Oral Histories to Material Culture
The making of autochthonous art Origin of Shame and Sorrow
Vikas HARISH for Naithani Collection

Aesthetic academic thought and the ‘translation’ of Indian arts first gave expression through the religious texts, the Vedas, the Upanishads and their explicatory texts. The performance was indeed the visual narration of stories that were written. However, there was the other aspect to these performances, surely, they weren’t just the dramatic interpretation of the sculptures and paintings, or a mere narration of the textual stories. They emanated from deeper beliefs, theoretic principles that rhythmed the lives of ordinary Indians. Art scholars who in the 19th and 20th centuries turned to texts thus gave way to others who now repose their interest in the performed transmissions, the ‘visual literature’, beyond limitations of dialect. There is thus an increasing case for acceptance that the rural arts of India, in opposition of the written preserves of an elitist textual history, have archived pervasive and popular art forms.


In the revival of popular dance forms in an emerging post-colonial India, sculptures that manifested the mighty walls of temples, were used as the basis for understanding dance posture, while the texts were the poetic narrative that they enacted. Concomitantly in the rural India, it was the oral tradition that perpetuated the artistic image. The translation of rural poems and songs to the paintings, their malleability in sculpture and the narrative arts that emanated, puppetry, masks, theatre… the rural life followed the cyclic patterns of the seasons that they translated through their art.

While in the Hindu tradition the distinctive upanayana ceremony initiated a male progeny into the realm of adulthood, of professional dissemination, this was limited to higher stratums of Hindu society. In the rural India they followed their own characteristic ceremonies. The coming of age was a moment when knowledge was transmitted from the elder parents to their child, from fathers to sons, or from mothers to daughters. The iconographical language of rural arts, their technique as indeed the narrative styles were all handed through generations, within families. The reasoning for transmission wasn’t merely stylistic, giving the ‘tools of the trade’ but also conceptual, giving clarity to ideas of origin and of social order that defined the existence of every person within the family and community. Art was thus an expression of a deeper belief that needed to be enunciated, to be explained and thus to be imbibed over time.

To become a chitrakaar in Bengal, a young boy would not only have to learn to paint the scroll paintings, the patuas, but also importantly the art of their narration, sing the tales that would go with each painting. This despite religious origins, Hindu or Muslim. An elder member of the family would inculcate these aspects to the boys from a very young age. The young boy would learn to prepare his tools, in the past make his own colours, prepare the paper in a laborious process with gum, before he would be allowed to sketch. Concomitantly the child would learn the plethora of divinities, the mythological tales, stories of Gods and Goddesses that he would in future come to interpret, through paintings and enactment. The transmission was thus not merely technical but also conceptual and spiritual.