
By Lydia
Icke-Schwalbe, Dresden
Preface
The discovery of the elaborate tribal and folk art tradition in the vast
region, which is recently mostly treated and heavily infected by the major
industrial development of Heavy Engineering Corporations, Coal and Steel
Plants, has been primarily published in
a handmade edition typeset and designed by my son Gustav Imam in 2001. It
includes basic records on the rock art sites and comparing studies of the
designs and art in history as well in quilt embroidery.
It was dedicated to
Chedi Munda and Khaita Munda, who helped
to find and protect the traditional rock sites full of paintings of their
forefathers in the Isco fields. They passed away few years back , now succeeded
by their sons Rameshray and Saghan.
Hand made copies are
only available from Bulu Imam, Sanskriti Publishing Hazaribagh.
The Discovery
The Hazaribagh District originally covered the entire North Chotanagpur
Division, or the entire plateau of Hazaribagh, which is the northern tract of
the massif divided by the Damodar river from east to west, with the Ranchi plateau lying to
the south. Today the region is part of the new tribal state of Jharkhand
(meaning Forest Land ). This is an area rich in
Palaeolithic deposits. Acheulian type stone tools such as hand axes and blades,
habitation sites, Mesolithic rock art, Neolithic sites, Megaliths and Dolmens,
Copper and Iron sites, rivers that are considered sacred such as the Damodar,
and hundreds of sacred groves (sarna). The entire region is wrapped in saal
(Shorea robusta) forests, throughout the cold months blanketed in mist and
ground frost, in the Indian spring festooned with a burst of forest blossom the
likes of which is seen nowhere in India.
In 1987 a coal mining project in the upper Damodar threatened over 2500
sq. km of forests and agriculture, with 203 tribal villages. The rich forests,
which are still home and transit corridors between the forests of Palamau,
Ranchi and Hazaribagh, are filled with
tigers, elephants, leopards, bears, bison (Bos gaurus) moving through
and living in over a dozen ranges of hills divided into three major groups, Sati
Range in the east, Mahudi Range in the middle, Satpahar Range in the west.
Seventy-five opencast mines are planned. The process started in 1986 with the
declaration of the North Karanpura Coalfields Project which I have contested
from April 1987 to date. Initially Australian turnkey mining technology began
the first mine Piperwar Opencast Project rightalong the north bank of the
Damodar, destroying one of the last remaining elephant corridors, since much
of the south bank had been turned into a
nightmare of three hundred feet mines covering thousands of square kilometers
of once forested regions. The only transit habitat remained on the north bank
of the river known to history as the North Karanpura
valley, named for a small village called Karanpura.
In 1991 after a tip-off from Australian Jesuit missionary Tony
Herbert, I discovered in southern Bihar the
ancient rock-art site of Isco - now considered among the premier rock-art sites
of India .
It was to be this and another chance discovery at Isco that led to my
involvement with the Khovar and Sohrai art traditions of Bihar
and the setting up of the Tribal Women Artist's Co-operative. In the summer of
1992, I was driving with my daughters Juliet and Cherry up the edge of a steep
forested hill on the plateau above Isco and I could not find my way in the
heavy jungle. Getting out of my four wheel-drive vehicle to find a way to a
road, I suddenly saw what looked to me, through the trees, to be a line of
running animals and huge birds. Thoroughly dumbstruck I stood for a moment
completely taken aback. I was confronting for the first time the very powerful
comb-cut visual images of the Ganju Khovar art in its natural
setting. Depicted were the animals and birds of the local environment including
the rhinoceros and Bengal floriacan no longer
found in the region. We watched a small lithe young artist named Putli Ganju
creating these wonder filled comb-cut paintings on the walls of her home in
celebration of her forthcoming marriage. I called my daughter Juliet excitedly
and together we went and met Putli who had painted her inner rooms and coutyard
of her home with huge fishes and snakes and the inimitable Putli cow. She had
not left an inch un-adorned. (Today, a mural by Putli, painted during a
month-long residency with the Australian Museum`s Djamu Gallery, in Sydney
during April 2000, hangs in the Art Gallery of New South Wales).
It was from this chance discovery that we explored further afield
finding village after resplendent village each boasting virtuoso artists
working in timeless ancestral Khovar and Sohrai artistic traditions. The work
of many of these artists, including Putli Ganju have been exhibited widely
abroad and in India .
Khovar, meaning bridal chamber, is associated with the annual marriage
season from January to May. Sohrai marks the annual harvest cycle and
celebrations from October to November. Both styles are painted in natural earth
ochres and iron oxides. It was apparent that the Khovar and Sohrai mural
paintings and rock-art sites, including Isco, were inextricably linked. Over a
dozen sites were subsequently brought to light by us in the upper basin of the
river Damodar in the North Karanpura valley.
Unquestionably, these Tribal communities, the Adivasis of that region
and their ritual village art as well as the archaeologically significant
rock-art sites, including Isco, came from a prehistoric tradition, and these
Tribal communities and the rock-art sites, including Isco, required protection
from open-cast coal mining proposed by the North Karanpura Coalfields Mining
Project. Such destructive development would ensure the displacement of two
hundred and three villages. Open-cast coal mining brings no economic benefit to
Tribal communities but merely ensures destruction of the cultural and environmental
heritage and eco-systems, including over two thousand square kilometers of
finest agricultural lands and forests.
In 1993 we brought the mural art to
provided paper and requested a two-year development grant from the Australian
Government to document the Khovar and Sohrai mural traditions of the North
Karanpura Valley. The significant arrival of Australian curators Ace Bourke and
Claudia Hyles in early 1995, led to the first exhibition of works at the
Hogarth Galleries in Sydney. Very soon afterward
the Gallery Chemould exhibited the work in Mumbai.
Art by definition is the expression of an existential predicament of
human society and from the very earliest times these has been, various types of
such expression during different periods of history. Much of this art was
religio-cultural, that is, it had fixed motifs symbolizing certain specific
manifestation of the social calendar.
The Khovar painting of Hazaribagh
The Khovar art depicts the socio-religious tradition to prepare a
marriage room. The khovar is,
strictly speaking the bridal room, and the decorated nuptial room is a tribal
tradition. The decoration is done in this room, in the bride’s house by the
bride’s mother and aunts. Because in the tribal system bride-price is paid, and
the bride-groom spends the nuptial night in his wife’s house, which is the
influence of the original matriarchal system. Since the tribal woman is revered
as Devi, the mother goddess, the
woman is a very special person. Upon marriage she becomes Devi and anything
made by her hands is considered the gift of the mother goddess. The Devi is the
sole person allowed to draw or embroider ritual sacred icons relating to
marriage and harvest seasons, and it is an ancient tradition. Bride price is still paid in the tribal
villages of Hazaribagh. The marriage
season runs from January till the onset of the monsoons in June and overlaps
the summer months when the great annual spring and summer hunts take place.
The custom of Khovar
decoration is being carried out by the local village
societies among the agriculturists, the Ganju and Kurmi, but also among various artisan groups such as the Rana
(carpenter), Teli (oil-extractor and –seller), Ghatwar (originally the guards
of mountain passes), the Prajapati (originally “creators in earth” –
clay-modellers) and the Kumhar (potters, workers in clay). However it is most
original and significant among the
tribal groups of Oraon, Santal and Munda in Hazaribagh. (1) The Khovar art is a marriage-room decoration
full of jungle plants and animals. Even today the forest is considered by the
tribes with nomadic traditions the place where a couple have to go to
consummate the marriage.(2) The Khovar
art is done by scraping the upper coating of white or yellow liquid earth ochre
which reveals the black or red under-coat when it is scraped off with a comb.
Similar methods are also found in the Greek vase paintings in the middle of the
first millennium B.C. and similar artistic comb decoration traditions have been
found among tribal potteries of the north western South Asian sub-continent,
but even in the Pacific region (Lapita) to the east. Such art as that of the
Ganjus and forest dwelling Kurmi reveal the highest naturalistic art in the
Hazaribagh Khovar and Sohrai palette among our tribes.
The actual technique of comb cutting is as follows. The wall is
completely repaired and plustered with mud, after which it is in some
instances only, as in the case of Bhuiya
art, given a coat of cow dung and mud mixture. There after it is covered with a
coat of black earth, so called kali mati,
applied in a circulatory half moon stroke called the basera, bas - “bamboo”; era – “goddess”. After the black earth
coating has dried (or in some instances when it is still only half dried) the
Devi covers it over with a coating of either brillant white earth (charak) or subdued cream coloured mud (dudhi), or plain yellow earth (pila). Pila means child, mati means
earth. Before the white or cream or yellow earth has a chance to dry, it is
immediately “cut” by a sgraffito technique, or modern scraper board style, with
a piece of broken comb. The Munda painting is often done with the fingers
instead of with the comb, and the Bhuiya comb painting is also often done with
the fingers only, a style also practiced by some Oraons. The Prajapatis or
potters like the Kumhars also use their fingers instead of combs sometimes, but
generally Prajapati art is always comb cut and small fine bamboo combs are made
by the women specifically for the purpose. The Oraons sometimes use the curving
Basera motif similar to the Bhuiya. This design is a series of semi-circles,
and has a sacred significance as a mountain (Mesopotamia )
and bamboo (India )
and is always drawn along the top of walls on which the Khovar art is painted.
The cutting reveals the black ground beneath the over-coat, in a striking
design pattern. The Khovar is a highly symbolic art filled with aniconic forms
and mandalas which are ritually connected with marriage.
(see illustrations 6-8)
In the contemporary Tribal Art Project to produce mobile pictures for
sell manganese black is dissolved overnight in office glue and tap water (or
well water, or stream water, polluted or unpolluted). It is thereafter spread
by hand, cloth, or brush, over a surface, which is generally handmade high rag
content watercolour art paper, and then allowed to dry in a cool place. After
this a similar mixture of kaolin white or yellow ochre is applied over it in
the same process, and then with a broken comb (or a finely tooled special, quarter-inch
bit of bamboo comb), a design is cut, quickly, sharply, taking in the ends
swiftly, as in the case of a bird’s beak, or a feather tip end. Sharp snouted
snake headed plant limbs, arching trellises with curved lotus petals, and
equally curved fishes, float up in sgraffito from the dark undercoat, bringing
to light a new monotone. Yellow ochre of various shades is used depending upon
the locality where the art occurs. In Isco a beautiful lavender earth colour is
found, in Kharati a brillant white, in Jorakath a beautiful natural earth
colour. It has the two-dimensional folk magic with the primitive simplicity
which can be found also in such artforms known from the Warli, from Madhubani
women, Kalighat-patas as well as from the pata paintings of the coastal
Orissa. (see illustrations 1- 5)
The Sohrai Art
After the monsoon rains the village houses again require repair while
the paddy has to be harvested. Sohrai is the festival celebrating plough
agriculture done by cattle as well as the domestication of the cow. The art on
the walls painted by the Devis marks a distinct change from Khovar in that it
celebrates a male god, Pashupati the Lord of Animals. It is celebrated
the day after Divali and is connected with the return of Lord Ram. In the
murals in the village Prajapati is shown standing on the back of the Bull, very
Sumerian in design and conjectures the link with West Asia
and the Sohrai art of the Nile
Valley as well as the
Warli art. This is a Hinduizd iconic art. The body of Prajapati is in shape
akin to Shiva's drum (damru) and around him is a wheel of six lotuses
representing the Six senses, and we are reminded of the enigmatic yogi An from
the Mohenjodaro seal, who was obviously the chief deity of the Indus Valley.
Shiva as the forest god is shown in the form of a tree called Bhelwa (Aegle
Marmelos, ROXB.), and a similar form is the "Flowery Trident", as I
call the vertical lotus headed form sprouting five or six triangular horned
triangles like the Animal Wheel. He is also called Shiva and associated with
the Bhelwa tree.(3) - Ills. 9-11
Sohrai is the harvest festival art.
The name itself coming from an ancient palaeolithic word, “soro”, meaning
literally to drive with a stick. It is the festival of the early winter months
when the paddy has ripened and is about to be harvested. Thus it is connected
with the origin of agriculture.(4) Among
the Kurmi people in the Bhelwara location the cattle have been taken out to the
jungles very early in the morning, and washed after grazing in the forest
ponds. Then they are brought back ceremonially to the village where they are
welcomed with special painted carpets called "aripan". The welcome of
the cattle on Sohrai day is the mark of domestication of wild cattle, and the
origin of this event is attributed to Ram the great ancient king of the tribes,
probably a pre-Aryan tribal king who has been seen in the Ramayana, as
Parshu-Rama of the Indus king lists, and sometimes also associated by these
simple people with the creator and lord of the animals, Pashupati. The figure
seen on the backs of the cattle painted in the Sohrai murals are the form of
Pashupati. The name pashu means animals, pati- the father of
animals, or image maker of animals, creator of animals. The male deity is
represented by a vertical figure, often associated with the Bhelwa tree and
Shiva as I have earlier observed. The day after the Sohrai is a mock bull-fight
in which sacred cattle, both bulls and buffaloes, gaily anointed with coloured
spots and oiled horns are taken to posts in the crossroads of the village where
the three wise men sing to them. They are tied to a stake or Khuta so
the festival is called, simply, Khuta-bandhan. Bandhan means to tie. The women
anoint and colour the animals before they are brought to the sacred post.
Ills. 15-16
A Pashupati
song verse :
When the
oil lamps of Divali are over
Then the lord of the animals, Pashupati,
Comes with the animals from the forest.
The song of the three wise men is like this:
Where have I seen such a beautiful horse?
Where have I seen such a beautiful cow
Where have I seen such a beautiful family?
You are the beautiful sacrificial cow,
Such a beautiful horse, such a beautiful cow!
Such a beautiful family, such a beautiful cow,
Such a beautiful horse, such a beautiful cow,
Such a beautiful family cow.
The mandalas to welcome the cattle back from the jungle are made
from rice flour and milk in a kind of gruel which when dried on the sparse
brown earth is brilliant white. The mandalas are in the form of
hoof-prints, and sacred dots of vermillion (bindu) are put at line junctions. Ill. 16
The inference of these songs and these paintings, here on the southern
hand of the Asian Highway, the great Grand Trunk Road, which cuts right across
the Chotanagpur plateau in Hazaribagh, the thoroughfare of ancient trading
caravans, a region that saw the earliest thrust of cavalry and horses from
northwestern India with the Aryans, shows that the cow is being confused with
the horse. This is natural in an artform which has steadily been evolving in the
context of cultural contacts on this sensitive high road between northwest and
southeast Asia .
The women's role in the festival as we have seen, is crucial, and points
back to an ancient matriarchal society.
The Oraons have three distinctive artistic styles. One is very similar
to the Khovar of the agrarian hinduized Kurmis and may be seen in a way an
ancient progenitor of the style now in danger of being lost among the Oraon
themselves. They only paint these anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms indoor. See ill. 12- 14 The second great art form of the Oraons are
totem poles or khuta for the ancestors. The third is a delicate
realistic flowery style with a freshness of insect, bird, and animal life not
found elsewhere in Sohrai art.
Nearby to the villages of the Kurmis painting their harvest art are the
Santals, who celebrate the cattle in the spring month with simple floral and
bird designs. During marriages Santal bridegrooms paint their courtyard with
these designs. Down in the valley of the Damodar we have the delicate floral
art of the Prajapatis who are potters, and the dark, heavy forms of the Ranas
who are carpenters, both comb-cut. Another heavy style is that of the oil
extracting Telis. The basket-making Turis have a light painted art. The Ganjus
are a farming tribe who depend on the jungles for subsistence. Their densely
forested environment in the southern part of the Hazaribagh plateau has given
them a close observation of the wild flora and fauna. This is inevitably
reflected in their paintings,. Their art is most vividly depicted in painted
murals done during the Khovar marriage season from February to April.
The Sohrai art of Hazaribagh for me is the grand painted ghodas , horses, and the animal wheels,
the intertwining anthropomorphic floral Shiva, the almost unbelievable creative
originality of leafy forms, painted in Bhelwara during the Sohrai festival. (Ill. 12) It is as
creative as the Khovar art and evokes a highly individual charm different in
many ways to the marriage art with its fertility symbols taken as auspicious
ritual symbols. Fresh and highly spontaneous in its original outline made with
a nail, (which the Ganju artists sometimes use in making the first line of a
stupendous animal form). This is a long trailing line later gone over with in a
more studied if not less whimsical line. In the Kurmi art of Sohrai in Bhelwara
village a running red line, is later outlined with a running white line; or
sometimes a black line is outlined with a red and then a white line. Vast
whimsy at its natural best is the irrepressible quality of Sohrai art. The huge
glyptic spaces made with black and red ochre on the floors is sometimes echoed
in red and white glytic geometrical designs on the walls.(5)
Meaning is the last important aspect of a picture, and yet paradoxically
it is the most important. This is an eternal value transcending mythology and
art aesthetics. The painted houses of Hazaribagh carry meanings for the tribals
of fertility and fecundity, of abundance and prosperity, from familiar forms
less than a few dozen in number. Unavoidably, Hindu icons have entered here and
there, but very few. Popular motifs are plants, fishes, birds and animals as we
have seen, and some familiar icons of the mother goddess. The need to tell a
story, as in the sense the Aboriginal art of Australia has been portrayed in
recent times, is alien to our most original Tribal art. The Western viewer,
ever keen to read strange tales from foreign lands will be disappointed in our
art! When Australian art critic Adam Geczy wrote about our Khovar and Sohrai
art that he hoped that "the murals in Bihar be only effaced by the
monsoons", I think he hit a vital chord: for the natural death of all the
village art as a result of the seasons (i.e. monsoons) does not mean the end of
the art in the fatal manner of destructive development which is destroying
Tribal homelands and ecosystems in India, and literate education in non-Tribal
literate traditions bringing with it new cultural histories, religious and
social significances, new value systems is destroying oral education. The
Tribal tradition continues strictly upon and according to its own foundations.
Similarly, when our Tribals cut trees from the forest for building their homes,
or for firewood, the forest does not die, it replenishes itself. The threat is
from modern development with its nasty need to remodel everything according to
exclusive needs; which speaks of conservation while clear-felling forests, and
which speaks of saving and museumizing culture while it destroys the roots of
culture from one valley to another through big dams or mines or senseless
industrialization. This has been the price which Tribal India has had to pay in
the past five decades for the cost of development in rural India .
At this juncture the novelty and naivete of Tribal art is surpassed by a
wider reality - where the curiosities and thin wedges of excitement from
encountering something new are overcome by a greater reality In countries like
Australia museums are fighting to preserve culture in situ rather than
museumize them. The actual nature of indigenous art is a far remove from an
artform that has become mercantile and already in some way been shaped by the
effects of art aesthetics and merchandise. The original images left on the
walls for a few short months before they are wom away by sun or rain, are the
real strengths of Khovar and Sohrai mural painting in the villages of
Hazaribagh. In the tradition house paintings of the painted houses of
Hazaribagh we may mark small slight changes by the younger women but the web of
tradition is so thorough in rural India that the ancient forms
continue with majestic continuity. The art on the village houses is not to be
compared with what passes as Tribal art in the shops of Delhi or Bombay with but few exceptions.
Stylistic modes of Khovar and
Sohrai art:
Stylistic Mode
|
Motifs
|
Paint Khovar
|
Comb
Khovar
|
S.C. or
Scheduled
|
Paint
Sohrai
|
Comb
Sohrai
|
Village
|
Filigree
|
Mother Goddess Shiva, Floral, Anthropo-morphs
|
*
|
*
|
Prajapati
(Potter)
|
|
*
|
Kharati,
Bhaduli
Pipradih,
Napo
|
Heavy
|
Floral, Animal
|
*
|
|
Rana
(Carpenter)
|
|
*
|
Kharati,
Punkur
Barwadih
|
Heavy
|
Floral
|
|
*
|
Teli (Oil
Extractor)
|
|
*
|
Barhmaniya
|
Sgraffito
|
Snake,
Anthropo-morph
|
|
*
|
Munda
|
|
*
|
Isco
|
Strong,
|
Floral
|
*
|
|
Oraon
|
*
|
|
Dato
|
Heavy,
Geometric
|
Pashupati
on
Bull/Ghoda
Anthropo-morph
|
|
|
Ghatwal
|
*
|
|
Potmo
|
Powerful
Realism
|
Birds, Animals
|
|
*
|
Kurmi
|
|
*
|
Jorakath,
Chapri
|
Anthropo-morph
|
Pashupati
on
Bull/Ghoda
Birds, Animals, Anthropo-morph
|
|
|
Kurmi
|
*
|
|
Bhelwara
|
Delicate
|
Floral
|
|
|
Turi
(Basket-Maker)
|
*
|
|
Kuju
|
Simple
|
Circular,
Squared
|
|
*
|
Bhiuya
|
|
*
|
Dato,
Khapariwa
|
Electric
|
Birds, Animals,
Humans
|
|
*
|
Ganju
|
*
|
*
|
Saheda
|
.
Concluding Remarks
The ancient rock paintings discovered in and around the North Karanpura
Valley represent a
prehistoric tradition of painting that belongs to the Mesolithic age, and
perhaps much earlier since the earliest levels seem to have faded out due to
exposure and the harsh weather conditions. But the presence of Upper Palaeolithic and Middle Palaeolithic habitation
sites close to the rock- art caves has given credence to the claim for a
connection, and maybe the strongest claim for a continuous evolution of
indigenous societies anywhere. The nomadic hunter-gatherer Birhor's claim that
their ancestors painted the rock-art, (and indeed village traditions in the
present Munda village
of Isco associate Birhors
with the rock-art caves) is not to be taken lightly. The Prajapatis also say
the ancestors of the Birhor painted the art. The rock-art has since time
immemorial been considered sacred and therefore not spoken about and for the
Tribals of the Valley these paintings signify their origin as a people and
their notion of personhood, as well as reflecting their deep connection with
their ancestral landscape. These rock paintings and continuing traditions of
village paintings signify their spiritual symbiosis with their ancestors and
hence their past.6
Thus the Painted Houses of Hazaribagh may appear as a pro-Tribal
document in a new light in contemporary India . In Bastar for example, the
traditional stone memorial epitaphs are being painted with crude human figures,
by so called modern Tribal artists for fancy prices, while the best of their
an-iconic art languishes at paltry prices in the village bazaars. In
Madhubani a similar fate has overtaken their art. Warli art has become
stylized. The Kantha in Bengal , Pata in
Orissa, are valued in terms of labour. Khovar and Sohrai have made a remarkable
tribute to artistic freshness by continuing their tradition into new spaces.
But the threat to the art comes mostly from within in the changing scene - -
the facades of many a modern Tribal home bears ancient images cut from concrete
by masons!
Summary
Additional Notes
by Dr.L YDIA ICKE-SCHWALBE, DRESDEN
Additional literature
DANI, A.H.: Recent archaeological discoveries in Pakistan- UNESCO Paris,
Tokyo , 1988
Elwin, V.: The Baiga.
repr. Delhi ,
Gian Publishing House, 1986
Elwin, V.: The tribal
art of Middle India. London, 1951
Hoffmann, John:
Encyclopaedia Mundarica. In 16 volumes. repr. Delhi , Gian Publishing
House, 1990
ICKE-SCHWALBE, Lydia: Identity
formation in Jharkhand. - Aus:
.....Berlin, 2002, pp.)
Icke-Schwalbe, Lydia: Die Munda und Oraon in Chota Nagpur. Berlin ,
1980
Roy, S. C.: The Mundas and their country. Ranchi
1912, repr. Delhi, 1974
IMAM, BULU: On
Rockart.- In: Man in India, Vol83 (3-4), Ranchi 2003, S.453-461
Illustrations
Figures: drawn by Juliet Imam
Photographs 1-3, 7-9, 11, 12 (2002):
Lydia Icke-Schwalbe, Dresden
6, 10, 13-16 (2002): Nils-Gregor
Icke, Dresden
4-5: Eva Winkler, Dresden
Photographs
1. Prajapati
Rukmini Devi prepares a sheet of paper for Khovar art making
2. Scrabing the
soft white surface for Khovar art , producing a palm motif.
3. Prajapati Rukmini Devi demonstrated Khovar art with a comb-like cut piece of wood.
4. Khovar painting by Devi, Bhelwara, now in the SMVk Dresden, Kat. Nr.
5. Khovar painting
by now in the SMVk Dresden, Kat. Nr.
6. Khovar wall painting for marriage party in Sugiya
Devi’s house in Kharati village.
7. Sugiya Devi, the Khovar artist of the Prajapati peasants in Kharati, prepares the Kovar for her daughter’s
marriage
8. The painted entrance to the marriage room in Sugiya
Devi’s house in Kharati
9. Painted houses of the Kurmi in Bhelwara for the Sohrai festival
10. Wall painting and carved doors at Sohrai festival
in Bhelwara, Kurmi
11. Horses and riders, Sohrai art of Kurmi in Bhelwara
12. Sohrai painting with white and red lines in
Bhelwara, inner house wall painted by
the married daughter of the house, Parvati Devi.
13. Elaborate Sohrai wall painted in the inner court
of the house, full of fertility motives, “written” by Parvati Devi of the Kurmis in Bhelwara.
14. Sohrai wall painting with flower, fishes and
tortoises. Bhelwara.
15. The decorated cattle at the Sohrai festival in Bhelwara.
16. The cattle move on the cleaned and ornamented floor at the Sohrai
feast morning, Bhelwara.