Scroll Paintings of Bengal: Art in the Village

© 2012 Amitabh SenGupta. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/28/2012

ISBN:   978-1-4685-7937-6 (e)

Cover picture:

Behula pat,

Early twentieth century,

Murshidabad, artist unknown,

Painted on cloth, 12X90 In., West Bengal

Cover Design by Prancys Arvin T. Belandres

All pictures printed in this book are from the author’s personal collections

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Remembering my days with Potuas

Table of Contents

Forwored

Introduction

Chapter 1

Patachitra and Scroll Painting

Impediments in History and Social Paradigms

Change and Events in Recent Past

The New Focus and the Rise of Reason

The Cultural Dichotomy

Chapter 2

Social Antecedents

Schematism in Folk

Cultural Intermix and Early Trends in Indian Painting

Constructs of Culture in Patachitra

Storytelling or Katha – the Narrative Construct in Folk

Potuas through Historical References

New Focus in the Colonial Period–Perspective of Nationalism

Chapter 3

Historical Background of Bengal

Potuas – Origin and Status in the Society

Painting in Bengal – A Historical Overview

Chapter 4

Myths and Legends

Linguistic Roots of Pata Songs

Change and Variability in Folk

Potua’s Village – Bangla Potua

Santhal Village and Jadu Potua

Chapter 5

Correlations of Indian Genre and Folk Elements in Scroll Painting

Bangla pat–Meaning and Conventions

Santhal pat–an Outline of the Tradition

Methods and Material in Bangla pat

Colours

Binder

Methods and Material in Santhal pat

Other Traditions of Folk Paintings in Bengal

Potua in the Present Society

Chapter 6

Art as Human Behaviour

Appreciation of Art in Scroll Painting

Individual Style in Bangla pat

Variations within Bangla pat

Stylistic Variations due to Thematic Change in Bangla pat

Hell Tortures or Jom pat–An Ancient Theme

Animal Story or Poshu-Katha in Bangla pat

Given Themes in Social pat

Santhal pat–Style and Conventions

Popular Themes on Santhal Life

Symbolism of Gods in Santhal pat

Santhal Festivals

Chapter 7

Popular Themes in Scroll Painting

Stories

Jom pat

Manasa pat

Satya Pir pat

Lost Themes from Santhal pat (Clan Chiefs, Festivals, and Gods)

APPENDICES

APPENDIX–A: Pata Songs and Linguistic Roots

APPENDIX–B: Plants Utilised for Extraction of Colours in Folk Paintings

APPENDIX–C: Practicing Potuas in Bengal – A Short List

APPENDIX–D: Two Extracts:

APPENDIX–E: Status of the Artist (UNESCO, April 21, 2006)

APPENDIX–F: Note on Contemporary Santhali Literature:

APPENDIX–G: Romila Thapar on Versions of the Ramayana

APPENDIX–H: Japanese Picture Scrolls

APPENDIX–I: Plates

Glossary

Select Bibliography

Forwored

Amongst the many genres of Indian art is ‘scroll painting’. It shares a commonality with other Asian traditions, especially Chinese. Its antiquity is well attested in textual sources – Buddhist, Jaina and Hindu alike. Panini, Patanjali, Buddhaghosa and others refer to scroll painting and painters. There are vivid descriptions in both critical and creative literature of the unrolling of scrolls, to visually and orally narrate myths, legends and historical events, as also eulogies to kings, patrons and saints. The narrative sculptural reliefs on the walls of the monuments, ranging from Bharhut, Sanchi, Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, are antecedents. Later, the sculptural reliefs of narrative and painted scrolls are coeval. In the course of time, while scroll painting continued as a highly sophisticated art in China, in India it became the special prerogative of itinerant bards and painters. They sustained the tradition in different parts of India, under varying socio-economic conditions. Each region, even villages and specific family traditions, developed a distinctive characteristic of content, form and technique. Rajasthan developed and perfected the visual narrative in the Bapuji ki Pad and Devenarayana Katha as also the legends of Dhola Maru. Goa evolved the Dasavatara, Andhra the Thola Bomalattam, which was both shadow puppetry as also painted scrolls, Pinguli in Maharashtra, and the Chitrakatha. In Maharashtra and Gujarat there evolved a highly sophisticated form of scroll painting known as the prasasti patra. Orissa was and is known for its Patachitra. Bengal is the richest– here the tradition of scroll painting, the Patachitra, has continued over centuries. Within Bengal there are sub-schools, such as those of Murshidabad, Medinipur, Bankura, Birbhum, Bishnupur and the 24 Parganas.

Amitabh SenGupta, painter, researcher, painstakingly attempts to situate the Bangla and Santhal pata against the socio-cultural and artistic history of India and particularly of Bengal. He presents a bird’s eye-view on the socio-cultural history of India, culled from secondary sources ranging from R. C. Majumdar to Romila Thapar. Useful as this is for an entry into his subject, it has to be acknowledged that there are varying points of view on the socio-cultural history of India. Mr. Amitabh Sen Gupta next delves upon the history of Bengal, quoting again from the works of S. K. Chatterjee, and R. C. Majumdar among others. He finally focuses attention on the history of painting in Bengal and especially pata painting.

Of interest is his narration of the socio-cultural identities of a class of artists–painters, potters, snake-charmers and others who are itinerants. Within themselves they combine dual or multiple identities of religion – Hindu, Muslim–and out of caste and within caste. Flexibility and fluidity of personal identity and multiplicity of skills characterize their life and their art. They can be Hindus/Muslims at the same time, can be untouchables, but may also be Kshatriyas. In short, there is space for containing and encountering social change in time and place. When needed they take on the generic name of Pal, and when all caste identities are eschewed they are all Chitrakars. These observations provide important insights into the dynamics of culture, where the artistic elements impact on socio-economic groupings and status. The artistic sphere is the safety valve where plural identities co-mingle without conflict. Indeed, more in-depth studies should be done on this aspect of the living arts and the artists of that overarching category called ‘folk art’.

Naturally and understandably, it is the ‘art’ and not the socio-economic status of the artist and the community which has drawn attention of the art historians. Amitabh SenGupta is fully conscious of this. He particularly refers to the work of the earlier pioneers, Gurusadaya Dutt, Stella Kramrisch, D. P. Ghose and others. He, however, interrogates the classificatory category of classical and folk art, high and low. His theoretical premises are well taken when he unequivocally states that ‘‘art cannot be weighed on the human scale of socio-economic development’’. Indeed, this leads one to ask the question whether folk and classical art, or sophisticated craft of rural communities and art of individuals in an urban milieu, are sociological or artistic categories.

Indeed, the emergence of a school of painting, viz., the Kalighat paintings, is a case in point. The particular style developed from the pata, was no longer a scroll, and was in a fixed pictorial frame. The development was impelled by the changes in the socio-cultural milieu of colonial India. This was the encounter of a rural tradition with a first level urbanization as also colonial rule. Resultantly, many styles of the rural Bangla pata were conflated. While artists freely drew upon earlier techniques, the paintings were infused with a new contemporary sensibility. The artists display a remarkable capacity of responding to socio-cultural change and yet retain the vitality with rural roots. The sharp wit enables them to critique contemporary society freely and without inhibitions. Can this be called ‘modern’ or classical or folk? Of late, there has been much scholarly interest in this genre and many critical studies have been undertaken, especially of Jyotindra Jain. National and international exhibitions have been held. Each has received wide acclaim. Shri SenGupta is keen to point out, and rightly so, that the Kalighat school has close links with the rural art of the Bangla patas, but is a category apart.

His concern is with the continuation of the variegated schools of Bangla pata and the Santhal pata. They follow a different trajectory from the Kalighat paintings. The artists, the potuas, continue to be polyvalent itinerant artists. Each potua is story teller, poet, painter, musician and singer combined. Creativity comprises the conception and interpretation of a theme, or narrative, its oral enunciation and its pictorial narrative. The oral and the visual are integral to each other and cannot be separated. Also, while mythology, legend and deeds of heroes are their subject matter, at no time is this static, confined to a fixed text, which constitutes the basis of the visual narrative. The potua is not illustrating a verbal text. He is creating a verbal and visual text, as also a kinetic text, simultaneously. Spontaneity and simultaneity are his artistic impulses which he still follows.

The potua thus is different from his counterpart–the Kalighat painter, who adapted himself to a fixed pictorial frame and restricted himself to only single situation and the visual. The potua is also different from the artist of miniature painting. He is not basing himself on a given verbal text, who either illustrates or interprets the text visually. The verbal versions of the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Gita Govinda or Rasikapriya were finished texts which the painters undertook to visually recreate. They were not creating an oral text along with a visual text.

Amitabh SenGupta underlines some of these characteristics and succeeds admirably in communicating the special features of the generic genre, Bangla and Santhal pata. In fact, it is perhaps the underprivileged social status which empowers him with the privilege of moving freely in both space and time, both at the level of conception as also execution. The individual and the group are itinerant in their life and thus fluid and flexible in their art. A fixed place, a standard notion, a specific temporal frame, is not their calling. Instead, it is movement, crossing of religious-cultural boundaries, of traversing different orders of space and time which is their calling. The art thus moves on the dual plane of perennial flow as also an immediate event or happening. With effortless ease the potua can relate the past and the present, the universal and specific, the sacred and the mundane. This is evident in the patas relating to the epics, Ramayana or Mahabharata or the Durga pata. The myth and legend is given contemporary significance. This is also evident contrarily in the patas which were created spontaneously after the Bangladesh War of Independence, and now the active and creative response of the potuas to the phenomenon of the Tsunami. The versatility lies in the mind and its capacity of quick and almost instant response to the ‘situation’, outer or inner.

The Bangla pata and the Santhal pata, although related, can be clearly distinguished from each other. While the potuas with all their sub-schools deal with myth, legend and historical narrative and contemporary events, the Santhal pata is centered around cosmology and cosmogony. The Santhal patas visually narrate the conceptions of the universe, its origin and the different orders of space and time. The Jadupata has magico-religious significance, and thus the Chakshudana pata acquires a very definite sacred significance. It serves as a mediator between the two worlds of the mundane and the sacred, the living and the dead.

Amitabh SenGupta describes the differences of approach as also style and technique between these two broad categories. He also elaborates upon the stylistic differences within the Bangla pata in the districts of Murshidabad, Midnapur, Bankura and Bishnupur. The latter was understandably deeply affected by the Vaishnava ambience of the Bishnupur temple terracottas. It is also brought home that the potuas are not only polyvalent artists– poets, painters and musicians– but are also makers of clay and terracotta figurines. Lastly, we are reminded that the rich and complex artistic traditions of the simple and un-privileged are threatened to extinction or transformation to trivialization.

Richly illustrated, the monograph raises several questions on the classificatory categories in the discourse on the Indian arts. Are the classical and folk insular categories? Are they sociological categories or artistic categories? Does artistic excellence depend on socio-economic status or is it independent of socio-economic-cultural status? Is artistic genre within village societies unconnected to urban milieus, or is a very complex transaction taking place between the two? Is the artistic activity confined to specific families and is thus a collective activity without space for individual creativity? Or do the two intersect and sometimes individual excellence within community art has opportunity and space? The extraordinary creative excellences of Gangadevi or Sitadevi of Madhubani painters or amongst the Worli painters or the patuas are a case in point. The monograph through its very simple lucidity will no doubt, I hope, impel discerning readers to ask these seminal questions. The monograph, I hope, will not be received as another coffee table book of ephemeral interest by those who have an interest in the beauties of exotic folk arts. It is these ‘arts’ which have sustained long continuities and have encountered change with admirable vitality. What is the secret of this creative engagement with the past and present without ‘rupture’ and ‘trauma’? This is not a simple question of interposing ‘tradition’ and modernity, rural and urban, sacred and secular. Its complexity lies deeper, and it is time to ask these questions in both sociological as also artistic terms. Perhaps this monograph will, I hope, not only provide basic information and description but will ignite an interrogation of the widely accepted system of classification of artistic genres and art-forms in Indian Art. This is the future of Indian Art History beyond chronology, dating and extension of sociological categories to artistic categories.

Kapila Vatsyayan

Introduction

Beyond the splendid walls of palaces and temples or the delicate miniatures of Indian art, there remains a vast pictorial tradition, yet unknown in historical accounts – these are the scroll paintings by the itinerant painter bards. This tradition of scroll painting is also referred as Patachitra, which in Sanskrit meaning encompasses all genres of pictorial traditions, both classical and vernacular. As the vernacular tradition has hardly found any attention in written accounts, its past remained shrouded in time. Primarily an oral form of storytelling, the bard presents the story with pictures and simultaneous narration with a song, which is gitika. This tradition has been known in the Indian subcontinent for over five thousand years or more, and flourished further in different regional trends. In the eastern part of India, in Bengal, its popularity can be observed till today, in a wide range of folk narratives and vibrant pictures that are created by the contemporary painter bards, known as the Potuas. While the trends of Indian arts, such as the classical and the subsequent Regional Schools, have come to a logical end to constitute the meanings of historical past – vernacular art transcends through time and have its presence even today. However, the continuum of this larger artistic tradition has little claim in historical accounts, either from the past or in the present.

However, the living tradition of vernacular scroll painting in Bengal indicates an unbroken link with the past, at the same time, it has contemporary elements to remain relevant in the present; the tradition signifies another primary aspect–the oral tradition of storytelling or katha. Storytelling since the preliterate stage is present in different forms and one can observe its development in a multitude of vernacular expressions. In the ancient period, storytelling of the bard was a popular mode of communication that familiarised the isolated life in different regions. The mobility and constant change are always present in oral traditions and these elements have not changed since the earlier periods. Thus, when the bard moves from one village to another, the stories become known in another community; it takes further version in bardic form, may be gathering new stylistic elements in pictures. Historically, the oral culture might have played a prominent role in merging divergent groups of alien cultures, binding the unfamiliar elements within the common norm and values. Storytelling in Indian life has turned into a long sustaining tradition, in the form of katha. The process exists in all societies, thus reminds us of a timeless picture: at the end of the day, the mother telling a story to her child or the villagers gathering to listen intently, to tales that are loftier than life, mythic or heroic, which would bind their lives together within a moral code.

In the absence of substantial evidence from the past, present knowledge about vernacular scroll painting would remain incomplete. Nevertheless, many of the old songs continue, as evident in the mythological stories of the contemporary painter bards, the Potuas. These provide an initial source to follow. Potua’s pictures on mythological stories continue to manifest timeless elements that also reflect a syncretism in regional versions. With themes that are both sacred and secular, Potua brings the past to present as if in a continuum. Information