A period in the early to late 2000s when the market value of Indian art rose exponentially, the Indian Art Boom was marked by the creation of an international market for Indian Modernists, the establishment of Indian auction houses, and record-setting sales of Indian art at foreign auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The Boom period established the careers of several emerging artists in India due to financial speculation on their work, which helped create a market niche for contemporary Indian art. It ended with the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing global recession. Much subsequent investment in art infrastructure — such as larger galleries, art NGOs, grants, art residencies and private museums — is credited to the establishment of Indian art as a market category during the Boom years. The beginning of the Boom is marked differently by various scholars and commentators. The most conservative estimate states that the Boom lasted for two to three years between 2006 and 2008, when most of the highest-grossing sales and other investment in Indian art occurred. Other analysts believe it started in 2000, the year India’s two major auction houses, Saffronart and Osian's Connoisseurs were founded.  The groundwork for the Boom was laid in the 1990s. The first sales of modern Indian art by Sotheby’s and Christie’s were held in New York in 1995. For most of the twentieth century, Indian art received little attention on the global stage until the economic liberalisation in the 1990s. Following this event however, foreign investors were able and willing to speculate on the newly opened Indian market with confidence after seeing the rapid commercialisation of Chinese art around the same time. This influx of foreign currency — cautious at first, then gaining speed by 2000 — encouraged curators, collectors and art institutions to take note of it and prepare art historical timelines for viewing and discussing Indian art. Between the late 1990s and the early 2000s, art writers such as Geeta Kapur, Gayatri Sinha, R Siva Kumar and Yashodhara Dalmia outlined the historical category of Indian Modernism, as well as its various schools and movements. The creation of such a framework for modern art in India allowed art dealers — particularly auction houses — to draft catalogues that introduced collectors to Indian art as an opportunity to invest in the cultural output of independent India. The biographical details of several artists, such as MF Husain and Subodh Gupta, were written about with as much emphasis as their work, giving collectors a sense that these were artists whose careers overlapped with key moments in Indian history, or whose lives and work represented an essential aspect of the Indian story. Such a conceptual structure helped to price artists’ work as well, placing them in hierarchies according to their position in the newly written history of Indian Modernism. Particularly popular were paintings by the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG), due to their close parallels with Western Modernists such as Pablo Picasso. PAG artists such as Husain, FN Souza and SH Raza were highly palatable to the Western art market, which was beginning to expand its definition of modernism to global proportions. Other Modernists with high sales included Amrita Sher-Gil, whose work was frequently compared to that of Frida Kahlo, and Arpita Singh, who was one of the few established women artists living in India at the time. To underscore this parity between Indian and Western Modernism, as well as to attract collectors, Saffronart’s early exhibitions were held in New York or London, where much of the art world’s sales were concentrated.  The auctions that were held at these venues began to see the first record-making sales of twentieth century Indian art. A notable example of this is Mahishasura, a painting by the PAG artist Tyeb Mehta which sold for over a million dollars at Christie’s in 2005, making it the first modern Indian painting to do so in an auction. Many of Indian art’s new patrons came from the Indian diaspora in the West and were drawn to the narrative of Indian Modernist history reclaiming its place on the global art market. Other collectors were interested in speculating on the rising value of younger contemporary artists’ work. This speculation made the careers of several key names in Indian art today, such as Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat and various emerging or mid-career practitioners at the time. India’s relatively few domestic collectors typically had more traditional tastes, and were initially cautious about buying into the increasingly expensive market for contemporary Indian art. A crucial factor in their involvement was the creation of funds — such as Copal’s Art Fund and Osian's Art Fund — that were set up specifically for investing in and selling Indian art. Most investors in these funds had no history of purchasing art, but were encouraged by the new market niche for Indian art. Several factors contributed to the end of the Indian Art Boom. While the general impact of the 2008 global financial crisis was softened in India, the crisis forced foreign collectors, institutions and non-resident Indians to stop or pull investments in Indian art. Osian’s Art Fund became a case study in hasty investment, poor planning and multiple legal oversights which led to its being forcibly closed down by the Indian government in 2013. Other factors that ended the Boom include a lack of infrastructure that could sustain Indian art outside of the market, such as contemporary art museums, robust educational institutions, and funding for artists. Indian artists had been carried through the Boom years mainly by market forces, and did not have a safety net of government funding or public support for contemporary art within the country. Lastly, Indian bureaucratic hurdles and a lack of channels to invest easily in art may have limited sales and other follow-up investments from foreign buyers during the Boom years. The Indian Art Boom, revealing as it did the level of international interest in Indian art and the need for better infrastructure, was a catalyst for the creation of public-facing projects, funding organisations and generally a more adaptive support structure for Indian artists after 2008. This included expansions and renovations at major Indian galleries such as Chemould Prescott Road, Gallery Espace, Nature Morte, Chatterjee & Lal, Bodhi Art and several others. The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India’s first private museum showing contemporary art, was opened in 2010. The annual India Art Summit (now India Art Fair) began in 2008, and continues to be a key event for seasonal sales for art in the subcontinent.

A prominent modernist painter, Tyeb Mehta is best known for his renditions of totemic Indian forms, particularly the goddess and the bull. Throughout his career, Mehta’s critical success was matched by considerable commercial interest in his work, fetching record amounts at auctions. He was among the first living Indian artists to attract such high prices. Born in 1925 in Kapadvanj, Gujarat to a Dawoodi Bohra family, Mehta grew up in the Crawford Market area of Mumbai. His family owned and operated some cinema halls, and after a brief period working in them, he left the family business to work as a film editor at the Famous Studios in Mumbai. Later, he joined the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai to study painting. After his graduation in 1952, Mehta became part of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, established in 1947. Fellow artists Akbar Padamsee and SH Raza encouraged him to travel and live in London, where Mehta and his wife Sakina lived from 1959 to 1965. In London, he encountered the works of Francis Bacon, whose influence seeped into his approach to anatomy and colour. During this period, he developed a modernist vocabulary in his work, influenced by European art. After returning to India in 1965, Mehta set up a base in New Delhi. In 1968, he was awarded the Rockefeller Fund Fellowship and lived in New York City for a year, where he was exposed to abstract expressionists, particularly Barnett Newman, whose work inspired Mehta to include blocks of contrasting colours in his paintings. In the mid-1980s, he permanently moved back to Mumbai. In the 1970s, he started making the “Indianised” paintings for which he would become best known. One of his most significant works, the Diagonal series, was painted in this decade. In it, he used some of the techniques that would go on to become his signature: flat planes of contrasting colour which divided the canvas diagonally into separate spaces. During the 1980s, Mehta spent some time as an artist-in-residence at Kala Bhavana, Shantiniketan. In 1991, he painted the Falling Figures series, encapsulating his vision of post-Partition violence. The falling figure, the goddess, the rickshaw-puller and the trussed bull are some of the recurring motifs in Mehta’s work. Many of his works are meditations on the human propensity for violence, from the Partition to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The falling figure, making an appearance in many of his works, is a modernist symbol of universal suffering that he applied specifically to post-Partition India. The rickshaw-puller attests to both the suffering of the human body and its endurance, and the misery human beings inflict on one another—as one person is comfortably seated on the rickshaw while a second toils to pull it forward. The bull, often shown as a load-bearing or sacrificial creature, is used as a recurring signifier of helplessness, analogous to the figure of an oppressed person. The surfaces of Mehta’s paintings were usually matte sheets of flat colour. He applied Cubist techniques of fragmentation to depictions of movement from ancient Indian figurative sculptures, such as the Nataraja. Mehta’s diagonal division of compositions makes minimal use of line and colour. Layering iconographic elements into a sparse arrangement, his paintings have acquired acclaim for their sense of movement and profound humanism. Known as a careful and deliberate painter, Mehta completed no more than around 300 works in his lifetime. His critical acclaim and limited oeuvre have contributed to an intensely competitive market for his works—the sale of which has also directed commercial interest towards the works of other Indian artists. Even during his lifetime, his works sold for unprecedented prices. His triptych Celebration (1995) was sold by Christie’s in 2002 for INR 2.19 crore, making Mehta the first Indian artist whose work had sold for over a crore. This was followed by more record-breaking sales, including Mahishasura (1994) for INR 10.9 crore in 2005, Woman on Rickshaw (1994) for INR 22.99 crore in 2017, and Kali (1989) for INR 26.4 crore in 2018. Mehta has been honoured with several awards. These include a Gold Medal from the Lalit Kala Akademi (2004), the Manpatra from the Government of Maharashtra (2004), the Kalidas Samman by Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal (1988), a Gold Medal during the first Triennial of the Lalit Kala Akademi (1968), and the Rockefeller Fund Fellowship (1968–69). In addition to painting, Mehta also worked on films, most notably his 1970 film Koodal, which won the Filmfare Critics Award. His work has been exhibited at numerous international and national venues including the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Tate Modern, London; and the Gallery Le Monde de l’Art, Paris. His paintings form part of several major public and private collections. Tyeb Mehta passed away in 2009 in Mumbai. His estate is managed by his wife, Sakina.

A Hungarian-Indian Modernist painter, Amrita Sher-Gil is considered the first professional woman artist in India. She is primarily known for her paintings of rural India and her self-portraits, which reflected her engagement with her identity and the country. Her works are characterised by bold colours and flat planes, partly inspired by the works of Impressionists such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Amedeo Modigliani. Sher-Gil was born in Budapest, Hungary, to Umrao Singh Sher-Gil and Marie Antoinette Baktay, and spent the early years of her childhood in the city, following the outbreak of World War I. She began drawing and painting at an early age. The Sher-Gil family returned to India in 1921 and settled in Shimla, where Sher-Gil began to be trained in painting by art tutors engaged by her parents, one of whom recognised her talent and suggested that she be tutored abroad. Following this advice, she was sent to the Santa Annunziata Boarding School, Florence, in 1924. However, she was dismissed from the institution owing to her protests against the school’s orthodoxy as well as after she was found painting a nude. Subsequently, she began dividing her time between Shimla and her paternal uncle’s home in Saraya, Uttar Pradesh. In 1927, following her maternal uncle’s suggestion, she began using live models for her human studies, primarily the people around her such as the household help. As her artistic aptitude became increasingly apparent, Sher-Gil’s family moved to Paris in 1929, where she studied painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Pierre Vaillent, then the Ḗcole des Beaux-Arts to train under the supervision of painter Lucien Simon. From 1930–32, she undertook several studies of human anatomy, sketching male and female nudes in charcoal. She also began working with oil paints in 1930, which would later become her preferred medium. She produced over sixty paintings during this period, consisting chiefly of self-portraits and portraits of her acquaintances, as well as landscapes, still lifes and nude studies. In 1933, Sher-Gil was inducted as an Associate of the Grand Salon, Paris, when she was just nineteen. In 1934, she and her family returned to India, where she briefly stayed at her family’s mansion in Amritsar, Punjab, and her uncle’s estate in Saraya before settling down in Shimla. She soon began exhibiting across the country, finding critical acclaim for her work, especially in Bombay. She won two prizes for her self-portraits at the Delhi Fine Arts Exhibition in 1936 and the gold medal for Three Girls (1935) at the annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society in 1937. Her prominent works during this period, such as Mother India (1935), reflected her preoccupation with poverty and its abjectness. Towards the end of 1935, Sher-Gil painted Hill Women and Hill Men, which are known for their flat planes and deep hues. In 1936, Sher-Gil became increasingly interested in Indian miniature paintings, which inspired her to use bright and vivid colours in her own work. She also developed an appreciation for other artistic traditions such as the Ajanta murals. Soon after, she travelled to the Ajanta and Ellora caves; Madurai and Cape Comorin (now Kanyakumari), Tamil Nadu; and Cochin (now Kochi), Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram) and Mattancherry, Kerala, and recorded her travels in works such as Fruit Vendors (1936), Bride’s Toilet (1937), Brahmacharis (1937) and South Indian Villagers Going to Market (1937). Sher-Gil also employed Primitivism in her work, which was balanced by a formalist emphasis in her art, prompted by an introspective approach to her work as well as her disdain for historicism in Indian painting, such as that practised by the Bengal School and which she found shallow and stunted. Consequently, Sher-Gil developed a visual language that combined the bright hues of Rajput and Pahari miniatures — reds, browns and yellows — with the figural monumentality of the Ajanta murals, creating figures that occupied the frame of her canvas. In the following years, Sher-Gil shifted towards smaller figures that were closer in size to those in miniature paintings. She also began depicting natural elements in her work, such as in Elephants Bathing in a Green Pool (1938), Red Clay Elephant (1938) and The Verandah with Red Pillars (1938), introducing the element of decoration in the form of plants and animals. In 1938, Sher-Gil briefly moved to Hungary, where she married Victor Egan. Subsequently, she returned to India, where she lived at the Saraya estate before moving to Lahore, Pakistan (formerly in British India) in 1941. Some of Sher-Gil’s most famous works were painted during these years in India, such as The Ancient Storyteller (1940), The Bride (1940) and Woman Resting on a Charpoy (1940). Sher-Gil died in December 1941, a few months after moving to Lahore. Following her death, her family donated several of her paintings to the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Her works were declared a National Art Treasure by the government of India in 1976, making it illegal for them to be transported out of the country without official permission. India Post also released a stamp featuring her work Hill Women in 1978.  

One of India’s first recognised Modernist artists, Francis Newton Souza was known for his forceful paintings, which often brought together religious imagery with the banality of the body, carrying erotic or violent undertones. His anti-establishment approach made him instrumental in founding the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, in order to shape a new artistic idiom for Indian Modernism. Souza painted in various media, including ink, watercolour, oil and gouache, on paper, canvas and board. His figural paintings, landscapes and still lifes were executed in styles combining Expressionism, Cubism and Art Brut, using a thick application of colour with dynamic brushstrokes and palette knife-work.  Born in Saligao, Goa, to Roman Catholic parents in 1924, Souza lost his father at a young age. His mother moved with him to Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1929, where he attended St Xavier’s College for his secondary schooling in preparation to become a Jesuit priest. A rebellious child, however, he was expelled from the school for truancy and making explicit drawings. He developed a serious interest in art during his early years, absorbing impressions of the oleographs and prints of religious figures he was exposed to at school, as well as the hymns, iconography and architecture he encountered at church. The early visual influence of stained-glass windows, in particular, later became evident in the straight black outlines distinctive of his style, while imagery such as the priestly robes and Biblical figures went on to form recurring motifs in his work. In 1940, he enrolled in Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai to study fine art. His active participation in the Quit India Movement led to his suspension in 1945, just before he could receive his degree.  Subsequently, he joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)). In addition to watercolours of the rural Goan landscape and religious scenes, his paintings from this period portrayed class struggles in society — works that he was able to exhibit in the working-class colonies of Bombay with assistance from the CPI(M). These include the oil-on-board Untitled (Indian Family) (1947) — a depiction of poverty in Goa that is reflective of Souza’s communist and radical sympathies — and the oil-on-canvas Pieta (1947), depicting Jesus Christ nailed to the cross while the Virgin Mary crouches in the foreground.  In 1947, the year of India’s independence, Souza, along with SH Raza, MF Husain, KH Ara, HA Gade and SK Bakre, founded the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). Souza wrote the group’s manifesto, stressing the need for artistic independence and freedom of expression. His political connections enabled the PAG to hold many of its early meetings at the offices of the CPI(M). However, around the time the PAG held an exhibition with the Bombay Art Society in 1949, he had begun questioning the ideologies of the group, denouncing their communist motivations and insisting that  common aesthetic concerns instead be the unifying factor among the members.  In 1948, Souza exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and moved to London the following year. However, owing to the financial uncertainty in the aftermath of the Second World War, Souza worked in obscurity until 1955, when his autobiographical essay ‘Nirvana of a Maggot’ was published in the London-based Encounter magazine. The publication was run by British poet and essayist Stephen Spender, who introduced Souza to the English art collector Peter Watson, resulting in some of Souza’s works being exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in 1954. Souza held his first solo exhibition in the same year at Gallery One, London, and went on to display his work alongside those of artists such as Francis Bacon and Henry Moore. By this time, Souza had begun fusing elements from Christian iconography, bronze sculptures from the Chola period, temple carvings from Khajuraho and Mathura, and European Modernism, resulting in a style inspired by the post-War Art Brut movement and elements of British Neo-Romanticism. In 1955, Souza painted Birth, depicting a heavily pregnant woman lying naked on her back with her eyes closed, while a bearded figure in a red clerical robe positioned at her feet looks out at the viewer, and the window behind them reveals a cityscape suggestive of London. With the dark palette, the female nude, the sexual undertones of the image and the autobiographical quality of the priestly male figure, the painting represents many of the chief elements of his style. In 2008, it fetched a record auction price for an Indian artist’s work, and further surpassed it with its own resale in 2015 at almost double the price. His 1959 painting Crucifixion depicts more explicitly Souza’s preoccupation and struggle with his Catholic identity, showing a tortured Christ-like figure occupying the central space. With his typical deconstruction of conventional figural forms, he portrays Christ as a jagged black shape with an almost animal-like head, pierced with thorns and flanked by two smaller figures who may be seen as apostles. Souza published his autobiography Words & Lines in 1959. In 1967, having received the substantial prize money of the Guggenheim International Award — then the largest amount given for the arts — Souza moved to New York. This move ushered in a marked change in his palette as he began incorporating bright, warm colours applied in thick layers, or impasto, and minimised the use of black in his work. This is seen in the American cityscapes he started painting, exemplified by the oil-on-canvas Oklahoma City (1971). Here the sharply defined forms of his earlier work are replaced by a loose, almost abstract composition bursting with colour. The city’s buildings and vegetation are rendered in large globules of paint squeezed directly from the tube and spread around the canvas in bold lines and patches, creating a vibrant, joyful effect. This period also saw Souza experiment with other media and techniques, such as manipulating printed images from magazines, catalogues and newspapers using chemicals, and drawing or painting over them. Though he visited India frequently, he continued to live and work in the USA until his death. His work has been exhibited at many solo and group shows around the world, and his paintings are part of the collections of the Tate Modern, London, and the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. In 1987, the theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi curated a retrospective of his work, held jointly at Triveni Kala Sangam, Delhi and Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, Mumbai. In 2005, Tate Britain held a career retrospective titled Religion and Erotica; and in 2018 his works featured in a landmark retrospective of Indian Modern art curated by the Asia Society, New York.  Souza died in 2002 in Mumbai, at the age of seventy-seven.

With a practice that spans sculpture, painting, collage, video, photography and text, British-Indian artist Bharti Kher is known for her radical and heterogenous oeuvre, characterised by the recurring motif of the sperm-shaped bindi. Her art addresses issues of identity and culture that traverse the binaries of tradition and modernity, nature and technology and the spiritual and physical. Her work also engages with and subverts histories and categories of styles such as readymades, Narrative Figuration, Abstraction and Minimalism. She is best known for the scale of her sculptural installations. Born in London, Kher went on to study art at the Middlesex Polytechnic. She received a bachelor’s degree in fine art (painting) in 1988 from the Newcastle Polytechnic (now the University of Northumbria). During this period, she was deeply moved by the socio-political stirrings provoked by Margaret Thatcher’s brand of neoliberalism. When she relocated to Delhi in the early 1990s, she was confronted with the effects of globalisation and the sectarian strife in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition (1992) and the Bombay riots (1992–93). Although not immediately reflected in her works, these events left a deep impression and were instrumental in shaping her artistic direction, resulting in works that served as a commentary on the nature of violence. Through the 1990s, Kher was occupied with finding a way to address the social issues of patriarchy, ritual taboos and superstitions in India in her art. Juxtaposing Indian cultural references against her wry sense of humour, she sought to investigate and transgress cultural codes from the perspective of an outsider looking in. This led her to adopt an almost ethnographic process of surveying, collecting and transforming objects with the aim of recasting the viewer’s relationship with them while situating the contemplative aspects of the works comfortably against their political implications. She started working with the bindi in 1993, using it as a material, much like paint or clay. Her unconventional use of the object introduces a duality to the bindi, stripping it of its mundane associations in the face of its domestic, ritual, consumerist and metaphysical connotations. One of her earliest bindi works, Spit and Swallow (1999), took the form of two separate panels, each bearing a large circle teeming with sperm-shaped bindis that radiated outwards in one and converged inwards in the other, meshing the symbols of male and female fertility. Other works feature felt bindis pasted over aluminium composite or painted boards — placed in concentric circles, divided into squares and rectangles, used in acentric configurations or in mandala-like geometries — as well as on maps and in satellite images. Another prominent part of Kher’s practice are her sculptural works. Created using various mediums and replete with chimeras and mythical figures, they challenge patriarchal and anthropocentric narratives. The Girl With The Hairy Lip Said No (2004) features a crochet tablecloth upon which lies broken porcelain and a cup with a fistful of hair — alluding to the perceived havoc wrought by the refusal of a marriage proposal by a girl. In the part-animal, part-human composite of Arione (2004), a dominatrix serves muffins on a tray upon which her naked breast rests, speaking to the repressed fantasies of womanhood. In her animal sculptures, Kher combines ferality with tenderness and innocence, covering the sculptures in a coat of colourful, pulsating bindis. Some of these works — such as a life-size elephant (The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own, 2007) or the heart of a whale (An Absence of Assignable Cause, 2007) — are modelled with anatomical accuracy and made to their original scale, challenging the dimensions of a gallery space. Kher also uses objects such as wooden wheels, mannequin body casts, pillars and architectural remains, such as in Impossible Triangle (2012). Kher’s work has attracted a large international audience, most prominently through her solo exhibitions that include Virus at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (2008); A Wonderful Anarchy at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset (2019); A Consummate Joy at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2020); and An Unexpected Freedom of Chaos at the Galerie Perrotin, New York (2020). She has also participated in several group exhibitions at institutions such as Art Gallery of New South Wales; Kochi Biennale Foundation; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto; Le Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; KHOJ International Artists’ Association, Delhi; and Yale University School of Art, New Haven. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Tate Modern, London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Vancouver Art Gallery; and the Devi Art Foundation in New Delhi. She won the Sanskriti Award in 2003 and the ARKEN Art Prize in 2010 and was bestowed the honour of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Government in 2015. Kher is married to artist Subodh Gupta and lives and works in Gurgaon, Haryana.  

A contemporary artist working across mediums such as painting, sculpture, video, photography and telescopes, Jitish Kallat’s work reflects on our current times, the cosmos and historical recall. Kallat received his BFA in painting from the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, in 1996. This was immediately followed by his first solo exhibition at Chemould Prescott Road and Prithvi Gallery. Kallat received acclaim during his early years as a painter, his distinct visual style drawing from the streets of Mumbai and inspired by billboards, graffiti and political posters. He presented everyday life in the city with its bustle and vital movement in works such as Modus Vivendi (1000 people - 1000 homes, 2000). His work is marked by the graphic treatment of Mumbai’s urban landscape and its range of particular issues such as crises of housing and transportation, city planning, caste and religious strife and the onset of globalisation.  Kallat’s work further studies universalised states of sustenance, birth, death and morality. In Traumanama (The Cry of the Gland, 2008), he paints abstract anatomical studies in formations of muscle, bone and lymph. His works such as Wind Study (2017), Circadian Study (2020), and Integer Study (2020) come together as odes to observation and carry references to natural cycles, mathematical arrangements and routine. More recently, Kallat has extended beyond the scope of painting to create sculptures, installations and new media work which have been celebrated for their attention to detail and monumentality. Epilogue (2011) — based on an earlier work, Conditions Apply (2007) — is an assemblage of 22,500 chapattis labelled through months and years, tracing out the 753 lunar cycles that quantify his father’s lifetime, where the chapati in its varying stages of consumption and roundness is symbolic of the moon. His sculptural elements are also used in framing, such as the bronze gargoyles depicting details of the colonial era Victoria Terminus railway station and holding artwork such as Haemoglyphics (Archipelago of Ashes, 2009).  He uses text in several of his works; in The Lie of the Land and Humiliation Tax (2004), he appeals for religious tolerance and fraternity by using the transcript of a speech made by the Hindu thinker Swami Vivekananda in 1893 in Chicago. His seminal installation Public Note 3 (2011) once again recontextualised Swami Vivekananda’s speech, but this time in light of post-9/11 paranoia in the United States; the text of the speech was illuminated on the stairs of the museum in the bright colours of US Homeland Security’s threat-level code. In Covering Letter (2012), Gandhi's plea to Hitler urging him to not go to war and to maintain a peaceful world order is projected as a fog-screen installation, where the words appear and erode in a descending mist. This work was part of the Indian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019.  Kallat’s solo exhibitions have been displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago; Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Museum, Mumbai; San Jose Museum of Art, to name a few. His work has also been shown at Tate Modern, London; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Serpentine Galleries, London; and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, among others. His work has also been shown at international biennales and expositions such as the Havana Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Asia Pacific Triennale, and Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, among others.  Kallat’s work is part of several public and private collections, such as the Bihar Museum, Patna; Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC; Brooklyn Museum; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi. In 2014, he was appointed the curator and artistic director of the Kochi Muziris Biennale. His mid-career retrospective was held in 2017 at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi titled Here After Here 1992–2017.   Kallat is married to fellow artist Reena Saini Kallat. At the time of writing, he lives and works in Mumbai.

A multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles and Mumbai, Neha Choksi works with performance-based film and video art, incorporating sculpture, photography and paper-based art. Often taking the form of physical situations and interventions, her art seeks to create a space for poetry, absurdity and humour in the lives of both its viewers and its subjects. Choksi’s work is rooted in simple, playful and memorable propositions based on philosophical questions about existence. It involves creating physical actions within unconventional yet poetic settings, which ultimately conclude with erasure or transformation. Born in Belleville, New Jersey, Choksi grew up in Mumbai but returned to the US for her college education. In 1997 she completed a double major in art and Greek from the University of California, Los Angeles and in 2000, a master’s in classics from Columbia University, New York. A deep interest in poetry underpinned both her choice of classics for her postgraduate studies and her subsequent practice in the visual and performative arts. A series of three video works titled Trilogy on Absenting: Leaf Fall, Minds to Lose, Iceboat (2007–13) embodies Choski’s most important concerns around time, loss, transience, memory, consciousness and transformation. In Leaf Fall (2007–8), a troop of actors pluck a tree bare over the course of a day, leaving behind a single autumnal leaf, which comes into prominence only in the absence of the others. Her thoughts on presence and absence found expression in their literal and physical sense in Minds to Lose (2008-11), during which she used anesthetics to investigate the universality of the experience of unconsciousness. Themes of transience and self-erasure took centre stage in Iceboat (2012–13), which showed the artist rowing a boat made of ice until it melts completely into the lake on which it was rowed. Later works include the multi-channel film Faith in Friction (2017), shot on the construction site of an expansive and modern Jain ashram. It involved a collaboration with several friends, using physical, gestural and vocal dialogue to explore the structures and limits of self-reliance and interdependence. The site of the work was deliberately chosen to inquire into the philosophy of individualism, central to many spiritual traditions and Western models of psychotherapy. Choksi’s work has featured in several notable group and solo exhibitions at venues and events such as the Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane and the Shanghai Biennale in 2012; the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014; the Hayward Gallery Project Space, London, in 2015; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2018; and the Dhaka Art Summit in 2016, 2018 and 2020. Choksi was honoured with the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists in 2019 and the Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles in 2021. In 2017, she also won the India Today Best New Media Artist of the Year award. As of this writing, Choksi continues to live and work between Mumbai and Los Angeles, where she also serves as one of the editors of the arts journal X-TRA. Her work is represented by Project 88 in Mumbai.  

A Modernist artist and poet, Maqbool Fida Husain is one of twentieth-century India’s most widely known artists, recognised for his narrative paintings portraying subjects from popular culture, history and mythology in vivid colours and characteristically bold lines and forms. A founding member of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG), Husain adapted the Cubist style of European Modernist art to explore Indian themes, in oil, acrylic and watercolours, as well as offset printing and serigraphy. He is known for his public persona and prolific output, with a repertoire that also extended to filmmaking. Alongside his national and international success, Husain also encountered grave opposition from religious fundamentalists in India who considered some of his work to be offensive, and drove him to seek exile outside the country. Born around 1915 in the Hindu temple town of Pandharpur, Maharashtra, Husain belonged to a working-class family in the small Sulaymani Bohra community of Muslims. The date of his birth was not recorded, and Husain is known to have assigned himself one later in life. After his mother died in his infancy, he was sent to his maternal grandfather’s madrassa in Siddhpur, Gujarat, to obtain religious instruction. It was here that Husain was exposed to Urdu language and literature; he developed his calligraphic skills, practising the Kufic script and designing calligraphic monograms, or tughra, using various mediums on paper. Later, growing up in Indore, Husain also absorbed Hindu mythology through folk traditions such as Ramlila performances, which enact scenes from the deity Rama’s life, and participated in the city’s spontaneous evening mushairas, or poetry recital contests. In 1932, Husain began attending evening classes in painting at the Government Institute of Fine Art, Indore, and made landscapes of the surrounding countryside in a style heavily influenced by the academic Naturalism taught in the college. In 1934, he enrolled at Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai (then Bombay) to study painting, but financial constraints forced him to return to Pandharpur.  In 1937, Husain returned to Bombay, where he supported himself by painting billboards for Hindi films, an experience that familiarised him with creating large-scale figures quickly and decisively, and shaped his characteristic style. During this period, he also worked with a company that designed children’s furniture, while simultaneously painting, visiting exhibitions and occasionally participating in the city’s art shows. In 1947, Husain came into prominence by winning an award in the Bombay Art Society’s annual show. In the same year, he met the artists FN Souza, SK Bakre and SH Raza, and joined them in founding the PAG, which aimed at establishing a Modernist current in Indian art that was also globally relevant, through the amalgamation of pan-Indian artistic traditions and the techniques of European Modernism. He held his first solo exhibition in Mumbai in 1950. Unlike many other members of the PAG who emigrated abroad soon after, Husain remained in India until he was forced to leave in the 2000s. Husain’s fascination with the country’s politics, history, mythology, people and cultures was reflected throughout his oeuvre, which portrayed a vast variety of Indian subjects and symbols. In the decade following the Partition and Independence Husain turned his attention to the pillars of independent India when he depicted the Indian countryside, village life, men and women farmers and motifs from rural life such as horses and wheels, seen in paintings such as Peasant Couple (1950), Zamin (1955) and Yatra (1955). In other works such as Amusement in the Street (1957) he combined his interest in Rajasthani miniature paintings with the bleak colours of contemporary and urban India. Husain, who had lost his mother at an early age, also remained preoccupied with the female form, whether ensconced in domesticity, in epics and the pantheon of India’s gods and goddesses, or as an erotic muse. In paintings such as Durga (1964) and Draupadi (1971) his subjects embody the concept of shakti or power associated with women in the Hindu canon. Another work, the Musicians (1961), portrays the Hindu god Krishna and two female forms, with the mythological snake Kundalini, whose uncoiled depiction stresses the erotic tension in the painting. In the 1980s and 1990s, Husain created iconic images of cultural and political figures who were dominating the public imagination. After the success of Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi (1982), he painted The Attenborough Panels (1983), a work made of six panels depicting MK Gandhi’s journey from his life in his ashram to his apotheosis as the mahatma, or great soul. He also made numerous paintings inspired by the Albanian missionary Mother Teresa, including the iconic Untitled (Mother Teresa) (1991), in which the nun is shown caring for an infant and a child, depicted only through her distinctive blue-trimmed white sari and a nurturing hand gesture — motifs that Husain repeatedly used to portray her, instead of defining her face. Individuals from contemporary popular culture — including politics, sport and film — continued to fascinate Husain, and were frequent subjects of his paintings over the decades. Husain’s work, while secular in spirit, used symbolism and iconography drawn from religious and mythological sources, particularly the Mahabharata and Ramayana. In 2005, he painted The Last Supper, based on the mythologised event in the life of Jesus Christ, which was also interpreted as a comment on global poverty. Auctioned the same year, the work fetched a record price for an Indian painting at the time. In 2008, at the age of ninety-three, Husain embarked on a series of ninety-six paintings commissioned by Usha Mittal, wife of the industrialist Lakshmi Mittal. Titled Indian Civilization, the series would chart India’s history since antiquity. Husain was able to complete eight triptychs before his death, covering subjects ranging from political and cultural icons and deities to the varied cities, festivals, modes of transport, dances and domestic cultures of India. With his active social and public life and a prolific output that went beyond the confines of galleries and collections, Husain became the most visible and recognisable Indian painter of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Besides producing several thousand paintings in his sixty-year career, he also created posters for India’s national airline, Air India; painted murals on restaurant walls; printed his work on textiles; and wrote and directed three films. The first of these, Through the Eyes of a Painter (1967), which featured iconographic elements from his paintings, received the Golden Bear short film award at the Berlin International Film Festival that year and the Indian National Award for Best Experimental Film in 1968. His subsequent films — Gaja Gamini (2000) and Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities (2004) centred on strong female protagonists, which were played by prominent Hindi film actresses Madhuri Dixit and Tabu respectively. Travelling extensively, he also frequently received media attention for acts such as painting in front of live audiences and painting on a human body. In 1986 he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian parliament. Remaining detached from the actual proceedings of the house during his six-year tenure, he instead produced a series of black-and-white sketches based on his observations here. These were published as the book Sansad Upanishad: The Scriptures of Parliament in 1994.  However, as fundamentalist Hindu ideologies gained political force in the 1990s, Husain’s work began to receive criticism from groups who claimed that his nude depictions of Hindu goddesses such as Saraswati, Durga and Lakshmi hurt religious sentiments. These images — some of which were made as early as the 1970s — as well as a 2006 painting of a nude figure interpreted as Bharat Mata (Mother India), led to various lawsuits being filed against him. In 2004, Husain withdrew the film Meenaxi from theatres after a Muslim organisation, the All-India Ulema Council, criticised the use of Quranic verses in his lyrics for one of the film’s songs. Facing numerous legal cases accusing him of insulting religions and promoting enmity between different religious groups; repeated vandalism and violent threats; and government apathy, Husain was finally forced to leave India in 2006. He then lived in self-imposed exile between London and Doha until his death, having eventually given up his Indian citizenship to accept Qatari citizenship in 2010. Husain received the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi in 1955; the Padma Shri in 1966; the Padma Bhushan in 1973; and the Padma Vibhushan in 1991. His works are part of the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the National Museum of Islamic Art, Doha.  Husain died in London in 2011, at the age of ninety-five.

A Mumbai-based multimedia and multi-format artist, Shilpa Gupta uses text, video and found objects along with drawings, interactive media installations and performance in her practice. The key concerns of her work are cultural identity, uncritical stereotypes, national borders, urban environments and the process of seeing and receiving synthesised images. Gupta was born in Mumbai and graduated with a BFA in sculpture from the Sir JJ School of Art in 1997. Her works are informed by the cosmopolitan environment of Mumbai and serve as deeply personal expressions of the friction between the fluidity of multiple inhabitations and the rigidity of language, gender, religion and map lines that result in complacency and fixed viewpoints. As a member of a generation of artists whose work responded to the political climate of the 1990s, Gupta’s critical gaze addresses religious fundamentalism and jingoism, resulting in recurring themes of identity, gender, religion, dissent and collective action, as well as the history and networks of globalism. In her work, Gupta draws on memory and desire to challenge dominant narratives and linguistic regimes. She uses non-linear narratives, discontinuous stories and multiple perspectives to blur the boundaries between art and communication in the age of globalisation. Her works, such as Memory (2007) — a site-specific installation which consisted of a cut-out of the word “memory” on a large white wall (reminiscent of the Berlin Wall) — illustrate the punctures in memory that cause recurring lapses in reason. For her series 100 Hand Drawn Maps of My Country (2008–), she traces maps drawn from memory by people from countries with troubled border histories, such as India, Canada, Israel, Palestine, France, Italy and South Korea, to create a multi-layered map that questions the idea of borders and nations as fixed concepts. Her work Blame (2002–04) was created as part of a public exchange project between India and Pakistan called Aar-Paar, in 2002 — the year of the Gujarat riots. This participatory work required volunteers on local trains to separate and distinguish fake blood in small bottles labelled “Blaming you makes me feel so good, so I blame you for what you cannot control, your religion, your nationality…” In another interactive performance titled There is No Explosive in This (2007), participants on the streets of London were invited to carry a cloth-covered bag printed with the name of the work. The work served to question people’s perceptions of and preoccupations with objects, carriers and sources of terror, as well as to critique art as a commodity. Her large-scale installation, For, In Your Tongue, I Can Not Fit, was part of the 2008 Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The installation consisted of one hundred metal spikes piercing sheets of paper containing verses by imprisoned and persecuted poets and authors writing in various languages, including Arabic, Azeri, Russian, Hindi, Spanish and English, accompanied by a hundred suspended microphones through which the verses were narrated. The work aimed to highlight the repeated political infringement of freedom of speech and expression across the world. Her work Untitled, first shown in 2009 at the Lyon Biennale and ten years later at the 58th Venice Biennale, demonstrated the inherent capabilities of manmade objects that are defined by their pre-assigned functions. Consisting of a mechanised metal gate with tall spikes designed to hit and break the wall upon which it was hinged, the installation blurred the boundaries between protection and vulnerability and took aim at constantly shifting geopolitical relationships. Gupta’s work has been shown at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; Serpentine Gallery, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Mori Museum, Japan. She was also awarded the Transmediale 2004 Award in Berlin; the International Artist of the Year award in 2004 by the South Asian Visual Artists Collective, Toronto; and the Sanskriti Pratishthan Award, 2004. Several of Gupta’s works and their prints, such as 01:14.9 (2012), There is No Explosive in This and There are No Borders Here (2006) have fetched significant sums at international auctions. At the time of writing, Gupta lives and works in Mumbai, India.

An Indian Modern artist and founding member of the historic Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG), Sayed Haider Raza is best remembered for his geometric abstract paintings drawing on Indian spiritual and philosophical traditions, particularly that of Tantrism. Raza painted landscapes and cityscapes in various styles before exploring the themes of nature and cosmology through colour symbolism and basic shapes, focusing particularly on the bindu — ‘point’ or ‘dot’ in Sanskrit. Living and working largely in Paris, he also distilled in his work the influences of Pahari and Rajasthani miniature painting, Indian poetry and meditative practices, as well as his own childhood experience of the central Indian forests, expressing these through a mastery of colour. Initially working with watercolour and gouache, he moved to oil and eventually acrylic paints over the course of his seven-decade-long career.  Raza was born in 1922 in the remote village of Babaria in present-day Madhya Pradesh, where his father was a forest ranger. His experience of close proximity with the rivers and dense forests of central India until the age of thirteen shaped his psyche and artistic sensibility, and one of his first teachers introduced the bindu to him as a focus for concentration. The family then moved to the bigger town of Damoh, where he completed his high-school education, taking a particular interest in visual art as well as Indian literature, poetry and cultural traditions. In 1939 Raza enrolled at the Nagpur School of Art, and having received a teacher’s diploma, taught drawing at government high schools. In 1943, he moved to Bombay where, before commencing his training in painting at Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, he worked for a designer and blockmaker who also allowed him to stay in the studio. He painted numerous gouache studies of the Bombay cityscape at this time, rendering buildings, roads and people as expressive masses of colour, in an early development of his abstract work that incorporated Fauvist colours, Expressionist brushstrokes and Cubist forms. Following a group exhibition held at Cama Hall Art Society in Bombay in 1943, Raza’s paintings caught the attention of the art critic Rudolf von Leyden, a German émigré known for his promotion of experimental Indian artists. von Leyden went on to champion Raza’s work in the coming years, also inaugurating the latter’s first solo exhibition at the Bombay Art Society Salon in 1947. In the same year, Raza joined his contemporaries FN Souza, MF Husain, KH Ara, SK Bakre and HA Gade in founding the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, aimed at framing a new direction for contemporary art for a newly independent India. Attempting to reach the masses through a synthesis of traditional Indian art and European Modernism, the group held its first exhibition in 1949 at Rampart Row, Bombay, but dispersed soon afterwards with a shift in ideology and many of its members moving abroad. Between 1947 and 1949, Raza’s parents died and the rest of his family migrated to Pakistan with the Partition following India’s independence, while he chose to remain in India for its secular and plural identity. In 1948, a year after India gained independence, Raza visited Kashmir where he became acquainted with the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who introduced him to the works of the French painter Paul Cézanne, which formed a precursor to Cubism. He encouraged Raza to look to Cézanne’s work towards incorporating greater structure in his own. The visit yielded numerous watercolours that were later shown at an exhibition inaugurated by Leyden in New Delhi. It also resulted in many works that showcased Raza’s early attempts at building a unique style of abstraction, marked by an exploration of urban forms through the use of colour and elimination of detail until the buildings appear detached from the background. These works were exhibited at a solo show in 1950, held at the Institute of Foreign Languages, a cultural and exhibition space founded by Viennese immigrant Charles Petras in Bombay.  In the same year, at the age of twenty-eight, Raza obtained a scholarship from the French government to study at the École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts, Paris. In 1952, he mounted a group exhibition with Akbar Padamsee and Souza at Galerie St. Placid, Paris — his first exhibition since arriving in France. The exhibition was a success and Raza was invited by the Parisian Galerie La France to showcase his work. The first few years of Raza’s life in Paris were dominated by watercolour and gouache studies of the French cityscape, reflecting his Formalist art education in Paris — paintings such as the gouache-on-paper Haute de Cagnes (1951) and the offset-printed Black Sun (1953) depict clusters of buildings in distorted but sharply delineated shapes amidst empty spaces, with a black orb in the sky above them. Inspired by Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh’s work, Raza shifted his primary medium from watercolours to oil, which he used in an thick, impasto application, as seen in Untitled (Village dans la Nuit) (1957) and Plein Soleil (1961). In 1962, while on a three-month teaching stint in the USA, he became acquainted with the works of American Abstract Expressionists including Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Sam Francis. He was moved by the lack of rigid structural frameworks that he encountered in them, particularly the use of pure colour in Rothko’s paintings. He began to move towards a more non-representative approach, and shifted his medium from oil to acrylic. This is seen in one of his largest works La Terre (1977), which, with its expressive brushstrokes and subtle symbolism, evokes the forests of Madhya Pradesh forests at night, sparsely illuminated by the habitations of the Gond tribes.  From the 1980s onwards, Raza’s style shifted from the gestural and expressive use of colour to the exploration of geometric compositions. Inspired by themes from Tantrism, he began using primary shapes and colours to explore natural phenomena, incorporating symbolism from Indian spiritual practices, as well as written words or lines of poetry in the Devanagari script, in his paintings. It was during this period that the bindu began to occupy a central position in his work. Appearing in the eponymous Bindu (c. 1980) as a dark circle centred within a series of square frames, it became a recurring, defining motif in most of his subsequent work. By the 1990s, fuelled by a nostalgia for India and his study of Indian art, Raza began exploring the concept of the bindu as a point of primordial origin. In his Germination series (1991–2012), the bindu appears as a focal point, often surrounded or accompanied by a variety of geometric patterns, especially complementary triangles suggestive of the female (prakriti) and male (purusha) principles in Hindu cosmology.  Raza moved back to India in 2010, after the death of his wife, the artist Janine Mongillat, and founded the Raza Foundation in collaboration with the poet Ashok Vajpeyi for promotion of the arts. Raza’s work has been shown in two retrospectives — one at Palais Carnoles, Musee de Menton, France in 1991, and the second organised by Saffronart, New York and Berkeley Square Gallery in 2007. His work is part of the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; the Asia Society, New York; and the Musee National D’Art Modern, Paris. In 1956, Raza became the first non-French artist to be awarded the Prix de la Critique by the French government. In 1981, he was awarded the Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akademi and the Padma Shri in 1981, the Padma Bhushan in 2007 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2013, as well as the French Legion of Honour in 2015. His life and work are the subjects of various literary works, including the monograph Syed Haider Raza (2023) by Ashok Vajpeyi and the biography Syed Haider Raza: The Journey of an Iconic Artist (2021) by Yashodhara Dalmia.  Raza lived and worked in New Delhi, India until his death in 2016 at the age of ninety-four. 

A contemporary artist who works across mediums such as drawing, photography, sculpture and video Reena Saini Kallat was born in Delhi and received a BFA in painting from the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai in 1996. Her work ruminates on issues of migration, memory and the myths of the nation-state and is significantly informed by inquiries into the nature of nationhood, national borders, legal documents, bureaucracy, memorialisation and erasure. Throughout Kallat’s vast body of work, an array of thematic predilections can be outlined since her art works through a complex network of codes and motifs and reinvests them with meanings. One such motif is that of the rubber stamp. A recurring presence, the rubber stamp comes with its particular associations to bureaucracy and governmentality. While it symbolises sanction and power, Kallat inverts and inflates the rubber stamp to restage postcolonial dilemmas. In her monumental painted sculpture Untitled (Cobweb/Crossings) (2013), she created a cobweb composed out of hundreds of rubber stamps, each bearing the colonial name of an Indian street which has since then been replaced by an indigenous name, reflecting the nature and practice of decolonisation, while also bringing to fore the contested nature of history. Another motif present in her work is the electric wire, symbolising the Partition of India and resonating with Kallat’s family’s movement across the new border. In her work, the line is often a device that marks a range of incisions: the violence of the nation-state, the enclosure of borders, the interlinkage of global networks. It also becomes an instrument for hybridisation, merging composite forms to reflect on the history of the subcontinent. In retracing these lines of control in her work, Kallat points our attention to its geometric, cartographic and chronological fixity. For instance, in Leaking Lines (2019), she reinscribes the borderlines marked by the Partition: Radcliffe Line, Curzon Line and McMohan Line; the border appears abstract, underscoring the scale of its presence and absurdity. In Anatomy of a Distance (2014) and Half Oxygen (2014), wires are woven and embroidered. While the former is fitted with motion sensors that correspond to a divided landmass, the latter’s painstaking warp and weft create a pair of lungs — half of which takes the form of a banyan tree, the national tree of India, and the other half takes that of the deodar tree, the national tree of Pakistan. Kallat’s work has been widely exhibited at museums such as the National Museum of Asian Arts (Guimet, Paris), the Manchester Museum (UK), Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum (Mumbai, India), Kennedy Centre (Washington DC, USA), Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Tate Modern (London, UK), Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), Arken Museum of Art (Denmark), ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art (Karlsruhe, Germany) Oscar Niemeyer Museum (Curitiba, Brazil), Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai, China). She has been part of international art fairs and biennales such as Bangkok Art Biennale (2020), Havana Biennial (2019), Busan Biennale (2016), Goteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2011), the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale (2011), the Asian Art Biennale, Taiwan (2009), among many others. Kallat’s work is part of several public and private collections including Manchester Museum (UK), Initial Access (Frank Cohen Collection, UK), Pizzuti Collection (Ohio, USA), Burger Collection (Hong Kong, China) Fondazione Golinelli (Bologna, Italy), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi, India), Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (Mumbai, India) and National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi, India) among others. She is married to the artist Jitish Kallat and at the time of writing, Kallat lives and works in Mumbai.

Founded in 1992 by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Raqs Media Collective is a contemporary multimedia art practice based in Delhi. It explores themes of identity, location, power and history through a multidisciplinary practice that includes documentary filmmaking, new media installations, performance art, research, critical writing and curation. Formed a year after the trio graduated from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, Raqs crystallised around the shared leftist tendencies and common critical concerns of its three members. Named for the Persian, Urdu and Arabic word used to denote the state of heightened consciousness achieved by whirling dervishes, Raqs is also an acronym for Rarely Asked Questions, a theme that is central to the Collective’s work. The artists collaborated on various freelance writing projects and productions through the early 1990s — such as director Pankaj Butalia’s documentary on the widows of Vrindavan — before formally coming together as the Collective. Inspired by the state of “kinetic contemplation” attained by whirling dervishes, their work centres around the relationship between space and time and identity and culture. Critical of the prevailing discourses of nationalism and multiculturalism, they look to other kinds of narratives to explain social and personal histories. Their practice defies the spatial and typological conventions of art through a combination of visual, academic and theoretical disciplines — ranging from filmmaking and political philosophy to criminology and the biological sciences. Between 2000 and 2013, the Collective grew more active in their roles as researchers, writers and intellectual provocateurs. They co-founded the Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi, also serving on the editorial board of its publication, the Sarai Reader series. During this period, Raqs collaborated with researchers at the programme to produce work in a variety of forms that included film, photography, publications (online and print), installations, archival projects, public interventions, lecture-demonstrations and pedagogical experiments — establishing their multidisciplinary approach as a hallmark of their practice. Despite the fluid nature of their work and philosophical interests, the Collective often uses Delhi as the focal point of the dynamics they seek to examine, especially in their explorations of sites and locations. In 2002, they showed their work 28°28' N / 77°15' E:: 2001-2002 An Installation on the Coordinates of Everyday Life in Delhi at Documenta 11. The work consisted of printed stickers and signboards in Hindi, English, Turkish and German, alongside text, video and sound recordings – together forming a commentary on urban dispossession and the relationship between signages and legal prohibitions and the depletion of the commons. Raqs has shown at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and other biennales in cities such as Venice, Liverpool, Istanbul and Taipei, as well as at institutions such as the Tate Britain, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Mori Museum, Tokyo; Art Unlimited, Basel; and the Hayward and Serpentine galleries, London. Some of their notable international curatorial projects include the exhibition The Rest of Now, for the 7th edition of Manifesta (2008), Bolzano, Italy, and an exhibition on contemporary Indian art titled Indian Highway at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 2008. In 2013, they presented a nine-month long exhibition, The Sarai Reader 09: The Exhibition, at the Devi Art Foundation, Delhi. Significant for its unique format as a dynamically unfolding exhibition, it gathered the works of practitioners across disciplines — including filmmakers, writers, performers, dancers, musicians and magicians — over the nine-month duration. In 2015, they presented the largest and most wide-ranging survey of their practice, spanning the previous decade, titled Untimely Calendar (Asamayavali), at the Jaipur House in the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi. The following year, they were nominated chief curators of the 11th edition of the Shanghai Biennale. They curated Five-Million Incidents in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Delhi and Kolkata from 2019–2021 and were appointed the artistic director of the 2020 Yokohama Triennale titled Afterglow. The Raqs Media Collective continues to practice out of Delhi.

Born in Khagaul, Bihar, Subodh Gupta is an artist who specialises in installation art using readymades to reflect on issues of migration, class and globalisation. Objects of mass domestic utility — from cowpats to metal pots and pans, plates and oversized steel kitchen racks, sometimes cast in silver and gold — are his signature raw materials. Through Formalism, he draws attention to the social construction of value and presents the uneasy dynamics between faith and poverty, modernity and capitalism, and “lower-class values” and high art. Gupta’s father was a railway guard and his mother a homemaker. Railway networks and stainless steel utensils — symbols of his parents’ lives — became key signifiers of modernity in his later work. Gupta’s interest in art was initiated by his association with local theatre groups for whom he designed posters. He enrolled in the Patna College of Arts and Crafts in 1983 to receive formal art training. He also began working part-time — and later full-time — as an illustrator at a newspaper in Patna. In 1988, he quit his job and moved to Delhi to work as artist-in-residence at the government-run Garhi Studios, where he met fellow artist Bharti Kher, whom he subsequently married. Gupta’s works explore his experiences of growing up in a village in Bihar, playing on the migrant crisis, “cow-belt” politics, caste conflicts, illiteracy and poverty. One of his earliest works, Bihari (1999), features a field smeared with cow-dung with his face at the centre of the canvas, underscored by the Hindi word “bihari” outlined in Devanagari script with twinkling lights usually found decorating roadside tea and paan stalls. His work speaks to the dislocation and movement symptomatic of a globalised and urbanising economy: some of his paintings depict unidentified young men stacking plastic and fertiliser bags atop taxis and conveyor belts, or carrying cardboard boxes with international brand logos. Gupta frequently also uses cow dung to explore these dynamics. In his practice, cow dung is smeared all over his body or in the form of an elliptical structure within a white-cube setting, transforming its traditional and ritual associations of sanctity and purity to portray how the values associated with objects change across time, space and context. One of Gupta’s most significant moments came when he shifted from gestural abstraction to sculpture. The history of sculpture in India had previously ranged from benign abstraction to indigenous Pop Art. In this context, Gupta’s installations, primarily made of welded stainless steel utensils, with their social focus and monumental scale, subverted conventions of medium and material. At KHOJ International Artists Association, where Gupta worked from 1997, he also developed a rigorous engagement with painting, performance, video, installation and photography. In Very Hungry God (2006), Gupta used stainless steel utensils to convey a state of hunger to indicate the failure of the socialist state and the greed of the capitalist nation. His Line of Control (2008) is a large mushroom cloud made of steel and brass pots and pans, alluding to nuclear war. In 2009, Gupta held a solo show at Hauser & Wirth, London, where he explored Western art history through Et tu, Duchamp?, which featured a bronze cast of Marcel Duchamp’s moustachioed Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q, 1919). Gupta also ventured into stage design by designing a set for French choreographer Angelin Preljoca’s show Creation (2010). In 2008, Gupta became among the earliest Indian artists to sell their work for more than USD 1 million (over INR 7 crores today). His oil painting, Saat Samundar Paar, fetched a price of USD 463,433 (over INR 3 crores today) at Saffronart’s online auction. The proceeds went towards relief efforts for the victims of the 2017 Bihar flood. Gupta displayed his mid-career survey show in 2012 at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi. In 2013, he was bestowed the title of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Letters by the French government for his contribution to contemporary art. His subsequent international and domestic participations included exhibitions such as When Soak Becomes Spill (2015) at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Seven Billion Light Years (2015) at Hauser & Wirth, New York; Anahad/Unstruck (2016) at Famous Studios, Mumbai; and Invisible Reality (2016) at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset. In 2018, during the MeToo movement, Gupta was accused of sexual harassment by the @herdscenand account on Instagram. The artist denied the allegations and filed a civil defamation lawsuit, and resigned from the positions he held at the Serendipity Arts Foundation and KHOJ International Artists’ Association. In February 2019, Gupta dropped his civil defamation lawsuit in return for the withdrawal of the allegations made against him. At the time of writing, the artist continues to live and work in Delhi.  

Initially credited as the architect and sculptor of several temples in the Karnata Dravida style of architecture, Jakanachari is today considered to be a mythical figure. Instead, scholars believe that the name may represent an artisan guild that was active between the tenth and thirteenth centuries in present-day Karnataka, when the region was under the rule of the Western Chalukya and Hoysala dynasties. While it is unclear when the myth of Jakanachari originated, the name is documented in colonial reports of temples in the Deccan region.  There are several popular legends associated with Jakanachari. He is believed to have been born in Kaidala, a village in Tumakuru district, Karnataka, India. According to one legend, he left his home in search of work, leaving behind a pregnant wife. Several years later, while Jakanachari was working on a sculpture to be installed in the complex of the Chennakeshava temple, Belur, a young man — eventually revealed to be his son, Dankanachari — spotted a flaw in his work. When the flaw was revealed, the dejected master artisan cut off his right hand. He later had a vision in which he received an instruction to build a temple to Vishnu in his village; his hand was restored once the temple was consecrated, with the village gaining the name Kaidala, meaning “restored arm”. Another myth claims that Jakanachari’s skill allowed him to build temples in a single day.  Some scholars suggest that the name Jakanachari may have been derived from the terms dakshinacharya or tenkanacharya, meaning “sculptor of the southern region/or of the south.” Others have suggested that the roots of the name can be linked to the term yaksha. The likelihood that Jakanachari was a mythical figure has been largely based on the construction dates of three Hoysala temples that Jakanachari is credited with having worked on: the Chennakeshava temple in Belur, the Hoysaleshvara temple in Halebidu and the Chennakeshava temple in Somanathapura. While the first two temples were built in the early twelfth century, the temple at Somanathapura has been dated to the mid-thirteenth century, making it extremely unlikely that any artisan could have worked on all three temples. Further, given that Western Chalukya and Hoysala temples spanning nearly three centuries are associated with the Jakanachari legend, it is likely that the term referred to a guild of artisans who worked on temples of the Karnata Dravida style during this period. This guild and eleventh-century artisans such as Dasoja may have been integral to the adoption and evolution of the style under Hoysala patronage. It is also notable that there is no epigraphic evidence of Jakanachari in the form of inscriptions at a time when several master artisans working on Hoysala temples inscribed their signatures on their images.  The myth of Jakanachari has been repeatedly depicted in popular culture in Karnataka, notably in the film Amarashilpi Jakanachari (1964). In 1995, the state government of Karnataka instituted the Jakanachari Award, which is conferred on master sculptors and artisans of the state.  

A master sculptor who was active in Karnataka, India, between the last quarter of the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth century, Dasoja is known for working on a number of temples built under Hoysala rule, most notably the Chennakeshava temple, Belur. Dasoja and his son Chavana were among several master artisans who worked on Hoysala temples, identified by their inscribed signatures on the works.  Little is known about Dasoja’s birth or early life. However, one of the epithets in his inscriptions — Balligaveya ruvari Dasoja (meaning “the sculptor from Balligavi, Dasoja”) — indicates that he hailed from the village of Balligavi in Shivamogga district, central Karnataka. Balligavi was an important cultural centre under Western Chalukya rule, along with Lokkigundi, Gadaga and Banavase. Dasoja and Chavana may have migrated to Balligavi along with other groups of artisans as Hoysala rulers began commissioning temples in the region.  A Jain epigraph attributed to Dasoja and dated to the second half of the eleventh century suggests that he was an engraver in addition to a sculptor. Some works attributed to him include images of Achyuta and Keshava — both epithets of Vishnu — at Balligavi and Hirekerur, respectively, as well as a sculpture of Keshava bearing Dasoja’s signature and dated to the early twelfth century, which may have originated in Kikkeri, near Mandya in Karnataka, and is currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  Dasoja signed his work with epithets such as Sarasvatiganadasi (“Servants of Sarasvati,” which may have been a guild) and Birudaruvari Gandalabadiva (“From a crowd of titled sculptors”). Works attributed to Dasoja at the Chennakeshava temple, Belur, identifiable by their inscriptions, include madanika bracket figures on the exterior and interior of the temple mandapa, a Durga image and a Bhairavi image. At the Hoysaleswara temple, Halebidu, only one image contains an inscription by Dasoja, but this inscription varies from those at Belur and other sites. However, given the chronological overlap between the two sites, it is likely that they are the work of the same artist. Another inscription naming Dasoja was found at the Chandragupta Basadi, Shravanabelagola. However, scholars suggest that is likely to have been referring to another artist by the same name.  Dasoja was active until the mid-twelfth century, with the last work attributed to him being the engraving of an inscription to build a temple at Arasikere, near Halebeedu, dated to 1152. 

Known to have worked over a span of more than sixty years during the thirteenth-century, Ruvari Mallithamma is considered to be one of the most prolific and important sculptors who worked for the Hoysala court. His inscribed signatures attest to his contribution to a large number of Hoysala temples in present-day Karnataka, India, notably the Chennakeshava temple, Somanathapura. While he gained particular recognition for his work on Vaishnava temples and developed an expertise in their iconography, his contributions to Shaivite temples are also known. The details of Mallithamma’s early life are obscure as his signatures did not provide biographical details such as place of birth, unlike those of some of his predecessors and contemporaries, such as Dasoja and Chavana. Based on an inscription mentioning a figure named Mallithamma, dated to the reign of the Hoysala ruler Someshvara (r. 1235–63), some scholars suggest that the sculptor may have been from a place called Panchajanya in present-day Hassan district, Karnataka. However, it remains unclear whether the inscription refers to the sculptor. The earliest project he is associated with is the Amruteshvara temple, Amruthapura in present-day Chikmagalur district, Karnataka, dated to 1196. Here Mallithamma worked on the the mukhamandapa or front hall, constructed some years later around 1206, carving ceilings of the central and southern parts and the northern doorway of the structure.  The next dated structure attributed to Mallithamma is the Lakshmi Narasimha temple, Haruvanahalli (now Haranhalli, in present-day Hassan district, Karnataka), where he worked on sculptures, friezes and scroll ornamentation on the northern side of the temple and at the base of the main cell. The friezes include depictions of yakshas, yakshis, horsemen, elephants and makaras. His signature is found on several Vishnu images on the site as well as on sculptures of Sankarshana, Pradyumna, Aniruddha, Garuda and Lakshmi. Around 1237, he sculpted two dvarapala, or door-guardian, images for the Shaivite Panchalingeshvara temple, Govindanahalli (present-day Mandya district, Karnataka), although he was likely not extensively involved in the temple. In the 1240s, he contributed to the Lakshmi Narasimha temples at Nuggehalli and Javagal, both in Hassan district. At Nuggehalli, as at Haranhalli, Mallithamma worked on the northern side of the temple, as well as a section on the western side, sculpting images of Indra and his consort Sachi, as well as various forms of Vishnu. At Javagal, he worked on the southern section. At both these sites, he may have undertaken the role of a supervisor in addition to sculpting images. He also worked on the Kedareshvara temple, Nagalapura around the same time.  Mallithamma’s most significant project was the Chennakeshava temple, Somanathapura, which was completed around 1268. He worked on the north tower of the temple, creating sculptures and friezes depicting scenes from Ramayana and Mahabharata, forms of Vishnu such as Janardana, a figure of a dancing female deity and an image of Mahishasuramardini. Scholars suggest that by the time he began work on the temple, Mallithamma may have been a renowned artist not only among his peers but also among Vaishnavite patrons in the region, for his contributions to Vishnu temples and his familiarity with Vaishnavite iconography. Therefore, it is likely that he was invited to work on the temple by its patron Somanadannayaka. By this time, however, Mallithamma is likely to have been too old to create the sculptures himself, and his contribution to the temple may have involved designing the sculptures and leading a workshop of artisans to execute them.

Active in the early twelfth century, Chavana was a master sculptor working for the Hoysala court. With his father, the master sculptor Dasoja, Chavana is known for his work on the decorative bracket figures or madanikas at the Chennakeshava temple, Belur in Karnataka, India.  Chavana hailed from the village of Balligrama (also known as Balligamve, now Balligave, in Shivamogga district, Karnataka), which he references in an inscription where he calls himself a  ‘bee at the lotus feet of the god Dharmeshvara of Balligamve’. Balligrama was an important cultural centre in the Western Chalukya kingdom, alongside others such as Lokkigundi, Gadaga and Banavase. In the early twelfth century when temple-building began to be patronised extensively by royal and non-royal figures in the Hoysala kingdom, artists from these centres began migrating to centres such as Belur and Halebeedu to participate in projects like the Chennakeshava temple, Belur and the Hoysaleshvara temple, Halebeedu. Chavana and Dasoja are among several master craftspersons, including Ruvari Mallithamma, who travelled significant distances across the Hoysala kingdom in present-day Karnataka, contributing their expertise and knowledge to the art and architecture of the temples of the period.  There is little information about Chavana apart from his work at the Chennakeshava temple, Belur, where he is thought to have worked for around five years with his father Dasoja before moving to a different site. Here, Chavana contributed four madanika images in the exterior and interior sections of the mandapa, including sculptures of a huntress and a dancer. Like his father, Chavana was known by different epithets, including Macheharipa birudaruvari Madana Mahesa (‘Shiva to the Cupid of titled sculptors’) and Macheharipa birudaruvari sarabhabherunda (‘Bherunda to the Sarabha of rival sculptors’), likely referring to gandabherunda and the sharabha, mythical beasts in Hindu mythology associated with Vishnu and Shiva, respectively.  There is no available information about Chavana’s work after 1117. 

A group of thirty-six large relief sculptures of women, the Madanikas are positioned on a series of brackets on the roofs and pillar capitals of the mandapa of Chennakeshava temple, Belur. The temple and its sculptural programme offer a unique perspective of Hoysala courtly culture, especially the professional identity of artisans. The Madanika statues are accompanied by inscriptions on their bases, which bear details of their sculptors including names, guilds, and places of origin. The madanikas are female figures sculpted inside a leafy, arboreal frame, often with a lotus flower as their base. They are made of soft chloritic schist, allowing them to be carved with lush detail, including headdresses, jewellery and costume. The figures are naturalistic in form, with rounded bodies, sensitive facial expressions and hand gestures, and gracefully positioned limbs. They are shown engaged in a myriad of courtly activities, including hunting, clutching a palm-leaf book, stroking the strings of a vina, striking cymbals, gazing into a mirror, and drying their hair after a bath. The stylistic features of madanikas vary, and this heterogeneity in detail has been read by scholars as a marker of the heightened individualism of the artists. Among the names of sculptors inscribed on the statues are Chavana, Dasoja, and Malloja, accompanied by elaborate titles. It is possible that these titles were granted to them by the Hoysala court as a reward for their skill: sculptors appear to have been highly mobile and sought-after professionals in the mediaeval Deccan, with some names inscribed on statues in temples across a span of hundreds of kilometres. The iconography of the madanikas, who are accompanied by arboreal imagery, has been connected to those of yakshis. Scholars have suggested that they were produced as a symbol of the incorporation of local deities into the worship of the nature goddess Vasantika, venerated by the Hoysalas. This interpretation is, however, controversial. A more commonly accepted view is that they helped establish the status of the Hoysala ruler Vishnuvardhana as a major patron of the arts, thus legitimising his rule as an independent sovereign. The madanikas appear to have been added to Chennakeshava temple late in its construction in the early twelfth century. They then came to be frequently depicted in Hoysala temples. Madanikas appear to have been retroactively installed in the Brahmeshvara Temple in Kikkeri (in present-day Mandya district, Karnataka) after it had already been completed in 1171. At least eleven madanikas at this site appear to be copied from examples at Belur. Chennakeshava temple continues to be a major tourist attraction today, and the madanikas are among its most famous and recognisable features.  

Used to embellish clothing as well as home furnishings with the iridescent wings, or elytra, of the Jewel beetle of the Buprestidae family, beetle wing embroidery has been historically used in India, Southeast and East Asia and the Middle East. Their earliest recorded use in India dates back to the fifteenth century when the blue-green jewel tones of beetle wings were often paired with lustrous zardozi embroidery to decorate clothing worn to signify high status in the Mughal courts. Examples of this form of surface decoration began to appear in Europe, especially in countries such as England and France, which had well-established trade and colonial relations with Asia. During the Victorian era in Europe, this style of embroidery began to appear on gowns and accessories, and by the nineteenth century such embroidery work was being created in Benaras (now Varanasi), Calcutta (now Kolkata), Hyderabad and Madras (now Chennai), solely for the export market. A famous example of this was the “Peacock Dress” worn by Mary Victoria Leiter, or Lady Curzon the Vicereine of India, at the 1903 Delhi Durbar. The dress, now at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, was patterned like a peacock’s tail and was embroidered with zari and beetle wings. The wing casings of the Sternocera aequisignata are usually preferred because of their blue-green-purple iridescence as well as their durable coat of colour. In Japan, the wing casings of Chrysochroa fulgidissima, known as Tamamushi (‘jewel insect’), are used instead. The process of decoration is generally the same with minor regional variations. The casings are either sewn as a whole onto the material to be embroidered or are cut into small pieces, shaped and then stitched on the fabric, usually fine muslin or net, like sequins. In traditional examples like Mughal era clothing and turbans, they are usually added only around the edges of fabric due to their fragility and pierced using a fine retaining thread. In a few cases, particularly Victorian garments such as Lady Curzon’s Peacock Dress, one can see the casings embroidered in the body of the cloth as well. Today, medieval and colonial examples of beetle wing embroidery are preserved in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the City Palace collection in Jaipur, the Bharat Kala Bhavan at Benaras Hindu University and the National Museum in New Delhi. Since the beetle wing casings were part of elaborate garments that were rarely worn, they have largely survived well, even in cases where the textile itself may have deteriorated.  

Traditionally practised by the Banjaras (also known as Lambanis or Lambadis), a semi-nomadic community primarily residing in parts of central, western and southern India, primarily Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka, banjara embroidery is characterised by vibrant colours and geometric stitches, embellished by a variety of visually distinct materials such as bells, beads, cowries, shisha, metal bits, coins and tassels are integrated into the embroidery patterns, often covering the entirety of the base fabric, which is typically red-dyed cotton. Traditionally, this technique of embroidery was practised solely by women, who often work together and are trained by more experienced practitioners in the community. They embroider freehand, causing the stitched lines to appear slightly wavy rather than rigid and straight. A range of stitches is used traditionally classified into fourteen types, including running stitches, which are used to create simple patchwork designs on the chatta; chain stitches; herringbone stitches; bargello stitches; and smock stitches. Often, strips of kangura are applied to line the borders of the embroidered fabric using the appliqué technique. Shishas appear frequently and are used for their reflectiveness, while materials such as ivory and gold are used to lend greater commercial value to the fabric. Additional materials, such as cowrie shells and coins, are also incorporated to lend symbolic value to the work. Banjara embroidery is traditionally used in clothing and accessories that aid the community’s way of life, such as bags, pouches and headdresses with circular pieces that allow women to carry pots of water on their heads. While settled and working partly in agriculture since the nineteenth century, the Banjara continue to practise their craft, both for personal as well as commercial use. The latter has resulted in the production of a vast range of items featuring embroidery, including bedsheets, cushion covers, wall hangings and other goods. This has been facilitated through various government initiatives and independent organisations, including the Sandur Kushala Kala Kendra (SKKK), which works with indigenous weaving communities including Lambani women to help them build self-help groups based out of Sandur, Karnataka.

A textile tradition practised in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan as well as in Haryana, bagh embroidery is ritually important and used to decorate textiles such as chaddars and odhnis, which are also referred to as baghs. The term derives from the Hindi bagh, meaning “garden,” owing to the thick layer of embroidery and the representation of monumental gardens on some baghs. Baghs are similar to phulkaris — both textiles use silk embroidery thread, the darning stitch, a similar colour palette and have the same historic centres of production. Like phulkaris, baghs are generally made to celebrate occasions such as births and weddings. However, bagh embroidery almost completely covers the base cloth, which is visible only as thin lines in the design. The base cloth is often chaunsa khaddar, a finer version of the red cotton base fabric used in phulkaris. There are several types of baghs, which are often named after key aspects of everyday life and culture in Punjab. Those used in wedding rituals include vari da bagh, gunghat bagh and sar pallu. Baghs are frequently named after their motifs: leheriya and darya baghs feature water motifs; the chandrama bagh, which uses moon motifs, is worn during Karva Chauth rituals; the tota bagh features parrot motifs; and the belan bagh depicts rolling pins — a key instrument of domestic life in north India. Since Punjab has historically been an agrarian region, some baghs use motifs of important vegetable crops, such as the karela (bitter gourd) , mirchi (chilli), gobi (cauliflower), dhaniya (coriander) and kakri (cucumber) baghs. The genda, chameli and surajmukhi baghs are named for the flowers that are used as motifs. Certain baghs, such as the Shalimar and Chamasia baghs, are named after the historic gardens they depict or the general composition of a Mughal garden, such as the char bagh. Possibly the most elaborate type is the bawan bagh, which features between forty-two and fifty-two rectangular cells decorated with geometric motifs. Pachranga and satranga baghs are named on the basis of the number of colours in the design. Bagh embroidery is time-consuming, taking several months to a year to complete. Today, they are not typically made by families, which was traditionally the mode of production; instead, they are procured from retail outlets or have been replaced by heirloom baghs for ceremonial use. Examples of historic baghs are held in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A style of metal thread embroidery characterised by the use of thin, flattened gold or silver wires called badla, which are threaded through a delicate base fabric such as malmal without the use of a thread or glue. Badla wires are used to create two distinct types of embroidery: kamdani, in which entire patterns are filled using badla, and mukaish or fardi ka kaam, in which the metal wires are inserted and twisted into the fabric to create small dots of floral and geometric patterns. Badla embroidery is also referred to as sachcha kaam due to its traditional use of pure gold and silver. This style is believed to have been introduced to India by the Mughals. It flourished in Lucknow and surrounding areas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, under the patronage of the Nawabs and the upper classes of Awadh. By the nineteenth century, the practice also became widespread among embroiderers in West Asia and southeastern European regions, including Greece, Egypt, Syria and Turkey. Unlike other intricate forms of embroidery, badla work does not use a frame to hold the fabric taut; instead, artisans use their fingers to control both the fabric and the badla wires. To prepare the fabric, a design is first traced on it by hand. A porcupine quill or a sharpened ivory stick is then used to create perforations, called fardi, along the traced patterns, through which the sharpened badla is then inserted, with the aim of preserving symmetry on both sides of the fabric. As the last step, the embroidered fabric is laid flat and a cowrie shell is rubbed over the embroidered parts to flatten the wire against the fabric and burnish it to a shine. Common designs in badla embroidery include jaali patterns, paisleys, bel and floral motifs, and depictions of animals such as fish and peacocks. This style of embroidery is often rendered on fine, semi-transparent fabrics; for instance, sarees with badla work feature gold and silver thread-work over delicate fabrics such as pure chiffon and georgette. Badla work can also be combined with other embroidery techniques such as chikankari and tilla. It has also been used for decorating curtains, bags, and saddles used on horses and elephants. Since the mid-twentieth century, gold and silver badlas have increasingly been mixed or replaced with other, less expensive materials such as copper or metallised polyester film. Today, the number of artisans who practise the original technique — many from Muslim communities in Uttar Pradesh — has dwindled, and newer generations of artisans are apprehensive to take up the practice owing to long work hours, lack of government support and poor working conditions. Currently, badla-based embroidery is also practised in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.

A style of embroidery that involves a chain stitch created by hand using an ari — a wooden-handled tool with a long, fine needle ending in a hook, resembling a crochet hook. Ari embroidery is characterised by floral patterns and natural motifs such as birds, trees and leaves. The threads used for this embroidery range from cotton and silk to zari. Made by professional embroiderers, it is used to decorate bags and garments. In preparation for the embroidery process, the base fabric is stretched tightly over a wooden support frame and the pattern is traced by hand. The artisan holds the thread below the material and the ari is fed from above the surface to catch and pull the thread up through the fabric, creating a loop. Each new loop is pulled through the last, securing it in place and creating a chain. This process is repeated until the chain stitch fills the outlined pattern. As a final step, the embroidered surface is sometimes flattened using a hammer. Scholars believe that this style of embroidery originated in the twelfth century among the mochi community of Kutch, who used it to decorate leather. The craft grew in the sixteenth century under the patronage of Mughal emperors, who commissioned artisans to create textiles and decorative objects for the royal courts. By the eighteenth century, ari work was introduced to Europe through trade under the British East India Company and was adopted in France and Britain, where it is practised to this day as tambour embroidery. It is especially popular among luxury fashion houses that create intricately embroidered couture.  

Prominently featuring the use of tiny circular or almond-shaped shisha, Ahir embroidery, practised by the Ahirs of Kutch for centuries, comes under the larger umbrella of bharat or “filling” embroidery of the Kutch tradition in Gujarat. Either standalone butas, inspired by the local flora or combinations of simple geometrical shapes and circular shapes (of five different types) are used to create animal and figurative motifs. These include elephants, scorpions, parrots and peacocks and representations of Krishna, known as Kaanudo, and the milkmaid or maahiyari, all embroidered onto dyed fabric using silk or cotton threads. Scholars believe that the Ahirs were pastoralists who migrated to Gujarat, settling in the Saurashtra and Kutch regions. Women are the sole practitioners of this type of embroidery, which is used to decorate cushion covers, torans, quilts, odhnis and ghagras for everyday use as well as items that are presented to young brides-to-be as a part of their dowries. In preparation for the process, the base fabric, usually cotton, wool or silk, is dyed in colours such as pink, maroon, green, blue, white and yellow. Intricate designs are then hand drawn in geru (ochre), filled and detailed using various combinations of stitches, such as the sankli, a chain stitch; the vanno, a herringbone stitch; the Bavaria, a criss-cross stitch; the popatiyo; and dana. The sankli, which forms the outline, uses twisted thread, unlike the filler and detailing stitches. The outermost detail stitch is called kanta, owing to its resemblance to the thorn of the Babool tree. The characteristic shisha are held in place by a ring of stitches, typically in pink, orange or blue thread. The shisha work that features so prominently in ahir embroidery is also a part of banjara and banni embroidery. Contemporary Ahir artists have added to the traditional embroidery by introducing elements such as the teardrop shape, which has become a signature style; machine-produced variants of this style often appear in clothing and domestic fabrics found across the Indian subcontinent.  

Widely practised in the Kathiawar region of Rajasthan, heer embroidery is named after the untwisted silk floss used for embroidering plain cotton fabric. It is distinguished by densely embroidered geometric patterns in bold and deep colours such as crimson, deep orange, purple and blue. Another key feature is its use of tiny mirrors or shisha, which are stitched onto the fabric, along the borders or in the main design, to emphasise aspects of the design. This embroidery, practised primarily by the Kathis of Rajasthan, is used to decorate household textiles, such as bhitiyas, consisting of embroidered panels called chaklas, and door-hangings or torans. Scholars have suggested that heer embroidery may have originated from the Hephthalites or White Huns (Huna), a group of Central Asian tribes who had invaded India in the fifth century, from whom the Kathis are believed to have descended. Evidence of this genealogy is cited in a distinctive motif, of two female figures with bird heads, found in chaklas made by the Kathi women: the motif, which represents the “mother goddess,” is usually associated with sun-worshippers, such as the Huns. Similar to other types of bharat (embroidery), heer embroidery is used to create intricate geometric motifs in shapes with heavy fills. These are rendered using different types of stitches, such as the long, darning stitch, adiya-fatiya; the thorn stitch, bavaliya; and others such as the chain stitch, double–satin stitch and the interlacing or herringbone stitch. The long stitches are made parallel to the weft and perpendicular to the warp, to produce the effect of shading. Shisha is incorporated into the design using the buttonhole stitch. Over the years, heer bharat has come to take on influences from other, often similar, forms of embroidery from the various communities in the Kathiawar region of Rajasthan, Kutch region of Gujarat and the shared Banni region. The intricately embroidered patterns used in heer bear similarities to those developed by the Jat communities, while the pastoral motifs seen in later instances of heer embroidery are borrowed from the repertoire of the Mochi community of Rajasthan. Research indicates that the communities currently practising this form of embroidery are the Jats, Lohanas, Mochis and Kathis. Other communities from other regions of India practise similar forms of fill embroidery, such as Banni bharat, Bagh phulkari and Parsi embroidery.  

An embroidery technique consisting primarily of a simple chain stitch using woolen thread,is called crewel embroidery. Some scholars believe that this technique originated in the twelfth century among the mochi (cobbler) community of Kutch, who used it to embroider leather and was later popularised by the Mughals. Others suggest it was first used by craftsmen from Damascus during Sultan Zain-ul-Abidini’s rule in Kashmir, in the sixteenth century, where it is known as kashida or zalakdozi. It is done with quick successive movements of clockwise and anticlockwise rotations of the ari hook resulting in brightly coloured, slightly raised motifs. While similar to ari embroidery, crewel makes use of a thicker awl and is used to embellish coarser materials like leather, upholstery and drapery. Common motifs that are embroidered include floral patterns and naturalistic motifs such as birds, trees and leaves. In Kashmir, crewel embroidery is most commonly used to embellish shawls and carpets with the Chinar tree leaf as the most significant motif. Other motifs include hunting scenes and the almond. Unlike the crewel leather embroidery, artisans use threads of varying colours and types — such as rayon, artificial silk, wool — to embroider. Crewel leather embroidery is used by the Chavda and Banni Meghwal communities in Gujarat and Gohil community in Rapar, among others, to embroider leather footwear and belts with a white cotton thread. Today, artisans embroider items of home decor, such as cushion covers and bed spreads, and other products such as bags, shoes and belts, which are then sold in commercial markets.  

An embroidery tradition from Karnataka that dates back to the fifteenth century and is typically applied on sarees and cholis is known as kasuti embroidery. Originally, handwoven clothing was embroidered with kasuti and worn by the women of the Lingayat community, a Shaivite sect that was founded in the twelfth century. Chandrakali sarees with kasuti were a traditional bridal garment and blouses decorated with the embroidery were often presented as gifts to new mothers. Today, most often ilkal sarees embroidered with kasuti are worn by women of all communities in Karnataka and southern Maharashtra, usually during special occasions. Kasuti is a counting thread embroidery in which the stitches of the design are measured in terms of the number of base fabric threads in the area to be embroidered, making for very precise and deliberate patterns in vertical, horizontal and diagonal stitches. The four main stitches used in kasuti are menthi, a cross stitch used for filler patterns; gavanti, a double running stitch where the second stitch is applied in the spaces skipped by the first; murgi, a zigzag stitch similar to gavanti but arranged in alternating diagonal steps instead of a straight line; and negi, a darning stitch of varying lengths. Motifs rendered with the gavanti and murgi stitches are visible on either side of the cloth but those made with menthi and negi are not. In pre-Independent Mysore (now in Karnataka), kasuti was done with a silk thread, but today commercially available cotton thread is used and valued for the fastness of its dyes. When applied to sarees, kasuti embroidery is placed prominently along the border of the pallu, and reduces in size towards the pleated section of the saree. In more elaborate cases, embroidered motifs may not be repeated exactly, making for dozens of unique symbols and variations along the saree’s length. These motifs largely consist of Shaivite imagery, reflecting the Lingayat community’s faith: the vahanas (steeds) of various deities such as peacocks and bulls, temple design elements such as gopurams and lingams, chariots, conch shells, snakes, elephants, lotuses, jasmines and marigolds. Traditionally, women undertook the craft between March and June, after they had sold their harvested crops and were able to spend some of this income on the raw materials for kasuti work. Cooperatives like the Janata Shikshana Samithi have held training programs where older women teach kasuti embroidery to the younger generation as a valuable source of personal income, and the students are also given a stipend to compensate for their time spent away from the farm. Scholars like Kamala Dongerkery have also been instrumental in securing support for kasuti craftspersons to prevent the craft from dying out. Since it is practiced mainly in southern Maharashtra and Karnataka, the largest market for kasuti goods today is Mumbai.

An umbrella term for embroidery traditions which originate in Kashmir and are executed with an aari, kashidakari is often also referred to as crewel embroidery. The various types of kashidakari include sozni, kani, amli, rezkar, tilla and dori, all of which have unique characteristics and applications while also sharing many elements of the embroidery process, materials and design. The embroidery is applied to a variety of garments, but particularly to pashmina shawls and namda blankets. Common motifs in kashidakari include butas, lotuses, cypress trees, Chinar leaves, butterflies native to Kashmir and birds like parrots and magpies. Human forms are generally absent, although in rare cases, hunting scenes were embroidered on commissioned pieces during the medieval and early modern period. In Kashmir, kashidakari embroidery is traditionally practised by men and the knowledge and skills are handed down from father to son. The fabric to be embroidered is placed under a perforated sheet on which the intended design is drawn with coloured powder or charcoal by the designer or naqshband. The sheet is lifted and the outline of the design is drawn by hand around the powder marks. The embroiderer – in the case of kashidakari this is usually the same person as the naqshband – uses an ari needle to execute the motifs in the fibre or zari yarn, after which the markings are washed off.

A household craft practised by women from West Bengal and Bangladesh, kantha – derived from the Sanskrit word kontha, or “rags” – embroidery is applied on quilts, bags and other textiles made from reused fabric. Although kantha embroidery originated in undivided Bengal through the influence and patronage of Portuguese traders in the region, it can be traced to the sixteenth century text Chaitanya Charitamrita by Krishnadas Kaviraj, in which the titular character receives a textile made with old fabric from his mother. Apart from being used as a warm blanket or bed covering, kantha textiles can be adapted to a variety of purposes depending on the size and thickness. The style varies between regions, and to some extent even between households, as embroiderers are encouraged to apply their aesthetic to each quilt. The raw material for kantha quilts is usually old sarees and dhotis in a single solid colour. These are cut to size and stitched into several layers depending on the intended purpose of the resulting textile. When the borders of the saree are detailed and decorated, they are repurposed as borders of the quilt and the threads used for embroidery are extracted from the sarees as well. In some cases, the embroidery is thick and closely stitched, making both sides of the textile appear identical. While the designs differ between the various styles of kantha, they are all typically done with a running stitch and use motifs such as flowers, vines, mangoes, swastika and Tree of Life symbols. Except Lep kantha, all kantha textiles have intricate borders and a large lotus motif in the centre. The running stitch is the basic building block of most designs; other stitches have been included through the influence of the changing textile market during the colonial rule such as cross-stitch, satin stitch, back stitch and herringbone stitch. Design elements derived from the choice of stitch include anaras (pineapple), wave-like lohori running stitch and the geometric par tola representing triangular kautar khupi and diamond-shaped borfi. Kantha embroidery made by Hindu women contains human and animal figures while Muslim women traditionally depict geometric patterns and repetitive floral imagery. Broadly, there are eight kantha traditions that vary based on usage, stitch and imagery: Nakshi kantha, a quilt produced mainly in Bangladesh carrying natural imagery with large floral motifs in each corner and accompanied with a border; Sujani kantha is a large blanket embroidered in cross stitch with scenes from Indian epics or folk stories at the centre and a border with geometric patterns; Arshilata kantha is used to cover handheld mirrors, combs and cosmetics, usually bearing floral motifs around a mandala; Durjani kantha is a bag made by stitching together three corners of a square textile; Bayton kantha is a square cloth for wrapping books and is designed in a mandala format with a Satadala Padma design in the centre surrounded by motifs from Indian mythology and deities; Lep kantha is a thick quilt made with several layers of cloth and embroidered with floral and geometric motifs in a wave-like pattern; Oaar kantha is a pillowcase with a distinct border along the edge and embroidered with natural motifs in lines of running stitches; and Rumal kantha is a handkerchief with decorated borders and a lotus motif at the centre. While kantha has historically been a household tradition in rural Bengal – the textiles primarily being given as gifts or used by the embroiderer’s family – it has attracted a significant market in recent years. The craft received encouragement from Revivalist artists at Shantiniketan (now Visva-Bharati University) in the 1940s, and again in the 1980s through Shamlu Dudeja’s organisation Self Help Enterprise (SHE) which incentivised women to practise kantha embroidery commercially. In Bangladesh, a renewed interest in Nakshi kantha has been attributed to artist and designer Surayia Rahman. Today, its distinct running stitch designs are often used to embroider sarees and blouses, although such garments are made with a new cloth material and in many cases are produced in states without an established kantha tradition, such as Gujarat and Rajasthan. Kantha embroidery continues to be popular, providing a significant income to many practitioners.

An embroidery style from Kashmir, sozni or suzani needlework designs are usually used to embellish kani weave pashmina shawls, and have been luxury handloom items since the Mughal rule in South Asia. The embroidery is characterised by geometric patterns, floral motifs and variations of buta, such as paisley and kairi. Sozni embroidery is intricate and time-consuming — in rare cases, a single shawl takes years to be embroidered. The key feature of the embroidery is the dorukha method of stitching: after stamping the planned pattern on the shawl using carved walnut wood blocks, a type of stem stitch is used to wrap each warp yarn with a coloured thread. Usually, two or three colours are used in sozni designs, with the main design rendered in a single continuous thread. The resultant pattern is layered, dense and visible on both sides of the shawl. After the embroidery is completed, the shawl is washed, dried and pressed using large rotating cylinders in order to even out the surface. The embroidery is practised mainly by men in household workshops with some assistance from the women of the family. While shawls with sozni embroidery continue to be regarded as luxury items, the number of kani weavers and sozni embroiderers has reduced over the last few decades. The lack of mechanisation in the craft adds further social and financial pressure on existing artisans. Today, the craft continues to be supported by non-profit organisations such as Dastkari Haat Samiti, especially to aid with documentation and spreading public awareness.

A folk performance form that incorporates martial arts and dance-drama elements, chhau is performed in the states of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. Each state has distinct styles of chhau — Seraikela chhau in Jharkhand, Mayurbhanj chhau in Odisha and Purulia chhau in West Bengal. Chhau performances originally took place during the spring festival of Chaitra Parva in April, which celebrates the deities Shiva and Shakti in the Ardhanarishwara form. Over the last few decades, it has begun to be performed throughout the year. The origins of the word “chhau” are debated. Possible sources include the Odia words chhauni (military camp), chhauka (checking something stealthily) and chhauri (armour), suggesting that it may derive from military practices. Another possibility is that the word is derived from the Sanskrit word chhayi, meaning shadow, illusion or image, referring to the use of masks in some forms of chhau. The Odia words chhabi (picturesque), chhai and chhatak (clowning) have also been suggested as possible origins. Until the end of the twentieth century, only men would participate in and perform chhau, but women performers have become more visible since. These individuals are organised into troupes, which move in search of work. Mayurbhanj and Purulia chhau are performed primarily by members of Scheduled Castes, whereas Seraikela is primarily performed under royal patronage by men from the Kshatriya (warrior) caste. Chhau emphasises footwork and the movement of the entire body, rather than mudras. Instead, chhau performers’ hands are held tightly in fists or kept open, imitating the grasping of a sword and shield. Instruments typically used include the mahuri (a conical double-reed pipe), dhol (a percussion instrument), nagara (a large drum played with wooden sticks), dhumsa (a kettle shaped single headed drum), and chadchadi (a flat percussion drum). The narratives of chhau are borrowed from Puranic texts, and epics such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana. A single performance generally lasts for about forty-five minutes to an hour, and includes different episodes or stories. If multiple troupes are performing, such as during a village festival, performances last for four or five hours. The performative repertoire consists of stylised movements to depict action only through the feet, known as uflis, as well as nature-inspired bodily movements depicting animals and birds, known as challis and topkas. Other standard movements include the baagh chaali (tiger walk), mayur chaali (peacock walk) and khel (variations on ufli and swordplay). The forms are not derived from a text, with the traditions and forms passed on generationally within troupes. Chhau troupes may be grouped into overarching schools within the three broad regional styles.These include Uttara Sahi and Dakshin Sahi within Mayurbhanj chhau, and Bazar Sahi and Brahmin Sahi for Seraikala chhau. All three styles of chhau are believed to derive their movement elements from the martial arts practice of parikhanda, wherein pari denotes shield and khanda denotes sword. A distinguishing feature between the styles is the use of masks. Both Seraikela and Purulia chhau incorporate masks in their performances, whereas Mayurbhanj chhau does not. This means that Mayurbhanj chhau uses both facial expressions and bodily movements to express emotion in dance drama sequences, while Seraikela and Purulia chhau emphasise bodily gestures as the performers’ faces are covered with masks. Seraikela and Mayurbhanj chhau both received considerable royal patronage over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which impacted their performative repertoire. Purulia chhau, in comparison, retains influences from the martial arts from which chhau may derive. As a dance form, Seraikela chhau is deeply influenced by its usage of masks which constrain the movement of the performer. It thus emphasises subtle movements of the neck (known as grieve bheda) and the head (siro bheda). Though light, the mask makes it difficult for the performer to breathe and thus restricts the length of a typical Seraikela chhau to no more than ten minutes. The basic stance is known as dharan, wherein the knees are bent and both feet turned outwards with the left foot in the front. The body weight typically rests on both legs. Seraikela chhau is usually practiced in solo performances, with some duets and troupe performances. Though most of the performers are men, eighteen of the standard thirty-six feet movements in Seraikella chhau represent the everyday routines of women. Some popular dances within this style dances include ratri (night), depicting a playful game between the moon and the night; sabar (hunter), in which a hunter is depicted waiting for his prey; mayur (peacock), wherein the dancer evokes the bird through elaborate neck and upper body movement; astra danda (martial art movements) and Radha-Krishna (playful dance representing the god Krishna and his consort). Seraikela chhau gained immense popularity under the aegis of Kumar Bijay Pratap Singh Deo of the Seraikela royal family, who choreographed and performed this style of chhau in a form that has continued to the presentas it is recognised in its present form. He also promoted the form internationally by taking the chhau dancers for a tour to Europe in 1938, cementing its contemporary position as one of Jharkhand’s foremost performing arts. It was under his patronage that women first began to perform chhau, joining his troupe on their Europe tour; women have been part of Seraikela chhau troupes since. Purulia chhau incorporates acrobatic and energetic movements accompanied by elaborate masks representing gods and demons from Hindu mythology. The narratives tend to focus on episodes of combat from the Puranas, depicted using athletic skills. Popular dances include Mahishasura Badha, depicting the defeat of the demon Mahishasura by the goddess Durga and Ravana Badha, a duel between Rama and Ravana characterised by the use of high-pitched sound and vigorous movement. The performances typically begin with a song to Ganesha, followed by a rousing call to action for the dancers. Purulia chhau is traced to the work of the twentieth-century dancer Gambhir Singh Mura, who contributed significantly to the choreography and forms that the dance is recognised with today. Mayurbhanj chhau divides its performative elements into movements depicting birds and animals, along with thirty-six feet movements. The execution of these movements, however, differ from Seraikella chhau. Mayurbhanj dancers adopt the basic stance from the tribhangi (standing position) from Odissi, with the body weight resting on one leg. The dancers also emphasise their upper body movements more than in Seraikella chhau. The movements can be categorised into three types — Kalibhanga or delicate, lyrical movements; Hatiyardhara or forceful, masculine movements and Kalikata, which combines the two. The absence of masks in this form allows for more acrobatic movement. Some significant dances include the solo dance Nataraja, represented by dancers from the Uttara Sahi tradition, depicting the god Shiva. The Dandi dance is performed by dancers from the Dakshina Sahi tradition, and is based on the Upanayana or sacred thread ceremony. Mayurbhanj chhau traces its origins to the masked Ram-Leela performances of the Baripada district in Odisha, and also incorporated influences from the Seraikella chhau. Scholars have also suggested similarities to ritualistic dances by the Santhal community, a tribe residing across much of east-central India. During the reign of Maharaja Jadunath Bhanja in the mid-nineteenth century, one Madan Singh Bapu from Baripada combined music from Ram-Leela with that of chhau. Master performers Upendra Biswal and Banamali Das were then brought into the region to train dancers, leading to the creation of the two schools of Uttara Sahi and Dakshin Sahi. After the annexation of princely states in the region following the independence of India, royal patronage ceased, adversely impacting Mayurbhanj chhau. The state government of Orissa (now Odisha) extended patronage to chhau from the 1950s by establishing annual grants and through the establishment of training centres. Chaitra Parva, the spring festival, generally includes chhau performances in Odisha, and many Chaitra Parva celebrations receive state support as well.The Sangeet Natak Akademi runs special training centres for chhau dancers. Chhau was recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2010.  

Originating in the Indian Deccan region, mardaani khel was a popular armed martial art form within the Maratha regime. Popularised by Chhatrapati Shivaji, the art form involves several weapons and was an important part of the war tactics employed by the Marathas along with ganimi kava or guerilla warfare. It is performed by both men and women. Some of the weapons used in the mardaani khel include the dand-patta, a double-edged flexible sword measuring up to three feet with a covered handle that extends upto the wrist and, sometimes, up to the elbow. It is normally moved horizontally due to its flexible blade. Another weapon is the bhala, or spear, consisting of a six-foot long stick with a pointed metal arrow at one hand, which is used in movements very similar to the lathi (stick). A weapon that was developed resembling the spear, but one that allowed attacks over longer distances was the vita. Also consisting of a six-foot long stick, with a two feet long pointed metal piece on one end and a six-foot long rope on the other to be coiled around the hand, the vita could be flung over a distance of about ten feet and retracted with the use of the rope. Yet another weapon developed as a part of this art form is the maduvu, a weapon made of two deer horns, both pointing outwards with a grip in the centre. A much smaller yet equally fatal weapon was the bagh nakh, a contraption resembling tiger's claws that could be worn on the fingers and consisted of pointed claw-like bits on the palm. And finally, the dhop, a four-foot long sword that was different from the regular three-foot-long sword, that was a compulsory weapon to be carried by all soldiers in Shivaji's army. Since the art-form has evolved from real war tactics, the formations and movements take multiple opponents into consideration and account for attacks from multiple directions. This is reflected in formations where the players go back-to-back securing a 360-degree view of the opponents. Women performers wear the Nauvari saree and the men wear mandchol, a thigh-length tunic with knee-length breeches. Additionally, they wear a headdress called mundasa and leather mojaris. The popularity of mardaani khel fell considerably after the British invasion and the introduction of the Arms Act (1878). Therefore, to ensure the art form’s survival, senior practitioners, known as vastads, turned it into a folk game which in the present day is performed as a part of cultural festivals and sports programmes. Presently, there are training centres in Pune, Kolhapur and Mumbai where the art of mardaani khel is taught.

Believed to have originated in the third century BCE, kalaripayattu is an armed martial art used for self-defence and is indigenous to the state of Kerala. Kalaripayattu is composed of two words, kalari means “place of combat” and payattu means “fighting” in Malayalam. Practitioners of the art form credit the Hindu saint Parashurama with founding the art form and consider him to be its first teacher or gurukkal.  Broadly, the art-form is divided into four stages with each stage including a technique, and the form does not follow a grading system that ranks students on the basis of seniority. The first stage, the meipayattu, involves various stretching exercises and jumping movements. The next stage is kolthari, where students are taught fighting techniques with the use of sticks. The wooden sticks, known as kettukari, are usually thin bamboo poles measuring six feet long. Other wooden weapons used in this stage include the viada (two-headed club), cheruvati (short, heavy stick) and lastly the ottakol (curved wooden weapon, with a club at one end). In the angathari stage, weapons made of unbending metal are used including the kattaram (dagger for duels at short range), sword and shield. The last stage, verumkaiprayoga, involves instruction in fighting without tools or weapons. Several of these movements are modelled on animals such as the horse, serpent, rooster or tiger, amongst several others, inspired by the forests of Kerala that form a vast part of the state’s landscape. Additionally, there are mainly two main styles of kalaripayattu: vadakkan or the northern style predominant in the Malabar region which emphasises graceful body movements and the weaponry and the thekken or the southern style, practised mainly in the Travancore region, involving free armed techniques and movements. The training normally begins with an oil massage that is seen as an important part of the training of the art form, followed by prostration in front of the teacher and deities installed at an altar in the western corner of the kalari, known as a puttara. The number of deities can vary between seven and twenty-one. The main goddess of kalari is considered to be Bhagavathi, a form of the goddess Durga, and Para Devathai, a god that embodies both Shiva and Parvati. The kalari usually measures 21 feet by 42 feet and is an enclosed pit that is covered on all sides. When not located within the house, it consists of a roof made of palm leaves supported with a bamboo frame. This provides it with an airless atmosphere that is considered suitable for training. The training of Kalaripayattu also includes training students in ayurveda (ancient Indian medicine and healing system) and in locating the 108 vital points of the body, known as marma, which could be used in combat.  The practice of Kalaripayattu has traditionally been passed on to students through vaythari or the oral commands, but it was only in 1936 that these oral instructions were written down and published followed by more descriptive writing starting around 1953. Art forms such as theyyam, parichamuttu, poorakkali, poikali or vela kali, have been inspired by movements of kalaripayattu. The Indian Kalaripayattu Federation (IKF) was established in 1995 to promote the art form and it conducts state-level competitions, national championships and the National Kalaripayattu Festival. 

A form of self-defence that developed in the Undivided Punjab region, gatka is an armed martial art that uses a wooden stick. The word gatka comes from the Sanskrit word gatayas or motion, but in Punjabi, the word refers to a short wooden stick, called a gatka, used in practice and combat, which is why the martial art form is also known as gatkabaazi. Gatka is often performed during celebrations or festivals such as Baisakhi or Gurpurab with decorated sticks. Though traditionally practised in grounds known as akharas, training of the martial art form is also imparted in gurudwaras. Scholars speculate that gatka is likely to have been established by the sixth Sikh guru, Guru Hargobind, who introduced the kirpan (dagger) for self-defence. Other accounts narrate that it was originated by Muslims and that the gatka was made out of the branch of a date tree. During British rule, the popularity of the martial art form reduced considerably since it was banned along with the kirpan and the neja (javelin) for the fear of rebellion and uprisings. During this period, the art form was secretly practised within akhadas, mostly in rural areas. The training begins with learning the paintara, meaning footwork, or more broadly, the strategy for engagement. This is followed by an instruction of the weapons beginning with open-handed combat (bahu yudh) and a stick made of bamboo, known as marahati. In addition to this other weapons used in the art-form include, chakra (a round weapon with little wooden balls), soti (a long wooden stick), tega (a long and broad sword), tabar (axe), guraj (mace), barchha (spear), and the khanda (double-edged sword). Of these, the combination of the gatka and phari (shield) is the most common, followed by the kirpan and dhal (shield). The Dasam Granth dictates the usage of the weapons in gatka. The weapons may be classified by their use into mukata weapons – to be used either by hand or released from machines like the catapult or bow – and amukata weapons which are held in the hand. These weapons are placed either in the kamarkasa (cummerbund) or within the dastar (turban). The weapons of gatka are often worshipped before combat through a shastra puja, where the weapons require to be arranged in particular formations; a popular one resembles a lotus flower. Following this, the weapons are offered salutations through the shastra namaskar. The Dasam Granth also provides invocations that may be made during training and displays. These are often chanted or performed along with war drums such as the dhol or nagara. Apart from Punjab, gatka is also practised in parts of Afghanistan, such as the Hazara division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as by Trinidadians of Indian descent. In the early 2000s the martial art went through a revival through organisations such as Gatka Federation of India (GFI) and National Gatka Association of India (NGAI) and is played as a competitive sport nationally. Additionally, in 2013, the state government of Punjab began offering a diploma course in gatka at the Punjabi University, Patiala.  

Originating in present-day Himachal Pradesh, thoda or thoda ka khel is a form of armed martial art involving the skill of archery as well forms of dancing. Believed to have originated as a form of martial arts performed by the Pandavas and Kauravas in the Mahabharata, it primarily involves the use of a bow and arrow in combat. The members participating in the thoda are collectively known as Khashiya, and belong to the Thakur community of the region. Thoda derives its name from thod, meaning a raised platform, upon which the Khashiya would offer sacrifices before combat. Another version states that the name comes from thud, meaning lower limbs, which are targeted during the fight. In its current form, the martial art form comprises two teams – known as the saathi and pashi, where the former represents Kauravas (saath referring to the sixty; the number of Kauravas in the battle) and the latter Pandavas (pashi is derived from paanch (five) the number of Pandavas) – and nearly 500 members each. The group is a combination of dancers that encourage the fighters and archers, armed with bows, normally seven feet long with three feet long strings and arrows. The pashi group forms a chakravyuh, a military formation in the form of a circle, surrounding its opponents the saathis who have to attempt to break through this formation. Points are scored in the fight by targeting the opponent's leg below the knee. Any other part of the body attacked outside this area leads to a negative point. Participants of thoda are normally dressed in a salwar or suthan, with a naltoo (a kind of short shirt worn on top), below which they wear a pair of pyjamas with a patti (thick strip of cloth) an boots, in order to prevent injuries. In addition to the instruments used for combat, the art form also involves music in which traditional instruments such as the dhol, nagara, shehnai and narsingh are used. The martial art form is popular today in the districts of Shimla, Sirmaur and Solan in Himachal Pradesh and is usually performed on the day of Baisakhi.  

Originating among the Meitei people of Manipur, thang-ta is one component of the martial art form known as Huyen Langlon, often referred to interchangeably. It is an armed martial art technique that mainly uses swords, called thang, and spears, known as ta. The other unarmed component of Huyen Langlon is known as sarit-sarak. According to local legends, the art form originated from the creator of the Meitei people, Tin Sidaba, and the instruments originated from his limbs. It was banned by the British during the Anglo-Manipur War (1891) but was reintroduced by Maharaja Churachand in 1934. The practice of thang-ta may be carried out in various ways. One component to this art form involves performing rituals, another involves elements of dance using swords and spears and a combative form involves the actual act of fighting. Thang-ta also involves forms of war dance such as the sword dance, Thangkairol and the spear dance, Khosarol. Within the method of fighting, the spear techniques are known to be harder than the sword techniques. The most basic stance is known as the “lion’s posture” which involves standing with one's feet at a forty-five-degree angle, leaning forward with the toes and chin in a straight line, thus, forming a straight line at the back. Rather than a fight to death, the duel is often won by the opponent who draws the first blood.   Today, the martial art form is taught in some schools in Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir. Until 1985, the knowledge of thang-ta was not shared with non-Meitei people. Ojha Premkumar is considered the current grandmaster of thang-ta while Khilton Nongmaithem was the first teacher to teach thang-ta outside Manipur. Among many different forms of performing Thang-ta a popular variant is performed with spears during funerals and Manipuri classical dances such as Pung and Pala Cholom and the Lai Haraoba are also believed to have originated from this martial art form.  

Originating in ancient Southern India, silambam is a form of warfare that involves fighting with a bamboo staff developed for self-defence. The name silambam, comes from the Tamil word silam, meaning hills. This reference to hills may be the reason that the art of silambam was particularly useful in the Kurinji hills to keep wild animals away. The primary weapon used for the art form is a particular kind of yellow bamboo known as silambambu, but other weapons may also include swords, spears, daggers and knives. The origin of silambam is unclear but references to silambam can be found in Sangam literature, for instance in the epic, Silapathikaram. Also, historical references elucidate its use by the rulers of the Chera, Chola and Pandya kingdoms. Most notably the soldiers in the army of the Tamil ruler Veerapandiya Kattabomman, defended their kingdom against the British using silambam. Scholars note that the city of Madurai was an important centre in spreading the art form to other parts of Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East and the silambam staff was exported to these parts of the world. Some accounts also state that the shaolin style of martial arts is also a derivation of silambam, and was brought to China by Bodhidharma in 526 AD. The basics of the fight come from its footwork, known as chuvadus, of which there are eighteen types and these are taught to the students before they are allowed to move on to the use of sticks. Unlike other popular stick-based martial art forms, the grip used in silambam is known as a hammer grip (main hand facing down behind the secondary hand that faces up) instead of a poker grip where both hands face down. This, in combination with fast and agile wrist movement and footwork, is seen as the core of this art form. In some cases, along with the stick, a shield made of bamboo or wicker may also be used that is secured on the wrist or forearm. The art form is performed on a circular, hard surface which is 40–50 feet in diameter. The match can be of three kinds: a duel to the finish, where the first opponent to lose their stick loses; a duel where the participants must guard an object placed at their foot; and lastly, the most popular, where the opponent must try and get the opponent’s stick to touch them the least number of times in order to win. For the last variant, the stick is laced with a sticky substance that gets left behind on the opponent's body when touched. Since the staff is the most important part of combat, it may vary in length based on the height of the fighter and is approximately 1–1.25 inches in diameter. “Torch silambam” or panthukol, where cloth balls are lit on fire, are used by fire dance performers at events or festivals. In another variant, the two opponents have their sticks coated in two different coloured powders and the winner of the combat is determined by the person left with the least marks of colour on their body. Compared to other martial arts, silambam wasn’t always regularised since it has mostly been passed on through a guru-shishya (teacher-student) system. Recently it adapted the belt system, like karate, where silambam begins with a white belt and ends with a black — ash, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple and brown come in between. Additionally in an effort to popularise and promote the martial art form, the World Silambam Federation was founded in 2010 in Chennai.

Originating from the regions of Saraikela and Singhbhum in Jharkhand, pari-khanda is a martial art whose name comes from the weapons — pari (sword) and khanda (shield). It was established as a form of physical training for the soldiers. Pari-khanda training begins with the practice of chaalis, or steps, which involve the movements of birds and animals such as the haathi chaali (the elephant movement) and baagh chaali (tiger movement). These are followed by upalayas or combined movements inspired by movements occurring in daily life, such as gutti-koora, lifting a pebble with one’s toes; gobar-goola, mixing cow-dung with water; kula-pachra, husking paddy; bota-cheera, splitting a bamboo; and finally the khel, consisting of ten movements. Pari-khanda is generally performed early in the morning and on the banks of the Kharkai river, on a stretch of raised land, known as Bhairavsal, consisting of seven stone lingas (phallic-shaped stones symbolising the deity Shiva) before each of which the pari-khanda performers prostrate themselves. Performers normally perform in a dhoti and a bare torso. Today, the martial art form survives in the form of chhau dance which utilises the movements of pari-khanda. Another variation of the pari-khanda is known as the paika, a martial art form popular in Odisha.  

Among the earliest functional objects found in the Gandhara region of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan are small carved stone dishes dated to the period between the late second century BCE and the first century CE. Usually made of schist, steatite or phyllite, these plates and shallow bowls are typically between 10 and 15 centimetres in diameter and between a few millimetres and 3 centimetres high. Often divided into two or more sections, the interior of each dish shows a scene carved in intricate relief, with decorative patterns etched along the rim and on the underside. The style and iconography of these images demonstrate the exchanges between Hellenistic, Parthian and Shaka artistic traditions that formed the basis of later Gandharan sculpture.  First discovered at the archaeological site of Sirkap near Taxila in the early twentieth century, the stone dishes feature standalone scenes populated by a variety of subjects. Commonly seen are drinking scenes, showing men and women holding wine cups or inebriated people being supported by attendants, as well as mythological creatures and guardian couples depicted as versions of Indic, Greek and West Asian deities. One such artefact held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York shows an inebriated woman being supported by a man, both wearing wreaths and drapes rendered in a style that suggests the Greek god Apollo and his consort, Daphne. On another dish featuring the couple, Apollo is shown wearing a pointed hat typically worn in the Parthian world. Other dishes depict lotus petals in the interior, a distinctively Indic motif.  As with most Gandharan art, there is some ambiguity around the degree of Graeco-Roman influence on these images. While some scholars consider the scenes to be an aspect of the cult of Dionysus — and thus a product of Hellenistic influence on Gandharan art — others highlight a more indigenous source for the images in the ancient cults of yakshas and yakshis. These spirit figures were considered custodians of amrita, the elixir of eternal life often held in chalices, and were ritually offered meat and alcohol. However, as evident through the mixed iconography of Apollo and the recurrence of Indic floral motifs, the carvers of these images drew on multiple sources and re-interpreted them in a unique visual language, which would have been intelligible to the cosmopolitan audience of ancient Gandhara.  While their distinctive style, antiquity and presence in museum collections makes them valuable objects of art in the contemporary world, there has been speculation and debate regarding the original function of the stone dishes. The minimal wear on the dishes as well as their iconography suggest that they were made for ritual rather than utilitarian or ornamental purposes. The division of the dishes into internal sections points to their use for libations and other offerings. However, unlike other Gandharan sculpture, the artefacts have been found in the remains of houses and not of sacred structures, which might indicate that they were used for rituals practised within the domestic context. In all probability, the plates were likely considered luxury goods at the time, partly because of their highly skilled craftsmanship and given their predominant emergence from important urban centres. Speculations about the social structure of Gandharan society also suggest that the Dionysian cult, whose iconography is frequently seen on the plates, was limited to the elite class. Although largely accepted as ritual objects today, they were initially thought of as ‘toilet trays’ or cosmetic containers based on an interpretation of a relief sculpture from Butkara (in present-day Swat, Pakistan) showing a woman applying makeup from a circular dish. By the 2000s however, this theory was abandoned as none of the artefacts showed traces of the cosmetic pigments or pastes that were found in other containers at excavation sites in Gandhara. The specifics of the dishes’ ritual use, however, have not been conclusively resolved, and it has been suggested that the plates may have been used for Buddhist funerary rituals rather than Dionysian ceremonies. Today the dishes are part of collections across the world, the largest being housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Relief panels, carved stone dishes as well as objects such as metal and ceramic cups discovered in the Gandhara region and dated between the second century BCE and third century CE frequently depict banquets with inebriated figures and scenes of revelry. Made under the rule of the Kushan dynasty, these images show men and women holding wine cups, drinking, playing music and dancing. Since these are scenes of merriment accompanying the consumption of alcohol, these images have been referred to as ‘Bacchanalian’ or ‘Dionysian’, after the Roman and Greek gods of wine and ecstasy, Bacchus and Dionysus, respectively.  Such scenes appear carved in relief on the inside of some shallow stone dishes, which are among the earliest sculptural discoveries from the Gandhara region and depict subjects drawn from classical Greek mythology. Initially thought to be ‘toilet trays’, they are now understood to have been used for ceremonial rather than functional purposes within the domestic context. The relief panels, which were typically stair-risers to stupas, depict figures wearing Hellenistic, Egyptian and South Asian attires engaged in wine-drinking and merrymaking. The secular theme of these reliefs appears consistent with their placement in what was considered a ‘polluted’ context — one where people stepped on them barefoot. The images on the dishes as well as the reliefs are non-narrative and depict a variety of subjects, including guardian couples, inebriated people being supported by attendants and, in one instance, rows of attendant figures around a man who some scholars interpret to be Dionysus. The central figure in some images is interpreted as Dionysus based on the grapes in his hair or the animal skin he wears, as well as his being offered wine, being flanked by wreathed male figures, or receiving a goat — an animal that is ritually sacrificed to him during festivals. Other scholars also consider this figure to be Indra, who was interpreted as a Dionysian figure in the Hellenistic context. The guardian couples have been variously identified as Panchika and Hariti or Ardoxo and Pharro. Wine cups and grapes are recurring motifs in these images. Although wine-drinking is censured in Buddhism, textual and archaeological sources reveal the presence of well-developed pre-Buddhist traditions of viticulture and viniculture in the region. These are further corroborated by records such as Arrian’s Indica — which described India as abundant in grapevines believed to have been brought to the region by Dionysus himself — and Kautilya’s Arthashastra, which mentions imports of a special kind of wine from Kapisiyana (corresponding to Kapisa or the region around present-day Begram, Afghanistan). Archaeological finds such as soot-blackened vessels, round-bottomed flasks and condensers in industrial numbers in Taxila and Shaikhan Dheri also serve as evidence of wine production and distillation in Gandhara under the Kushan administration.  As with most Gandharan art, there is some ambiguity around the influences for the inebriated figures, which seem to simultaneously draw on Hellenistic, Roman, Egyptian or Ptolemaic, Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian cultures in both style and subject matter. While some scholars consider the scenes to be an aspect of the cult of Dionysus — and therefore, a product of Hellenistic influence on Gandharan art — others highlight a more indigenous source for the images in the ancient cults of yakshas and yakshis, who were ritually offered meat and alcohol and were also custodians of amrita, or the elixir of eternal life, which was held in chalices.  These scenes thus indicate the tendency of Gandharan art to defy the binaries of Hellenism and Buddhism as well as of indigenous and foreign influences, to present multiple meanings and interpretations that would have been understood by the diverse and cosmopolitan audience of the region.  

The first anthropomorphic representations of the seated or standing Buddha were developed between the first and third centuries CE in Gandhara and Mathura, before and during Kushan rule. The human image of the Buddha was supported by an emerging view of Buddhism that favoured an embodied form over existing symbolic or aniconic representations, such as chakras, footprints, bodhi trees and so forth. Some scholars believe that the lack of images of the Buddha before this period was due to early Buddhists, also known as Hinayana Buddhists, being opposed to representations of the Buddha, although there is no clear scriptural or textual evidence to support such a claim. The earliest examples of anthropomorphic sculpture in the Gandhara region have been dated to the late first century BCE, under Saka rule. The surviving reliefs of bodhisattvas carved in a flat, rigid style were likely a part of the stupas and monasteries in the region. A few seated figures rendered in stone and bronze, as well as images on the Bimaran reliquary — which were probably made in the same period — are very likely the earliest human representations of the Buddha, based on the iconography that was standardised later in that century and over the next. However, it was not until the Kushan Empire expanded into the Indian subcontinent and became a major regional power that anthropomorphic imagery of the Buddha flourished. Under the Kushans, a rise in Mahayana Buddhism was accompanied by a rise in the imperial patronage of Buddhist art. Scholars speculate that a lack of local legacy in sculptural aesthetics may have led the Kushans to commission craftsmen and sculptors from Persia, Greece and Rome – cultures that had a long tradition of envisioning religious and spiritual heads in the anthropomorphic form – to produce images of the Buddha. Many of these were sculpted from the blue or grey slate of the Swat valley and depicted the Buddha with several features that have now become ubiquitous, including a smooth and youthful face, a protective halo behind the head, the ushnisha or top knot in his hair and an urna or small between the eyebrows, to name a few. These features became essential elements in subsequent depictions of the Buddha and comprise the thirty two mahapurusha lakshanas listed in the Pali Canon. These standardised representations of the Buddha, along with other Graeco-Buddhist art, comprise what is now known as the Gandhara school. In images of the standing Buddha, the Hellenistic influence is most pronounced in the naturalistic modelling of the robes, his slight contrapposto posture and his bare feet. The seated or meditating Buddha, however, sits cross-legged with his feet either tucked under him or in padmasana. The palms of his hands and soles of his feet are typically marked with the chakra or the swastika. A rare variation of the seated Buddha is the fasting Buddha, an extremely emaciated figure intended to represent the Shakyamuni Buddha after the seven weeks for which he is believed to have meditated without pause. The introduction of the anthropomorphised Buddha further paved the way for narrative reliefs depicting the Jataka tales, particularly his life as Siddhartha, replete with iconography borrowed from both the Graeco-Roman and Hindu traditions. These reliefs line the dome and the base of several stupas from the first and second centuries CE. Several Kushan rulers also associated themselves with the Buddha and commissioned bodhisattva statues in their likeness in order to grant a divine legitimacy to their reign. The standing anthropomorphic Buddha, for instance, was stamped on gold coins during the reign of the emperor Kanishka, who was himself depicted on the obverse. In Mathura, the anthropomorphic Buddha emerged by the early second century. Sculpted from red sandstone in high relief, the Mathura Buddhas seem to be modified versions of yakshas – nature and guardian deities whose sculptures had been produced in the region since the second century BCE – with robes replacing the dhoti and paryataka. The Mathura version featured full lips, broad shoulders, a thick neck, a spiral ushnisha and robes rendered with shallow grooves, as though to indicate a thin, translucent fabric. A subtle but significant characteristic of the early Mathura Buddhas is their gaze, which is directed at the viewer, unlike the meditative gaze of the Gandhara Buddhas. Standing Mathura Buddhas were not shown in contrapposto, suggesting a significantly reduced Greek influence. In other respects, such as the frequent appearance of the abhaya mudra, the presence of the urna and the benevolent expression, the Mathura Buddha is very similar to its Gandharan counterpart. By the fourth century, when both centres of Buddhist art and most areas with a Buddhist following fell under Gupta rule, the Gandhara and Mathura styles began to merge. Buddhas made in this period are a clear amalgamation of the physical proportions of the Gandhara Buddhas and the drapery of the Mathura style. The ushnisha, for example, was now considered a cranial protrusion covered in a layer of thick curly hair or dried snails, rather than a top knot of curly hair, although visually it remained the same as that of the Gandhara Buddha. Over the centuries, the Gupta version spread across Asia as the standard image of the Buddha, with variations occurring from region to region.  

One of the earliest stone sculptures made under the patronage of the Mauryan king Ashoka, the lion capital at Sarnath, Bihar, depicts four male Asiatic lions seated on a round abacus with their backs to each other. The capital is carved from a single block of highly polished Chunar stone that is separate from the block used for the pillar shaft, which features the inscribed edicts of Ashoka. The most elaborately carved of all surviving Ashokan capitals, the lion capital stands at a height of two meters and is dated to ca. 250 BCE. The broken remnants of the pillar, as well as the complete, but detached, capital were formally excavated around the year 1905 by F O Oertel. The capital is believed to have originally been attached on top of the pillar. Also among the findings were fragments of a large dharmachakra stone with thirty-two spokes, which is presumed to have rested on the capital in a likely reference to the Buddha’s first sermon. The four lions comprising the capital are depicted with their mouths open as if mid-roar and their manes are arranged in neat ringlets. They also portray an understated but carefully studied musculature. Scholars claim that the eye sockets of the lions were once fitted with semi-precious stones. The overall form of the lions is poised, heavily stylised and compact, similar to the lion images carved in Achaemenid Persia, which is a known source of influence for Mauryan architecture. In addition, the abacus features four animals — an elephant, a lion, a bull and a horse, carved in high relief and suggesting that the sculptor(s) may have been familiar with the anatomies of the animals. They appear to be moving in a clockwise direction and are separated by four chakras with twenty-four spokes each. The abacus rests on an upturned, bell-shaped lotus with elongated, fluted petals, which are also believed to have been borrowed from the Achaemenid style of architecture. Sarnath is the site of the Buddha’s first sermon and the lion capital is believed to have been built to commemorate the occasion. Therefore, the various icons that appear on the capital are recurring symbols within Buddhism. The dharmachakra is a solar symbol with its origin in many faiths and, therefore, has multiple interpretations. Here, it is believed to represent the Buddha “turning the wheel of the law” with his first sermon at Sarnath. It also possibly refers to Ashoka’s title of Chakravartin, meaning “a ruler whose chariot wheels roll everywhere.” Some sources interpret the lions as personifying the Shakyamuni (of the Shakya, or lion, clan) Buddha who preached his sermons at Sarnath. Their open mouths are interpreted as spreading the Buddha’s teachings, the Four Noble Truths, far and wide. An almost identical lion capital with its mouth open is found at the Sanchi pillar, which is another site where the Buddha is believed to have delivered sermons. Some interpretations suggest that the lions symbolise not only Buddha, but also Ashoka. As a significant ruler of the first historical empire in India with a vast geographical reach, strong relations with foreign states and diverse secular cultures, Ashoka was held in parallel with the Buddha, having limitedly imbibed the Buddhist way of life. The animals on the abacus are interpreted differently by various scholars. According to Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher, and later accepted by most other scholars, the four animals are associated with the four milestone events in the Buddha’s life: the elephant, representing his mother Queen Maya’s dream of a white elephant entering her womb; the bull, representing his birth under the astrological sign Vrishabha; the horse, representing Kantaka, the horse on which Buddha fled his palace to pursue asceticism; and the lion, representing the enlightened Buddha and often known as Shakyasimha. The animals are depicted running in the clockwise direction and separated by four dharma chakras, possibly signifying the intention of setting the wheel in motion through the cycle of life or representing the Buddha setting the wheel in motion at the sermon at Sarnath. Another prevalent opinion is that these animals face the cardinal directions. They have also been identified as the four perils of samsara — birth, disease, death and decay — following each other in an endless cycle. The upturned lotus that the capital rests on represents purity in Buddhist art, sculpture, ritual and theory and symbolises rising above the mundanity of life to attain enlightenment. In 1950, three years after Indian independence, the lion capital at Sarnath was adopted as the emblem of the Republic of India, with the lions representing virtues such as pride, power, courage and confidence. The inverted lotus bell has been omitted, and the motto ‘Satyameva Jayate, meaning “truth alone triumphs,” is inscribed in Devanagari script below the abacus. The original lion capital is now preserved at the Sarnath Museum, near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.  

A genre of sculpture that arose and developed between 100 BCE and 700 CE in the ethnically diverse and religiously tolerant cultures of the ancient region of Gandhara, in the northwest of the ancient Indian subcontinent. The body of sculptural art from this period, in the form of reliefs and freestanding work serving mostly as expressions of Buddhist faith, is unique for its syncretic character, combining stylistic influences of the Hellenistic, Persian and Kushan cultures. Gandhara Buddhist sculpture is particularly noteworthy for introducing anthropomorphic depictions of the Buddha, bodhisattvas and associated figures. Gandhara was one of the sixteen mahajanapadas or kingdom-states of ancient northern India, and was established as a province or satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire in the early fifth century BCE by Darius I, after which it experienced several waves of ethnically diverse dominion including conquest by Alexander the Great. This cosmopolitan culture developed a distinctive visual vocabulary that drew predominantly on the art that had historically received imperial patronage — from the Macedonians, Greco-Bactrians (Hellenistic), Sakas and Indo-Parthians — and Buddhist traditions introduced largely by the Mauryans. The visual expression, particularly in the plastic arts, blossomed under direct and indirect patronage from the Kushan court until the late third century CE, and continued to evolve in scale and complexity well into the sixth century. It began to wane, however, with the arrival Hephthalites and the subsequent shifting of the imperial attention of later dynasties towards other cultural centres in northern India such as Sarnath and Mathura. Ancient Gandhara was a vibrant crossroads between the classical cultures of the Mediterranean region and those of South Asia, reflected in the Graeco-Buddhist art of the area. The boundaries have been redrawn numerous times due to shifting geopolitical control in the region. Yet, amidst this flux, historical centres of Gandhara’s cultural production — Taksashila (now Taxila), Pushkalavati (now Charsaddha) and Purushpura (now Peshawar) — remained vital and relevant, aided by Gandhara’s position on the Silk Road. The variety and richness of the artistic traditions in the region were also due in large part to the varied levels of patronage from the many donors who funded everything from small figurines to entire rows of relief panels and sacred reliquaries. The earliest examples of iconic sculpture in the early Graeco-Buddhist Gandhara region date back to the late first century BCE, under Saka rule, the only surviving examples of which are reliefs of bodhisattvas that were likely part of the stupas and monasteries in the region. The figures were rendered in a rigid but distinctly Graeco-Roman style, as seen in their angular build and the folds of their clothing. Later, from the first century CE onwards, bodhisattvas were portrayed more naturalistically as subtly toned figures draped in heavy robes. They were individualised by their moustaches and hairstyles, most of which were variations of the top knot: a Gandharan interpretation of the Buddha’s ushnisha (cranial protuberance). The bodhisattva understood to be Maitreya is distinguished by his looped knot and the water flask in his left hand. Avalokiteshvara or Padmapani, who is otherwise the most popular bodhisattva in later styles, was shown holding a lotus. Bodhisattvas became more relevant to religious ceremonies over the first five centuries, even as the aniconic reliquaries holding remnants of the Buddha continued to be central to all worship. The earliest anthropomorphic representation of the Buddha are a few relief images on the Bimaran reliquary in the late first century CE, based on iconography that was standardised later in that century and the next. With local and imperial patronage under the Kushan dynasty, artisans at Gandhara further developed the Graeco-Roman anthropomorphic style, and created the first large, free-standing stone images of the Buddha, sculpted from the blue or gray schist of the Swat valley. The introduction of the anthropomorphised Buddha paved the way for narrative reliefs depicting his life, replete with iconography borrowed from Graeco-Roman and subcontinental cultures. These reliefs, usually depicting episodes from the Buddha’s last life, lined the dome and the base of stupas, and were read in ritual processions (pradakshina) clockwise around the stupa. For stupas of a large size, this narrative was supplemented by further tales from the Buddha’s past lives. The Buddha in this format is typically depicted as he is in statues: bearing a halo and no ornaments, wearing a long rippling robe, and having a calm countenance. The women that appeared in the narrative scenes are modelled after yakshis but are shown holding cornucopias and wearing wreaths and robes very similar to the classical Greek style. Their depiction under trees and leafy canopies prefigures the salabhanjikas or “maidens of the sal trees,” a popular image in later reliefs and sculptures. In this phase of relief art, one finds a close reference to textual sources such as the Abhiniskramana sutra, indicating Gandhara’s closer affinity to the Central Asian and Chinese textual traditions than the north Indian oral traditions. After the second century, the narrative element was discarded in favour of portraiture in reliefs and friezes, mainly of the figures of the Buddha and bodhisattvas. These were decidedly devotional images, and exhibited a clear hierarchy of scale — the Buddha was shown as a looming figure, surrounded by diminutive secondary figures. Solo reliefs such as these were positioned above entrances to the stupa, and along the upper part of the drum, signifying to devotees the sanctity of the monument. The most common subject among these depictions was the seated Buddha in his moment of enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, which led early scholars to conclude that such images were part of a narrative series of the Buddha’s miracles. Friezes that did not feature the Buddha but showed lesser subjects, such as bodhisattvas and characters from the Buddha’s life, were used as stair risers, i.e., the vertical face of the stairs leading up along the stupa. These stair-risers occasionally included non-Buddhist mythological figures carved in an emphatically Hellenistic style, either as an homage to the Indo-Greek culture or as a surviving remnant of it. These few but interesting examples include a series of spear-wielding Greek deities flanked by Corinthian columns, lines of inebriated figures courting a man who appears to be the Greek god Dionysius, images of Hercules carrying a vajra (a weapon representing a diamond and a thunderbolt), and the figure of the Atlas situated around the base of the stupa, symbolically holding it up. Another sculptural element rendered in this style, possibly from the early first century, was a ring of garland-holders: a procession of male and female figures arranged around the surface of the stupa’s drum, carrying heavy garlands over their shoulders. Inscriptions suggest that donors sponsored figurines such as these, as well as large reliefs and free-standing sculptures. Aside from stupa reliefs, free-standing statues and busts of Greek deities such as Athena and Poseidon were also made at Gandhara, although in very small numbers and with unknown patronage. Unlike the publicly visible emphasis on Buddhism, many finely made objects of personal use, such as combs and vases, almost exclusively featured Greek imagery. In particular, stone palettes (also known as toilet trays) which were used for mixing cosmetic pastes and powders, feature relief images of Greek gods, sea monsters and Nereids. These are unique to Gandhara, and were made between the second century BCE and the first century CE. Gandharan sculpture can be broadly classified— based on the predominant medium used — into schist and stucco phases. Up until the third century CE, the stone used was almost exclusively grey, and occasionally green, schist. Stucco began to be used subsequently for reliefs as well as monumental free-standing statues of the Buddha and bodhisattvas because it lent itself better to modelling and was a more economical medium. These were made with an armature of wood, rope and straw — and sometimes even a rough core of schist — which was then covered and modelled in stucco. Gaining popularity as Gupta influence began to affect the style at Gandhara in the fifth century, stucco effected a slimmer, smoother silhouette that was more rounded in the shoulders than stone. Metal and ivory were reserved for devotional objects such as reliquaries and life-sized bronze Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and secular objects such as coins, mirror handles and combs. When the use of bronze for statuary grew more common, stylistic variations began to emerge, such as the expansion of the halo to envelop the standing Buddha figure. Although Gandharan art is defined by its repertoire of Buddhist sculptures, it also includes a small but important body of Brahmanical representations. Most noteworthy and prevalent among them are the relief sculptures of Skanda, shown here as a martial hero before he was absorbed into the Hindu pantheon. Depicted in a suit of armour with a bow strung across the chest and a sword in hand, Skanda is shown trampling a similarly clad figure with a buffalo head. This representation of the Mahisasuramardini narrative as carried out by Skanda and not Durga, and is the only known depiction of a variant of the popular myth. The extant and preserved Gandharan art, mostly from early acquisition during the British Raj, which received a great deal of attention for its notably hybrid nature has been dispersed across various institutions globally, with the largest collection being housed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Other notable museum collections include the Karachi and Lahore Museums, the National Museum in New Delhi, the Indian Museum in Kolkata and the British Museum in London.

Comprising the manuscript illustration traditions patronised by the sultanates of Ahmadnagar, Bijapur and Golconda, Deccani manuscript painting flourished between the sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries. It also includes the manuscripts and muraqqas commissioned by Maratha emperors and peshwas in the eighteenth century, though these were fewer in number. Manuscript painting in the Deccan grew steadily until the Mughal conquest of the region between 1600–87 resulted in the annexation of the Deccan sultanates, after which a combination of puppet governments and appointed governors kept the practice alive, but with a heavy emphasis on emulating the Mughal aesthetic. The Deccan plateau, which extends over most of the land between the eastern and western coasts of the Indian peninsula, has enjoyed a long history of trade and artistic exchange because of its many ports, which linked it to the Indian Ocean trade routes. Further, the royal families of several Deccan sultanates also had ancestral or cultural links with Persia and Turkey. As a result, Deccan manuscript painting absorbed a range of influences, especially from the Safavid and Mughal ateliers, and, in its initial phases, from the paintings and sculptures of medieval Hindu and Jain temples in the region. It is also notable for its patronage from women rulers, whose power is reflected in the paintings, as well as in subjects such as astrological charts, the Buraq and composite animals. While the style varied somewhat between courts and time periods, overall Deccani manuscript paintings were boldly coloured, heavily ornamented, and often equal parts fantastical and detailed in their rendering of flora and fauna. The costumes and jewellery worn by the figures featured varying degrees of synthesis between the south Indian fashions of the time and the traditional attires of Persia and Asia Minor. The matured styles of the various courts — in the early decades of the seventeenth century — show a fascination with movement, especially the suggestion of a slight breeze that lent a characteristic dynamism to otherwise static figures. Persian influences can be seen particularly in the way mountains and faces were drawn, and in the high, slightly curved horizon line. However, as Mughal military expansion into the south began at the end of the sixteenth century, painters began to move between Mughal and Deccan ateliers, sometimes deliberately altering their work for their north Indian patrons. Over time, Deccani paintings became more naturalistic, more tightly composed and more muted in their colour choices – similar to the Mughal style. The oldest surviving manuscript paintings from the region belong to the incomplete Tarif-i-Hussain Shahi manuscript, made in 1565 for the Ahmadnagar court, though scholars speculate that there may have been older manuscripts that are now lost. Information on the development of the Ahmadnagar style is particularly fragmentary, as few folios and drawings have survived. The prominent position given to Khanzada Humayun, the queen regent of Ahmadnagar between 1565–69, in the paintings and the text of the Tarif-i-Hussain Shahi manuscript suggests that she likely commissioned it herself. However, she was deliberately erased later on in all but one painting of the manuscript after her son Murtaza overthrew and imprisoned her. The Ahmadnagar style appears to become more restrained and naturalistic in the 1570s, and a clear Mughal influence is visible by the 1590s. By 1600, however, political turbulence in the kingdom and the Mughal conquest of key cities in Ahmadnagar ended local patronage for the art form, although Rajput governors of the Mughal Deccan continued to hire artisans for Rajasthani-style miniatures, particularly for portraits and ragamala paintings. The Bijapur sultanate, also formed in 1490, extensively patronised manuscript painting. The earliest example is the Nujum-ul-Ulum, an encyclopaedic manuscript on astrology and magic commissioned by Ali Adil Shah I. His successor, Ibrahim Adil Shah II, sponsored manuscript painting and other art forms generously, also dabbling in painting himself. His reign marks what scholars consider the high point of Bijapur painting, which is notable for its extremely dense use of golden floral and arabesque patterns for the ornamentation of clothing, and its intricate, varied depiction of flora. Ibrahim’s interest in both Hindu mythology and Sufism allowed for the inclusion of syncretic symbolism in illustrations commissioned during his reign, and even more so in the accompanying texts. Chand Bibi, aunt and queen regent during Ibrahim’s minority, features in later eighteenth-century Deccan paintings as the ideal female ruler and warrior, typically depicted hawking with an entourage. While Ibrahim’s successors continued to commission illustrated manuscripts, this was done as a matter of courtly duty rather than personal interest. This, along with the increased presence of Mughal governors in the region following the conquest of Ahmadnagar territories in 1600–36, meant that the younger generation of local artists was encouraged to emulate the Mughal style in their commissioned manuscripts. Many artists trained in the north were also brought into the royal ateliers of the Deccan. As a result, the Bijapuri style became very close to that of Mughal manuscript paintings by 1680, soon after which Bijapur was annexed by Aurangzeb. Meanwhile, in the north Deccan, the Maratha court took an interest in manuscript painting, commissioning muraqqas, ragamalas and illustrated copies of religious texts regularly over the course of the early seventeenth and eighteenth century. Initially, these were made at Rajput kingdoms in Rajasthan, but as Maratha patronage steadied, local painters were hired in the chitrashalas or painting ateliers at Poona (now Pune). In Hyderabad, the Qutub Shahis of Golconda – the wealthiest of the Deccan sultanates – employed local, West Asian and Central Asian artists in their atelier, but the style tended towards that of the Safavids. While the idealised faces and bodies of human figures of these paintings are characteristic of Persian painting, their realistic postures suggest the hand of local artisans experienced in making stone sculptures for temple walls. The Golconda style underwent subtle changes over the course of the seventeenth century: first, in the form of the Mughal naturalism, which had already spread to Bijapur, and then as a deliberate rigidity and restraint seen in painted figures, possibly in emulation of new Persian painters of miniatures such as Shaikh Abbasi. Scholars have suggested that this style may be the work of Deccani artists who trained in Persian ateliers and returned to India or of Persian artists migrating to India themselves. Following the capture of Golconda by Mughal forces in 1687 and the deposition of the Qutub Shahis, a Mughal tributary state based in Hyderabad emerged as the major political presence in the south Deccan in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. While these rulers were governors and not royalty, they still functioned as major patrons, typically commissioning portraits in which they appear in profile with grave expressions, possibly to emulate the Mughal style – a choice that was somewhat undercut by the abundant flora surrounding them. After Hyderabad and the southern Deccan were taken over by the Asaf Jahis in 1724, the court style retained its rigid emulation of Mughal painting, steadily sponsoring artisans over the course of the eighteenth century. These works were technically well-executed and extremely formal, with the dynamism and nuance of earlier Deccan styles visible only in drawings and sketches. Today, folios and manuscripts illustrated in the Deccan can be found in museums and private collections across the world, including the National Museum, New Delhi; the Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal, Pune; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; the David Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA; and the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, St. Petersburg, Russia.

A free-standing, sandstone pillar measuring 6.5 metres in height, the Heliodorus Pillar is situated at the site of Besnagar (in present-day Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh) at the confluence of the rivers Bes and Betwa. The pillar contains two sets of inscriptions that describe the circumstances of its construction under the patronage of the Indo-Greek ambassador Heliodorus in the early second century BCE. It is dedicated to Vaishnava religious practices and is considered to be historical evidence of trade and diplomatic relations between the Indo-Greek kingdom centred around Taxila in modern-day Pakistan, and the kingdoms of the Gangetic Plains. The pillar’s shaft is divided into three segments crowned by a decorated but heavily damaged abacus. The lower, middle and upper segments have eight, sixteen and thirty-two sides respectively, with the upper being the shortest. The border between the lower and middle segments is decorated with a carved ring of low relief floral half-medallions. The middle and upper segments are in turn separated by a mid-relief garland of entwined vines looped around honeysuckle flowers and fruits, and held up by pairs of geese. Above the upper segment is a smooth cylindrical segment surmounted by the capital, which consists of an upturned bell-shaped lotus base and a damaged cubical abacus that seems to have featured animal motifs, possibly mythical birds and hybrid creatures. The inscriptions suggest that a sculpted figure of Garuda in an earlier, less anthropomorphic form may have surmounted it. The lime mortar base of the pillar presents one of the earliest pieces of evidence of cement binding in India. The lower segment of the shaft bears two sets of inscriptions, each written across three faces on opposing sides of the pillar. These inscriptions were concealed under thick layers of vermillion when the structure was examined by Alexander Cunningham and other archaeologists in 1877, suggesting that it had become an object of local devotion. Before the inscriptions were uncovered, the pillar initially was dated to the fourth century and assumed to have been part of a Gupta era building. The inscriptions are written in the Brahmi script, although the language is Prakrit. The mention of a garudadhavaja (Garuda standard) — one of the earliest such references found in India — in the first set, and the presence of a Vishnu shrine nearby, distinguishes it from the earlier Ashokan pillars and marks it as an early monumental conception of Brahmanical religions. Scholars have suggested that it may have formed a part of a group of eight free-standing pillars dedicated to the shrine. The first set of inscriptions identifies Heliodorus as a Bhagavata and as an ambassador sent by the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas to the court of the Shunga king Bhagabhadra. The second set, inscribed on the other face of the pillar, offers advice on the path to immortality, recommending self-control, self-denial and watchfulness. Due to his description as a Bhagavata, Heliodorus is believed to have been an adherent of a Vaishnava cult, although some scholars have suggested that it could equally refer to the Buddha, who was also referred to as Bhagavan (The Blessed One) by his followers. The pillar has been understood as an aniconic symbol of Vasudeva, (considered Krishna’s father in later traditions). Vasudeva may have been represented here as embodying cosmic totality, with the three distinct levels of the pillar standing in as an axis that joins the earth, the intermediate space and the heavens. The pillar is locally known as Khambh Baba, meaning The Pillar Saint, or Father, and is occasionally worshipped. It is under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India.

Emerging in the manuscripts produced by the court ateliers of the Mughal dynasty, a major tradition of miniature painting was established in the Indian subcontinent in the mid-sixteenth century. Known for its naturalism, intricacy and luminosity, Mughal miniature painting embodies a range of regional and cultural influences, showing a syncretism of both style and subject matter. It fused diverse influences, incorporating pre-existing South Asian manuscript painting traditions with Persian as well as European Renaissance styles and imagery. These paintings illustrated or accompanied literary, historical, scriptural and scientific texts, and also served as visual aids for court storytellers. The Mughal miniature style remained highly influential in South Asia and the wider Islamic world until the late eighteenth century, influencing the paintings produced in smaller courts even after the decline of the Mughal empire from the early eighteenth century onwards.  Having lost his Indian kingdom after a ten-year reign, the Mughal emperor Humayun (r. 1530–40; 1555–56) sought military aid in Safavid Persia, in present-day Iran. Additionally, inspired by the aesthetic achievements of Shah Tahmasp’s court there, he negotiated to take two Persian artists, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad, back to India. Returning to reestablish his empire in 1555, Humayun had the court atelier set up under Ali and al-Samad. During the second half of the sixteenth century, the atelier grew tremendously under his successor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), whose expansion of the Mughal empire and interest in the arts ensured a steady flow of wealth as well as artists from the kingdoms of Lahore, Kabul, Persia and Kashmir, each with their own distinctive style. The atelier expanded from about thirty artists in 1557 to over a hundred in the 1590s, including painters, colourists, calligraphers, bookbinders and other specialists. The artisans composed and painted manuscripts on fine quality paper imported from Persia and Italy, using pigments derived from rare and expensive mineral sources such as lapis lazuli, orpiment, cinnabar and gold.  The atelier formed part of the Mughal kitabkhana — ‘book house’ or ‘library’ — an important institution in which manuscripts were produced and restored, as well as stored. The kitabkhana embodied a fluid and highly collaborative process, where specialists in various domains worked together to produce and maintain luxuriously illustrated manuscripts, and later individual paintings and designs for other objects. This helped achieve large manuscripts in the codex format, resembling the modern book, which stood in contrast to the indigenous palm-leaf manuscripts that were highly restricted in their size and shape. Each step of the process was performed by a specialised artisan with expertise in a particular aspect — from preparing the paper and binding, to calligraphy, applying gilt and painting the margins. The art of Mughal miniatures is distinctive not only for the painted images, but equally by the Persian nastaliq calligraphy of the manuscripts, and the intricacy and ingenuity of the hashiya, or margin, decorations that framed them — each of which was a specialised domain of artisanship. A master painter composed the images for a manuscript based on the text, to be coloured in by junior painters. Artists also specialised in different kinds of drawing, such as portraiture, animals, flora and decorative pattering — and a level of consistency was achieved as they rendered these subjects across folios or manuscripts.  At the same time, particular master artists also had distinctive visual languages that made their work recognisable — for instance, Basawan became known for his talent for naturalism within neat compositions, whereas the work of his contemporary Daswanth was characterised by densely populated, energetic images, best exemplified through his illustrations of war in the Razmnama, a Mughal manuscript of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. The names of these and other artists occasionally appear on individual folios of these manuscripts, alongside other information such as the size of the atelier and the number of days taken to complete the work. Such mentions, as well as documentation in administrative manuscripts such as the Ain-e Akbari, serve as important sources of information about the making of Mughal manuscripts today. One of the earliest examples of Mughal miniature painting is seen in a Tutinama (‘Tales of a Parrot’) manuscript made in the 1560s. Illustrating the fourteenth century text, the paintings show Indian flora and fauna within Persianate landscapes; further, the human figures are realistically proportioned and rendered as dark-skinned, as associated with South Asia, rather than the willowy, fair-skinned youths emblematic of Persian paintings. Around this time, European emissaries and Jesuit Christian missionaries were invited to Akbar’s court, and brought with them religious paraphernalia and examples of European devotional art, introducing the ateliers’ artists to new influences. Not only did this infuse Western Renaissance notions of perspective and pictorial depth into the work of the court artists, but Christian iconography and subjects themselves became part of the Mughal canon. Examples of this influence are seen in the Persian translation of The Life of Christ, commissioned by Akbar, as well as multiple paintings of Christ’s crucifixion, Madonna with the infant Jesus, and other Christian themes; and in the iconographic elements used in a painting showing combat between the Hindu gods Indra and Krishna in the Harivamsa.  In the 1580s and 1590s, under Akbar, the atelier worked mainly on manuscripts of dynastic histories such as the Baburnama (‘Book of Babur’, written in the fifteenth century; the Timurnama (‘Book of Timur’), written in the sixteenth century; and translations of Sanskrit epics such as the Mahabharata, known in Persian as the Razmnama. These would often be large projects, both in the dimensions of the codices as well as the number of illustrations commissioned. One the Mughal atelier’s most ambitious and extensive manuscripts, the Hamzanama (‘Book of Hamza’), was made during this period. A fictional biography of the prophet Mohammed’s uncle Hamza ibn Abdul-Muttalib (c. 569–625), it is illustrated with 1400 paintings. Akbar also commissioned a real-time documentation of his reign, the Akbarnama (‘Book of Akbar’), which was illustrated by at least forty-nine artists in the atelier; and a lavishly illustrated manuscript known as the Khamsa of Nizami — a set of five long narrative poems by the twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi — which was a popular subject for illuminated manuscripts both before and after Akbar.  By the reign of Akbar’s successor Jahangir (r. 1605–27), the types of paintings and manuscripts being produced, and thereby the structure of the atelier, were beginning to change. Jahangir had a preference for naturalism, and laid particular emphasis on portraiture, which he employed in allegorical paintings presenting his position as a divinely appointed world ruler. He was, accordingly, drawn to the work of only a few artists, and reduced the number of artists retained by the imperial atelier for long-term projects. This sufficed for manuscripts of Persian poetry, which were smaller than biographies, and also suited the shifting focus from manuscripts of single texts to muraqqas — carefully curated albums of assorted miniature paintings, short calligraphic texts and European prints. He is also known to have commissioned a copy of a miniature painted by Isaac Oliver and shown to him by the first English ambassador to Mughal India, Sir Thomas Roe, as well as a muraqqa of Persian and Mughal paintings infused with European artistic traditions and themes.   Having flourished under the patronage of Akbar and Jahangir, the ateliers remained functional during the reigns of Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707). While Shah Jahan maintained funding for the atelier, his interest was mainly directed towards architecture. Painting was viewed predominantly as a medium of courtly representation, and the paintings of this period were largely formal, lacking the flair for experimentation or aesthetic interest seen under the previous emperors. Nevertheless, the muraqqas, and manuscripts such as those of Shah Jahan’s biography Padshahnama (‘Book of the Emperor’), were naturalistic and technically accomplished, the latter known for their use of multiple perspectives and exuberant colours. Aurangzeb’s religious orthodoxy led him to direct funding away from the atelier a few years into his reign, but for most of the 1660s the emperor tolerated painting as a courtly art. Several distinguished examples of portraits and durbar, or court, scenes in the Mughal style were produced in this period. With the exception of a revival under the reign of Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48), Mughal patronage for miniature painting had dwindled enough in the eighteenth century for these artists to seek employment outside the imperial court. As they were absorbed into the ateliers of smaller kingdoms, they strengthened the Mughal element in these painting traditions — particularly those of the Rajput and Maratha courts — many of which had already been emulating the style due to the power and influence of the Mughal empire in previous decades. Scholars today recognise two distinct categories of Mughal manuscript paintings — those that were commissioned by the Mughal imperial court and executed by its ateliers; and a sub-imperial or popular form of Mughal painting, which was made by other, smaller ateliers patronised by minor nobility. While the similarities between them result from the style set by the wealthier, more established imperial ateliers, the difference is visible in the subject matter, the quality of materials used, and the intricacy and naturalism achieved.  With the advent of British rule in the nineteenth century, the tradition of Mughal miniature painting, particularly its emphasis on naturalism, was incorporated into the Company school. Today, dispersed folios and, more rarely, whole manuscripts in the Mughal style, are housed at various museums across the world.   

An umbrella term that broadly refers to motifs of flowers, leaves, trees, shrubs and buds. It derives its name from the Persian boteh, meaning “shrub” or “flowering plant” and is commonly used to decorate textiles. Butas appear in various sizes, colours and orientations and often in combination with butis. The term originally referred to the teardrop-shaped motif, also known as Boteh Jegheh, kairi motif, mankolam and paisley. The motif is believed to have originated in Babylon, c. 1700 BCE, and has been widely used to signify nobility and royalty. Although the exact origins of the buta in India are unknown, it has been in use since the sixteenth century, primarily in Kashmiri shawls, which were popular among the Mughals. While Indian craftsmen adapted the motif to represent indigenous flora and fauna such as genda, kamal, mor and gulab, fabrics meant for royalty portrayed non-indigenous flowers such as tall tulips, irises and poppies, interspersed with smaller butis of rose buds. The late eighteenth century also saw the emergence of the European cabbage rose as a popular motif in Indian textiles. Another widely used buta is the teardrop- or mango-shaped kairi/keri buta, also known as the mankolam, which is used along with symbols such as swastika and om as well as indigenous birds and flowers such as peacocks, parrots and lotuses. This buta is popularly used in Kanchipuram sarees in Tamil Nadu. Today, butas are used in a variety of Indian textiles such as shawls, sarees, bedspreads, cushion covers, ghagras and cholis, among other garments. Specific floral butas also appear in Bagru and Sanganeri prints, Benarasi brocades, Ashavali sarees and Pashmina shawls.  

A silk brocade fabric decorated with gold and silver threads, gyaser (also known as gos-chen in Ladakh) is used in religious rituals in Buddhist communities and is characterised by a discontinuous supplementary weft pattern. Weaving has sacred and mythical associations in Ladakh, with sacred textiles believed to grant protection and blessings to the person wearing it. It is also associated with fertility and procreation, with the textiles and the loom representing sexual union and the creation and protection of life. Thus, the weaving of sacred textiles such as gyaser was not undertaken by monks but would be imported from China, Tibet and eventually from the looms in Benares. While there are no written records indicating the introduction of the fabric to India, visual records suggest that the trade and use of gyaser in the country began c. tenth century CE during the Namgyal dynasty of Ladakh (1460–1842), with the textile being one of the items imported to the region from China. Missionaries travelling between Lhasa and Ladakh also brought back brocade samples to their monasteries, usually as unstitched fabric, robes or on the borders of stitched boots. Gyaser was introduced to Benares (present-day Varanasi) in the mid-nineteenth century by traders from Tibet as well as traders from the Marwari community who had settled in Kalimpong, which had emerged as an important commercial centre between Tibet and India. The gyaser made in Benaras gained popularity in Ladakh and Tibet due to its relatively cheaper costs compared to fabric from China, as well as the cheap cost of labour in Benaras and the higher quality of gold zari and fabric. By the early-nineteenth century, Benaras had become an important brocade-weaving centre, primarily producing kinkhwab, which was popular in the Mughal court as well as among the royalty in Ladakh. While this fabric was traded to Ladakh via Punjab, Kashmir and Kalimpong, it differed from the gyaser in its lack of Buddhist motifs. Tibetan traders also frequently visited Benares and introduced the gyaser to Benares weavers, which they would imitate. Subsequently, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, weavers in Benares began producing gyaser featuring Chinese designs and Buddhist motifs. Trade fluctuated briefly during the 1950s and 1960s due to the closure of international trade routes to Ladakh after India’s independence and following China’s occupation of Tibet, which led to the displacement of several Tibetan communities. Trade from Kashmir and Punjab also slowed, with traders suspending travel to Ladakh. However, demand rose again after the displaced populations from Tibet had resettled across India, where they established monasteries and resumed religious activities. However, the suspension of trade routes was instrumental in driving the nobility and monastic clergy of Ladakh to source gyaser for personal and religious use directly from the weavers of Varanasi. In Varanasi, gyaser is made primarily in the area of Pili Kothi, which is known for its expensive brocades that incorporate real gold zari thread. The men draw the design on a graph, make the punch cards and dye the threads, and the women are engaged in the preparation of the multi-ply yarn. The weaving is primarily carried out on the jacquard loom, with the punch cards used for the patterning. The cloth is woven to lengths of about twenty-eight inches, with hand-patterning of motifs using metal silver or gold zari. Due to the sacred associations of the fabric, the design and colour of gyaser have not undergone major changes over the years. The fabric features Buddhist symbols such as the eight lucky signs, the thunderbolt and bell, the lotus, clouds and dragons. In the 1980s, following the Vishwakarma revival effort by the Indian government and collaborations with Martand Singh, gyaser weavers began incorporating newer, more universal designs in the fabric, such as geometric patterns, to appeal to a wider market. Gyaser pieces also began featuring patterns such as the Rusnata (Russian medallion pattern) and the flame pattern, and metallic gyaser that incorporated twill-bound lozenges. More recently, the exhibition Between Land and Sky: Woven Gold from Gyaser Tradition (2019) incorporated gyaser into saree designs by Swati Agarwal and Sunaina Jalan. Today, gyaser is woven primarily in Varanasi, with weavers replacing pure gold and silver threads with synthetic fibres to speed up the weaving process and lower costs. Gyaser woven in Varanasi is supplied to Buddhist communities in India and exported to Himalayan Buddhist countries and prominent Buddhist centres in Southeast Asia, the USA and the UK. It continues to be used in religious rituals, especially in Buddhist monasteries as altar and seat covers, monk robes, mounts for thangkas, decorative borders in hats and stitched boots. It is also used to make loom-woven products for everyday use, such as shawls, cushion covers and floor mats.  

A popular motif used in textile design, handicrafts and fine arts depicting a tree with emanating branches, is called Tree of Life. It draws from the symbolism of the primordial tree as is present in cultures of Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania. The symbol depicts an upright tree with distinctive branches shooting off from it, sometimes bare and sometimes laden with leaves, fruits and flowers. In India, theTree of Life comes from several sources such as the Bodhi tree under which Buddha received enlightenment; the Peepal and Banyan trees associated with Hindu mythology; and as the tree of immortality alluded to in Islam. The Tree of Life symbol was used as a decorative biomorphic motif as early as the mid-sixteenth century. For instance, in the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque in Ahmedabad, a carved stone window dating to 1573 showcases a set of finely drawn trees. The symbol also features on a mirror frame designed in the Mughal court in the 17th–18th century, where the mirror’s jade frame is inlaid with gold stems and leaves, buds of rubies, diamonds and emerald. The Tree of Life was featured on chintz, silks and printed cloth and has been depicted using techniques ranging from resist-dyeing methods like batik, block printing, mordant painting, handweaving and embroidery. The Portuguese, the Dutch and then the British East India Companies not only traded the fabric but also used it in South-east Asia as currency to exchange for spices. Hence, the symbol travelled through the world and took on many variations. For instance, the motif of tumpal – an isosceles triangle arranged one after the other on a fabric’s border – wasn’t found among the motifs in use in the Indian mainland and is conjectured to have been incorporated to suit the tastes of the Indonesian market, where the design has a long history of appreciation. Another example is the conception of phaa nung, a palmette design covered with gold gilt that was made for the Thai court and fused the style of kalamkari, the architectural niche of mihrab and the design of Tree of Life along with that of floral bouquet. In Europe, through the influence of the British East India Company, the symbol was depicted on large cotton bed coverings known as pampalores, tent panels and later as wall hangings and table linens. Complementing the European interest in chinoiserie, China produced wallpapers and silk wallcoverings modeled after Indian pampalores. Today, Tree of Life is a one of the commonly used motifs in handwoven fabrics like Banarasi, Chanderi and Jamdani and is also used to decorate the border of a saree apart from featuring on a wide variety of other garments. The motif is no longer limited to large scale depictions or as currency for trading but continues to be popular in the textile industry within India.  

A devotional tradition where images of Buddhist deities are painted on scrolls, to gain divine merit and for teaching and meditating, historically, thangka paintings served as visual aids. The tradition emerged from Nepal in the seventh century and spread to the Himalayan region, significantly Tibet (now Tibet Autonomous Region). Travelling Buddhist teachers would deliver talks on Buddha’s life and teaching and complement their lectures with these painted scrolls. Thangka paintings function as intermediaries between the mortal and divine world; when consecrated in shrines or family altars, they are believed to be occupied by the deity they depict. They are also worshipped as part of public religious ceremonies, and often commissioned as a means of generating spiritual merit. They are also used to guide and enhance meditation. Derived from the pata paintings of India and practices of drawing mandala into the ground for ritual use, thangkas came to be painted on woven canvas, usually cotton, with bamboo-cane rod pasted on its bottom edge so that it could be rolled. Generally rectangular, the canvas is strung on a bamboo frame, which is stretched onto a wooden frame. It is washed and scrubbed many times and the surface is traditionally coated with chalk, gesso (animal glue) and a base pigment, which is then replaced by a distemper-glue mixture and rubbed with a piece of porcelain or glass until it is smooth. The outlines of deity and composition are then made in charcoal or pencil, according to rules of iconography and iconometry in grids. These pencilled drawings are painted over with a fine brush and later painted in. The colours used in painting were sourced naturally from vegetable and mineral pigments and mixed with lime and gluten. The colours used include red, arsenic yellow, vitriol green, carmine vermillion, lapis blue, indigo and gold. The main deity is painted once the background is filled in. When finished, the painted thangka is given a silk brocade border that usually consists of red, yellow and blue fabrics. The thangka also has a finer silk fabric stitched on it to function as a protective curtain. This is usually yellow in colour. Besides being painted, some traditional thangkas were also embroidered or appliqued. The paintings contain depictions of Buddha and scenes from his life, Buddhist deities, saints and lamas (teachers), divine beings in assembly around the cosmic tree, the Wheel of Life, mandalas, symbolic representations of the universe from canonical texts and horoscopes. Depending on the subject depicted, some thangkas presented the immediate presence of enlightened beings while others showed events from their past and had a narrative. The thangka of Buddha’s First Sermon, for instance, depicts a crucial moment from Buddha’s life where, as prince Siddhartha, he travels with five companions with whom he undergoes extreme deprivation in search of truth. The Sikkim Thangka, created and developed during the rule of the last Chogyal (priest-king) of Sikkim, uses Buddhist imagery to tell the founding myth of Sikkim; three venerated lamas are shown along with the Chogyal in a canvas replete with Tibetan and Sikkimese symbolism. The protector deity of Sikkim, Kanchendzonga – a fiery red deity riding a snow lion and holding a banner of victory – is shown along with the Tibetan protector of monasteries, Mahakala – a black deity on a black horse – and the deity of Nagas – local faith of Sikkim – is depicted in white. Events from the past lives of divine beings were also depicted, such as that of the Buddha as Shakyamuni. Besides paintings of enlightened beings, inanimate sacred objects such as stupas, temples and monasteries were also portrayed. The simplest of compositions would portray a single figure placed at the centre, usually that of the Buddha or a deity. When a composition comprises many sacred figures, attention needs to be paid to make each grouping distinct from one another and to ensure that the identities and positions of the figures are according to iconographic prescriptions. In these complex compositions, the retinue of figures would be smaller and arranged in vertical and horizontal columns, usually painted only in outline (often of gold). Thangkas carrying these depictions would usually not incorporate a background landscape and were painted using either a red or black background and full colour was reserved for the main deity. In another variety of group composition, an assembly of figures is depicted without any main figure – such as in depictions of the eighty-four siddhas (great masters) or the sixteen arhats (elders). The tradition has changed significantly over time. While some monasteries continue to train lamas in the art form, most thangka painters now are artisans who have received training in the art and produce them for both commercial and religious purposes. The use of acrylic paints and synthetic fabrics has become common. Consequently, thangka paintings serve not just as highly revered objects but also as decorative items now.  

A silk weaving technique that uses two to five weft threads for every one or two warp threads, Tanchoi is practiced in Gujarat and Varanasi (formerly Benaras) to make silk sarees prized for their lightness and brocade-like designs. The key difference between a typical brocade weave and Tanchoi is that the extra weft threads of Tanchoi are woven simultaneously with the primary weft and thus cannot be separated from the ground weave, giving the fabric a smooth texture. Tanchoi weaves come in a variety of forms, and typically feature Chinese-influenced motifs of flowers, landscapes and birds. The basic Tanchoi is a satin weave with differently coloured weft threads that are used to create patterns that resemble embroidery, similar to Amru. This weave is often modified to include zari (gold or silver yarn) among the extra weft threads, although at least one of these threads remains silk. The Mushabbar design uses a woven net structure to create floral and tree-like patterns across the fabric, typically in shades of green. The Jamawar weave takes its influence from Kashmiri textiles and uses multiple colours in the weft. .Many accounts exist of the origins of Tanchoi, but Chinese influence is widely acknowledged among scholars. One version of the origins of Tanchoi is that it was introduced to Surat in the 1850s by three weavers sent to China by Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy to learn this technique. The name Tanchoi, according to the story, is a portmanteau of “tran,” the Gujarati word for three (possibly signifying the extra weft, or the three weavers who first brought it to India), and “Chhoi,” the Chinese master weaver from whom the brothers learnt it. Colonial Bombay (now Mumbai) was the primary trade centre for Gujarati Tanchoi sarees until the 1940s, when weavers in Varanasi adopted the technique. The Varanasi variation includes the addition of zari as the extra weft thread, and a much more elaborate design made of floral patterns and large buta motifs. Varanasi's highly time-effective Jacquard looms and existing network of silk weavers meant that Tanchoi sarees could be produced and distributed with greater speed at a lower cost, making Varanasi Tanchoi the dominant version of the garment today. The Gujarati weave was simple in design, with the extra weft threads being gathered and tied together as tassels. This is now more common among Tanchoi scarves and shawls rather than sarees, which are typically made in the Varanasi style. Today, Tanchoi sarees and other garments have a steady popularity among consumers, and are among the most prized silk textiles produced in Varanasi. They are widely sold in both online and offline retail stores.

An opulent piece of jewellery featuring the substantial Queen of Holland diamond as its centrepiece, the Toussaint necklace was commissioned in 1931 by Ranjitsinhji Jadeja (r. 1907–33), the ruler of the former princely state of Nawanagar (present-day Jamnagar, Gujarat in India). The necklace was designed by the luxury jewellery house Cartier and named after its influential director Jeanne Touissant, who absorbed influences from Mughal and other royal Indian jewellery in her work, and is also known for her involvement in the Art Deco movement. Following its dismantling in 1960, the necklace no longer exists in its original form. The two chains of the Touissant necklace consisted of large clear white diamonds, with square pink ones acting as links. At its centre, there were three pink diamonds, along with a 26-carat blue and a 12-carat green diamond. Its central pendant stone was the bluish Queen of Holland, then weighing 136.25 carats and considered one of the largest diamonds in the world.  Information on the diamond’s origins is entirely speculative. Its appearance in Amsterdam, Netherlands, recorded in 1904, would indicate South African origin given the large number of diamonds making their way into the country from South Africa at the time. Yet its bluish tint, characteristic of Golconda diamonds, has led experts to suggest that it originated in the Deccan region of India. Named after the then ruler of the Netherlands, Queen Wilhemina (r. 1890–1948), the diamond was cushion-cut in the early twentieth century by Dutch firm F. Friedman & Co., who owned it at the time. Ranjitsinhji, a jewel connoisseur as well as renowned cricketer, bought it from the firm in 1930, and took it to Cartier in 1931 to have it set as the centrepiece of what would become the Touissant necklace.  The necklace was completed in 1933, the year of Ranjitsinhji’s death. It went on to make several public appearances around the neck of his nephew and successor Digvijaysinhji Jadeja (r. 1933–66). The Touissant necklace remained with the family until it was dismantled in 1960, when Cartier bought the Queen of Holland as a standalone. After it was sold to William Goldberg in 1978, the diamond was further cut down to 135.92 carats. At the time of the writing, the diamond is owned by Robert Mouawad, former president of the Mouawad house. The Toussaint necklace entered popular consciousness again following the release of the American film Ocean’s 8 in 2018. The comedy heist film featured a smaller imitation that was recreated by Cartier using zirconium oxide crystals in place of the original diamonds. 

Considered the largest blue star sapphire in the world, the Star of India was found in the alluvial deposits of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), likely in the Ratnapura area historically renowned for its precious stones. When the sapphire was located by George F Kunz in the 1890s, the mineralogist estimated its discovery to have taken place at least three hundred years previously, and there is no information on the initial ownership or polishing of the rough stone. Given that the sapphire has no recorded connections to India, its name is a misnomer and is often attributed to a colonial-era conflation of the regions of the Indian subcontinent. Weighing 563.35 carats, the cabochon-cut gem is a slightly oblong dome with a flat base and a diameter of about 4 centimetres. Thought to have been formed one to two billion years ago, the sapphire contains minute crystals of a titanium mineral called rutile, which gives it its milky greyish-blue appearance. The needle-like rutile formations also reflect light in a star pattern, an effect known as asterism. The Star of India is distinctive in that its prominent six-pointed asterism is visible from both top and bottom.    Kunz, who was a prominent consultant for the US Geological Survey and vice-president at the jewellery house Tiffany & Co., included the Star of India in the collection of important gemstones he curated under the commission of American financier JP Morgan. After exhibiting the collection at the 1900 Paris Exposition, Morgan donated all the gemstones, including the Star of India, to the American Museum of Natural History. While already well-known for its large size, asterism and near-flawless nature, the sapphire garnered attention again after it was stolen from the museum along with twenty-one other gems in 1964. The thieves were apprehended within days and most of the gems recovered from a bus station locker, where they had been hidden. The Star of India was returned to its display at the museum in 1965.  At the time of writing, the sapphire is exhibited in the Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. 

A large pinkish-brown diamond, the Star of the South has been a subject of attention and intrigue since its discovery in the mid-nineteenth century. Among the first Brazilian diamonds to receive international fame, it has made its way to Europe as well as India, where it was in the ownership of the royal Gaekwad family of the princely state of Baroda (in present-day Gujarat, India) for many years. In the wake of a number of anonymous sales and transfers from the late twentieth century onwards, the whereabouts of the Star of the South at the time of writing remain unknown. The diamond was discovered in 1853 by Madi Magassa, an enslaved labourer, among the alluvial deposits of the Bagagem river in Minas Gerais, Brazil. She took the 261.38-carat rough diamond to the mine owner Casimiro de Moraes (referred to as Casimiro de Tal in some accounts). In keeping with the practice of rewarding honesty among enslaved workers, he released her from slavery and granted her a pension. Unaware of its value, de Moraes sold the diamond for GBP 3,000 to an unnamed purchaser, who took it to Rio de Janeiro and sold it for GBP 35,000.  By 1855, it was in the possession of Parisian firm Halphen, who showcased the diamond at the Paris Industrial Exhibition that year, while it was still in the rough. Halphen also named it ‘Étoile du Sud’, French for ‘Star of the South’, referencing its South American origins. The diamond’s name later inspired the renaming of the city of its discovery to the Portuguese translation ‘Estrela do Sul’. Between 1856 and 1858, it was sent to Royal Coster Diamonds in Amsterdam, where it was cut by LB Voorzanger, who had also been responsible for re-faceting the Koh-i-Noor diamond shortly before. Over three months, Voorzanger cushion-cut the diamond in an oblong form measuring 35 x 29 x 19 millimetres, reducing its weight to 128.48 carats but greatly enhancing its brilliance. The diamond continued to attract attention and grew in popularity through its media coverage, particularly after a replica of it was showcased at the International Exhibitions of London and Paris in 1862 and 1867 respectively. Later in the same decade, Halphen is said to have sent the Star of the South briefly to India, where it drew the attention of various members of royalty, including an unnamed maharaja who made an unsuccessful bid for the diamond.  In the late 1860s, the Maharaja of Baroda Khande Rao II Gaekwad (r. 1856–70) bought the diamond for GBP 80,000 using the services of London dealer Edward Dresden, after whom the 78.5-carat English Dresden was named. The Gaekwad family later also purchased this diamond — which originated from the same region as the Star of the South — and in 1880, commissioned a necklace that would showcase both historic diamonds. In 1948, Khande Rao’s granddaughter-in-law the Maharani of Baroda Sita Devi (r. 1943–48) was photographed wearing this necklace by Henri Cartier-Bresson. While there is no conclusive information about the diamond between 1950 and 2001, the Gaekwad family claims that the Star of the South was included in its wealth tax returns until as late as 1988. In 2001, an anonymous buyer bought the Star of the South and sent it to the Gübelin Gem Lab in Lucerne, Switzerland to be analysed, making it one of the few historic diamonds for which a comprehensive gemological analysis has been published. The luxury house Cartier is said to have purchased the Star of the South in 2002, according to reports that appeared in 2007. 

A large diamond with a long history, the Koh-i-Noor is famously associated with conquests and the shifting balance of power among rival empires between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. Said to have been named Koh-i-noor — meaning ‘mountain of light’ in Persian — by Iranian conqueror Nader Shah, the diamond has changed hands many times, usually as a spoil of war. Its owners include the Kakatiya dynasty of South India, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Afsharids of present-day Iran, the Durranis of present-day Afghanistan, and maharajas of the Sikh empire, before the British East India Company acquired it. Housed in Britain since 1849 as Crown property, today it is the subject of criticism, international tensions and debates surrounding the colonial appropriation of goods. Weighing about 190 carats through its early history, the oval diamond in its present form weighs 105.6 carats, and is 3.6 centimetres long, 3.2 centimetres wide and 1.3 centimetres deep. The diamond’s origin and its history before the seventeenth century are uncertain. According to most modern scholarship, it is thought to have been discovered in the thirteenth century, sifted from alluvial deposits in the Krishna–Godavari river delta in present-day Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in India — the site of the later-established Kollur mines, famous for the Golconda diamonds. This put the stone in the possession of the ruling Kakatiya dynasty until it was, by most accounts, paid as tribute to the Delhi Sultanate when Alauddin Khilji’s forces subjugated the Kakatiyas c.1310. The diamond shifted hands among the various dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate for the next two centuries, including the Khiljis, the Tughlaqs, the Sayyids and the Lodis. When Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi in the Battle of Panipat in 1526, the diamond passed to him, receiving the epithet ‘Diamond of Babur’, and remained with the emperors of the Mughal dynasty for the next two hundred years. Babur’s account in his memoir Baburnama suggests an alternative provenance for the diamond, stating that it had previously been in possession of the king of Gwalior. According to other accounts, it may have been housed in the kingdom of Malwa before it was taken by the Delhi Sultanate. Weighing roughly 190 carats, the Koh-i-noor was at the time one of the largest diamonds in the world. In Hindu mythology and popular imagination, the Koh-i-Noor is considered to have a history dating back millennia. The precious stone Syamantaka described in the Bhagavata and Vishnu Puranas as endowing magical powers on its owners — which included the mythical Surya, Satrajita, Krishna and Jambavan — is sometimes interpreted as the Koh-i-Noor. However, these literary narratives are understood in scholarship to conflate several distinct historical gems. The first verifiable record of the Koh-i-Noor appears in Muhammad Kazim Marvi’s biography of Nader Shah, in which it is described as being embedded in Shah Jahan’s Peacock Throne. In 1628, Shah Jahan commissioned an exceptionally opulent throne as a symbol of his power, featuring the forms of two peacocks. Covered in gold and silver and studded with numerous precious stones including the Koh-i-Noor (then known as the Diamond of Babur), the Akbar Shah Diamond and the Timur Ruby, it served as a symbol of the extravagance, luxury and power that the Mughal empire epitomised at the time. Based on seventeenth-century French jeweller Jean Baptiste Tavernier’s account, it is sometimes theorised that the Koh-i-Noor was cut from the Great Mughal Diamond under Aurangzeb’s rule. However, this theory has generally been discredited in light of recent research. When Afsharid Persian conqueror Nader Shah invaded Delhi in 1739 he brought the Peacock Throne, among many other Mughal treasures, back to Iran — removing, however, the Koh-i-Noor and the Timur Ruby from the throne to wear on an armband. While the throne was later dismantled for the value of its component materials and gems, the armband with the Koh-i-Noor came into the possession of Ahmad Shah Durrani, who succeeded Nader Shah after the latter’s death in 1747, soon establishing and ruling what is present-day Afghanistan. In 1809, one of his successors, Shah Shujah, fled with the diamond after being overthrown, and was captured by the founder of the Sikh empire Ranjit Singh in Lahore, present-day Pakistan. Having refused to part with the diamond initially, he used it to negotiate his release in 1814.  In Ranjit Singh’s possession, the Koh-i-Noor’s reputation grew further as a coveted marker of prestige and dominance. He displayed it on the front of his turban or wore it on his arm at important state events or festivals, as a symbol of the territorial power he had reclaimed from the Iranian and Afghan rulers since their siege of Delhi. At all other times, it was kept fiercely guarded. At Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, his head priest alleged that the king had willed the stone to the Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha. However, his treasurer secured it for the successors to the throne, maintaining that it was state property. While the British imperialists also wished to acquire the diamond, it remained with Ranjit Singh’s successors through a tumultuous period in the Sikh empire. In 1843, his youngest son Duleep Singh ascended to the throne at the age of five. In 1849, the British annexed the princely state of Punjab, forcing the ten-year-old Duleep Singh to sign the Last Treaty of Lahore, which required him to surrender his position and hand over the Koh-i-Noor to Britain’s Queen Victoria. In 1851, the diamond was displayed at the Great Exhibition in London, where it failed to make a positive impression on the public owing to its dull appearance, which was exacerbated by a poor display case. This led the Queen’s consort Prince Edward to have it re-cut to improve its refraction, by Levie Benjamin Voorzanger and his team from the Dutch polishing house Royal Coster. The cutting, which took over a month, was undertaken in 1852 at the premises of the Garrard jewellery house in London, and used a steam-powered mill specially built for the purpose. The previously rose-cut diamond with 169 facets, which had a flat base and high dome, typical in the stones favoured by the Mughals, was shaped in the oval-brilliant cut, with sixty-six facets. Several of its imperfections were identified and removed, reducing its weight by nearly half but vastly improving its refractive ability and brilliance.  As her personal possession, Queen Victoria wore the re-cut diamond in a brooch. After her death, the Koh-i-Noor became property of the British monarchy and was fitted into the crowns of successive queens. Considered unlucky for men by British monarchs in light of its history, the diamond has only adorned the crowns of the highest ranking female members of the British royal family. It was embedded into the crowns of Queen Alexandra in 1901 and Queen Mary in 1911, before being installed into its present position in the coronation crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1937. The Koh-i-Noor was publicly exhibited in 2002 during her funeral, when the crown was placed on her coffin. It has remained in this crown since, and not been returned to the crown of Queen Mary, which was worn by Queen Camilla during the coronation of King Charles III in May 2023. The Queen Mother’s crown with the Koh-i-Noor is now displayed among other crown jewels in the Jewel House at the Tower of London, along with replicas of the diamond in the armband received from Duleep Singh and another exhibit showing its form before the 1852 recutting.  Given the diamond’s fraught provenance, it has been the subject of diplomatic disputes for decades. The Indian government has been requesting its return since the country’s independence in 1947. Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan too have claimed that the Koh-i-Noor is the legitimate property of their respective countries, and repeatedly demanded its repatriation. However, the British government has consistently declined all demands for its return, citing the stone’s complex history, the multiple claims on it and the Last Treaty of Lahore. In contemporary discourse the Koh-i-Noor continues to be associated with colonial imperialism and plunder, while raising open questions on the repatriation of such goods. The controversy surrounding the diamond has dissuaded the British royal family from using it in any ceremonies or events in the last two decades.

Commissioned by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala (r. 1900–1938), the ruby, pearl and diamond choker made by the Paris jewellery house Cartier in 1931 is popularly known as the Patiala Ruby Choker. The Art Deco–inspired choker is one of several ornaments that the French designers created for the ruler of the princely state using his heirloom gems — another prominent example being the Patiala Necklace containing the De Beers yellow diamond. Like the diamond necklace, the choker too disappeared for many decades before its reappearance and eventual restoration by Cartier in Geneva in 2012. Between 1925 and 1930 Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, known for his extravagant tastes, enlisted the house of Cartier to set a large number of gems from his treasury into jewellery that reflected a European design aesthetic. During the Art Deco period, Cartier and other Parisian luxury design houses evolved a dual aesthetic to cater to their clientele, offering a European design sensibility to Indian royalty, and injecting an Indian flavour into certain designs for Western customers. Completed in 1931, the ruby choker represented such a mix of South Asian elements with a European style. Bhupinder Singh gifted it to one of his wives, Maharani Sri Bakhtawar Kaur Sahiba, who is seen wearing it with other Cartier necklaces in some photographs.   The choker contains 292 crimson ruby beads, altogether weighing 356.6 carats. These are strung in six rows in the central section and five rows in two sections on either side, punctuated by four clusters of natural pearls. Of the 132 pearls, a few are also arranged on either end of the choker, adjacent to the clasps, which are studded with six cabochon rubies each. The central section is bookended by six rubies in a floral arrangement and sixty diamonds set in platinum, on either side.  It is unclear when the ruby choker was smuggled away or taken from Patiala’s royal treasury, and its whereabouts remained unknown until it re-emerged in the art market of Switzerland in the year 2000. It had been shortened into a bracelet, with a length of rubies removed. Cartier acquired and restored it to its original form in 2012, before selling it to the ruling Al Thani family of Qatar. As part of the Al Thani collection the choker has travelled widely to be displayed in museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and The Palace Museum in Beijing. In 2019, the choker was auctioned for 975,000 USD at Christie’s in New York as part of the Maharajas & Mughal Magnificence sale. 

Dated to the first century BCE, a pair of large gold earrings speculated to be from present-day Andhra Pradesh is one of the oldest pieces of jewellery found in the Indian subcontinent. Classified as prakaravapra kundala in their form, the spiral earrings constitute the only surviving example of jewellery that is depicted in ancient Indian sculpture. They show highly sophisticated craftsmanship; this, together with their size and weight and the emblematic motifs they contain, indicate that they are likely to have been royal commissions. Made entirely of gold, each earring, about 7.6 centimetres long and 4 centimetres wide, takes the form of a vine-like stem spiralling into a trumpet-shaped bud form at both extremities. The curving stem in the middle is decorated with gold granules in diagonal rows, with small rosettes between them. The surface decoration continues outward, with larger rosettes and petal shapes appearing at the base of the buds, which have a rectangular cross-section and convex end. On each end of the earring, one of the flat faces is adorned with a vase motif lush with fronds and other floral elements symbolising fertility and plenitude, and while otherwise identical, the two earrings show a slight difference in the design of these fronds. The adjacent face shows a saddled and harnessed elephant on one end, and a bejewelled winged lion on the other end. Both the repousse animals are emblems of royalty, and are elaborately decorated, covered entirely with granules and pieces of gold wire and sheets.  The ear ornaments were worn so that they hung vertically with the vase motif facing forward, the lions facing inward and the elephants facing outward. As with many of the ancient ear ornaments depicted in Indian art, these too are likely to have considerably distended the wearer’s earlobes, and possibly rested on their shoulders. Depictions of the Buddha commonly show such earlobes, believed to have been elongated by jewellery during his early life as a prince.  Earrings and other ornamentation of a similar style are seen on men and women in the sculptures of Bharhut and Sanchi. However, these earrings show a particularly striking resemblance to those seen in a first century BCE sculpture of the chakravartin (ideal or universal ruler) on a stupa at Jaggayyapeta in present-day Andhra Pradesh. As most jewellery from the ancient period in India is believed to have been melted down after the death of its wearer — possibly to avoid the passing on of their karma — this extant pair of ornaments is highly significant. Apart from demonstrating the quality and complexity of goldsmithing that existed in ancient India, it provides concrete evidence that the jewellery depicted in sculptures and terracottas of the time did in fact exist. Moreover, they indicate that such jewellery was more than decorative — the earrings’ material worth and the symbols they depict make them markers of royalty and power.  The pair is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as part of the Kronos Collections gifted to the museum in 1981.

Containing a total of 2930 diamonds with the De Beers yellow diamond as its centrepiece, the Patiala Necklace was made in 1928 by the Cartier jewellery house in Paris under commission by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala (r. 1900–1938). The ruler of the princely state, known for his extravagant tastes and penchant for jewellery, enlisted designer Louis Cartier to create a ceremonial necklace out of his heirloom jewels. Considered among the most expensive and elaborate jewellery ever made, it is estimated to have cost around 30 million USD in present currency value. The necklace’s disappearance around 1948 and the subsequent reappearance of its parts have been subjects of speculation and intrigue. The necklace in its current form is Cartier’s reconstruction over the original base with the missing elements painstakingly substituted.   The yellow diamond was discovered in De Beers’s South African mine in 1888, weighing over 400 carats in the raw. At approximately 230 carats after it was cushion-cut, it was the seventh largest polished diamond in the world. The then Maharaja of Patiala bought it after it was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889. Later, it was among the large number of precious stones that Maharaja Bhupinder Singh sent to Cartier in Paris c. 1926, with instructions to create a necklace worthy of his position. Combining South Asian influences with European designs, the necklace comprised five platinum chains in addition to a choker or neck collar. These were entirely encrusted with small diamonds, with seven larger diamonds — each between 18 and 73 carats — as well as some emeralds and Burmese rubies, surrounding the central pendant, which held the De Beers diamond. With a final weight of nearly 1000 carats, the necklace took about three years to complete, and was exhibited in Paris before it was delivered to the Maharaja.  Bhupinder Singh wore it on several occasions before his death in 1938, after which his son Yadavindra Singh inherited it. The necklace remained in Patiala’s royal treasury until 1948, after which it was discovered to be missing. Thought to have been dismantled and smuggled out of the country after the accession of Patiala to the newly independent union of India, its whereabouts remained unknown for over three decades. In 1982, the De Beers diamond appeared at a Sotheby’s auction at Geneva, Switzerland, but its location thereafter remains undisclosed. In 1998, a jewellery expert associated with Cartier discovered the platinum skeleton of the necklace in an antiques shop in London, with all of the larger stones missing. Having acquired this, Cartier London refurbished the necklace using cubic zirconia and synthetic diamonds to replace the missing gems.  The restored necklace is a part of the Cartier archives. It was displayed as part of the Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts exhibition at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco in 2011–2012. In 2022, the diamond choker made a public appearance when American celebrity Emma Chamberlain wore it at the Met Gala held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. On loan from Cartier, the choker attracted heavy publicity and scrutiny, raising questions about the painful history of stolen heritage reaching the West. Such criticism notwithstanding, the movement and provenance of the Patiala Necklace once it left the royal treasury remains unclear.

The process of stamping designs and patterns on base fabrics such as cotton or silk using dye-soaked, hand-carved wooden blocks. The technique is central to a variety of printing traditions across India in which blocks are used to create a range of designs composed of floral and religious motifs, geometric forms, and calligraphy. Some of these block printing traditions include ajrakh, Bagh, Bagru, Sanganeri, saudagiri, mata ni pachedi, namavali, and balotra, as well as the less popular traditions of the Chhimba community in Punjab and the more recent printing practices in Serampore of West Bengal. While several Indian communities practise the craft, the Khatris and Chippas in the country’s northwestern regions are the oldest known communities to have been continuously involved in block printing, since at least the sixteenth century. Although, block printing is believed to have been practised in a rudimentary form as early as the Indus Valley civilization between 3000 BCE and 1200 BCE, direct textual evidence dates the craft of block printing on textiles to the eleventh century in Kerala. The earliest material evidence of these textiles and their international trade came from fragments of cloth from Gujarat found in Egypt and Indonesia dating back to a period between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It has been inferred that these textiles were printed and dyed in blue and red during that time — and some were hand-painted using the technique of kalamkari. Block-printed fabrics had experienced sustained international trade in the western and eastern regions of the Indian Ocean, before the establishment of first Europe-mediated and then European trade between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. The initially indirect trade was routed through the existing Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian markets by commercial officers from Portugal and the Dutch East India Company and French East India Company. The cultivation of a robust European market for Indian printed cloth such as Kalamkari and chintz, proved lucrative by British East India Company, which began to establish trade monopolies from the seventeenth century on. The visual appearance of any block printed textile depends on the quality of the carving on the block, the richness of the dye and the effectiveness of the mordant used with it. While engraved blocks of metal and terracotta are sometimes used, those made from types of wood such as sheesham, sagwan and rohida are often preferred for their texture and ease of carving. Woodblock carving has been traditionally carried out in Gujarat and Rajasthan, each with producing blocks in distinctive styles. While in Gujarat, Pethapur has been the centre of block making, in Rajasthan, it is Jaipur that serves as the primary centre, both serving printing and dyeing clusters in their respective states as well as in Madhya Pradesh. is the primary blocks from Jaipur are best known for their precise cuts, which allow for cleaner printing with a lower risk of smudging. Contemporary block makers still prefer to use hand tools such as chisels to carve the blocks, alongside some mechanised tools such as small drills. Teak is the preferred variety of wood for making blocks, as it remains undamaged even after frequent contact with water and other substances used in the printing process. Air passages known as pavansar are also often drilled into the blocks to prevent them from clinging to the fabric when lifted. A single printed motif may require the use of multiple blocks. For instance, one block can be used to create a rekh of the motif, another can be used to fill it, such as a datta, and a third block, such as gadh, can be used to create the background of the design. This requires both the block maker and printer to be aware of how every block will be used, and how the motifs will fit into the design. karigars also mark the date on each block, in case it needs to be repaired or altered, so that patterns will repeat perfectly when the fabric is printed. Prior to printing, a mordant is typically added to the dye to allow it to stick to the base fabric because many natural dyes do not easily adhere to the cloth. Only a few — such as indigo, which is used in several block printing traditions and was a key product in colonial extraction — do not require the use of mordants. Although natural dyeing and printing was a thriving practice in India until the nineteenth century, karigars eventually began relying almost entirely on inexpensive chemical dyes. The use of such dyes has allowed two types of manual printing techniques to emerge: direct printing and discharge printing. In addition to block printing, karigars also sometimes employ resist-dyeing, which includes techniques such as dabu printing and batik. Block printing, indigo dyeing and resist dyeing are often combined to produce complex, layered and multi-coloured patterns in traditions such as the aforementioned ajrakh, Bagru and Bagh. The block printing technique in each region of the country is distinct, localised in terms of the materials and tools used as well as the cultural influences and social characteristics of particular communities. Traditionally, the raw fabric, motifs, colours and intricacy of block printed garments have served as designators of the wearer’s identity, caste, community, status and occupation. However, with the onset of urbanisation and market-driven mass production, these textiles have been redefined and adapted for contemporary consumption and usage, losing much of their social and symbolic values. Block printing has had a long tradition in Asia, and particularly India, which though having undergone much change to meet varying market demands and technological and lifestyle changes, has mostly remained authentic and uncompromising in aesthetic and technique. Block printed fabrics have in recent years experienced an upsurge in Indian and international markets, leading to more concerted efforts towards the conservation and revitalisation of indigenous block printing traditions. One f the largest repositories of Examples of printed textiles and garments have constituted the collections of museums in India — such as Sanskriti Museum of Indian Textiles, Calico Museum, and the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing.

This block printing technique for textiles derives its name Balotra from the city in the Barmer district of Rajasthan where it is primarily produced. Balotra printed fabrics are characterised by their vertically arranged floral and geometric butis that appear in earthy reds and yellows, as well as cream, over a base that is dyed deep indigo or dark green. These butis are usually large and often printed without the use of a black rekh, or “outline,” resulting in bold and simple designs without the nuances of colour evident in textiles such as ajrakh or Bagru. A unique feature of Balotra printing, considered an extension of ajrakh printing, is that it is done on both sides of the cloth and in quick succession. As with block printing traditions in other parts of Rajasthan, such as — Bagru and Sanganer — the karigars in Balotra belong to the Chhipa community. Oral traditions of the community indicate that woodblock printing has been practised there for many years. After the Partition of India, many Muslim Chippa families migrated to Pakistan, leaving a gap subsequently filled by an influx of Hindu Chippas into Balotra. The waters of the seasonal Luni river and Rajasthan’s hot and dry climate made Balotra well suited to the traditional methods of dyeing and printing that the immigrant and native Chhipas and Khatris had been practising. The preparation and printing of the fabric are similar to that of Bagru, although it is not as laborious or repetitive. The fabric, usually cotton, is first washed and beaten to remove impurities and soften its fibres, and then soaked in water for anywhere between twelve and seventy-two hours. In a process known as saaj, the fabric is treated using a mixture of castor oil, camel or goat dung, and soda ash. While still wet it is soaked in a paste of harda, which lends the cloth a yellow tinge and allows it to develop deeper blacks. Once dry, the designs are transferred to the fabric with wooden blocks in multiple stages: first using direct printing — in which dye is applied to the blocks and pressed onto the fabric — and then using dabu (or dye-resist) printing. The latter of these two processes is more complex as it serves additionally to protect the base colours of the prints from the eventual dye baths. The dabu paste is first made by combining clay, beden, lime and natural gum and fermented for several days. This mixture is then printed onto cloth using wooden blocks, after which it is usually sprinkled with beden to keep up from smudging and to help it dry quickly. Once dry, the fabric is soaked in vats of dye and then thoroughly washed to remove traces of the dabu paste. When dried again, the fabric reveals the dabu printed parts as undyed. A single fabric may be subjected to multiple rounds of dabu printing and dyeing, depending on what the design demands. Direct printing is used for colours such as black, made from a mixture of iron filings, jaggery and natural gum; red, made from natural gum and alum; and grey, khaki and brown, from kashish. Other colours in the palette include indigo-blue, green and a marigold yellow — all created using natural dyes. Balotra print fabric was traditionally used for the attire of women — ghagra (skirt), choli and odhani (a draped cloth) — from various regional communities. Dark-coloured fabrics that mask traces of dirt were used every day as they were better suited to labour, whereas the relatively uncommon lighter variations were reserved for special occasions. The printed cloth also served as social designators, with colours, motifs and patterns being used as differentiators of ethnicity, religion, socio-economic position, occupation and marital status. For example, the phooli, gainda and chameli are motifs worn exclusively by the Mali community. Others such as Rabari ro fatiya and Maliya ro fatiya, named after their respective communities, and the tokriya for the Rabari and gul buta for the Jain communities are all worn by widows. The mato ro fatiya is worn by women who are pre-construction workers, the trifuli is worn by young betrothed girls in Marwar. Motifs derived from names of medicinal and talismanic plants, such as laung and nimboli are worn by married women and by Chaudhary women and Mali widows, respectively. Other motifs such as methi, worn by widows from several communities, and goonda, worn by married Chaudhary women, are based on locally available plants commonly used in cooking. Since the 1990s, traditional Balotra printing has seen a steady decline as local printers have turned to other professions and as the appeal of less-expensive chemical dyes, polyester fabric and screen-printing methods have simultaneously increased. Only a handful of Chippa karigars who use traditional methods to produce authentic Balotra prints remain. These artisans work to supply local communities while also expanding their customer base by adapting traditional designs to decorate household textiles such as floor coverings, bedsheets, pillows and cushion covers.  

A traditional form of block printing locally known as thappa chhapai using natural dyes, Bagh has historically been practised by Khatris in a town of the same name in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh. These prints are characterised by a combination of their colour palette of black, red and white, and their intricate naturalistic and geometric motifs. Other features that distinguish the Bagh printing process from ajrakh, also practised exclusively by the Khatri community, is that the colours desired in the final product are applied directly on the undyed base fabric — instead of through a resist-dyeing process — and that the cloth is printing only on one side. Members of the Khatri community migrated from Sind (now Pakistan) nearly five centuries ago and settled in parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan and eventually Madhya Pradesh. They chose Bagh due to its location on the banks of the copper-rich Baghini river and its proximity to markets. Over time, the Khatris evolved a printing and dyeing technique that utilised local resources and catered to the Adivasi (Bheel and Bheela) and Rajput communities. The distinctive Bagh tradition emerged with the development of improved black and red colours (using iron rust and alum) as well as vegetable dyes and the incorporation of regional influences and visual motifs. The motifs and designs of Bagh prints, also known as alizarin prints, are produced by wooden blocks carved in Pethapur, Gujarat. The repertoire of traditional designs and motifs include chameli , maithir, kairi and jurvaria, which are then set in nariyal, leheriya, tikona and gehwar patterns. Some patterns, such as the jaali, or “trellis,” are said to have been inspired by monuments such as the Taj Mahal. The process of making Bagh prints is laborious and demands great attention to detail. In preparation for printing, the fabric is soaked in water overnight, dried and then dipped in a mixture of goat droppings, sanchiri, castor oil and water. It is then dried, washed, dried again and laid atop low tables in front of a karigar seated on the floor. The karigar’s work begins with printing the outline, followed by filling it in with colours and details. The red and black designs are printed in separate stages, allowing the natural dye to dry before the next layer of the design or colouring is applied. Red dyes are made from Aal (Morinda citrifolia), with alum functioning as a mordant, while black dyes are made by combining iron filings and jaggery. A paste made of tamarind seeds is typically used as a binding agent. Once dried for ten days, the fabric is taken to the river, where it is washed and beaten against rocks to soften it and remove excess dye — a process known as vichaliya — after which it is laid out to dry on the banks. The dye is then fixed and the reds are deepened by boiling the cloth for a couple of hours in a solution of alizarin and local dhawda flowers. In a final step, the fabric is washed once again in large tanks known as haudis and then laid out to dry. Threatened to the point of extinction by the advent of synthetics and rapidly changing lifestyles, Bagh printing was kept alive and subsequently contemporised by the efforts of a few prominent Khatri families. An award-winning duo, the late Ismail Suleiman Khatri, and his wife Hajjani Jetun Bi, are master karigars who have been credited with keeping the printing tradition alive in Bagh. Their five sons are all acclaimed karigars who continue to practise and popularise the craft, adapting their designs to suit contemporary aesthetic sensibilities. Among them, Mohammed Yusuf Khatri is prominent for his role in preserving the craft and improving the local economy by training the local non-Khatri artisans in Bagh block-carving and printing, and by expanding the design repertoire and introducing them to a larger market in the form of sarees, stoles and home linen. The next generation of Khatris have carried on this work, extending training and experimenting with materials such as reed mats to ensure the relevance and sustainability of this block-printing tradition. In 2008, Bagh prints from Madhya Pradesh received Geographical Indication (GI) status from the Government of India for their territory-specific production and characteristics.

A textile block printing technique that features repeated floral buti arranged in various patterns. Commonly seen butas in Bagru prints include gainda, gulab, badaam, kamal and bel. These motifs appear in varying sizes and combinations throughout the cloth on which they are printed. Other designs feature smaller jaali patterns, also composed of floral motifs. Bagru prints employ natural dyes, most frequently black, derived from a mixture of iron filings and jaggery and gum; red, from a mixture of madder and alum; and grey, khaki and brown, derived from kashish. Other colours in the palette include indigo, green and yellow. Named after the city in Rajasthan where it originated, the technique is primarily practised by the Chippa community in Bagru, Rajasthan. The city’s proximity to the Sanjariya river was ideal for the repeated washes required by the technique. Bagru’s clay-rich soil is also an essential element in the printing process, and the area’s warm climate allows fabrics to dry easily. Bagru printing involves multiple stages of washing, drying, printing and dyeing. The fabric, usually cotton, is first washed and beaten to remove impurities and soften the fibres, then soaked in water for twelve to seventy-two hours. The fabric is then treated using a mixture of castor oil, camel or goat dung and soda ash in a process known as saaj. The still-wet fabric is then soaked in a paste of harda, which lends the cloth a yellow tinge. The harda allows the fabric to develop deeper blacks. The fabric is then dried, after which the designs are transferred to the fabric using wooden blocks in multiple stages: first using direct printing — in which dye is applied to the blocks and pressed onto the fabric — then using dabu printing. A single fabric may be subjected to multiple rounds of dabu and dyeing according to the demands of the design. As with other block printing traditions such as Bagh and ajrakh, karigars print the outline before progressing to the filler colours and other finer details of the designs. Usually, a set of three hand-carved blocks are used to create each floral motif — a rekh block, a background colour block called gadh and a colour-detailing block called datta. The blocks are carved out of sheesham wood, with the process of carving and seasoning each block set taking about a week. In the past, chippas were printed on coarse, hardy reja cotton for local peasant and pastoral communities for garments such as ghagras, odhnis, sarees and pagdis. Bagru prints were also used for household products such as angocha, bedspreads, cushion covers and razai. Differing stylisations and combinations of the motifs and colours were developed for each community that wore the prints, allowing traders, farmers and artisans to be identified on the basis of the patterns on their clothes. The original patrons of Bagru prints included Rajputs as well as local communities. Over the last few centuries, the prints have been produced for local consumption, while other floral printed fabrics, such as chintz, have been heavily traded and appropriated in the West. Today, there are about fifty to sixty blockprinting workshops in Bagru, with a community of over five thousand workers. Both women and men participate in the printing process. To cater to contemporary markets, printers use fine fabrics that aren’t limited to cotton. While most of these workshops produce woodblock-printed cloth, some have now employed the screen-printing method, which is less laborious. Many karigars also use chemical dyes.  

A textile block printing technique created by resist dyeing. The term also refers to the resulting fabric, usually cotton, which features floral and geometric motifs printed in darker colours such as indigo and red. While the etymology of the word ajrakh is contested, the Arabic origin of the word — from azraq, meaning “blue” or “indigo” — is the most commonly accepted. It is also believed to derive from the Hindi aaj rakh, meaning “keep for today”. Ajrakh production can be traced back to the Indus Valley civilisation, between 2500-1500 BCE. The bust of the Priest King of Mohenjo Daro depicts him wrapped in a shawl with trefoil motifs, similar to the kakar or cloud motif seen in ajrakh prints. Numerous textile fragments dating from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries CE have been discovered at Al Fustat in Cairo, Egypt, and are considered to be the earliest known examples of printed textiles. The fragments, printed with small blocks and dyed using indigo and madder, bear a striking resemblance to ajrakh. The technique has been practised by members of the Khatri community, who migrated from Sindh in Pakistan to Kutch in Gujarat and Marwar in Rajasthan in the sixteenth century, settling in places that had access to flowing water, which is essential to the ajrakh process. Several karigars (craftspeople) relocated to Ajrakhpur in Gujarat following the 2001 earthquake. The process of creating ajrakh textiles has evolved significantly, from resist-patterning on one side of the cloth to two-sided resist-printed cloth. The printing blocks are often carved in pairs, thus registering an exact inverted image on the other side of the cloth. The production process for ajrakh is notably laborious. The fabric is first washed, beaten and rinsed to soften it and remove impurities. In a process known as saaj, the fabric is treated with a mixture of castor oil, camel or goat dung and soda ash. It is then dried and smoothened to ensure accuracy in the printing process. In the subsequent step, called kasanu, the fabric is dyed using harda, which lends it a yellow tinge. After it dries, the fabric is laid on low printing tables, where a karigar prints a rekh using a mixture of lime and natural gum, which acts as a resist. If the cloth is to be printed on both sides, the rekh is applied on the reverse side as well. The lines printed are resistant to alizarin as well as indigo, showing up as white in the finished product. In the next step, kut, a dye made of iron, jaggery, assorted millets and tamarind, is used to print another set of lines within and over the initial rekh. These lines oxidise when exposed to air and the harda and develop a black colour. Next, a dye that uses alum as a mordant is used to fill in the red details. A paste called pa, made using clay, millet flour and dhawda gum, is applied over these filled-in details to make them resistant to indigo dyeing. Dry cow dung powder is then sprinkled over the wet pa to prevent the resist from spreading. Once the printed lines have dried, the cloth is ready for dyeing. It is dipped in large vats containing a mixture of indigo, lime, jaggery and mustard seeds. The dyed cloth emerges a bright green that slowly turns blue once the dye oxidises. Various natural dyes may be added to the fabric before this stage. The cloth is then repeatedly washed and dried. Following this, the fabric is dyed red by soaking it in a solution of alizarin, natural gum, dhawda flowers and madder, and stirred continuously. It is then dried and washed, and the resultant cloth is considered a simple ajrakh. It is possible to carry out multiple rounds of resist printing and indigo dyeing to give the fabric added detail and dimension. This more intricate form of ajrakh is known as minakari, named after the detailed enamel jewellery tradition. The blocks used in ajrakh are often carved out of sheesham, rohida or sagwan wood, with cosmic and naturalistic motifs. Some blocks are carved in pairs, allowing traditional master karigars (meaning “artisans” in Hindi) to print fabrics identically on both sides with extreme precision. Traditionally, the Khatris have carved the blocks themselves, although this is now in decline, with blocks being carved in Ahmedabad or Farrukhabad in Gujarat. Ajrakh fabrics were primarily worn only by pastoralist men of Gujarat, Rajasthan and the Sindh regions, typically as a lungi, fainta or gamcha. However, its use is not restricted to special occasions, but functions as a versatile fabric for everyday needs: it is often wrapped as a turban or shawl, and is used to create women’s garments including odhnis and skirts or used as a bedsheet or tablecloth. After extensive use, the fabric softens and can be used to swathe babies, make hammocks and used as patchwork to create quilts called rillis. Today, commercially produced, cheaper versions of ajrakh are screen-printed in parts of Rajasthan. One of the current most prominent master karigars of the technique is Dr. Ismail Mohammad Khatri, who — along with his sons, grandsons and the larger Khatri community — continues to print the fabric in the traditional manner, using only natural dyes.  

A form of kalamkari from southern India, where designs are printed, instead of being drawn using a kalam (pen) are known as Machilipatnam block prints. These prints are presently limited to the town of Pedana, near Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh. As a trade textile it was known by several names: chintz by the English, sitz by the Dutch and pintado by the Portuguese. Locally, it is also known as addakam (dyeing) and Pedana kalamkari. The blocks are traditionally carved out of teakwood. The dyes are procured from minerals, leaves, flowers and barks of local trees. The colour red, a distinct presence in kalamkari, is made from a solution of alum and tamarind seed powder; the colour black comes from iron ore; violet is derived from indigo; and shades of yellow, such as mustard and lemon, are derived from varying mixes of turmeric and harad (myrobalan). The fabric is soaked in water for three days to remove starch from it. It is treated with buffalo’s milk and harad, then rinsed and dried for the first stage of printing. The edges of the carved block are pressed onto the cloth, beginning first with outlines and then filling in colour. If the design is supposed to be polychromatic, the red and black portions are printed first, after which the fabric is rinsed and dried to be prepared for a second round of printing. Once printing is finished, the fabric is boiled in a bath with dyes, creating varying combinations of colour. The fabric is rinsed and dried and after another stage of printing with natural dyes the cycle of rinsing and drying is repeated. In the Machilipatnam style, the outline drawing is carved on wooden blocks which are then used to print on fabrics. Unlike handpainted kalamkari, which was a smaller setup concentrated as an inter-generational craft, Machilipatnam print production is carried out in karkhanas (commercial workshops) where block making, washing and printing takes place simultaneously. Srikalahasti, the major centre where kalamkari developed, provided patronage to it through religious functions. Machilipatnam, on the other hand, was an important port city from the medieval period and a bustling trade centre. Due to the textile trade and varying influences of Persian, Arab and European traders, the motifs and designs of Machilipatnam block printed fabric were cross-cultural. Textiles were mass-produced in the karkhanas for trade, leading to a prioritisation of decorative function over the narrative function as was done in Srikalahasti kalamkari. Common patterns include geometric formation, floral patterns, twining creepers, animal figures and ornamental arches and niches. During British rule, Machilipatnam block printing was used to produce textiles for garments as well as for furnishing. While locally it was used for prayer mats, tents and canopies, the European market used it for clothing and bedspreads that were known as palampores. Presently, the craft faces difficult competition from techniques of mechanical printing and digital design. One of the few remaining craftspeople, Pitchuka Srinivas has established a small kalamkari museum for the tradition in the town. The production of kalamkari has been extended to markets of home linens, garments as well as souvenirs and it enjoys a great popularity in the west, where it is routinely exported. Pedana kalamkari received a Geographical Indications (GI) tag in 2013.  

A deep red natural dye produced from the roots of the aal tree (Morinda citrifolia or Indian mulberry), aal dye is predominantly used by the Panika community of Bastar, Chhattisgarh and Kotpad, Odisha to dye textiles worn by the Panika, Gond, Muria and Maria communities of the region. There is some evidence that the use of aal dye was widespread historically and that it was once exported to the Mediterranean region; textile fragments containing the dye, dating to the first millennium BCE, having been discovered on the shores of the Red Sea. However, textiles using this dye have not been sold on the general market in recent history. The traditional method of preparing the dye begins with gathering the roots of an aal tree that is between three and four years old, since the roots of older trees lose their pigment. The thin roots are selected, dried, ground into powder at a mill and added to a vat of boiling water to prepare the dyebath. Prior to this, the yarns are prepared for dyeing over nearly two weeks by rinsing and repeatedly dipping them in pots of water mixed with castor oil, after which they are covered in liquefied cow dung, wrung and dried. Wood ash sourced from household kitchens is mixed with water and left to settle overnight, after which the water is separated out. The yarns are then dipped in the ash water and wrung multiple times a day until they froth from the process, indicating that they are ready to be dyed. The alumina dissolved in the water from contact with the ash helps the yarn gain a deep, rich red during the dyeing process. Once the yarns are dry, they are added to the boiling dyebath and stirred continuously until the water evaporates, then dried and dyed again for two or three cycles. In cases where a deep brown colour is desired, iron sulphate is mixed into the dyebath on the third cycle. The resultant colour of the yarns is resistant to washing, light and heat. The roots are harvested and sold to the Panika community by the Parja, Gadva and Muria communities. The women of the community begin dyeing cotton yarn from a young age, and the men weave the yarn into their traditional clothing. Yarns dyed in aal dye are used to make headcloths for men and sarees for women. The dye is known to have a cooling effect, providing some relief to wearers who work extensively in the sun. While aal dye continues to be used today, the level of dye production has drastically reduced owing to the commercial availability of synthetic red and brown dyes as well as finished cotton fabric. The Kotpad Weavers Cooperative Society, founded in 1956, lobbies for government aid on behalf of the dyers and weavers and aids in creating a contemporary market for these goods.

A natural dye extracted from the Indigofera tinctoria plant native to South Asia, indigo dye is known for its deep blue colour and high potency compared to other blue dyes. Due to the rarity of usable blue pigments in nature, indigo has historically been a prized good, used in the Indian subcontinent for dying textiles for local use as well as for international trade. It played a major role in global economy through the medieval and colonial periods, until it was largely replaced in the late nineteenth century by a synthetic version of the dye. Indigo dye is typically produced in powder or cake form and sold either in this form or as a liquid suspension. Apart from India, indigo has historically been grown and used in Southeast Asia, West Africa and the Caribbean. Indigo dye is extracted from the small, green leaves of the Indigofera plant. Leaves are harvested before the flowers of the plant bloom and then soaked in water and churned until they release a navy blue froth. The upper portion of the mixture is drained out and used for irrigation, while the leaves are reused as fertiliser. The water and fine sediment at the bottom of the tank are allowed to settle for a day, after which the liquid is separated from the sediment. This deep blue paste is filtered for dirt and other impurities, pressed into cakes and dried for a few days, after which the indigo is ready to be used as a dye. The extraction process may be augmented with the addition of lime (Ca(OH)₂) to the first mixture of water and leaves and by dissolving various natural sugars into the paste. Indigo powder is insoluble in water, acidic or alkaline solutions. The conventional dyeing method is to add a reducing agent such as zinc or ammonia to the hot dye bath in order to make indigo soluble — a state known as “white indigo” — before the cloth is dipped into it. The dye bonds to the cloth in this altered state and returns to its deep blue shade after the cloth has been exposed to air and dried. This method was typically used for dyeing whole sheets of fabric and was the prevalent method of using indigo in pre-colonial India. Fragments of fourteenth-century block-printed cloth from Gujarat found in Fustat, Egypt, as well as some later examples from the eighteenth century show that indigo was sometimes used for printing, although the method is unclear. The earliest material evidence of indigo dye are traces found in textiles preserved in Egyptian tombs dating to the late Bronze Age. The earliest literary mention occurs in the Atharvaveda at the start of the first millennium BCE. It appears later in Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a navigational text from the first century CE. A detailed description of the dye-making process was recorded around the same time by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, suggesting that indigo-dyed textiles were being traded across the Indian subcontinent, West Asia and around the Mediterranean sea. The indigo trade flourished further after the consolidation of the Abbasid Caliphate in West Asia in the eighth century CE and the resulting growth in Indian Ocean commerce. The genizah documents — a set of over four hundred thousand papers found in Fustat, Egypt, containing commercial and administrative records from the ninth to nineteenth centuries — suggest a thriving indigo trade in the early medieval period. The documents even used the Sanskrit word for indigo, nili, as a suffix for the names of some Arab merchants who traded the dye. Sanjan, a port in Gujarat that exported indigo, was a key junction in early medieval trade networks. By the late medieval period, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aleppo, Syria and Jeddah had also emerged as major nodes, distributing indigo to Central Asia and Persia, Ottoman Turkey and the eastern African coast, respectively. French and British involvement in the trade took place in the Levant, where indigo prices were set for Mediterranean markets and, by extension, the rest of Europe. Despite being a very expensive dye, indigo frequently out-competed local European dyes such as woad due to its potency and fastness, leading to it being banned at various times between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in France, Norway and Britain. For most of the medieval period, parts of present-day Gujarat, Rajasthan and coastal Pakistan produced the bulk of indigo from the subcontinent. From the sixteenth century onwards, mercantile ventures by the Portuguese Estado da India and the British and Dutch East India Companies traded indigo from these regions. Production later shifted to Bengal as the British East India Company emerged as a ruling power in the region. British policies in Bengal, such as the Tinkathia system, made it mandatory for landowners to grow indigo in at least three kathas (a unit of land measurement) in each bigha (1 bigha = 20 kathas) of their land. These landowners (or indigo planters, as they were then known) enlisted the services of agricultural workers who were often made to cultivate Indigofera instead of food crops. While indigo planters and British traders made considerable profits by exporting indigo to Europe and Britain, workers were compensated poorly and forced into debt, sometimes even starvation. Indigo plantations were also set up in other colonies using similar policies, particularly the West Indies. During the Indigo Revolt of 1859, farmers from Chaugacha and other parts of Bengal staged a violent uprising against planters and zamindars. The human toll of indigo cultivation, especially in Bengal, has since been remembered as a symbol of colonial exploitation. In the late nineteenth century, Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (BASF), a chemical factory in Germany, developed and began the mass production of synthetic indigo. By 1914, natural indigo comprised only four percent of the global indigo usage, and despite minor revivals, it continues to have a niche presence today. The vast majority of indigo is now synthetic and is used for dyeing denim, although some natural indigo continues to be produced in south India, particularly Karnataka. More recently, freeze-dried indigo in its crystalline reduced state has become commercially available, shortening the dyeing process considerably due to its solubility in water. In addition to being used as a dye, indigo can be made to react with sulphuric acid to form a salt that is used as a colourant for food and pharmaceutical products.

A natural red colourant, chay root dye is derived from the chay plant (Oldenlandia umbellata), which is native to parts of Bengal; Puri, Odisha; Golconda, Telangana; the banks of the Krishna delta in Andhra Pradesh; and northern Sri Lanka. The dye was used from at least the seventeenth century onwards primarily in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu on kalamkari and chintz cloth. Historical evidence of chay cultivation and dyeing is available only from the seventeenth century onwards, predominantly in the form of European travellers’ accounts that reveal attempts to gain information on Indian methods of extracting and applying the dye for use in their home countries. Chay root was extensively cultivated in Sri Lanka under Dutch and British colonial rule, where members of the non-dominant Verkuthi caste harvested the roots under bonded labour arrangements. The bark of the chay root contains alizarin, which produces the dye’s red colour. The root is boiled in water with an alkali, which extracts the alizarin from the bark and turns the solution red. The cloth to be dyed is painted with a mordant solution, usually alum, according to the planned design. After soaking it in the dyebath, the cloth is removed and the excess dye rinsed off, after which only the areas with the mordant retain the red colour. If the design involves dyes that do not need a mordant, such as indigo, an additional wax-resist step is included. Chay and other natural dyes were quickly replaced by their synthetic counterparts with the invention of aniline dyes in the late nineteenth century. Today, although natural dyes are undergoing a minor revival, synthetic dyes continue to hold the vast majority of the global market.

A water-soluble colourant, lac dye is usually red to burgundy in colour and is extracted from a resin produced by the insects Kerria lacca and Laccifer lacca. Lac dye is used for dyeing wool, silk, and colouring food. The word “lac” derives from the Sanskrit laksha, meaning “100,000”, referring to the large number of insects typically needed for making the resin, dye and their byproducts. Lac was known in the subcontinent from at least the first millennium BCE. It is mentioned in three texts from the period: the Atharvaveda, the Astadhyayi of Panini, and the Mahabharata, where the Pandavas are almost killed in a flammable building made of lac resin and ghee. A dye recipe for lac is found in the Nayadhamma Kaha, a fifth century CE Jain text. Lac dye has been used in woolen Persian carpets since the eighth century, and was introduced to Europe in the late sixteenth century through Portuguese agents in India. Lac insects have a parasitic relationship with trees such as the Indian jujube (Ziziphus Mauritiana), kusum (Schleichera oleosa) and palash (Butea monosperma). The insects infest the trees by piercing the bark and drawing nutrients from the interior. The resin secreted by the insects can be processed into shellac. This can be shaped into jewellery or used to finish wooden surfaces, which is why lacquer was originally made with lac. Lac insects are cultivated by tying an already infested branch or twig to a tree, and periodically harvesting these as the colony expands across the tree. Today, lac is cultivated primarily in the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal, often by adivasi populations in forested areas. Lac dye gets its red colour from the laccaic acid present in the hemolymph or body fluid of the lac insect. It is obtained by separating the insects from the branch and the resin, crushing them and dissolving the result in an alkaline solution. This solution is then acidified and treated with chalk, which reforms the dissolved dye as a sediment. The sediment is allowed to settle for a week. The resultant crystallised form of lac dye is then strained out and added to a hot dyebath while still damp. A mordant, ideally tin chloride, and the fabric to be dyed are added to the bath and allowed to sit for an hour as it simmers. After the colour has reached a sufficiently deep shade, the cloth is removed, rinsed and allowed to dry. Until the invention of synthetic aniline-based dyes in the late nineteenth century, lac dye was the primary product of lac cultivation in India. It continues to be used in a minor capacity for handicraft textiles, and more commonly as a natural food colourant.

A natural red colorant extracted from the roots of the Indian madder or manjistha (Rubia cordifolia) and common madder (Rubia tinctorum), madder dye is known for its vibrancy and fastness. Indian madder is a cultivated species of madder that contains high amounts of alizarin, which is the main compound responsible for producing red in most natural dyes. Common madder is native to West Asia and the Mediterranean region and has been grown and used as a dye across Asia for centuries. The widespread habitat of madder plants as well as the long history of the trade of Indian cotton cloth has resulted in multiple varieties of madder being cultivated and used throughout Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Mediterranean coast and northern Africa. Madder has been used across the Indian subcontinent since the second millennium BCE, with traces of the dye found in cloth from Mohenjo-daro. The dye was also found on textiles discovered in the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutenkhamun, dating to the fourteenth century BCE. Chintz, kalamkari and other Indian textiles coloured with madder were extremely popular in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Madder dye began to be directly exported to Europe after cotton cloth began to be produced in the West. Textiles dyed, painted and block-printed with madder as well as other red dyes, such as those derived from lac, Indian mulberry and safflower, were also regularly exported to eastern Africa, West Asia and Southeast Asia from the first millennium CE onwards. The roots of the madder plant are gathered when it is between two and five years old. They are then cleaned and crushed into powder or small fibres. In pre-industrial India, soft water was first heated without bringing it to a boil before adding the cloth and salt- or oil-based mordants, preferably alum, to the water. The cloth was then allowed to sit in this solution as it cooled, before being removed and wrung. A dyebath was then prepared by wrapping the crushed madder in cotton cloth and placing it in a separate vat of water, followed by the mordanted cloth. Since alizarin has low solubility in water, this method allowed the red colour to disperse through the water slowly, so that the bath was evenly coloured and the cloth dyed uniformly. The dyebath could be reused to obtain lighter shades of red or pink. Madder dye was replaced by synthetic dyes by the late nineteenth century. Today, the dye is used to a small extent in traditional textile craft.

A bright yellow natural dye derived from the turmeric plant (Curcuma longa) native to South and Southeast Asia, turmeric roots are used for dyeing, painting, home remedies and cooking. The turmeric plant, known as haldi in most Indo-Aryan languages, may have arrived in South Asia during the early historic period, either through a land route from China or the sea route from Vietnam, then cultivated through selective cross-breeding with wild varieties such as Curcuma aromatica. While India has been the main producer and consumer of turmeric for centuries, the root is also used in the cuisine and traditional medicine of China, West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Firm roots are preferred while harvesting turmeric. Like all natural yellow dyes, turmeric is not durable and fades after several washes and prolonged exposure to light. Despite this, it was widely used as a dye due to its vibrancy and affordability. Cloth to be dyed is usually soaked in a solution of hot water, powdered turmeric root, baking soda and lime juice until it turns a strong shade of yellow. When dyeing calico cloth, pomegranate rind and alum are added to brighten the yellow colour and extend its life. Turmeric is also used on wool and silk, often combined with various mordants to produce different colours, such as tin mordant, potassium dichromate and ferrous sulphate to produce orange, olive green and brown, respectively. Dyed blue or red cloth is also overdyed with turmeric to obtain shades of green or orange. However, since turmeric is a fugitive dye, the yellow component of the colour eventually fades, leaving the cloth a light blue or pink. Today, turmeric continues to be used as a spice and a natural food colourant across the world, but its use as a textile dye has dwindled considerably due to the increased availability of synthetic alternatives.

Part of the costuming of Theyyam performers in Kerala, Theyyam masks combine face painting and masks to represent deities during performances.  Once the performer’s face and body are painted in preparation for the performance, they wear the masks and headgear in accordance with the deity being invoked; for instance, the mask for Gulikan, a local form of the Hindu god Shiva, features a trident on the forehead and a monumental headdress. Another important deity, the goddess Edalavuratha Chamundi, is depicted using masks made of wood, painted showing a tongue sticking out of the mouth. The masks are usually made of areca palm wood, decorated with palm leaves and painted with bright colours, mainly orange, white, yellow and red. Black is used to highlight the eyes. Strong contrasts are used in the colour schemes to suggest the deities’ forceful personalities.

Also known as mukha (face), Bhaona masks are primarily made of bamboo and wood and used in the Sattriya performative tradition of Bhaona in Assam. Representing different characters from the performative repertoire, the masks are intrinsic to the larger Sattriya tradition and considered essential for expressing rasa and bhava (emotion).  According to the Sattriya tradition, the first khanikar (mask maker) was social and cultural reformer Sankardev, who laid down the process of making traditional bamboo masks. He is said to have incorporated masks in his debut play Cinhayatra in the mid fifteenth century. However, there is evidence of wooden masks and masks made from sholapith (Indian tree-cork, Aeschynomene aspera) in the region that predate the use of bamboo. Today, mask-makers in regions such as Majuli, Assam, prepare different kinds of masks from bamboo, cane wood, fabric and earthen materials such as potter’s clay, cow dung, jute, cotton fibre, paper and natural colours, depending on the intended performative tradition.  To make the masks, a hexagonal base frame is first constructed using bamboo or sholapith, after which thin strips of cotton cloth coated with clay are plastered on the frame to form a base layer. This layer is then coated with a mixture of clay and cow dung, after which the mask is left to dry out in the sun. After the mask dries, traditionally, natural colours derived from flowers, leaves and tree bark are used to fill in details such as moustaches, eyes, eyebrows, lips and marks on the forehead. These have been replaced by the use of artificial colours. Ornamental details such as crowns, hair and jewellery are also added at this stage. Hengul (vermillion) is usually used for red, hiatal (arsenic) for yellow, dhawalmati (white clay) for white and smoke ash collected from kerosene lamps to make black. A variation on the bamboo mask is the xaasor mukha, which is made using a base frame (xaas) coated with multiple layers of cotton cloth dipped in a gum mixture of wheat, seeds from the kendu tree (Diospyros melanoxylon or Indian ebony) and hawthorn. Although it deviates from the traditional process of bamboo mask making, the xaasor mukha is lighter and more cost-effective, since the same frame can be used to make multiple masks.   Bhaona masks may feature human and animalistic elements and can be divided into two types based on the character they represent — loukik (wordly) masks, with human and animal features, and aloukik (otherworldly) masks, which depict supernatural creatures and feature exaggerated form and design. Masks are also categorised by their different sizes. Mukh or mur mukha are masks that cover only the face of the performer and are generally used for characters such as Maricha, Subahu and Surpanakha. Contrarily, bor or su mukha masks cover the entire body and are generally used for characters with supernatural or majestic characteristics, such as Ravana, Kumbhakarna, Narasimha and Narakasura. The masks are made of bamboo and are typically around 8–10 feet tall. The masks for the face and body are prepared separately and assembled during the performance. Lutukai or Suti Su mukha, used primarily during the Rasa festival, are similar to bor mukha masks, except that the head of the mask is separate from the body, allowing for comparatively easier movement; characters such as Taraka, Trishira and Shankhasur are generally portrayed wearing these masks.  Mask-making is an essential part of the Sattriya culture in Assam. However, the tradition has undergone a decline and are now infrequently included in performances. Today, bhaona masks are regularly made in the upper regions of Assam, in regions such as Jorhat, Majuli and Sivasagar.

Large, colourful masks of clay and wood, chhau masks are used for chhau performances in the states of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha. There are three major styles of chhau: Mayurbhanj, Seraikela, and Purulia. Each has a differing approach to the use of facial covering. Mayurbhanj chhau used masks till as late as the nineteenth century, but now only uses paint, make-up and costumes, allowing its performers considerable freedom of movement. In contrast, masks are an essential feature of Purulia and Seraikela chhau. Seraikela chhau, in particular, includes subtle neck movements in its repertoire in order to animate the performers’ masked faces. Chhau masks can sometimes be very large and elaborately decorated, contributing to the arrangement of the scene and its impact on the audience. While Seraikela chhau is performed traditionally under the patronage of the indigenous royal family and the dancers are from the Kshatriya (warrior) caste, Mayurbhanj and Purulia chhau are performed by members of the Scheduled Castes. Seraikela and Purulia chhau masks are made with similar construction methods. Clay is layered onto a base of cane or wood to create a mould. When it dries, it is detached from the base and covered with papier mache, followed by another layer of clay. Cotton fabric strips are used to reinforce the structure. As it dries over the course of three days, jute and acrylic wool are used to add details such as facial hair. Additional decorations and paint are applied afterwards. Older masks may be polished to impart a sheen before a performance. Purulia chhau masks cover the entire face, reaching over the top of the head until the base of the skull. Halos of wire, decorated with colored beads and sequins to signify deities, demons, or forest animals, are added around the top. Characters depicted by these masks include the goddess Durga and the demon Mahishasura as well as figures from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana like Arjuna and Lakshmana, usually shown with pink faces and black moustaches.Rama is depicted with a green mask, while a blue mask is used for Krishna. A mask for the half-man, half-lion deity Narasimha usually has a mane and large, wild eyes; an elephant mask is used for Ganesha; Shiva’s mask features serpents and ropey, matted hair; his son Skanda, traditionally believed to be handsome, is given a pink visage. In comparison to Purulia chhau, Seraikela chau relies extensively on masks which subtly represent essential attributes of the character being portrayed. For example, Ratri (Night) is depicted with her eyes half-closed, while the Hamsa (Swan) wears a long beak. They are usually made from the dark clay found in and near the Kharkhai river, which flows through the region. Seraikela chhau masks are light but cover the whole face of the performer, with small slits for the eyes and nostrils which make it difficult to see or breathe properly. Chhau mask makers have adapted according to the changing demands of performance as well as new consumers such as art collectors. More recently, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have also begun making safety masks for general use, basing their designs on chhau masks.  

Worn by practitioners of the cham dance in Bhutan, Nepal and India, cham masks are symbolic and ritualistic objects in Vajrayana Buddhism. These masks are believed to embody wrathful, protective deities and inspire fear and terror in the hearts of evil forces. These deities are also believed to remove obstacles in the path to enlightenment, and thus the masks are held to provide calm and tranquillity to the devotee and free them from the delusions of the material world. In the early twentieth century, European anthropologists termed these masks “devil masks” and used “devil dance” to refer to the cham performance. Both cham masks and the cham dance are associated with legends of the Tibetan guru Padmasambhava. Though there is some evidence of masks being used in ritual dances in Tibet from the seventh century CE, the masks used in cham today are believed to have been revealed to a guru in a dream by Padmasambhava in the thirteenth century CE. Some cham masks have been preserved in monasteries over generations and have become venerated in their own right, attracting pilgrims and worshippers to witness them being used in performances. Masks are also used for the non-ritualistic Yungdrung Shon Dance, which generally takes place as part of cham festivals today. Cham masks are made according to precise instructions from a variety of Buddhist scriptures and may have various regional variations. One manufacturing method involves preparing a clay mould and applying several layers of cloth to it using a mixture of glue and dry soil. They are then left to dry in the sunlight. When the glue has dried, the clay mould is removed and the surface of the mask is painted or decorated as required. Papier-mâché, metal and cotton strips may also be used to make the masks, especially in the case of animal masks, like those representing the Tibetan snow lion. Some masks may have marks around the mouth signifying leftover food or saliva, or the remnants of gorging on flesh, blood and intestines. Others, such as the shin yong (“protectors of the grave” in Tibetan) may consist of an elaborately decorated representation of a skull. The faces of wrathful deities such as Chogyel Yum, associated with Chamunda, may be surmounted by diadems featuring up to five human skulls. Each represents a negative affliction such as ignorance, jealousy, pride, attachment and anger, which are believed to be transformed by the dance into the positive virtues of wisdom, accomplishment, commonality, appreciation and understanding. Cham masks are usually very heavy and large, making it difficult to see through them or wear them for long periods of time. Due to their weight and sharp edges, dancers wear padded caps or folded towels covering the forehead or the sides of the face in order to prevent chafing and cuts. The masks are deeply associated with the philosophy of Vajrayana Buddhism. Tibetan scholars have suggested that they have layers of meaning: they may symbolise supernatural forces that are present both within the self and in the external world; the masks may refer to the illusory nature of the self; and their terrifying visages may be an allusion to the nature of the material world that masks the ultimate reality. The symbolism of these masks has also led the cham dance to be called the mystery play, the secret dance or the magic dance. Many traditional construction methods for cham masks are preserved only in oral histories today, owing to the destruction of texts during the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the twentieth century. In addition to South Asia, some historic cham masks are preserved in monasteries as far away as Mongolia.  

Colourful masks used in open-air performances in the coastal parts of Karnataka and northern Kerala, bayalata masks generally cover the wearer’s entire face and can be used with makeup and elaborate headgear. They feature in all forms of open-air performances, including yakshagana. For the Badagatettu Bayalata performances, three masks are usually employed: the head of the ashvamedha (sacrificial) horse; the mask for Nandi, who is the vahana or mount of Shiva; and the face of a spirit. Characters for bayalata masks are derived from the Puranas and other Hindu mythological sources like the Mahabharata. Another mask that is commonly used is the Narasimha mask. Bayalata performances featuring these masks continue to be held across the southwest coast of India, and more generally across the state of Karnataka.

Painted facial makeup and masks, therukoothu masks are used for therukoothu performances. The makeup for therukoothu performers is related to traditions of icon production, sacred mask making and face painting in the state. Each character's makeup has a basic colour upon which are drawn conventional motifs such as the kiruta (facial hair extending from the sideburns to the chin), which can be easily recognised by the audience. Actors wear partial face masks as well as the makeup, golden shoulder plates, bright skirts, headgear and crowns. Wooden ornaments are used, along with small mirrors for masks. Therukoothu costumes, colours and motifs signify forces of good and evil as well as characters’ virtues and flaws. Red face paint, for instance, is frequently used in the Mahabharata cycle. Green is associated with heroism, beneficence, morality, strength and power and is used for characters like Arjuna and Bhima. Villains’ faces are covered with black and white three-dimensional dots. Demonic characters such as Hirayam and Vallakaran usually have white fangs extending from their mouths. Various intermediate shades are also used, depicting subtle differences in personality between characters. Mal (a curved line extending from ear to ear) is used to accentuate the eyes. The makeup session generally takes the form of a ritual. An offering is made to a lighted lamp before the makeup begins. A figure of Ganesha is fashioned from turmeric powder and painted with the word Om. The make-up is then applied to the sound of music, using colouring agents such as vermillion and talcum powder. Therukoothu masks and makeup are believed to ritually charge the performance space and trigger sacred entrancement among the performers and audience members. They are still used in performances in northern Tamil Nadu today.  

Painted masks made of wood or papier mache, Prahlad Natak masks are used for Prahlad Natak performances in Odisha. The performative repertoire borrows from classical as well as folk sources. Though there are female roles in Prahlad Natak, performers tend to be exclusively male. Prahlad Natak performances, as the name suggests, depict the story of Narasimha, who rescues the devotee Prahlad from his father, the demon king Hiranyakashipu. These performances also include several minor characters and a gahaka or narrator figure. Ganesha appears at the beginning to bless the proceedings, played by an actor wearing a papier mache mask. In some performances, Hiranyakashipu wears no mask, but his face is painted bright red to suggest ferocity. His moustache is made of thick black thread twined with golden zari. Narasimha, however, is always depicted using a massive wooden mask, and the actor wears a big turban to which it is fitted. The mask is accompanied by bright makeup and tapered brass nails to simulate claws. The Narasimha mask is treated as a sacred object, and the wearer has to earn the privilege of donning it by performing a ritual to propitiate and invoke the spirit of the mask. This ritual includes water, flowers, coconut, sandalwood paste, incense, a lit lamp, and prescribed mudras. The worship is conducted off-stage prior to the performance, while the orchestra plays. While it is being conducted, all the performers gather around the mask and sing invocations to Vishnu. A similar ritual offering is performed throughout the year in the temples where the masks are kept. The oldest mask, believed to be as old as the Natak itself, is worshipped in one such temple at Sukunda near Brahmapur, Odisha. As of writing, Prahlad Natak is fading in popularity, with only a few dozen troupes still active in southern Odisha.  

A type of bagh embroidered on a red base cloth with rectangular cells, each containing a different geometric motif in threads of various colours, the bawan bagh has between forty-two and forty-eight cells placed in the main field of the base cloth — usually a chaddar — and the remainder being placed in each border at either end of the cloth. Its name derives from the Punjabi word bawan, meaning “fifty-two.” Due to the time and skill required for the craft, bawan bagh embroidery is rarely practiced today. However, examples of historic bawan baghs can be found in the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A textile tradition practised in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan as well as in Haryana, bagh embroidery is ritually important and used to decorate textiles such as chaddars and odhnis, which are also referred to as baghs. The term derives from the Hindi bagh, meaning “garden,” owing to the thick layer of embroidery and the representation of monumental gardens on some baghs. Baghs are similar to phulkaris — both textiles use silk embroidery thread, the darning stitch, a similar colour palette and have the same historic centres of production. Like phulkaris, baghs are generally made to celebrate occasions such as births and weddings. However, bagh embroidery almost completely covers the base cloth, which is visible only as thin lines in the design. The base cloth is often chaunsa khaddar, a finer version of the red cotton base fabric used in phulkaris. There are several types of baghs, which are often named after key aspects of everyday life and culture in Punjab. Those used in wedding rituals include vari da bagh, gunghat bagh and sar pallu. Baghs are frequently named after their motifs: leheriya and darya baghs feature water motifs; the chandrama bagh, which uses moon motifs, is worn during Karva Chauth rituals; the tota bagh features parrot motifs; and the belan bagh depicts rolling pins — a key instrument of domestic life in north India. Since Punjab has historically been an agrarian region, some baghs use motifs of important vegetable crops, such as the karela (bitter gourd) , mirchi (chilli), gobi (cauliflower), dhaniya (coriander) and kakri (cucumber) baghs. The genda, chameli and surajmukhi baghs are named for the flowers that are used as motifs. Certain baghs, such as the Shalimar and Chamasia baghs, are named after the historic gardens they depict or the general composition of a Mughal garden, such as the char bagh. Possibly the most elaborate type is the bawan bagh, which features between forty-two and fifty-two rectangular cells decorated with geometric motifs. Pachranga and satranga baghs are named on the basis of the number of colours in the design. Bagh embroidery is time-consuming, taking several months to a year to complete. Today, they are not typically made by families, which was traditionally the mode of production; instead, they are procured from retail outlets or have been replaced by heirloom baghs for ceremonial use. Examples of historic baghs are held in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A type of bagh characterised by a large, decorated triangle along its longer sides, ghunghat baghs are worn by brides as a ghunghat or veil during wedding ceremonies. The bagh is worn in such a way that a triangle falls over the bride’s face. A variation of the ghunghat bagh is the sar pallu, which has large, elaborately decorated borders on the short sides of the garment. The pattern on the triangles varies from piece to piece, although it is usually geometric. The rest of the ghunghat bagh is typically a single colour, with the border design matching the design on the triangle. It is unclear whether these baghs are produced today or whether ancestral pieces continue to be used in wedding ceremonies.

A type of phulkari typically donated to temples and gurudwaras, darshan dwar phulkari has a red base fabric embroidered with threads of various colours, most often yellow. The name of the textile translates to “the gateway (dwar) for beholding the divine (darshan).” The embroidery is characterised by a set of columns running along the sides of the fabric, topped with arches pointing away from the centre. The space in the middle of the phulkari resembles a pathway and is populated with human and animal figures, giving it the appearance of a busy street. The borders are filled with geometric shapes, usually diamonds, stars and triangles. The use of dwar phulkaris in religious shrines is considered to be a recent phenomenon, primarily owing to the lack of historic phulkaris in the possession of temples and gurudwaras, as well as an absence of any rituals involving them. It is also believed that the colonnade motifs in this textile may have originally referenced colonial-era buildings in Lahore, which were popular recreational venues; this may also explain the animated people and animals depicted in the centre of the fabric. Examples of historic darshan dwar phulkaris can be found in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A reversible phulkari that features prominently in wedding rituals, a chope is a large red chaddar (or wrap) embroidered with yellow and gold thread. The chope’s design is composed of geometric forms, mainly triangles and lattice formations, with the occasional inclusion of a peacock or cow motif. Thin lines in the pattern are embroidered in any colour other than yellow or red as a nazarbuti motif, believed to protect the bride from misfortune or malevolent stares. The embroidery is applied using a double running stitch, making the design visible on either side of the chope. The decoration is denser towards the longer sides of the chope than the middle, and the short sides lack borders. This results in a red stripe that runs lengthwise through the middle of the chaddar, narrow through the body and widening at each end, meant to signify endless fortune for the bride wearing the chope. The chope is of great ritual importance to the bride’s family. Her maternal grandmother traditionally begins embroidering the chope on the day she is born. The phulkari is then gifted to the bride by her maternal uncle during the chura charana or bangle-wearing ceremony, a wedding ritual in which the women from the bride’s family sit together and sing suhag or matrimonial songs. The chope is draped around the bride by members of her family after the vatna or ceremonial bath that she takes before the wedding. Chopes continue to be made and used in traditional Punjabi weddings. Examples of historic chopes are held in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A hereditary embroidery tradition, phulkari was historically practised by women of the Punjab region in present-day India and Pakistan. It is a form of counted-thread embroidery recognised by its neat, regular patterns of geometric and natural motifs, whose name translates to ‘flower work’ in Hindi and Punjabi. Embroidery was traditionally considered an integral skill for women in the region, and phulkari garments came to be closely associated with major events in their lives, particularly marriage. In the medieval and colonial periods, girls would initially learn to embroider small garments like odhinis or scarves for themselves, and as they grew older, produce chaddars or shawls to be handed down to younger generations of women in their families. Phulkari shawls are often gifted to brides on wedding days, especially by maternal relatives.  The origin of the craft is debated, with some scholars suggesting that it was introduced to India from Central Asia by the Jat community in the late medieval period, while others state that the craft was born of influences from Persian gulkari embroidery designs. Phulkari embroidery and the traditions surrounding it have been mentioned in the Sikh holy book Guru Granth Sahib, and the eighteenth-century Punjabi epic Heer Ranjha.  Phulkari embroidery is done using a running stitch with brightly coloured untwisted silk thread historically imported from Kashmir and Bengal. It uses a base of coarse handwoven cloth called khaddar (or khadi), typically comprising strips about half a metre wide, or less, stitched together. In most cases, the khaddar is traditionally dyed red using plant-based dyes obtained from palash (Butea monosperma) flowers, madder root (genus Rubia) or the bark of acacia (genus Acacia) trees. Embroidery threads are often yellow, orange or pink; darker colours like black, brown and green are less frequently used, and blue rarely. Despite its name, phulkari embroidery includes the depiction of animals and geometric forms in addition to flowers. The floral imagery used in phulkari includes marigolds, jasmines, lotuses and Tree of Life motifs. Modern motifs such as trains, trucks and cars have also found their way into phulkari patterns. The counted-thread method also lends phulkari designs a floral symmetry. In some cases, the embroiderer deliberately breaks the geometrical pattern in a small area, exposing the base fabric below. These are known as nazarbuti motifs and are meant to ward off misfortune for the wearer. Shawls and wraps traditionally made with this craft are also called phulkaris, as the embroidery is their main feature. There are various types of phulkari, distinguished by their size, style and ceremonial value. The chope, made with a reversible, double darning stitch, is the largest and of the most ritualistic importance in Punjabi culture, as it is embroidered by a bride’s grandmother, who presents it as a wedding gift to be worn by the bride during the marriage ceremony. Others include the sainchi phulkari from the Bathinda and Faridkot districts; the blue-based nilak phulkari embroidered in red and yellow; the thirma phulkari made on a white base; the shishedar phulkari embellished with glass pieces; the til patra phulkari made with patterns of sesame seed motifs; and suber phulkari, which is embroidered only in the corners. Bagh embroidery, which uses an all-over design where the base is completely obscured, is sometimes regarded as a type of phulkari, but this and its subtypes are distinct textiles. Prior to British rule in South Asia, phulkaris were not produced for commercial purposes but circulated as heirlooms in what is now Pakistani Punjab, mainly in the Peshawar, Sialkot, Hazara, Rawalpindi and Jhelum districts. From the nineteenth century onwards, embroidered shawls began to be given to British officers as tokens of goodwill. This period also saw the beginning of the commercial application of the craft on other garments, such as coats for women buyers living in cities. Following the Partition and the violence faced by Punjabi women in its aftermath, phulkari embroidery declined in India and Pakistan through the 1950s. Moreover, developmental agendas drafted by both countries in the post-Independence era depended on the rampant mechanisation of the goods and services sector, which pushed local craft traditions into further oblivion.  The 1980s and 1990s, however, heralded a revival for India’s art and craft traditions. Encouraged by a robust economy and counterculture movement against the West, the Indian government and NGOs made concerted efforts to revive phulkari and make it commercially viable. Women artisans were given skill-based training and financial support from banks and other government organisations like the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KIVC), the Ministry of Textiles and the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI). Furthermore, the formation of self-help groups during this period encouraged women to form clusters and embroider at home for fashion designers and NGOs such as the Nabha Foundation, which in turn also played a major role in supporting local artisans by expanding the market presence of phulkari embroidery and design.  Today phulkari is produced mainly in Gurdaspur and Patiala, India, and is applied to several types of Indian garments, particularly dupattas, kurtas, blouses and saris, using various cotton fabrics as a base.

A type of phulkari made on a neela khaddar, or base cloth, dyed with indigo, the nilak phulkari is characterised by red and yellow embroidery. A small amount of iron is sometimes added to the indigo to generate a darker shade of blue. Unlike chopes and suber phulkaris, nilak phulkaris are never used in wedding rituals. The blue and black shades of nilak phulkaris have been variously associated with Krishna, who is depicted with blue skin, or the neelambari musical raga, which represents longing. Young girls in Punjab sometimes begin making simple nilak phulkaris before they make more elaborate or ritually significant embroidery. Examples of historic nilak phulkaris can be found in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Featuring rich bagh embroidery, vari da bagh is a type of chaddar or shawl used in Punjabi wedding ceremonies, its name translating literally to ‘garden of the wedding trousseau’. This bagh from north India has a main field embroidered with gold-coloured silk thread, while the borders are made with a variety of colours. Thin gaps are left between the shapes so that the red base fabric, either chaunsa khaddar or halwan, shows through as an outline. The design is composed entirely of geometric forms, the central field typically embroidered with repeating concentric diamond shapes, with a complementary pattern of diamonds and zigzag lines along the borders. While vari da bagh designs often feature a repeating block of two concentric diamonds, more elaborate ones feature three concentric diamonds, with the innermost diamond further subdivided into four parts. In some cases, the diamond shapes are made of concentric triangles. As with some other types of phulkaris and baghs such as the shishedar phulkari and the chope, the patterns on a vari da bagh may be broken by a nazarbuti in the form of a small row of black threads embroidered in a random position in one of the diamond shapes. This motif, as well as a black dot commonly introduced in a corner of the fabric, is intended to ward off the evil eye or bad luck for the wearer. In traditional Punjab, the grandmother of a boy begins to prepare a vari da bagh shortly after his birth. The embroidery is started on an astrologically auspicious date, accompanied by festivities. Years later, the completed bagh is draped around his bride just after their wedding ceremony. The bride also wears it during the vidaai or doli, when she ceremonially leaves her parents’ home. Married Hindu Punjabi women traditionally wear a vari da bagh chaddar, either their own or one passed down as an heirloom, when praying for their husbands’ well-being during *Karva Chauth rituals. Vari da baghs usually take years to embroider. While new pieces are rarely made today, some are sold through retail outlets. Examples of historic vari da baghs can be found in the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A type of phulkari with an unbleached white or cream base fabric as opposed to the red khaddar typically used in other phulkaris, thirma phulkaris are embroidered with floral or geometric motifs. Phulkaris with all-over embroidery can also be considered baghs. The design is mostly rendered with silk thread dyed in shades of red or magenta, as well as blue, yellow or green. These phulkaris used to be presented as dowry in the north-western regions of Undivided Punjab; today, this practice, along with the production of the textile, has been discontinued in these regions, spread across present-day states in India and Pakistan. Examples of thirma phulkaris are held in the collections of the National Museum, New Delhi, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A type of phulkari embellished with sheeshe (small, dull pieces of glass) that are stitched in patterns across the fabric, the shishedar phulkari acts as a nazarbuti for the wearer. While nazarbutis in other phulkaris are typically presented as interruptions in the embroidery pattern, the glass pieces in shishedar phulkaris are a way of incorporating the motif into the overall design. Shishedar phulkari shawls and odhinis are typically embroidered with geometric patterns in white or yellow thread against a dark red or brown base. Like other phulkaris, the shishedar type originated in Punjab, before the Partition. Today, it is most commonly made and worn in Haryana, particularly in Gurugram, Rohtak, Hisar and neighbouring New Delhi. Examples of older shishedar phulkaris can be found in several private and museum collections, most notably the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A type of phulkari worn by Punjabi brides during their wedding ceremonies, the suber phulkari is an embroidered odhani that is used as a veil by a Hindu or Sikh bride as she takes the ritual pheras, or circumambulations, with the groom. Along with other phulkaris, such as the chope, the suber is a key garment in Punjabi weddings and is traditionally embroidered by the bride’s maternal grandmother. Suber phulkaris are embroidered with yellow thread on a red base cloth, which signifies fertility. Their distinguishing feature is the presence of five eight-petalled lotus motifs — one in each corner and one in the centre. Suber phulkaris continue to be produced by families in Punjab today.

A type of phulkari that depicts human and animal forms, often in a narrative format, the sainchi phulkari derives its name from the Punjabi word sainchi, meaning “authentic,” as the embroidered stories are either real events or didactic folk tales, and the imagery is more naturalistic than that of other phulkaris. The images in sainchi phulkaris are typical of life in rural Punjab: the embroidery is often a reflection of the artisans’ world. Motifs such as cattle, birds, crops and household items such as combs, mirrors and cooking utensils are frequently used. Human figures are decorated with jewellery embroidered in gold thread — silver is avoided. Narrative scenes depict agricultural activity, wrestling, games and dances. Modern imagery like trains and scenes from films can also be found, but are relatively uncommon. The more symmetrically composed sainchi phulkaris have a lotus motif in the centre and, less often, in each corner. The significance of the lotus is debated: some scholars see it as a generally auspicious symbol, while others suggest that it represents Sanjhi devi, a Hindu mother goddess worshipped in north India and honoured by prospective brides. While the embroidery itself is always done in shades of red and yellow thread, the base colour of the fabric varies between deep red, brown and blue. The borders are usually bands of geometric patterns. In the case of rectangular wraps, the borders on the shorter sides are made wider. Examples of sainchi phulkaris can be found in several private and museum collections today, most notably the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

One of the five common mudras or sacred gestures in Buddhist iconography and practice, the bhumisparsha or ‘earth touching’ mudra represents the moment of prince Siddhartha’s attainment of Buddhahood or enlightenment. It symbolises his invocation of the earth-goddess to witness the overcoming of the final barrier towards enlightenment, and is also known as the ‘earth witness’ mudra. Performed while seated cross-legged on the ground, the mudra is formed with the right hand reaching over the knee so that all four fingers extend downwards to touch the earth. Among the five celestial Tathagata or Dhyani Buddhas, considered to represent cardinal qualities, the bhumisparsha mudra is associated with Akshobhya.   The mudra is associated with Siddhartha’s defeat of the demon king Mara — a popular narrative and important episode in the Buddhist canon. In the final stages of Siddhartha’s meditation under a pipal tree, Mara is said to have appeared to claim the throne of enlightenment for himself, producing his army of demons as witness. In response, Siddhartha is believed to have reached out to touch the ground and declare the earth as his witness; Mara is defeated and Siddhartha attains enlightenment. The gesture is thus understood as a symbol of unshakeability; of moral triumph over temptation and evil intention; and of the liberation of the spirit from its worldly trappings. Accordingly, it is also linked with mastery over one’s senses and emotions, emphasised in Buddhist teachings as the means to achieve true awakening. When the left hand is simultaneously placed upturned on the lap in the dhyana mudra, the posture is thought to signify the union of skillful means and wisdom — upaya and prajna respectively.

A common mudra or sacred gesture in Buddhist and Hindu iconography and practice, the anjali mudra denotes reverence and devotion, and is also used as a salutation gesture. It is made by bringing the hands together in front of the chest with the fingers upright, and is named after the hollow formed between the palms in doing so. The thumbs are held against or close to the chest, either parallel to the fingers or pointed backwards. In Buddhism, the anjali mudra is particularly associated with the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. In Buddhist art, figures such as bodhisattvas, kings and other devotees are shown assuming the anjali mudra as a mark of deep respect when they face the Buddha, who is rarely depicted making this gesture himself. In Hindu contexts, the anjali mudra may also represent humility and surrender; it typically accompanies the namaste or namaskar greeting or salutation, which holds various degrees of respect in everyday life.  Representations of the anjali mudra have been largely consistent in sculpture and painting in the Indian subcontinent since at least the first century BCE. One variation, which is seen in some sculptures, features the wrists twisted in such a way that the back of the right palm faces the viewer. In Vajrayana and other eastern forms of Buddhism, the anjali mudra of Shadakshari Lokeshvara, the four-armed Avalokiteshvara, is believed to conceal a gem — representing love and enlightenment — that is only visible to him. This is believed to represent the deeply personal nature of enlightenment, and its invisibility to those who only perceive the world in material terms.

One of the five common mudras or sacred gestures in Buddhist iconography and practice, the abhaya or ‘fearlessness’ mudra represents protection, reassurance and pacification; it is believed to have been used by the Buddha to calm a rampaging elephant sent to attack him. It is performed by facing the right palm forward, close to the body and with the fingers loosely joined and upright; it sometimes employs both hands. Among the five celestial Tathagata or Dhyani Buddhas, considered to represent cardinal qualities, the abhaya mudra is associated with Amoghasiddhi. This mudra is one of the most recognisable and widely used symbolic and ritual gestures, not only in Buddhism but also in Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism. Across South and Southeast Asia, deities, saints and gurus are seen performing the gesture, which has come to be associated with benevolence and divinity. In various cultures, including pre-Buddhist ones, the raising of one or both open hands has symbolised the absence of weapons, and thereby peace or goodwill, as well as power.  In Gandharan art, where the first depictions of the abhaya mudra are found, the gesturing hand is held up at the shoulder level, and frequently denotes the act of preaching; later, from the fifth century CE onwards, the hand is often represented lower. When the right hand is in the abhaya mudra, the left hand usually hangs loosely by the side of the body or assumes the varada mudra. Occasionally the left, rather than the right, hand is seen in the abhaya mudra. Though primarily seen in representations of the standing Amoghasiddhi in Buddhism, the abhaya mudra is also associated with the walking Buddha in the Theravada sects of Thailand and Laos.

One of the five common mudras or sacred gestures in Buddhist iconography and practice, the dhyana or ‘meditation’ mudra denotes a state of concentration, representing the prince Siddhartha’s final meditation before enlightenment as the Buddha. Though developed as an iconographic element in the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, the gesture was prevalent in yogic practices predating Buddhism. It is also known as yoga mudra, and is performed by placing one or both hands palms-up in the lap while seated in padmasana or ‘lotus pose’. Among the five celestial Tathagata or Dhyani Buddhas, considered to represent cardinal qualities, the varada mudra is associated with Amitabha.   When the dhyana mudra is done with both hands, the right hand is laid flat over the left hand, with the fingers of both extended. The orientation of the thumbs varies across traditions: they may remain parallel to the other fingers and each other, or meet over the palms to form a triangle. The triangle carries various symbolisms in Buddhism, including that of the Triratna or Three Jewels — the Buddha, the dhamma, and the sangha or community. The overlapping hands are often considered to signify that the method or means, denoted by the right hand, can only arise out of the wisdom of meditation, denoted by the left hand. Some other traditions interpret the top hand as signifying realisation or enlightenment, which transcends the world of appearances symbolised by the bottom hand. In Theravada Buddhism, the mudra sometimes takes a variant form known as samadhi mudra, in which the index fingers are raised to meet the thumb of the respective hand, and also touch each other. The dhyana mudra is sometimes made using the left hand alone, representing the principle of wisdom or meditative void.  Occasionally objects such as a sacred text or a bowl of alms may be placed on the upturned hand or hands — for instance, the medicine bowl depicted in the open palm of Bhaisajyaguru or the ‘Medicine Buddha’.

One of five common mudras or sacred gestures in Buddhist iconography and practice, the dharmachakra or ‘wheel of law’ mudra represents the Buddha’s first sermon at Sarnath. The teachings of this sermon are considered to have set the wheel of dhamma or dharma in motion, dispelling ignorance with the wisdom of reality. Both the hands are held at the chest level, with the right above the left and the thumbs of each hand touching the respective index fingers to form a circle. The tips of the left and right thumbs and index fingers in turn touch each other in such a way that the palm of the left hand faces inwards, while that of the right hand faces outwards. Among the five celestial Tathagata or Dhyani Buddhas, considered to represent cardinal qualities, the dharmachakra mudra is associated with Vairochana.   According to some interpretations, the three extended fingers of the right hand are believed to represent the three vessels, or yanas, of the Mahayana Buddhism tradition, while those of the left hand are thought to denote the capacities for following these yanas. The symbolism is further extended to the open palms, of which the right suggests the method of conveying teachings and the left suggests their internalisation and the gaining of wisdom. When the left hand is shown holding a corner of the robe, as in early iconic representations, it symbolises renunciation.  In some versions, the left hand is held at the hip level with fingers pointing downwards and palm outwards while forming the symbolic dharmachakra. A variant and possible derivative of the dharmachakra mudra is another ‘teaching’ gesture, the vitarka mudra, in which the left hand lies on the lap with the palm upturned, while the right hand forms the wheel shape with the palm turned outwards. 

One of the five common mudras or sacred gestures in Buddhist iconography and practice, the varada or ‘boon-granting’ mudra represents generosity and compassion and is also called the dana or ‘charity’ mudra. In both sitting and standing positions, the hand is allowed to rest or hang at hip- or waist-level with the palm facing outward and the fingers pointing downward. Among the five celestial Tathagata or Dhyani Buddhas, considered to represent cardinal qualities, the varada mudra is associated with Ratnasambhava.   Generally understood to denote generosity or the fulfilling of vows, it is also associated with salvation and deliverance, and frequently features in depictions of deities or figures whose purpose is the liberation of humankind from greed, anger and delusion. In some interpretations, the extended fingers also have symbolic value, connoting the five perfections or paramitas — generosity, morality, patience, perseverance and meditative focus. In India, this mudra makes its earliest appearance in depictions of Avalokitesvara during the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Often performed with the right hand, it is usually done with the left when paired with the abhaya mudra. The combination of varada and abhaya mudras is thought to connote the conceptual union of the female and male aspects of wisdom and agency respectively.

A folk tradition of scroll-painting in Bengal, patua combines visual and oral storytelling narrated by a community of roving performers. Patua carries three different connotations simultaneously. First, it refers to a community named Patua which has held the occupation of handling the pata, meaning “scroll” or “canvas” in Sanskrit. Second, it refers to someone who paints or displays scrolls. Third, it refers to the practice of showcasing pictures. In the patua tradition, all these three meanings overlap often, but not always. The history of patuas is untraceable since it was a performance tradition that lacked written records. In documents from the colonial period, the word patua is used interchangeably for the caste and the practice, making it additionally harder to discern which of the either two is indicated. Presumed to be dating from as early as the tenth and eleventh centuries, the oldest surviving evidence of the scroll comes from the eighteenth century. The tradition – popular in Bengal, especially in Midnapur, Murshidabad, Birbhum and Purulia districts – is known to have been constituted by members of a specific caste (Patua), who narrated a body of stories through performance and demonstrated images by unravelling the scroll, moving across villages where they had been invited for festivals such as Durga Puja. The unfolding of pata is known as pat khelano and the narrative is called paater gaan. Patuas belonged to the Islamic faith and the narratives in the paintings included themes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata; religious texts like the Magalakavyas; and stories of Radha and Krishna, Behula and Lakhinder, renunciation of Chaitanya, Krishan Leela, among many others. The patuas bore symbols of flora and fauna and other decorative motifs along with the story. While initially painted on dried leaves, the patuas used cloth canvases, painting them with naturally extracted colours, prepared in broken coconut shells. Depending on their themes, there are several different kinds of patas. The Satyapir Pata is part of a syncretic belief system that fuses various local faiths. The Santhali Patai, also known as Jadu Pata or Chakshudan Pata is associated with the Santhal tribe and their rituals. The Manasa Pata centered around the snake-goddess, Manasa, who cures diseases and grants fertility. The Jama Patas depicts Yama, the god of death, and some variations depict his assistants torturing subjects in hell. The Kalighat Pata was created by Patuas who migrated to Kolkata in the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries and centred around the Kalighat Temple. In Odisha, the practice of Patachitra emerged in relation to that of patua. During the Bengal Renaissance, Gurusaday Dutt, an Indian civil servant who was the district magistrate of Birbhum in 1930, devoted himself to collecting scroll paintings and songs, becoming instrumental in popularising and exhibition of patas. The first public exhibition was organised at the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta in 1932, followed by another exhibition in Shantiniketan (now Visva Bharati University) in 1934. He also wrote and published extensively, arguing that Patuas claimed ancestry from the ancient Chitrakar caste, which was well-known as a painter caste across India. This gave Patuas a significant impetus and saw a revitalisation of the tradition as they were commissioned by individuals and organisations to depict subjects beyond religion. From the 1970s onwards, the scenes they depicted began to include family planning, literacy campaigns, anti-dowry campaigns and environmental appeals. In the 1980s, the demand for patua increased substantially, as its popular usage attracted people outside of art collecting circles. Since the 1990s, selling patua paintings has become the mainstay of the artists. Therefore, the patas came to be divorced from the performance tradition and got consolidated as a visual folk art. In 1986 and 1991, the Handicrafts Board of West Bengal financed training courses for Patuas in Midnapur and in 1992 a workshop was organised at the Ashutosh Museum, Calcutta University. Presently, the artists have adapted the form to offer depictions of contemporary life, and have shifted their scale to medium and small size canvases to cater to the market.  

The tradition of iconographic painting practised in West Bengal and Odisha on scrolls made out of cloth, patachitra tradition is among the many art forms to emerge from the Jagannath Temple, Puri. Initially, patachitra was called anasar patti in reference to the fifteen-day ritual period known as anasara or anavasra, during which the idols in the Jagannath Temple were kept in isolation, creating a need for substitute images to be in place for worship at the temple. Therefore, paintings of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra were painted on scrolls. Patachitra was originally practised by the artisan class of Odisha, the Mahapatra chitrakars. In Bengal, it is a blend of the tradition of patua along with bardic oral traditions, hence forming a part of a performance tradition. The patachitra scrolls, while traditionally painted on a gauze-like fine cotton cloth, are also rendered on palm-leaves and handmade paper. When painted on a cloth, the canvas goes through several layers of treatment. The first base involves a coat of soft, white stone powder made out of chalk and glue derived from tamarind seeds. This strengthens the surface, making it smooth and semi-absorbent enough to absorb paint. Instead of making preliminary drawings from pencil or charcoal, the artists directly begin making rough sketches through brushwork using light red and yellow colours. This is followed by the application of main flat colours, most commonly, white, red, yellow and black. The painting is then finished with fine strokes of black brush-work, which give the effect of pen-work. Upon completion, the painting is held over a charcoal fire and the surface is sealed with lacquer. This gives the painting a glossy finish and makes it resistant to dust and water. The colours used for patachitra are naturally sourced; white is derived from the powder of conch-shell, yellow from the stone Haritala, red from the red oxide stone (geru) and red sulphide of mercury (hingula), black from burning lamps and coconut shells, blue from indigo and green from leaves. The gum of the fruit kaitha is used to mix and bind the colours together. Given the dense narrative depiction, the fabric is partitioned into sections, each known as a pata. Often, the paintings would be made on scrolled cloth (jorani patas) so they can be carried. The travelling artists would roll open these scrolls and sing the narrative depicted. When rendered over palm-leaf manuscripts, patachitra is known as talapatachitra. These palm-leaf paintings are made with sharp drawings etched out through incisions on zig-zag folds of leaves and are strung together by threads. Patachitras depict religious, mythological and folkloric themes. Foremost among these are Vaishnavite narratives of two of Vishnu's avatars: Jagannatha and Krishna. Prominent depictions include highly stylised paintings of the Jagannath Temple, scenes from the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and regional mangalakavya texts such as the Chandimangala and Manasamangala. The painters follow certain conventions from the classical treatises on Indian art such as chitralakshana, paying attention to formal aspects of painting composition. One of the most distinguishable features of patachitra is its typical style of portraying faces such as long noses, prominent chins and elongated eyes. The paintings also have ornately designed borders that follow the colour scheme of patachitra’s narrative scene. The tradition is presently concentrated in and continued by the artist community of the village Raghurajpur in Odisha. No longer restricted to ritual use, these paintings enjoy a commercial market within India and internationally and are now rendered over a wide range of materials from synthetic cloth to paper, and in varying sizes.  

A form of traditional cloth-painting made for the worship of matas, or goddesses, mata ni pachedi is associated with western India’s nomadic Vaghri community, which has traditionally lived along the banks of the Sabarmati river in Gujarat. As members of this non-dominant caste were not allowed to enter temples, they began creating these paintings around three hundred years ago as part of their own shrines for worship. Deriving their name from the Gujarati for ‘shawl of the goddess’ or ‘goddess backdrop’, mata ni pachedi paintings were traditionally used as canopies and backdrops in temporary wooden shrines, and also formed objects of devotion themselves. They depict a Hindu goddess signifying shakti, or power, as the central figure, situated within an enclosure demarcating a temple, and surrounded by numerous other figures. The paintings are narrative in style, like those from the Phad tradition in Rajasthan and Kalamkari paintings from south India, and depict events from mythological texts, epics, religious processions and even historical themes such as Gujarat’s ancient sea trade.  Mata ni pachedi is usually made on a rectangular fabric, which is divided into seven to nine columns to create a grid for the narrative to unfold. The grid is structured by architecture-like insertions that reproduce windows, doors and archways in a stylised form. Traditionally, the colours used were naturally procured and processed, and consisted of a visual scheme of masoor (red) and black on a white cloth — the red extracted from alum, alizarin, tamarind and dhawadi (Woodfordia fruticosa) flowers, and the black from jaggery and iron rust. Before painting, the cloth is soaked, washed, de-starched and treated with a harda (Terminalia chebula) solution. Both woodblock printing and hand-painting are used to create mata ni pachedi paintings. While woodblocks are usually used for the borders, many drawings, embellishments and motifs are painted with a bamboo kalam (pen), and a brush in more recent times.  In mata ni pachedi the figure of the goddess has a commanding presence, depicted flanked by worshippers, musicians and animals. Many forms of the goddess — known through mythological and oral narratives, textual sources, and popular local traditions — are found in these images, including various representations of the goddesses Durga and Amba. Also included are goddesses from the local folk tradition of Gujarat, such as Vishat Mata, one of the most important goddesses for the Vaghris, who claim their ancestry from her; Vahanvati Mata, who is worshipped by seafarers and traders; Momai Mata, more popularly known as Dashamaa, a goddess of the Kutch region and protector of health, livestock and harvest; Khodiyar Mata, who is thought to be powerful enough to predict the nature of incoming monsoon; and Hadkai Mata, who protects her flock from rabies. The pantheon of such local goddesses in the mata ni pachedi tradition serves to illuminate the social and cultural life of the Vaghris as a nomadic agricultural community dependent on monsoon rains, as well as Gujarat’s history of maritime trade.  Images of the goddesses in mata ni pachedi  generally follow traditional iconographic conventions. In some versions, the Hindu god Ganesha appears in either the upper portions of the cloth or to the left of the goddess. Narratives from Mahabharata and Ramayana also find a portrayal, with artists improvising and adapting scenes from the texts to fit them into the mata ni pachedi painting conventions. For instance, the golden deer from the scene of Sita’s abduction in Ramayana is depicted instead simply as a two-headed deer since the colour gold was not available as a natural dye. Similarly, the game of dice from Mahabharata was substituted by a game of cards as the latter was easier to illustrate.  The need to improvise and adapt the form has led to significant changes in the art form; the grid-like structure for the narrative is no longer a requirement, and traditional depictions of rows of worshippers carrying garlands and flags have been supplemented by angels carrying them. In some cases, the temples also appear to be domed like mosques. To reduce costs and meet increased demand during the festive season, mata ni pachedi artists today have replaced natural dyes with a vast array of artificial colours, such as sap green, yellow ochre and dark blue.  The popularity of mata ni pachedi is no longer restricted to its ritual aspect and its significance during the nine-day Hindu festival of Navaratri. Artists now produce decorative consumer goods such as bedsheets, pillowcases, wall hangings and garments in the traditional style all year round.  

A tradition of watercolour painting that originated in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Kalighat painting was practised by artisans from the Patua community between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century. The name derives from the city’s Kalighat temple, around which the painters had established their business, and the paintings were known for their bright colours, sweeping brush strokes and strong lines. Though these paintings were originally intended to be souvenirs for devotees visiting the temple of Kali and featured primarily Hindu imagery, they expanded over time to include other religious traditions as well as socio-political commentary. Some scholars believe that the tradition can be traced to the 1830s or earlier when Patua artisans first moved to the city and began making paintings around the temple, while others argue that the thematic and visual characteristics that are more definitive of Kalighat painting, such as political caricatures, hairstyles and ornaments, only go as far as the 1850s. It is, however, broadly accepted that Kalighat painting reached its peak around the mid 1870s and began to decline after the late 1880s, owing to the rising popularity of photography and printing technology imported from England and Germany. Unlike the sequential narratives of the patachitras, each Kalighat painting depicted a single and simplified scene, usually featuring opaque figures on neutral backgrounds. The paintings were made on mill-paper treated with a paste of lime, on which watercolours were dabbed using a large brush or a rag. The pigments used were derived from a mix of natural and industrial sources, including black from lampblack, red from lead, yellow from arsenic and blue from indigo. The black outline of the forms was drawn using a pencil or a brush made from squirrel or goat hair, after which paint was reapplied to the edges that needed shading. The creation of a Kalighat painting was often a family affair, with different members completing different steps of the process. The key characteristics of the Kalighat style are the rounded, tapering limbs and pointed faces with small mouths and elongated, almond-shaped eyes. The neck and limbs may be bent at sharp angles or drawn as fluid curves, allowing the figures to have dynamic poses. Only the human figures are drawn with heavy shading and outlines, giving them a three-dimensionality that was not applied to the backdrop. This removed depth from the painting, made the characters appear more radiant, and sharply separated them from the background. In the case of many secular paintings, the background was omitted altogether. In the early 1800s, Calcutta –– the then capital of British India –– was developing into a thriving centre of industry and tourism, attracting, among others, migrant groups of rural artisans and craftspeople. This included the Patuas, who traditionally painted over twenty-feet long narrative scrolls known as patachitras. Costly and cumbersome to carry, these patachitras found few takers among pilgrims visiting the city, compelling the artisans to create smaller, less detailed but more portable images, which would come to be known as the Kalighat pats. The number of such visitors increased as trains began to connect more parts of the country to urban areas in the nineteenth century. Partly because their patronage came primarily from ordinary people, and partly because Patua painters were known for sometimes using their craft as a documentary tool, Kalighat paintings developed a reputation for keeping up with the visual culture of the time. Based on the broadest date range assigned to the tradition by scholars, the development of Kalighat painting can be divided into three distinct phases. The first phase covers the period immediately after the patua artists moved to the city, when the paintings were heavily influenced by the patachitra tradition. During this time, the Kalighat pats were sold as religious souvenirs for pilgrims at the temple, and therefore, portrayed religious icons such as Kali, Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, as well as related deities such as Ganesh, Krishna and Shiva who feature in the myths around these goddesses, and scenes from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Although the paintings were mainly religious, secular elements were often incorporated for added appeal, including depicting deities wearing Western shoes or holding violins instead of veenas. As the style gained popularity, Kalighat painting moved into the second phase, with groups other than the Patuas taking up the profession. Soon after, the paintings began to incorporate Islamic and Christian scenes and iconographies, including Islamic saints, angels and tazias. During the third and final phase –– from the mid-nineteenth century onwards –– Kalighat painting began moving away from religious themes and icons to depict more contemporary, humorous and satirical subjects. The artworks, which had grown popular among the migrants and non-elites of the city, began reflecting socio-cultural and political themes, ranging from topics such as courtesan culture, domestic pets, murder trials, horse racing and wrestling, among others. A frequent topic in this category was women’s emancipation: the education, legal sanctions and increased independence of upper class Indian women in the nineteenth century was satirically shown in paintings depicting husbands cowering before their wives, possibly as opportune references to Durga or Kali. The paintings also discussed colonial politics in the subcontinent, criticising the British government’s Indian collaborators through caricatures of complacency and greed, while praising iconic freedom fighters like Rani Lakshmibai, also known as Rani of Jhansi, and Tipu Sultan. Despite its popularity, the Kalighat style was subjected to severe criticism from British artists and Bengali elites for its politically charged subject matter and perceived non-conformity to Victorian modes of representation. Kalighat painting gained international attention in 1895, when Maxwell Sommerville donated fifty-seven paintings to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, USA. Following this, in 1917, Rudyard Kipling donated a collection of 233 Kalighat paintings to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK, which later developed into the largest collections of Kalighat paintings in the world. Other notable collections of Kalighat paintings can be found at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK; the British Library, London; the Naprstek Museum, Prague, Czech Republic; and the Pushkin Museum of Graphic Arts, Moscow, Russia. Within India, the most prominent Kalighat collections can be found at museums across Kolkata, including the Victoria Memorial Hall; the Indian Museum; the Gurusaday Museum; the Birla Academy of Art and Culture; the Asutosh Museum; and Kala Bhavan, Visva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan. As most Kalighat paintings were undated, unsigned and developed by multiple individuals, the names of most artists remain unknown. The last well-known Kalighat artists, Nibaran Chandra Ghosh and Kali Charan Ghosh, passed away in 1930. However, Kalighat paintings were instrumental in influencing subsequent generations of Indian artists, most notably Jamini Roy, and more recently the Midnapore-based contemporary artist Uttam Chitrakar.

A narrative painting and performance tradition, Cheriyal scroll painting has been practised in the town of Cheriyal in Siddipet district, Telangana since the seventeenth century. Cheriyal scroll paintings are made by artists known as Nakashis, who belong to the Madiga, Goud, Mudiraj, Mala, Padmashali, Chakali and other non-dominant caste communities in the region. Their folktales form a major part of the narratives in the paintings, along with caste-specific renderings of tales from the Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Historically, the scrolls were used as illustrations for storytelling performances by travelling bards. In the past, these paintings were made using handmade tools and natural pigments and materials. The perspective was flat, with elaborately dressed figures depicted in vivid colours against a red background. Traditionally, the base material was khadi cloth treated with a mixture of rice starch, tamarind paste and chalk powder, applied in two or three layers. The width of the cloth was usually 3 feet while the length varied depending on the number of panels. A squirrel hair brush was used to make thin black outlines on the fabric, after which a goat hair brush was used for painting in the details. Dyes were derived from natural sources, such as white from crushed sea shells, blue from indigo, black from soot and yellow from turmeric. While white and pink were used to paint the skin tone of human figures, other colours were used for deities and supernatural beings, some of which were specific to certain figures: black for Ram, blue for Krishna and green for Hanuman. The longer scrolls reached up to twenty metres in length and contained as many as fifty panels, each of which was unfolded as the performance progressed. Artisans usually work in conjunction with narrators while producing Cheriyal paintings. As a rule, images of Ganesh and Saraswati were painted first, followed by Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma and other deities. Narrators then travelled from town to town, performing the scenes depicted in the scrolls. Other performers and musicians often accompanied them with musical instruments and props such as masks and puppets. These performances — and, by extension, the scrolls — were often commissioned by entire communities and were treated as a major cultural event in the area, with people coming from nearby villages or towns to watch. Following cultural changes in India, since the 1990s Cheriyal paintings have increasingly foregrounded tales of Ram and Krishna instead of the Mahabharata. As the travelling storytelling function of the scrolls has become less relevant due to the arrival of television, cinema and the Internet, painters have reduced the size of the scrolls, often making large wall-hangings that depict one or two scenes instead of entire narratives. These are now usually made with synthetic colours on readymade surfaces like paper or plywood. To cater to tourists, artisans also make souvenirs such as keychains, dolls and masks in the characteristic Cheriyal style. In 1976, the government of India officially recognised Cheriyal scroll painting as a handicraft practice, and accorded it a Geographical Indication tag in 2008. Other incentives to preserve the practice include providing a stipend to apprentices to learn the craft, although their number remains small. Cheriyal paintings are exhibited and displayed at government emporiums and museum exhibitions, and the craft is taught to interested students through workshops conducted by Cheriyal painters.

Practised primarily in Bhagalpur, Bihar, Manjusha painting includes narrative scrolls, murals as well as painted temple-shaped boxes or pots called manjusha, from which the tradition derives its name. The painted boxes, along with the narrative scrolls, are of cultural and ceremonial significance during the Bishari Puja, an important local festival honouring the Bishari goddesses, while murals of Bihula, also known as bhitti chitra, were typically painted on the walls of a newlywed couple’s home as bearers of good fortune. Traditionally, members of the Kumbhakar community made the manjusha boxes, which were then painted by the Malakar community, who also painted the scrolls and murals. Scholars believe Manjusha painting originated in the seventh century when the Bhagalpur region was known as Ang Pradesh and was an important centre of trade and commerce. Manjusha paintings typically depict the folk story of Bihula and the five Bisharis or manasputris. The Bisharis are believed to be the adopted daughters of Shiva and Parvati, and are closely associated with snakes in the region’s mythology. Manjusha painting is done using only three colours: green, pink and yellow. The outlines and intricate details are drawn in green, after which sections are filled in with pink and yellow. The style has a flat perspective, and the characters are typically rendered in profile with their limbs spread in an “X” shape unless they are shown engaged in an activity that requires the use of their arms. The motifs that make up the borders of a Manjusha painting incorporate the significant features of the Bihula-Bishari story. It is believed that Shiva is fond of bel, or the wood apple tree and motifs of its leaves are often used to signify his favour in Manjusha paintings. Leheriya, or waves, represent Bihula’s journey on the river. Other significant motifs include sarp ladi, or a group of snakes, and the champa or frangipani flower. The five Bisharis, each of whom holds at least one snake, can be further identified by their weapons: Jaya wields a bow, an arrow and an amrut kalash, possibly referencing the Bisharis’ ability to cure snakebites; Dhotila holds the rising sun; Padmavathi carries a lotus; Mynah holds a mynah bird; and Maya holds snakes in both her hands. Following the excavation of the Vikramshila monastery in the 1930s and the discovery of artefacts that placed the origin of Bishari Puja as early as the seventh century, Manjusha painting received steady patronage from the colonial British government. An exhibition of Manjusha paintings on canvas was also organised at the India Office Library in London, UK. However, after India gained independence, public interest in Manjusha painting declined significantly. It was revived once again in the 1980s due to the efforts of the Bihar government’s Department of Information and Public Relations, which worked with local Manjusha artists such as Chakravarty Devi, Jyoti Chand Sharma and Shrimati Nirmala Devi to promote and popularise the art form. In 2007, a not-for-profit organisation called Disha Gramin Vikas Manch collaborated with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development to re-establish Manjusha paintings as a viable source of livelihood by holding training and awareness programmes. The two organisations provided incentives in the form of marketing campaigns and exhibitions as well as financial support for businesses that sold the paintings. Today, Manjusha paintings feature on a variety of commercial products, such as upholstery and masks, as well as on the exterior of the Vikramshila Express train, which connects Bhagalpur with New Delhi.  

A form of scroll painting from the Mewar region of Rajasthan, Phad painting chronicles the stories of local folk heroes and deities (or bhomiya), such as Ramdevji from the Meghwal and Regar castes, Devnarayanji or Devji from the Gujjar community and Pabuji from the Rabari community. Historically, these painted cloth scrolls were used during performances of the stories by travelling Rabari priests and priestesses, locally known as bhopas and bhopis, who would commission artisans to illustrate them. Phad painting is believed to have originated in Shahpura in the fourteenth century, where it was practised exclusively by members of the Chhipa caste. This was also the period around which the local folk stories, or veergatha, documented by these scrolls first emerged. Stories of notable Rajput kings were also painted, although this was comparatively rare. Phad paintings are traditionally large, ranging from five to thirty five feet in length. The base of the painting is made of coarse cotton cloth or khadi. The cloth is soaked in water overnight, then dried and treated with primer, after which it is burnished with a stone, usually by male artisans. The primer is a mixture of flour and gum boiled in water. The pigments are traditionally prepared by women and derived from naturally occurring minerals. The artisan makes a rough plan of the painting in yellow, and fills in more colours once the composition is ready. The pigments are applied to the cloth with a medium made of kheriya gond, a local gum. The gum and the burnished surface are the main reasons for the longevity and vibrancy of Phad paintings. The style uses a flat perspective and bright colours. Each painting is framed by black and white borders composed of intricate floral patterns, while the edges of the cloth itself are always red. Human figures are depicted frontally, although their faces are shown in profile. These figures are painted in orange, with jewellery and clothing in red, yellow, blue and green. The bhomiya of the story is placed in the centre of the composition, sometimes with a companion. The veergatha is painted around him, either in part or full, and while this is not necessarily composed in a linear manner, the scenes are usually arranged horizontally and divided into panels with thin borders of vines. The painting is concluded by drawing a pupil in the eye of the central figure: a gesture that symbolically brings it to life. Phad paintings are considered sacred and scrolls that have suffered extensive wear and tear are disposed of through ritual immersion in the Pushkar lake. The bhopa and bhopi traditionally perform through the night: the bhopi uses a lamp to highlight different scenes in the painting and plays a two-string instrument called the ravanhatta, while the bhopa narrates the story. The performance, also called phad baanchna (“reading of the phad”), was historically commissioned as a religious service and each painted scroll was treated as a shrine. The ceremony traditionally began with a series of purification rituals in the performance area as well as an arti to the bhomiya central to the Phad painting. In 1960, notable Phad artisan Shree Lal Joshi founded the Joshi Kala Kunj (now renamed Chitrashala) in Bhilwara, where people from any community could enrol and learn Phad painting. The historical system of commissioning has also changed in recent years, with artisans preemptively preparing paintings of standard scenes such as royal hunts or religious imagery. While only a few artisans make Phad paintings professionally today, many hobbyists have embraced it and continue to follow the traditional methods of making the paintings. The religious performances associated with these scroll paintings, however, are rarely practised now. Recently, other deities from Hinduism, such as Ram and Krishna, have also been featured prominently in Phad paintings in a bid to draw in a wider audience. With commercial buyers in mind, artisans have also scaled the scrolls down to two to six feet in length.  

Also known as moksha patam, gyan chaupar is a board game originally played in medieval India and Nepal. The board in gyan chaupar is traditionally made of cloth or paper, and features a series of squares, snakes and ladders. Some more elaborate boards include additional imagery, such as portraits or decorative borders. Due to the materials used, most surviving gyan chaupar boards are no older than the eighteenth century. Historically, besides being a form of recreation, the game also served a spiritual and didactic purpose — gyan chaupar, literally translated as the ‘game of knowledge’, represents a lesson in the attainment of moksha or release from the cycle of death and rebirth. The origins of the game remain a matter of debate, with some scholars attributing its invention to Dnyaneshwar, a thirteenth-century Marathi saint, while others interpret a passage from the tenth-century text Rishabh Panchasika as an even earlier reference to the game. The oldest surviving example of the game is from seventeenth-century Mewar. Gyan chaupar was especially popular during the Jain Paryushan festival, when devotees fasted and played the game as a form of spiritual engagement.  Although the modern version of the board has been standardised as a hundred squares arranged in a rectangle, the medieval gyan chaupar varied widely in design. The most common number of squares among Hindu versions was seventy-two, while the Jain boards from present-day Gujarat and Rajasthan had eighty-four squares. A few Vaishnava boards from the Punjab Hills (or Pahari region) have over three hundred squares, with the board divided into left and right sections where snakes and ladders allow for as much lateral movement as vertical. Boards of all sizes were arranged in a grid, a cross or in a custom shape that followed a theme. For instance, in a Mewari board that is housed in the National Museum, the playing area is shaped like a Rajput fort. Some versions of gyan chaupar featured Vaishnava imagery and labelled the destination square as Vaikuntha, or the abode of Vishnu. In keeping with a moral lesson on overreaching, Vaikuntha was often located a few steps before the end, so that a snake’s head on the last square would send a player down to the start of the board as a punishment for crossing Vishnu’s abode. Some gyan chaupar designs depicted the playing area surrounded by an image of Lok Purusha or the ‘Cosmic Being’. In one confirmed case, a nineteenth-century board inscribed in Persian was made using ideas and designs from Islamic or Sufi spirituality, with the last square denoting the moment of merger with god. The snakes and ladders in gyan chaupar function as karmic devices, either thwarting or aiding a player’s efforts to reach moksha. To emphasise this, the squares from which the tokens either ascend or descend were labelled with names of various virtues or flaws. The positive attributes listed were dependability, asceticism, faithfulness, generosity and knowledge, while the negative attributes and crimes included rebelliousness, vanity, crudeness, theft, lust, debt and violence. These concepts were taken from Jain and Hindu theology, and thus also included ideas that did not have an equivalent in later versions of the game that used Victorian moral codes — such as maya or the illusion of the material world, and dharma, or divinely ordained duty. The squares on either end of a snake or a ladder were often related, illustrating, for instance, the link between ego and illusion, or devotion and paradise. In some boards, there was a prescribed order to a player’s moral progress, meaning that a sudden ascension to a particular square (such as Brahmaloka, or the abode of Brahma) had to be followed by a descent from a subsequent square down a snake (to prithvi, or earth) at least once in the game. In such cases, players were required to land on such squares with an exact roll of the dice and could not move past them. The game, as a whole, was meant to educate players on which traits and practices were morally desirable, how these would be rewarded, and what consequences lay in store for negative habits. The number of snakes was typically much larger than that of ladders — often twice as many — to underscore the difficulty of the path to enlightenment.  The gameplay of gyan chaupar is as follows: each player has a token and moves between numbered squares from the bottom to the top of the board, according to the roll of the dice or, in older versions, cowrie shells. Snakes and ladders function as conduits between squares on different vertical levels: if a token lands on a squares at the head of a snake, it immediately descends to the square containing the snake’s tail, and if it lands at the foot of a ladder, it ascends to the topmost rung. The objective of the game was to reach the last square at the top and exit the game. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, British officers took a number of contemporary Indian gyan chaupar boards to England, where they were examined and exhibited. A few unique boards following the Jain or Hindu design were also commissioned by British officers as collectibles. It was not until the 1890s, however, that gyan chaupar began to be sold as a children’s game in Britain, under the name ‘Snakes and Ladders’. While the British version retained some emphasis on ideas of morality — with illustrations of good and bad deeds on the squares that bookended each ladder or snake — it did away with the spiritual connotations and nuances of the Indian version that would have been puzzling to a British player, simplifying these into the more familiar Victorian templates of good and evil. Later, in 1943, the game was introduced in the USA by Milton Bradley under the name ‘Chutes and Ladders’, as the company felt that the image of snakes would scare children away. Other versions of the game include the German Leiterspiel, which used pictures of circus animals.  Today, contemporary versions of the game have done away with the moral element altogether, and are now played as a game of random chance. Medieval-era gyan chaupar boards are housed in the collections of the National Museum, New Delhi; the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Jodhpur; the Calico Museum of Textiles, Ahmedabad; and the British Library, London.  

A Persian card game that has been popular in the Indian subcontinent since the sixteenth century, ganjifa is notable for its hand-painted playing cards. The name ‘ganjifa’ likely derives from the Persian word ganj, meaning treasure or money. The game has several variations across West, Central and South Asia.  The rules of ganjifa are largely consistent across its various versions. A game typically has three players and lasts three rounds, although this can be adjusted if required. The objective of each round is to make hands or tricks. When the round concludes, the player with the lowest score is obliged to exchange their high cards for the others’ low cards in the next round. The number of cards exchanged depends on the number of tricks lost. The oldest surviving reference to ganjifa in India was made in the early fifteenth century by the historian Ibn Taghribirdi, who wrote that a Mamluk sultan gambled with kanjifa (a medieval Arabic name for ganjifa) as a young man. The game likely made its way to India through the Mughals and is referenced in a journal entry by Babur dating back to 1527 CE. A description of the gameplay of this early version of ganjifa can be found in the Humayun-nama, a sixteenth century text on the life and times of the second Mughal emperor, Humayun, written by his sister Gulbadan Begum. From the Mughal or Safavid ganjifa of the north to the dashavatara ganjifa in the Deccan, there have been several variations of the game since it was first introduced, each with a distinct iconography, deck and cultural context. Such was the popularity of ganjifa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the ancient card game of kreeda patra, too, came to be identified as the Persianate card game in the royal courts.  Like games such as chess, the cards of Mughal ganjifa depict figures and objects closely associated with imperial courts of the time. There are ninety-six cards in a pack, divided into eight suits of twelve cards each. The pack is divided into two parts or bhedas — bishbar bheda and kambar bheda. Each contains four suits, with every suit comprising two court cards called shah (king) and wazir (minister) as well as number cards from one to ten. The court cards of a suit are its strongest. Among the number cards, ten is the strongest and one the weakest in the bishbar bheda, while this is reversed in the kambar bheda, with one being the strongest. The names of the suits — according to the set described by poet Ahli Shirazi in the early sixteenth century — are gulam (servant), taj (crown), shamsher (sabre, or curved sword) and tanka (silver coin) in the bishbar bheda; and barat (cheque or draft), qimash (material wealth, usually in the form of textiles), ashrafi (red or gold coin) and chang (a small harp) in the kambar bheda. As with Western playing cards, the numerical ganjifa cards depict their suit in the relevant number: a ten of taj will feature ten crowns, a six of ashrafi will show six gold coins, and so forth. Visually, these may be arranged loosely on the card’s face following no particular order, or by dividing the circular card into triangular segments, akin to a pie chart, or in some cases as individual flowerheads on a tree-like form. Despite the word ‘gulam’ meaning slave or servant, cards of this suit often feature comical characters or stereotypes from local stories, or even full scenes of human figures, with the number of individuals reflecting the value of the card. In such decks, the shah and wazir are given an entourage in their respective cards.  The jewelled crown of the taj suit is likely modelled after the Sassanian-style crown used in Persia, or the Timurid headdress from Central Asia, which is in turn a more elaborate version of the Mongolian hat. The shamsher suit is relatively uniform, usually showing a similar curved sword in every pack, with the grip sometimes being covered by a knuckle-guard. The figures of the shamsher court cards are often shown in battle armour, perhaps to complement the weapon. The motif on cards in the chang suit is a small harp of Persian or Chinese origin. The court cards for the chang suit show only women playing the harp. In the case of the shah card in this suit, the woman sits on a throne among companions, and in the wazir card she rides a camel. The instrument itself never gained popularity in India and has historically caused the most confusion among ganjifa artists, leading to this suit being drawn in a variety of imaginative ways. The two money suits, tanka and ashrafi, are represented by silver and gold coins respectively. Additionally, the ashrafi suit’s court cards are shown as lions, tigers or the sun, possibly due to the association of these symbols with the imperial courts of West and Central Asia at the time. The qimash suit, intended to represent comfort, depicts stylised bolsters commonly used in North India. The barat suit has the simplest motif, usually a rectangle, or occasionally a circle, with a green outline. While packs used by the Mughal court were made with precious materials such as ivory and tortoiseshell, the cards used by the general public were made with starched cloth, papier mache or palm leaf, sometimes with a lacquered face. Ganjifa cards were historically elaborately painted, although factors such as demand, prevailing tastes and scale of production did impact the quality of card design at different points in time. Unlike the rectangular West Asian cards, Indian ganjifa cards are typically circular in shape. The court cards are usually the most meticulously designed, reflecting their typically high status in the gameplay. These cards, especially those from packs used by royalty and nobility, were often treated as miniature paintings in their own right, with a king or minister painted atop a horse against a background of hills or forest, and the symbol of the suit deftly worked into the composition.  Several variations on the Mughal game have been designed over time, some of which include: a twelve-suited version invented by Akbar known as Akbar’s ganjifa; ganjapa, which is played in Odisha today and closely follows Mughal ganjifa; the ten-suited dashavatara ganjifa, made according to the ten incarnations of Vishnu; Mysore chad ganjifa; naqsh ganjifa; sawantwadi ganjifa from Maharashtra; and Ramayana ganjapa, also from Odisha. From the early twentieth century onwards, Western playing cards became more popular in India than ganjifa, due to their simpler four-suit system, easily mass-produced cards and the wide variety of games they served.  The game is rarely played today, with painters (or chitrakars) in Odisha, Maharashtra and Mysore occasionally producing novelty packs intended as display pieces. In recent years, artists and institutions have taken some steps to revive ganjifa, a notable example of which is Splendours of Ganjifa Art, a book on the game’s history released by the Chitrakala Parishath, Bengaluru in 2019.

A popular cross and circle board game that originated in India, pachisi derives its name from the Hindi and Urdu word for twenty-five, pachis. The game uses five cowrie shells as dice, with the highest throw valued at twenty-five. While the game is traditionally played on a cross-shaped cloth, any surface may be used, including a drawing or engraving on the floor. In contemporary India, ludo is the most commonly played version of pachisi, although the original version is still played in some parts.  The origins of pachisi are disputed, with some scholars speculating that a version of the game was played in the pivotal gambling scene in the Mahabharata, or is being played by Shiva and Parvati in a relief carving at Cave 29, Ellora. However, in the absence of any description of a board or gameplay, there is no evidence that these games were pachisi and may have simply been bets made on rolls of the dice. The oldest surviving evidence of the game is in the form of sixteenth-century pachisi courts built by the Mughals at Agra and Fatehpur Sikri. These were used for a life-sized version of the game in which Akbar’s courtesans took on the role of tokens who moved across the court as per the plays of the emperor and his noblemen. Details of these games and the gameplay have been recorded by Akbar’s biographer Abu’l Fazl, who notes that the game was already popular at the time, implying that pachisi substantially predates Mughal rule. Further evidence of the game exists in the form of surviving boards and tokens, as well as paintings from Mughal- and Rajput-era manuscripts, which depict people playing the game. Most cross and circle games use a board made of a circle enclosing a cross, usually in the form of paths. This can also mean that the tokens used by players follow a circular movement along the central cross without the presence of an actual circle, as is the case with pachisi. The board for pachisi consists of four pathways, each of which is eight tiles long and three tiles wide. All four pathways meet in a central area known as charkoni. Some tiles, usually three or four per arm of the cross, are marked with an ‘X’ and are called castles.  In traditional gameplay, four players are divided into teams of two, with players facing each other forming one team. Each player has four tokens, all of which are placed in the charkoni. Players take turns casting the cowrie shells, and the one with the highest roll makes the first move of the game, followed by the rest in a counter-clockwise order. Once the game begins, each player moves one of their tokens according to the roll of the cowrie shells, first going down the middle column of the arm that faces the player, then up and down the outer paths of each of the remaining arms in a counter-clockwise progression, with the last path being the same as the first. The first team to return all their tokens to the charkoni after completing a full circuit of the board wins the game.  Capturing and blocking tokens is also a major component of the gameplay. An opponent’s token is considered captured when a player lands on the same square as that token. Captured tokens are sent back to the charkoni and have to begin the game anew. In some versions of the game, a token could only finish at the charkoni if it captured at least one enemy token during its time on the board. Another Indian game similar to, and possibly also contemporaneous with pachisi, is chaupar (not to be confused with gyan chaupar), which uses stick dice in place of cowrie shells. Early European variations of pachisi include ludo, a British game invented in the late nineteenth century, and Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, an early twentieth-century German game. Later American adaptations of the game include Sorry! and Parcheesi.  Pachisi boards and tokens from various periods of Indian history can be found in the collections of the National Museum, New Delhi; the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; the Swiss Museum of Games; the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, USA; and in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art.

One of the earliest stone sculptures made under the patronage of the Mauryan king Ashoka, the lion capital at Sarnath, Bihar, depicts four male Asiatic lions seated on a round abacus with their backs to each other. The capital is carved from a single block of highly polished Chunar stone that is separate from the block used for the pillar shaft, which features the inscribed edicts of Ashoka. The most elaborately carved of all surviving Ashokan capitals, the lion capital stands at a height of two meters and is dated to ca. 250 BCE. The broken remnants of the pillar, as well as the complete, but detached, capital were formally excavated around the year 1905 by F O Oertel. The capital is believed to have originally been attached on top of the pillar. Also among the findings were fragments of a large dharmachakra stone with thirty-two spokes, which is presumed to have rested on the capital in a likely reference to the Buddha’s first sermon. The four lions comprising the capital are depicted with their mouths open as if mid-roar and their manes are arranged in neat ringlets. They also portray an understated but carefully studied musculature. Scholars claim that the eye sockets of the lions were once fitted with semi-precious stones. The overall form of the lions is poised, heavily stylised and compact, similar to the lion images carved in Achaemenid Persia, which is a known source of influence for Mauryan architecture. In addition, the abacus features four animals — an elephant, a lion, a bull and a horse, carved in high relief and suggesting that the sculptor(s) may have been familiar with the anatomies of the animals. They appear to be moving in a clockwise direction and are separated by four chakras with twenty-four spokes each. The abacus rests on an upturned, bell-shaped lotus with elongated, fluted petals, which are also believed to have been borrowed from the Achaemenid style of architecture. Sarnath is the site of the Buddha’s first sermon and the lion capital is believed to have been built to commemorate the occasion. Therefore, the various icons that appear on the capital are recurring symbols within Buddhism. The dharmachakra is a solar symbol with its origin in many faiths and, therefore, has multiple interpretations. Here, it is believed to represent the Buddha “turning the wheel of the law” with his first sermon at Sarnath. It also possibly refers to Ashoka’s title of Chakravartin, meaning “a ruler whose chariot wheels roll everywhere.” Some sources interpret the lions as personifying the Shakyamuni (of the Shakya, or lion, clan) Buddha who preached his sermons at Sarnath. Their open mouths are interpreted as spreading the Buddha’s teachings, the Four Noble Truths, far and wide. An almost identical lion capital with its mouth open is found at the Sanchi pillar, which is another site where the Buddha is believed to have delivered sermons. Some interpretations suggest that the lions symbolise not only Buddha, but also Ashoka. As a significant ruler of the first historical empire in India with a vast geographical reach, strong relations with foreign states and diverse secular cultures, Ashoka was held in parallel with the Buddha, having limitedly imbibed the Buddhist way of life. The animals on the abacus are interpreted differently by various scholars. According to Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher, and later accepted by most other scholars, the four animals are associated with the four milestone events in the Buddha’s life: the elephant, representing his mother Queen Maya’s dream of a white elephant entering her womb; the bull, representing his birth under the astrological sign Vrishabha; the horse, representing Kantaka, the horse on which Buddha fled his palace to pursue asceticism; and the lion, representing the enlightened Buddha and often known as Shakyasimha. The animals are depicted running in the clockwise direction and separated by four dharma chakras, possibly signifying the intention of setting the wheel in motion through the cycle of life or representing the Buddha setting the wheel in motion at the sermon at Sarnath. Another prevalent opinion is that these animals face the cardinal directions. They have also been identified as the four perils of samsara — birth, disease, death and decay — following each other in an endless cycle. The upturned lotus that the capital rests on represents purity in Buddhist art, sculpture, ritual and theory and symbolises rising above the mundanity of life to attain enlightenment. In 1950, three years after Indian independence, the lion capital at Sarnath was adopted as the emblem of the Republic of India, with the lions representing virtues such as pride, power, courage and confidence. The inverted lotus bell has been omitted, and the motto ‘Satyameva Jayate, meaning “truth alone triumphs,” is inscribed in Devanagari script below the abacus. The original lion capital is now preserved at the Sarnath Museum, near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.  

Also known as the Kailasa and Cave 16, the Kailasanatha temple at Ellora is the largest monolithic rock-cut monument in the world. At 32 metres high and 78 metres long, it is widely considered remarkable for its size, architecture and sculptural treatment. The temple is unusual in that it is not a recreation of interior spaces like earlier Deccan cave temples such as those at Badami and Ajanta. Rather, it is a rock-hewn rendition of a structural Shaivite temple executed as a freestanding form in a large open court. The temple’s design appears to have been appropriated or developed from the Chalukya Dynasty’s Lokeshvara or Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal. Scholars have suggested that this is meant to represent the victory of its patrons, the Rashtrakuta Dynasty, over the Chalukyas, their former sovereigns. The temple’s iconography is influenced by Shaivite myths as well as the avatars of Vishnu; many sculptures appear to have been selected based on themes of the successful upholding of cosmic order, supporting the claims of its patrons to political ascendancy over the Deccan. Scholars initially believed that Kailasanatha’s diversity in sculptural styles, coupled with the scale of its excavation — requiring over two million tonnes of rock to be removed — meant that it must have been added to over the course of many generations, through the patronage of multiple dynasties. However, the temple’s uniform architectural programme, combined with more recent studies of sculpture and iconography, have led to a new consensus attributing it to around two decades of activity under the Rashtrakuta kings Dantidurga and Krishna I in the late eighth century CE. The carving was most likely executed from the surface of the rock to the centre, from the top to the bottom. Additional halls and sculptures may have been added through the early ninth century. The temple is entered through a two-storeyed rock-cut gateway, or gopuram. Directly facing the entry is a carved panel of Gajalakshmi, generally associated with kingship, flanked by two colossal dvarapalas. Beyond this is an open courtyard 47 metres wide on average. Two free-standing elephant sculptures are positioned in a space adjoining the gateway, which transitions into a circumambulatory space around the temple proper through a short flight of steps. The temple proper stands on a moulded plinth about 8 m high within this. Such a tall plinth is unusual for structural temples of this period, leading scholars to suggest that it was designed to allow for light and air to reach the bottom storey. The plinth is decorated with carved elephants and lions and appears to be influenced by models from Pallava sculpture; it has also been argued that sculptor guilds from Pallava territories may have been drawn to Ellora by Rashtrakuta patronage. Large galleries are carved into the side and back walls of this enclosure, further increasing the space available for circumambulation at ground level. Scholars have argued that some of these — specifically the river goddess shrine carved into the northern cliff face and the sacrificial hall or yajnashala on the southern cliff face — might have been added by later Rashtrakuta monarchs. Other galleries, such as the sixteen-pillared Lankeshvara temple on the first storey of the northern cliff face adjacent to the temple, appear to have been a part of the initial excavation. The upper storey of the Kailasanatha includes the temple proper, consisting of a Nandi mandapa; a sixteen-pillared sabhamandapa with porches on the north, west and south; the garbhagriha surmounted by a vimana with four talas; and five subsidiary shrines to the north, northeast, southeast and south of the vimana. Sculptural stone bridges connect the Nandi mandapa with the gopuram and the sabhamandapa; a bridge that originally extended from the sabhamandapa to the southern cliff face has since collapsed. On the ground floor, on the lower exterior walls of the Nandi mandapa and the sabhamandapa, are large sculptures of Gajasurasamharamurti and a meditating Shiva facing each other. The southern lower exterior wall of the sabhamandapa is carved with detailed narrative friezes depicting the Ramayana, while the northern lower exterior wall is carved with the Mahabharata narrative. Both of these reliefs omit the beginnings and ends of the epics and include scenes not seen in the classical recensions, suggesting that the artisans and patrons of the temple used local or regional variations of the stories instead. The sculptures on the south exterior wall of the sabhamandapa on the upper storey depict the abduction of Sita and the battle of Vali and Sugriva; the north includes various forms of Shiva. Scholars have suggested that this is meant to suggest a collapse and a restoration of cosmic order respectively, which in the temple’s iconographic programme appears to be closely linked with Shiva and by extension the Rashtrakutas as Shaivite kings. Scholars have also suggested that the Kailasanatha collected and represented aspects of Shaivism that were still evolving in the eighth and ninth centuries: the galleries on the ground floor contain among the earliest known depictions of Ravana sacrificing his heads to Shiva, a legend that is directly linked to later jyotirlinga traditions. The vimana of the Kailasanatha may be considered an example of the continuing evolution of Deccan temple architecture. It is surmounted by an octagonal shikhara over a platform with reclining bulls at four corners. In the three subsequent talas, the shrines at the centre of each side are crowned by barrel-roofed aedicules known as shalas, and those at the corners by square-shaped aedicules called kutas. The overall elevation of the vimana shows a radial continuity by repeating the basic architectural scheme in each of the lower talas giving the impression that the whole vimana expands outward with each tala. A barrel-roofed antefix or sukhanasa extends from the vimana towards the roof of the sabhamandapa, a feature also seen at the Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal. The roof bears kuta aedicules at each corner interspersed with shala aedicules; at the centre is a lotus surmounted by four lions arranged around a central kuta. The lions’ bodies are pointed towards the ordinal directions, whereas their faces are turned towards the cardinal directions; it is possible that this is also meant to support claims to Rashtrakuta political ascendancy. The sculptures at the temple are characterised by movement: plasticity and fluidity of form replaces the solidity and verticality seen in the sculpted volumes of earlier caves at Ellora, a trend first seen in the Dashavatara cave. This sculptural trend provides further art historical support to the attribution of the Kailasanatha to the Rashtrakutas, since the Dashavatara cave is directly associated with the Rashtrakuta king Dantidurga through an inscription. The sculptors at the Kailasanatha appear to have moved away from older compositional styles emphasising the central axis of symmetry; the figures they produced are mobile and animated, as observed in the dvarapalas and the Gajasurasamharamurti. The sculptural depiction of Ravananugrahamurti under the sabhamandapa on the south side has also been remarked upon for its dramatic quality, with palpable psychological contrasts and tensions. The multi-armed, multi-headed demon-king Ravana is carved completely in the round under a platform on which Shiva sits; the whirling motion of the demon is balanced by the stillness of Shiva. Like other sculptural depictions of Ravananugrahamurti, such as those seen at Pattadakal, this may be meant as a political allegory for the dominance of the Rashtrakutas over their rivals. However, the lack of inscriptional evidence from the temple itself makes such associations difficult to establish definitively; the only references to what may be the Kailasanatha temple are found in inscriptions from Rashtrakuta vassals. The Kailasanatha temple continued to attract visitors, admirers and patrons for centuries after the collapse of the Rashtrakutas. These included various rulers of the Bahmani and Nizam Shahi dynasties, who visited the temples for recreational visits along with their courts; the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir visited it in the late seventeenth century and in the eighteenth century, the Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar sponsored a renovation and the repainting of some sections of the temple. The temple was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 as part of the Ellora Caves complex.  

Stone sculptures, often reliefs, that are carved from living rock and are typically associated with monolithic architecture. Monuments built by excavating and carving rock on site differ from structural buildings that are made with materials such as stone, wood, bricks and so forth that are sourced from elsewhere, segmented into units and transported to the site of construction. Rock-cut sculpture has independently arisen in various part of the world, from subterranean structures in Malta in the Neolithic Period to tombs in ancient Egypt and the Phrygian kingdom in present-day Turkey. Given the size of some of these early monuments, the decision to carve living rock is widely assumed to be made based on convenience. Hillsides containing rock like sandstone and basalt — found abundantly in the Deccan region, where many such caves are located — were typically used for this purpose because they are relatively easy to carve while remaining structurally sound. As a tradition specific to the religious art of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, rock-cut sculpture in South Asia is found in cave temples and prayer halls, and reflects shifts in regional trends and cultural patronage. The earliest surviving example of rock-cut sculpture in India can be found in the Lomas Rishi cave in the Barabar hills, Bihar. These caves date back to the third century BCE, when they were excavated — in this case, hollowed and shaped — with the patronage of Ashoka and his successor Dasaratha of the Mauryan Empire. The Barabar caves were created so that wandering ascetics might be able to take refuge there during the monsoon, since caves (even altered ones) were considered an extension of the natural world as opposed to the material civilisation which the ascetics had disavowed. Early approaches to rock-cut sculpture emerged from broader traditions of rock-cut architecture, aided by the tastes of patrons and the development of religious iconography. Cave sites dating to the second and first centuries BCE in present-day Maharashtra — such as Bhaja, Pitalkhora and Karla — were also built to house travelling Buddhist monks, but the collective patronage from officials of different faiths meant that Hindu and Buddhist iconography feature alongside one another in the sculptures carved on the cave walls. At Bhaja, for instance, narrative scenes are rendered in low relief over the cave walls, with characters packed densely together. The later reliefs at Karla show a deeper integration of the natural structure of the cave in the architecture and the sculptures; here, the figures are rendered in high relief in proportion with the cave size. In the first millennium CE, rock-cut sculptures saw a movement from dynamic, often asymmetrical forms to a stricter, standardised style of sculpture. Key examples of the former are date back to the fifth century at the Udayagiri caves in Madhya Pradesh and the Ajanta caves in Maharashtra. The carving of whole caves or particular images at these sites was funded by officials and rulers of the Gupta Empire and Vakataka Dynasty respectively, with spaces dedicated to Buddhist, Jain and Hindu worship. The sculptural treatment of the human figure at these sites is naturalistic and affective, suggesting that this visual vocabulary may have already been established in the fourth century or earlier, but possibly in a more easily perishable medium. The formal dynamism apparent in the transitory style of the early sixth century Shaivite temples at Elephanta was soon replaced with a more regularised style. By the eighth century at Ellora, the human form was carved in front-facing, symmetrical poses with neat patterns of recurring elements such as the folds of a figure’s clothing or ornamentation. The dense but carefully balanced narrative scenes depicted in the Kailasanatha Temple reflect this new style, which incorporates multiple iconographies while drawing from a variety of architectural forms. The sculptural elements of later caves at long-patronised sites such as Ellora were often carved in imitation of earlier ones, or other important sites. The rock-cut temples of Badami and Aihole borrow elements from the earlier Ajanta and Udayagiri style as well as the stricter Ellora style. The largely Hindu temples at these sites, all built with the patronage of the Chalukya Dynasty in the sixth century, are carved from soft red sandstone, which allowed for naturalistic and densely composed reliefs. In the seventh century, the period following the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I’s victory over the Chalukyas saw a large number of rock-cut structures being carved from the granite boulders and caves at the newly established town of Mamallapuram in present-day Tamil Nadu, all of which were in some way designed to memorialise the victory. Stylistically, the rock reliefs of Mamallapuram are rougher and more rigid than those of caves in western India and the Deccan. This is partly due to the lack of specialised craftsmen for rock-cut sculpture in the region and partly a difference in material: the basalt rock of the Deccan and the sandstone at Badami and Aihole are softer and relatively easy to carve than the granite boulders at Mamallapuram. Built toward the end of the tenth century, the Gomateshvara statue dedicated to the Jain figure Bahubali, is the world’s largest rock-cut sculpture at a height of seventeen metres. Situated in the town of Shravanabelagola in Karnataka, it is carved entirely from a single block of granite. There are also a few significant examples of monumental rock reliefs beyond the subcontinent. Carved on a sandstone cliff, the two sixth-century Bamiyan Buddha statues in present-day Afghanistan, measuring 53 and 35 metres respectively, were the largest known examples of Gandhara sculpture before their destruction in 2001 by the then-incumbent Taliban government. Despite their large numbers, very rarely are the artisans of these sculptures identified, even when inscriptions of patrons or dedications are present. Moreover, most artisans worked in guilds, and individual contribution was secondary to collective work, especially in the case of lower caste artisans who worked on temples dedicated to upper caste worship.  

A complex of five monolithic, rock-cut, granite structures located in Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu, the Pancha Rathas – meaning “five chariots” in Sanskrit – are attributed to the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I, and were carved between 630–668 CE. The shrines are considered significant examples of early Dravida architecture. They are now named after the Pandavas and their wife Draupadi from the Mahabharata epic: the Arjuna Ratha, the Bhima Ratha, the Dharmaraja Ratha, the Nakula Sahadeva Ratha and the Draupadi Ratha. However, the original structures have no known correlation with the epic, and it has been argued that they were probably intended as individual shrines rather than as chariots. The complex also includes three large sculptures of a lion, an elephant and a bull. The vimanas of these structures are marked by the presence of shalas, kutas and chandrashalas, dormer-shaped windows typical of Pallava architecture. Of the five rathas, four are in a line, suggesting that they were carved out of a single stretch of granite rock approximately 49 metres long and 12 metres tall at the southern end, and around 6 metres tall at the northern end. Fissures in between were likely used to create the individual structures. The fifth ratha, which is not in the same line as the others, was probably carved out of an adjacent boulder. Scholars believe that the granite was cut from top to bottom, with the uncut rock below used as a support base. The Pancha Rathas fall under the sculptures at Mamallapuram, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. They are also a protected site of the Archeological Survey of India under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act, 2010. As of writing, they continue to be a major tourist attraction.  

Two rock-cut shrines excavated during the seventh and eighth centuries CE, the Thirumalapuram cave shrines are located on a hillock in Thirumalapuram (also known as Varunachimalai) in the district of Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu. The two shrines, which have identical façades, are located on the northern and southern sides of the hillock. The northern cave contains a linga carved out of the rock, suggesting it was dedicated to Shiva, while the southern cave appears to have been left incomplete. The shrines provide important evidence of the movement and interaction of artistic styles through the region in the medieval period. The completed northern shrine has an entrance porch or mahamandapa followed by a rectangular pillared ardhamandapa and a sanctum or garbhagriha, excavated into the lateral wall rather than the back wall of the cave. The entrance to the sanctum is flanked by sculptures of dvarapalas, which had become commonplace in south Indian temple architecture by the eighth century; a Nandi faces the linga. The façades and the pillars appear to be influenced by the shrines of the Pallava court. Lotus medallions are present in the cubical portion of the pillar shafts as well as in the pilasters that frame the reliefs on the inner walls. The underside of the bracket capitals are decorated with scroll ornaments. Carved in relief panels are images of Ganesha and a Trimurti scheme featuring a four-armed Vishnu flanked by ganas; a dancing Shiva, also similarly flanked; and Brahma, with two of his four faces shown in profile. This representation of the three deities may also be inspired by Pallava models. The northern cave shrine was also decorated with frescoes, dated to the eleventh to twelfth centuries CE. They depict dancing ganas, the group of men in floral robes, and a celestial figure riding a lion (possibly Durga) near the Brahma relief. These paintings reflect influences from the mural traditions of Sittanavasal and Thanjavur. Although the Thirumalapuram cave shrines’ original purpose is unknown, an inscription from the eleventh century CE, attributed to the Pandya king Maravarman Vallabhadeva, recorded that religious ceremonies and rituals were regularly performed at the site. As of writing, the shrines have attracted little scholarly attention, and their sculptures and frescoes are in a state of neglect.  

A large granite statue of Narasimha, the Ugra Narasimha statue was commissioned in 1528 CE by Krishnadevaraya, a ruler of the Tuluva Dynasty of Vijayanagara (present-day Hampi, Karnataka). At the time of its construction, and until its partial destruction in the aftermath of the battle of Talikota in 1565, the statue was a composite Lakshmi Narasimha statue. The accompanying Lakshmi image, once seated on the god’s knees, was destroyed in 1565. The statue shows Narasimha seated in a frontal posture with bulging eyes and a gaping mouth. The god, 6.7 metres tall, is framed by a prabhavali arch with a kirtimukha (face of glory) at its top. Unlike most Narasimha images, here the god is depicted is seated atop three coils of the snake Adishesha, and is surmounted by its seven hoods. In this aspect, as with its original coupling with the image of Lakshmi, the statue shares iconographic attributes conventionally assigned to Vishnu. Behind the statue is a small shrine dedicated to Narasimha. The Narasimha statue’s colossal proportions and fearsome form suggest that it was considered a protecting image for the city. Vijayanagara rulers of the Tuluva Dynasty were devotees of Narasimha; the god was one of the earliest Vaishnavite deities to be widely worshipped at Vijayanagara. Two early Vijayanagara temples were dedicated to him at Anegondi, and on the south bank of Tungabhadra. The Narasimha cult expanded under the rulers Krishnadevaraya and his successors Achyutaraya, and Sadashiva; it was given special impetus through the activities of the Madhava sect, who were active in and around Vijayanagara between the early fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Madhava Brahmins were also closely associated with the military administration of Krishnadevaraya. The defeat of Vijayanagara by an alliance of the Deccan Sultanates in 1565 led to a sack of the city, during which the structure was also harmed. Both knees of Narasimha, and the Lakshmi image seated atop them, were broken off. This has commonly been interpreted as an act of iconoclasm by Muslim rulers, a view that has been questioned by recent scholarship. It has been pointed out that a monumental statue of Ganesha near the Narasimha statue was left untouched by the attacking armies, suggesting that the vandalism of the Narasimha statue was driven by its association with the power of the Tuluva Dynasty, rather than primarily by religious considerations. Such politically-driven acts of violence were commonplace in the sixteenth century: the rulers of Vijayanagara, especially Krishnadevaraya, are attested to have done so during campaigns in Odisha and the northern Deccan. Restoration attempts in the 1980s brought the figure back to a cross-legged position by adding in a pair of knees. A yogapatta band was also added, strapping the knees together. This addition has often led the image to be described as Yoga Narasimha, as a result of which the restoration remains controversial. As of writing, the Ugra Narasimha statue continues to feature in debates over religious and political violence in the sixteenth century and remains a major tourist attraction at Hampi.  

Comprising the manuscript illustration traditions patronised by the sultanates of Ahmadnagar, Bijapur and Golconda, Deccani manuscript painting flourished between the sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries. It also includes the manuscripts and muraqqas commissioned by Maratha emperors and peshwas in the eighteenth century, though these were fewer in number. Manuscript painting in the Deccan grew steadily until the Mughal conquest of the region between 1600–87 resulted in the annexation of the Deccan sultanates, after which a combination of puppet governments and appointed governors kept the practice alive, but with a heavy emphasis on emulating the Mughal aesthetic. The Deccan plateau, which extends over most of the land between the eastern and western coasts of the Indian peninsula, has enjoyed a long history of trade and artistic exchange because of its many ports, which linked it to the Indian Ocean trade routes. Further, the royal families of several Deccan sultanates also had ancestral or cultural links with Persia and Turkey. As a result, Deccan manuscript painting absorbed a range of influences, especially from the Safavid and Mughal ateliers, and, in its initial phases, from the paintings and sculptures of medieval Hindu and Jain temples in the region. It is also notable for its patronage from women rulers, whose power is reflected in the paintings, as well as in subjects such as astrological charts, the Buraq and composite animals. While the style varied somewhat between courts and time periods, overall Deccani manuscript paintings were boldly coloured, heavily ornamented, and often equal parts fantastical and detailed in their rendering of flora and fauna. The costumes and jewellery worn by the figures featured varying degrees of synthesis between the south Indian fashions of the time and the traditional attires of Persia and Asia Minor. The matured styles of the various courts — in the early decades of the seventeenth century — show a fascination with movement, especially the suggestion of a slight breeze that lent a characteristic dynamism to otherwise static figures. Persian influences can be seen particularly in the way mountains and faces were drawn, and in the high, slightly curved horizon line. However, as Mughal military expansion into the south began at the end of the sixteenth century, painters began to move between Mughal and Deccan ateliers, sometimes deliberately altering their work for their north Indian patrons. Over time, Deccani paintings became more naturalistic, more tightly composed and more muted in their colour choices – similar to the Mughal style. The oldest surviving manuscript paintings from the region belong to the incomplete Tarif-i-Hussain Shahi manuscript, made in 1565 for the Ahmadnagar court, though scholars speculate that there may have been older manuscripts that are now lost. Information on the development of the Ahmadnagar style is particularly fragmentary, as few folios and drawings have survived. The prominent position given to Khanzada Humayun, the queen regent of Ahmadnagar between 1565–69, in the paintings and the text of the Tarif-i-Hussain Shahi manuscript suggests that she likely commissioned it herself. However, she was deliberately erased later on in all but one painting of the manuscript after her son Murtaza overthrew and imprisoned her. The Ahmadnagar style appears to become more restrained and naturalistic in the 1570s, and a clear Mughal influence is visible by the 1590s. By 1600, however, political turbulence in the kingdom and the Mughal conquest of key cities in Ahmadnagar ended local patronage for the art form, although Rajput governors of the Mughal Deccan continued to hire artisans for Rajasthani-style miniatures, particularly for portraits and ragamala paintings. The Bijapur sultanate, also formed in 1490, extensively patronised manuscript painting. The earliest example is the Nujum-ul-Ulum, an encyclopaedic manuscript on astrology and magic commissioned by Ali Adil Shah I. His successor, Ibrahim Adil Shah II, sponsored manuscript painting and other art forms generously, also dabbling in painting himself. His reign marks what scholars consider the high point of Bijapur painting, which is notable for its extremely dense use of golden floral and arabesque patterns for the ornamentation of clothing, and its intricate, varied depiction of flora. Ibrahim’s interest in both Hindu mythology and Sufism allowed for the inclusion of syncretic symbolism in illustrations commissioned during his reign, and even more so in the accompanying texts. Chand Bibi, aunt and queen regent during Ibrahim’s minority, features in later eighteenth-century Deccan paintings as the ideal female ruler and warrior, typically depicted hawking with an entourage. While Ibrahim’s successors continued to commission illustrated manuscripts, this was done as a matter of courtly duty rather than personal interest. This, along with the increased presence of Mughal governors in the region following the conquest of Ahmadnagar territories in 1600–36, meant that the younger generation of local artists was encouraged to emulate the Mughal style in their commissioned manuscripts. Many artists trained in the north were also brought into the royal ateliers of the Deccan. As a result, the Bijapuri style became very close to that of Mughal manuscript paintings by 1680, soon after which Bijapur was annexed by Aurangzeb. Meanwhile, in the north Deccan, the Maratha court took an interest in manuscript painting, commissioning muraqqas, ragamalas and illustrated copies of religious texts regularly over the course of the early seventeenth and eighteenth century. Initially, these were made at Rajput kingdoms in Rajasthan, but as Maratha patronage steadied, local painters were hired in the chitrashalas or painting ateliers at Poona (now Pune). In Hyderabad, the Qutub Shahis of Golconda – the wealthiest of the Deccan sultanates – employed local, West Asian and Central Asian artists in their atelier, but the style tended towards that of the Safavids. While the idealised faces and bodies of human figures of these paintings are characteristic of Persian painting, their realistic postures suggest the hand of local artisans experienced in making stone sculptures for temple walls. The Golconda style underwent subtle changes over the course of the seventeenth century: first, in the form of the Mughal naturalism, which had already spread to Bijapur, and then as a deliberate rigidity and restraint seen in painted figures, possibly in emulation of new Persian painters of miniatures such as Shaikh Abbasi. Scholars have suggested that this style may be the work of Deccani artists who trained in Persian ateliers and returned to India or of Persian artists migrating to India themselves. Following the capture of Golconda by Mughal forces in 1687 and the deposition of the Qutub Shahis, a Mughal tributary state based in Hyderabad emerged as the major political presence in the south Deccan in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. While these rulers were governors and not royalty, they still functioned as major patrons, typically commissioning portraits in which they appear in profile with grave expressions, possibly to emulate the Mughal style – a choice that was somewhat undercut by the abundant flora surrounding them. After Hyderabad and the southern Deccan were taken over by the Asaf Jahis in 1724, the court style retained its rigid emulation of Mughal painting, steadily sponsoring artisans over the course of the eighteenth century. These works were technically well-executed and extremely formal, with the dynamism and nuance of earlier Deccan styles visible only in drawings and sketches. Today, folios and manuscripts illustrated in the Deccan can be found in museums and private collections across the world, including the National Museum, New Delhi; the Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal, Pune; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; the David Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA; and the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Patronised by the Hindu Rajput courts of northwestern India, a number of regional schools of manuscript painting emerged, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, in and around present-day Rajasthan. Building on earlier traditions of Jain religious manuscripts in the region as well as Sultanate idioms of Islamic art, various medieval courts of Rajput dynasties absorbed influences of contemporary Mughal art and incorporated them into miniature paintings for Jain, Hindu as well as secular manuscripts. This constituted a shift from flat, angular images in a limited colour palette to finely detailed, naturalistic depictions using a range of subtle, earthy colours. Variously grouped as Rajasthani or Rajput miniature painting schools by scholars, regional schools such as the Kota, Bundi, Marwar, Kishangarh, Mewar and Jaipur schools emerged during this period, each with its distinctive character — but together instrumental in prolonging the Mughal miniature idiom even after the decline of the empire. Significant pictorial traditions had existed in the region from at least the eleventh century, in the form of illustrated Jain manuscripts made using palm leaves. Used as educational texts and ritual objects, these manuscripts were stored in bhandaras, or libraries. By the fifteenth century, secular and Hindu religious manuscripts also began to appear, including illustrated versions of the Gita Govinda, the Devi Mahatmya, the Panchatantra and the Rati Rahasya. Despite using paper, these manuscripts retained the narrow horizontal format of older palm-leaf manuscripts. The illustrations themselves are characteristic of the western Indian style of painting, featuring angular silhouettes, bold lines and earthy colours, such as ochre and olive, occasionally punctuated by bursts of vivid hues. While the faces of ordinary people are depicted in three-quarter profile, with the farther eye protruding, Hindu deities and nobility are shown in perfect profile with only one eye visible. By the mid-fifteenth century, the stylistic influence of Islamic court art from present-day Iran and Afghanistan percolated into western Indian schools through India’s early medieval Sultanate courts. Manuscripts from this period incorporated decorative borders as well as embellishments using silver, gold and lapis lazuli. An illustrated copy of the Hindu text Bhagavata Purana from this period also reflects the influence of Islamic codices — manuscripts which typically took a vertical format akin to the modern-day book — with images becoming independent of text and expanding in size, sometimes occupying the entire folio. In the sixteenth century, various renderings of the eponymous twelfth-century Sanskrit love poem gave rise to the Chaurapanchasika style, which embodied what scholars consider an early phase of the Rajasthani style. Rajput rulers also formed close alliances with the Mughal dynasty which gained centralised power in the Indian subcontinent from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. Alongside other social and cultural exchanges between the Mughal and Rajput courts, the influence of Mughal miniature painting became increasingly pronounced in the manuscript traditions in Rajasthan and beyond. The kitabkhanas — libraries and book-making workshops — of the Mughal court invited artists from all over the empire, and beyond. Among them were a large number of specialists, including calligraphers, colourists and painters, working together in a highly organised environment to produce lavish manuscripts. In the Rajput context, however, manuscript-painting teams often simply comprised the extended families of painters, who were sometimes present at court and at other times worked from their family homes in the small towns and cities of the kingdom. At the same time, the smaller Rajput principalities in central India also carried forward the longstanding traditions of the Malwa school of painting, after the fall of the Malwa kingdom’s capital Mandu in the second half of the sixteenth century. These diverse influences were amalgamated in various ways to give birth to a series of regional styles.  In the sixteenth century, the Mughal techniques of naturalism in landscape and facial features, spatial depth and perspective, were absorbed to differing degrees in these courts and co-existed alongside their own traditional styles. The themes of the manuscripts from this period were diverse, encompassing Hindu religious texts such as the Bhagavata Purana, epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, as well as legends and stories about local folk heroes. As Vaishnavism took hold of sixteenth-century Rajasthan, works about the life of Krishna, in particular, were produced across the various royal courts. Poetical works such as Rasamanjari, Rasikapriya were also commissioned, as were devotional works like the Gitagovinda and Sur Sagar.  Each Rajput principality had its own legacy and style of manuscript painting, with patronage and production not always limited to royal workshops. In Marwar, for example, a Meghaduta manuscript was commissioned by lay patrons in 1699, showing stylistic similarities with a traditional Ragamala series dating back to 1624. At Mewar, which hosted another prominent school of miniature painting, the earliest manuscript, Chawand Ragamala, dates back to 1605. It is one of several notable works produced by the court’s workshop during the first half of the seventeenth century, including the Mewar Ramayana (1649–53).  In the seventeenth century, the style of the Bikaner school continued to parallel the Mughal artistic style of the time. However, by the second half of the century, the Mughal workshops suffered a decline and Bikaner’s local painting tradition re-emerged and gained prominence, as evidenced by a Rasikapriya series and Bhagavata Purana dating to this time. It was during the same period that manuscript painting was also flourishing in the workshops or chitrashalas of Bundi and Kota. The former is notable for its use of elements from both the Mughal and the Deccani schools. The latter, after its separation from Bundi, established its own painting tradition, which included detailed depictions of landscapes and hunting scenes in addition to devotional works.  The apogee of the Kishangarh school, meanwhile, came in the first half of the eighteenth century, characterised by devotional paintings of Radha and Krishna. These paintings, primarily executed by the master artist Nihal Chand, were based on the Bhagavata Purana, the Gita Govinda and the poems of Savant Singh, then-ruler of Kishangarh. In the court of Amber at Jaipur as well, court painting gained prominence in the eighteenth century, with several manuscripts produced under the royal patronage of its ruler Sawai Pratap Singh, including a Ragamala series and a Rasikapriya series. Like many manuscript painting traditions in the subcontinent, the administrative and economic policies of the British government in the nineteenth century led to a decline in patronage as the wealth of most of the smaller courts was reduced. Coupled with the arrival of photography, which attracted the interest of royal patrons, and new avenues of employment for artists, such as Company paintings, Rajasthani and other miniature painting traditions faded away by the late nineteenth century.      

Considered among the earliest surviving illustrated manuscripts of South Asia, palm-leaf manuscripts on Buddhist themes were an important part of the aesthetic patronage of the Pala empire, which extended over the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent between the eighth and twelfth centuries CE. Under the Pala dynasty, the modern-day regions of Bihar, West Bengal, Nepal and Bangladesh became flourishing centres for the study and dissemination of Mahayana Buddhism, nurturing a stylistic school of bronze and stone sculpture, architecture and painting. Informed by Buddhist iconography and visual idioms from the temple sculptures and murals of the period, artists in these regions created manuscript paintings largely for the Mahayana texts Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita (‘The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Verses’) and the Jataka tales, and some for texts of the Vajrayana sect, such as the Pancharaksa (‘The Five Protective Goddesses'), Karandavyuha sutra and Kalachakra-tantra. Their vision and skill in miniaturising the expansive, now-lost mural paintings of the time marks a significant achievement in the evolution of the miniature painting tradition in the Indian subcontinent, influencing the painting styles in regions as dispersed as Kashmir, Tibet and Southeast Asia.  These manuscripts were largely produced in the Pala-patronised mahaviharas or great monastic centres of Vikramashila, Nalanda and Kurkihar in modern-day Bihar, presumably by the resident monks, and parts of present-day Bangladesh where the Yadava-Varman dynasty reigned from the mid-eleventh to mid-twelfth century. They were commissioned by monks — some of whom are named in manuscripts as Sthavira, Upasaka and Bhiksu — as well as high-ranking lay persons seeking spiritual blessings for themselves and their families. Sections of the manuscripts have been found not only from these sites but also in Northeast India and present-day Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asian states like Myanmar and Thailand, where Buddhism was disseminated. Missionaries and scholars such as Atisha, Shantarakshita and Tilopa are known to have travelled to these regions from the Pala empire, and would have taken the manuscripts with them. They were produced not only to preserve and propagate the tenets of Buddhism but also as ritual objects used for the invocation of deities during worship — as evidenced by the thickly daubed layers of vermillion, sandalwood paste, oil and milk found on the covers of many of these manuscripts.   The manuscripts were made using leaves of the talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera) that were encased between cover panels, usually of wood and occasionally more precious materials such as copper or ivory. The palm fronds were cut into narrow rectangles about 5 centimetres wide and 50 centimetres long; flattened and rubbed down with a stone; and covered with a layer of primer to form the manuscript pages, or folios. The text was inscribed or painted onto them, in densely packed calligraphy, the script varying by region. The finished folios were pierced and bound together with a cord, and placed between the wooden boards, which were painted and varnished. With the emphasis largely on the text — both for its sacred content and the meritorious and ritually significant act of copying it — the painting of images occupied a secondary position, and the pages themselves often had no illustrations. The insides of the cover panels often bore images, while the outsides were largely painted with decorative floral patterning. For folios that would contain images, the process of painting followed that of writing; images would be painted into spaces measuring roughly 5 x 7 centimetres, allotted to them between columns of text. Illustrated folios commonly held three such images each, equally spaced on the horizontal panels. While the names of the scribe and the donor commissioning the manuscript were mentioned on the colophon, alongside the year and place of the manuscript-making, the artist was never credited in these manuscripts.  Moreover, the paintings in the manuscripts do not directly illustrate the texts they accompany, instead serving as iconic representations of principal Buddhist themes. They are largely restricted to depictions of events from the Buddha’s life, specifically the Eight Great Events, which were canonised in the region by the ninth century — the Buddha’s birth; enlightenment; first sermon; acceptance of honey from a monkey at Vaishali; taming of Nalagiri the elephant; descent from the celestial plane Tavatimsa heaven; multiplication of himself at Shravasti; and death. Deities of the Mahayana as well as the Vajrayana sects, such as Tara, Maitreya, Lokanatha, Marichi and Vajrapani, are also found in the manuscript paintings. The figures in the paintings typically show strong silhouettes and a clear definition of forms. Initiated with black or red outlines, they are painted in with layers of flat colour. Backgrounds are rendered in flat colours, with the figures occupying a single plane. Tonal variation and contours are achieved by overlaying progressively darker tones in different areas of the figures, creating a degree of modelling. Finally, forms and facial features are emphasised with black outlines. A hierarchy between the deity and the devotees is established through their relative positions and sizes in the composition. Whilst the Buddha’s face is represented frontally, others are usually depicted in three-quarter profile. The colours were derived largely from mineral sources — white from burnt conch shells, yellow from orpiment, blue from lapis lazuli, and vermilion from cinnabar. These, along with green pigment, crimson from madder root, and black from soot, formed a palette that corresponded with the Buddhist iconographic conventions of the time. The manuscript paintings made during the reigns of Mahipala (r. 988–1038) and Nayapala (r. 1038–55) constitute an early phase of the tradition, known for its close association, and even imitation, of the ideals of mural paintings of the period. The figures of this phase are relatively flat and angular, with delicate lines, and features such as the eyes exaggerated in proportion to the face. The paintings of this period, executed in subdued colours, also featured crowded compositions with multiple figures occupying the frame.  From the late eleventh century onwards, around the period of the rule of Ramapala (r. 1077–1120), manuscript painting entered its mature phase, with more spacious compositions and greater fluidity of figural forms. This phase is marked by a distinctive emphasis on the fullness and suppleness of the figure, especially in the representation of female deities, and more saturated colours. Scholars have also pointed to two regional variations in the paintings of this phase. The paintings executed closer to the Pala capital in the Magadhan centres of modern-day Bihar, such as Nalanda, constitute the northern style, also known as the Varendra style — characterised by bold, hard lines and ornate compositions. They sometimes depict figures of donors or patrons and their family members painted along the periphery of the main illustration panels. The manuscripts here employed the formal Siddhamatrika Brahmi script also known as Ranjana or Kutila (‘hooked’ or ‘crooked’, referring to the shape of the letters).  The southern — or Vanga style — was centred around present-day Munshiganj district of Bangladesh, the capital of the Yadava-Varman dynasty, which by this time sought peace with the Palas. It is known for the simplicity of its pictorial style, minimal decorations and bold application of tonally flat colours. Vanga manuscripts were written in a proto-Bengali Gaudiya script, rather than the Kutila script preferred in the north. The difference between two extant Prajnaparamita manuscripts — produced eleven years apart in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, under the Yadava-Varman ruler Harivarmadeva — demonstrate the stylistic shift between the early and late phase.  Pala manuscript painting traditions declined towards the end of the twelfth century, when Turkic rulers began to establish their rule over present-day West Bengal, Bangladesh and parts of Bihar. However, the dissemination of Buddhism ensured that some of Pala manuscripts travelled to Nepal, Tibet, Kashmir in South Asia and Thailand in Southeast Asia, where they inspired local adaptations of the style in murals and manuscripts. The Bharat Kala Bhavan and The Asiatic Society of Bengal hold some Pala manuscripts, particularly of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, dating back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Manuscript and muraqqa illustration traditions in kingdoms at the foothills of the Himalayas — including present-day Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir — are grouped together under the term pahari, meaning “of the mountains.” These kingdoms were established by Rajput kings from Rajasthan in the late seventeenth century and maintained their sovereignty until the early nineteenth century. The courts at Basohli, Kulu, Guler and Kangra in particular took great interest in manuscript painting and established the careers of notable artists such as Pandit Seu and his sons, Nainsukh and Manaku, to whom the distinctive character of Pahari painting is largely credited. Manuscript painting flourished in the Himalayan foothills – which are also known as the Punjab hills as they pass through the northern part of Indian and Pakistani Punjab – until these kingdoms were annexed by the Sikh Empire and the British East India Company in the first half of the nineteenth century. Despite major changes and external influences, Pahari painting retained certain key features. The paintings usually illustrated amorous or religious Hindu texts, particularly those featuring Krishna and Radha, namely the Gita Govinda and Bhagavata Purana. To a lesser extent, the Nala-Damayanti, Mahabharata and Ramayana were also illustrated. Following Rajput tradition, Pahari courts also commissioned ragamala albums and portraits of young kings. Almost all figures – in albums as well as in manuscripts – were depicted in profile, with their facial features rendered with increasing accuracy over the eighteenth century. Costumes were carefully painted to convey their pattern and texture. While Pahari painting is often divided into a Basohli and Kangra phase due to the heightened influence of these courts, manuscripts and albums were commissioned by many other kingdoms in the region, albeit for smaller projects and sums of money. The artists hired for these commissions worked throughout the region, as a result of which it is difficult to distinguish variations of styles across different courts. The earliest manuscript from the Himalayan foothills is an illustrated copy of the Rasamanjari, made at Basohli between 1660 and 1670. This early style is characterised by the use of bright, deep shades of yellow, ochre and green; detailed depictions of ornamentation on the main figures of the painting; and the use of strong gestures to express heightened emotions. The almond-shaped eyes are wide open and intense, especially in romantic or intimate scenes. While necessary details of the environment were painted around the characters — such as trees or architectural features — these were kept in the middle ground or foreground, while the background was usually a solid colour field with a very high horizon line. When noble or royal persons were included in a painting, they were often shown to be disproportionately large compared to the structures inside which they were situated, underscoring their importance in relation to other figures. For a brief time, paintings at Basohli in the seventeenth century included the application of wing cases from beetles on the figures’ costumes to imitate jewellery. However, this technique is not seen in later paintings. As a result of the political independence and the remoteness of the Pahari kingdoms, the early Pahari style at Basohli was far removed from the naturalism, restraint and muted colours of Mughal painting, despite the strong influence of the Mughal style in Rajasthan and the Deccan during the same period. Over the course of the next century, however, Nainsukh began to occasionally work for the Rajasthani and Mughal courts and, as a highly influential painter, became responsible for the introduction of Mughal elements into the manuscripts painted in Basohli and surrounding kingdoms. Additional Mughal influences on the Pahari style were brought by the many artisans who fled from the atelier of Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah, following the seige on Delhi by Nader Shah’s forces in 1739. Notable features that distinguish this later style from that of the seventeenth century include a landscape backdrop with a lower horizon line, a lighter colour palette, less ornamentation in the costumes, and a more realistic size difference between human figures and architectural elements. This style, established in the mid to late eighteenth century, is considered to be the fully realised form of Pahari painting. The Kangra ateliers flourished in the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth, carrying forward the themes, experiments and Mughal influences of the Basohli paintings, while also adding new elements. This was largely done by artists from the families of Nainsukh and Manaku, under the patronage of the Kangra king Sansar Chand. In addition to the features of the late Pahari style described above, Kangra paintings feature an emphasis on the green, undulating landscape of the Punjab hills as well as a continuous narrative technique practised mainly in Pahari paintings and very rarely in Rajasthani and Mughal ateliers. This composition technique typically involves the strategic arrangement of trees and architectural elements in such a way that a scene is divided into panels. The main participants of the narrative are shown multiple times in the same painting, enacting different parts of the narrative within the divisions created by the surrounding landscape and buildings. Continuous narratives were usually applied to known stories from the Bhagavata Purana, the Gita Govinda and the Ramayana, possibly so that the painting would remain intelligible to the viewer. Royal patronage for Pahari manuscript painting ceased in the early nineteenth century, prompting many Pahari artisans to take up employment at Sikh or Rajasthani courts. While some minor artists in Kangra continued to practice the art form, the Punjab hills were no longer a cultural centre for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, organisations such as the Kangra Arts Promotion Society (KAPS) and the Kangra Museum of Arts in Dharamshala offer training in the traditional Pahari style of painting, including the use of traditional materials and pigments. These paintings are sold commercially as individual works, although the income from sales and the stipend from these organisations remain a precarious form of livelihood for traditional Pahari artists.

Emerging in the manuscripts produced by the court ateliers of the Mughal dynasty, a major tradition of miniature painting was established in the Indian subcontinent in the mid-sixteenth century. Known for its naturalism, intricacy and luminosity, Mughal miniature painting embodies a range of regional and cultural influences, showing a syncretism of both style and subject matter. It fused diverse influences, incorporating pre-existing South Asian manuscript painting traditions with Persian as well as European Renaissance styles and imagery. These paintings illustrated or accompanied literary, historical, scriptural and scientific texts, and also served as visual aids for court storytellers. The Mughal miniature style remained highly influential in South Asia and the wider Islamic world until the late eighteenth century, influencing the paintings produced in smaller courts even after the decline of the Mughal empire from the early eighteenth century onwards.  Having lost his Indian kingdom after a ten-year reign, the Mughal emperor Humayun (r. 1530–40; 1555–56) sought military aid in Safavid Persia, in present-day Iran. Additionally, inspired by the aesthetic achievements of Shah Tahmasp’s court there, he negotiated to take two Persian artists, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad, back to India. Returning to reestablish his empire in 1555, Humayun had the court atelier set up under Ali and al-Samad. During the second half of the sixteenth century, the atelier grew tremendously under his successor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), whose expansion of the Mughal empire and interest in the arts ensured a steady flow of wealth as well as artists from the kingdoms of Lahore, Kabul, Persia and Kashmir, each with their own distinctive style. The atelier expanded from about thirty artists in 1557 to over a hundred in the 1590s, including painters, colourists, calligraphers, bookbinders and other specialists. The artisans composed and painted manuscripts on fine quality paper imported from Persia and Italy, using pigments derived from rare and expensive mineral sources such as lapis lazuli, orpiment, cinnabar and gold.  The atelier formed part of the Mughal kitabkhana — ‘book house’ or ‘library’ — an important institution in which manuscripts were produced and restored, as well as stored. The kitabkhana embodied a fluid and highly collaborative process, where specialists in various domains worked together to produce and maintain luxuriously illustrated manuscripts, and later individual paintings and designs for other objects. This helped achieve large manuscripts in the codex format, resembling the modern book, which stood in contrast to the indigenous palm-leaf manuscripts that were highly restricted in their size and shape. Each step of the process was performed by a specialised artisan with expertise in a particular aspect — from preparing the paper and binding, to calligraphy, applying gilt and painting the margins. The art of Mughal miniatures is distinctive not only for the painted images, but equally by the Persian nastaliq calligraphy of the manuscripts, and the intricacy and ingenuity of the hashiya, or margin, decorations that framed them — each of which was a specialised domain of artisanship. A master painter composed the images for a manuscript based on the text, to be coloured in by junior painters. Artists also specialised in different kinds of drawing, such as portraiture, animals, flora and decorative pattering — and a level of consistency was achieved as they rendered these subjects across folios or manuscripts.  At the same time, particular master artists also had distinctive visual languages that made their work recognisable — for instance, Basawan became known for his talent for naturalism within neat compositions, whereas the work of his contemporary Daswanth was characterised by densely populated, energetic images, best exemplified through his illustrations of war in the Razmnama, a Mughal manuscript of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. The names of these and other artists occasionally appear on individual folios of these manuscripts, alongside other information such as the size of the atelier and the number of days taken to complete the work. Such mentions, as well as documentation in administrative manuscripts such as the Ain-e Akbari, serve as important sources of information about the making of Mughal manuscripts today. One of the earliest examples of Mughal miniature painting is seen in a Tutinama (‘Tales of a Parrot’) manuscript made in the 1560s. Illustrating the fourteenth century text, the paintings show Indian flora and fauna within Persianate landscapes; further, the human figures are realistically proportioned and rendered as dark-skinned, as associated with South Asia, rather than the willowy, fair-skinned youths emblematic of Persian paintings. Around this time, European emissaries and Jesuit Christian missionaries were invited to Akbar’s court, and brought with them religious paraphernalia and examples of European devotional art, introducing the ateliers’ artists to new influences. Not only did this infuse Western Renaissance notions of perspective and pictorial depth into the work of the court artists, but Christian iconography and subjects themselves became part of the Mughal canon. Examples of this influence are seen in the Persian translation of The Life of Christ, commissioned by Akbar, as well as multiple paintings of Christ’s crucifixion, Madonna with the infant Jesus, and other Christian themes; and in the iconographic elements used in a painting showing combat between the Hindu gods Indra and Krishna in the Harivamsa.  In the 1580s and 1590s, under Akbar, the atelier worked mainly on manuscripts of dynastic histories such as the Baburnama (‘Book of Babur’, written in the fifteenth century; the Timurnama (‘Book of Timur’), written in the sixteenth century; and translations of Sanskrit epics such as the Mahabharata, known in Persian as the Razmnama. These would often be large projects, both in the dimensions of the codices as well as the number of illustrations commissioned. One the Mughal atelier’s most ambitious and extensive manuscripts, the Hamzanama (‘Book of Hamza’), was made during this period. A fictional biography of the prophet Mohammed’s uncle Hamza ibn Abdul-Muttalib (c. 569–625), it is illustrated with 1400 paintings. Akbar also commissioned a real-time documentation of his reign, the Akbarnama (‘Book of Akbar’), which was illustrated by at least forty-nine artists in the atelier; and a lavishly illustrated manuscript known as the Khamsa of Nizami — a set of five long narrative poems by the twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi — which was a popular subject for illuminated manuscripts both before and after Akbar.  By the reign of Akbar’s successor Jahangir (r. 1605–27), the types of paintings and manuscripts being produced, and thereby the structure of the atelier, were beginning to change. Jahangir had a preference for naturalism, and laid particular emphasis on portraiture, which he employed in allegorical paintings presenting his position as a divinely appointed world ruler. He was, accordingly, drawn to the work of only a few artists, and reduced the number of artists retained by the imperial atelier for long-term projects. This sufficed for manuscripts of Persian poetry, which were smaller than biographies, and also suited the shifting focus from manuscripts of single texts to muraqqas — carefully curated albums of assorted miniature paintings, short calligraphic texts and European prints. He is also known to have commissioned a copy of a miniature painted by Isaac Oliver and shown to him by the first English ambassador to Mughal India, Sir Thomas Roe, as well as a muraqqa of Persian and Mughal paintings infused with European artistic traditions and themes.   Having flourished under the patronage of Akbar and Jahangir, the ateliers remained functional during the reigns of Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707). While Shah Jahan maintained funding for the atelier, his interest was mainly directed towards architecture. Painting was viewed predominantly as a medium of courtly representation, and the paintings of this period were largely formal, lacking the flair for experimentation or aesthetic interest seen under the previous emperors. Nevertheless, the muraqqas, and manuscripts such as those of Shah Jahan’s biography Padshahnama (‘Book of the Emperor’), were naturalistic and technically accomplished, the latter known for their use of multiple perspectives and exuberant colours. Aurangzeb’s religious orthodoxy led him to direct funding away from the atelier a few years into his reign, but for most of the 1660s the emperor tolerated painting as a courtly art. Several distinguished examples of portraits and durbar, or court, scenes in the Mughal style were produced in this period. With the exception of a revival under the reign of Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48), Mughal patronage for miniature painting had dwindled enough in the eighteenth century for these artists to seek employment outside the imperial court. As they were absorbed into the ateliers of smaller kingdoms, they strengthened the Mughal element in these painting traditions — particularly those of the Rajput and Maratha courts — many of which had already been emulating the style due to the power and influence of the Mughal empire in previous decades. Scholars today recognise two distinct categories of Mughal manuscript paintings — those that were commissioned by the Mughal imperial court and executed by its ateliers; and a sub-imperial or popular form of Mughal painting, which was made by other, smaller ateliers patronised by minor nobility. While the similarities between them result from the style set by the wealthier, more established imperial ateliers, the difference is visible in the subject matter, the quality of materials used, and the intricacy and naturalism achieved.  With the advent of British rule in the nineteenth century, the tradition of Mughal miniature painting, particularly its emphasis on naturalism, was incorporated into the Company school. Today, dispersed folios and, more rarely, whole manuscripts in the Mughal style, are housed at various museums across the world.   

South Asian traditions of making, decorating and illustrating bound manuscripts date back to the ninth century, possibly earlier. The images and decorations in these manuscripts, with their intricacy and small size — determined by the dimensions of the manuscript itself — constitute the principal form of miniature painting in the Indian subcontinent. These paintings variously served iconic, narrative or allegorical purposes, illustrating manuscripts that ranged from sacred objects to storytelling devices. Usually an elaborate undertaking, the manuscripts and their paintings have generally been produced collaboratively in court workshops or ateliers patronised by imperial dynasties. These patrons commissioned copies of religious texts as meritorious acts, as with the Pala Buddhist manuscripts and Jain manuscripts between the ninth and sixteenth centuries. From the fourteenth century onwards, absorbing influences from Persia and Europe, wealthy patrons such as the Mughals and the Rajputs also commissioned historical, literary and scientific manuscripts, as well as muraqqas or curated albums, with an increasing focus on illumination, or decoration, and illustration. The pictorial styles developed in some of these traditions, such as the Mughal school, transcended manuscripts and became influential schools of miniature painting in their own right.  Originally made using palm leaves or tree bark, and later cloth, the earliest Indian manuscripts comprised sacred texts, and were themselves ritual objects; from around the twelfth century they were increasingly made with paper, and also dealt with secular themes. Manuscript painting in India drew upon influences from outside as well as within the subcontinent. Whilst these pictorial traditions display a variety of idioms and styles across time and regions, commonly observed features of Indian manuscript painting include floral, geometric or calligraphic borders; shallow perspective; and intricate but flat patterning on features such as clothing, upholstery or architecture. Pluralism too has been a major characteristic of manuscript painting in India, with Jain, Hindu and Muslim patrons and artists creating manuscripts based on a wide range of religious and cultural material. Paintings were commissioned for manuscripts across genres, from religious works, epics and biographies, to poetry, romances, fables and travelogues. In many cases, manuscripts were also used for storytelling performances at imperial courts, in which the image painted on the front-facing side, or recto, of a folio was displayed to the audience as the storyteller read out the corresponding text written on its reverse side, or verso.   Systems of producing these manuscripts have varied: while in some cases, a single artisan might illustrate an entire book, usually this was done by an atelier of at least a few artisans working under a master painter. Particularly in later traditions, work was divided on the basis of specialisations such as portraiture, patterning, and the rendering of animals, birds and plants, or of costumes and accessories. Well-established artisans were retained for long periods by particularly wealthy courts with rulers who had a keen interest in the arts, but for the most part artisans were commissioned for specific projects. As a result, there was a rich and rapid exchange of styles in the subcontinent as artists trained in various schools moved from court to court. While some scholars date South Asian manuscript painting traditions to as far back as the third or fourth century CE, among the earliest surviving evidence of these is a wooden cover panel found from Gilgit in present-day Kashmir, dating back to the ninth century. Its cover image indicates a Buddhist manuscript, and it would have contained palm-leaf folios like those that survive of the eleventh-century manuscripts made at the Pala-patronised monastic centres of Nalanda and Kurkihar in present-day Bihar. Such Buddhist texts, along with Jain religious texts, constituted the most commonly illustrated manuscripts in India before the establishment of Islamic sultanates in the subcontinent. Restricted by the dimensions of the palm leaves used, these were narrow rectangular manuscripts, which were bound horizontally. While the advent of paper in the twelfth century allowed for different dimensions, the earliest paper manuscripts too retained a similar format, with illustrations usually no larger than 5 to 8 centimetres square. These manuscripts were typically dominated by the text, with the images playing a largely decorative or iconic role. In later traditions, however, both text and image were crafted and patronised to an equal degree.  By the fourteenth century Indian manuscripts began absorbing influences from the arts of Safavid Persia, through the Sultanate courts, and later the Mughal empire. Indian courts commissioned manuscripts, or codices, made in different sizes and more closely resembling the form of the modern book. Paper, which was now used for these manuscripts, also allowed for a variety of pigments and mediums for painting. These patrons commissioned lavish manuscripts, often employing highly skilled artisans and using rare or precious materials as pigment, including gold and lapis lazuli. Intricacy of workmanship was also achieved through specialised tools such as fine squirrel hair brushes, sometimes comprising a single strand. Today the quality of workmanship and materials observed on extant manuscripts — intricacy of border patterns, neatness of composition and use of expensive colours such as gold and ultramarine blue — also serve to distinguish those that were produced under the patronage of wealthy courts and aesthetically inclined rulers, compared with those made in imitation by smaller courts.  Beginning with the Mughal emperor Akbar’s (r. 1556–1605) patronage of the art form in the second half of the sixteenth century, Mughal manuscripts became the most influential style in India. The Mughal atelier, originally led by Persian artists, attracted painters and calligraphers from across regions and cultural backgrounds. Mughal painters were also exposed to Christian prints through European visitors to the court, and adopted some attributes of Western Renaissance art, most notably a naturalism of forms and the aerial perspective. Around this time, the Deccan kingdoms that had broken away from the Bahmani Sultanate in the sixteenth century began commissioning illustrated manuscripts of their own, first in a highly original, elaborate aesthetic and then in a more noticeably Mughal style. Manuscript painting traditions that were directly or indirectly influenced by the Persian style typically have a lighter colour palette, a high horizon line and tend towards naturalism in the rendering of faces, flora and fauna — all notable features of Mughal manuscript paintings. Although some kingdoms in present-day Rajasthan also began patronising manuscript painters around the same time as the Mughal court, the Rajput style emerged in earnest only by the late seventeenth century, as painters left the declining ateliers of the Mughal court and moved to Rajput kingdoms in Rajasthan, and in the Himalayan foothills in present-day Himachal Pradesh where Pahari painting emerged as a distinct school. A number of other miniature painting traditions flourished in India, including Majuli manuscript painting, Bengal Sultanate manuscript painting and Awadhi manuscript painting. Besides these various individual manuscripts, including a Jain-style Shahnama, the Nimatnama-i-Nasiruddin-Shahi cookbook and an illustrated copy of the Chandayana, have been influential and significant in Indian art history. Apart from imperial patronage, wealthy merchants or noblemen also commissioned manuscripts, although these are more difficult to date and were executed by minor or inexperienced artists. Exceptions to this include the few European patrons who were active in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though they typically commissioned muraqqas. By the late nineteenth century, rulers of the princely states under British rule favoured photography and large Western-style portraiture as mediums of courtly imagery, leading to the decline of illustrated manuscript painting. While illustrated manuscripts are no longer produced, the most recognisable styles of such painting have been adopted by several contemporary artists from Pakistan, most notably Shazia Sikander, Bashir Ahmad, Saira Wasim and Imran Quereshi. In India, miniature painting has also been a major influence on the artists of the Baroda school and Bengali Modernists such as Nilima Sheikh and Abanindranath Tagore.  

Square or rectangular objects used for stamping that are typically made from steatite, featuring carvings on the front and a perforated boss on the back, stamp seals are one of the most extensively found cultural artifacts from the Indus Valley Civilisation. Numbering approximately two thousand, they were likely in use during its Mature Harappan Phase. They were excavated from many urban sites in the Indus Valley but were most prevalent in the Mohenjo-daro archaeological site in present-day Pakistan. These seals are understood to have been used primarily in trade as a designatory device, and their discovery from sites beyond the known Indus Valley region — such as Kish and Umma, and in Iraq — is indicative of an early system of trade with other societies such as the Mesopotamian Civilisation of Western Asia, where both flat and cylindrical seals existed. Typically, the front of the seal is carved in intaglio so that a positive imprint is produced on the material on which it is impressed. The back of the seal is in the form of a knob-like protrusion or boss, for easy handling, with a perforation that possibly allowed the stamp to be strung and worn as an amulet. Apart from the steatite, or soapstone seals, believed to have been given a surface glaze by treating with alkali and heating, rarer seals made of terracotta, silver and faience have also been recovered from Indus Valley sites. The symbolic and formal imagery on the seals are typical of Indus Valley iconography and consist of bovine figures such as bulls, water buffalo, Indian gaur or wild ox and zebu; other animals such as elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers; fantastical creatures such as unicorns (sometimes interpreted to be bovine animals in strict profile) and plants, although less common; and human and human-like figures. Seals also often carried illustrated scenes of people seemingly engaged in religious activities, accompanied by motifs such as the sacred fig, vessels and agricultural tools. The geometric forms and naturalistic figurations are almost always accompanied by inscriptions of four to seven characters in the as-yet-undeciphered Indus script, making the Indus Valley stamp seals the most dominant set of artefacts to feature it. Although the exact use and the meaning of the seals cannot be confirmed, it is suggested that they could have been used as marks of identification, owing to the uniqueness of the inscriptions found on them. It has also been suggested that they were used in trade, to stamp clay insignia on ropes to seal and secure packages during transportation, ( the depiction of pack animals lending support to this interpretation), and by traders and merchants to designate their goods by name, place of origin and so on. A ritualistic function has also been ascribed to these seals due to renderings of thematically central human or humanoid figures of priests or deities, such as in the famous Pashupati seal, and of narrative scenes, as in the Seal of Divine Adoration. The largest collection of Indus Valley stamp seals is housed in the National Museum, Delhi, while a significant number of them are in museums across Pakistan such as the Harappa Museum in the Punjab province and the Mohenjo-daro Museum in Sindh. Smaller collections of seals can be found in museums in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the British Museum, London.  

A carved ivory statuette of a female figure, the Pompeii Lakshmi was recovered during archeological excavations at the site of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in 1938. The statuette, along with the city, had remained buried under volcanic ash since Mount Vesuvius had erupted in 79 CE. Its discovery established the existence of flourishing trade networks spanning the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. The statuette’s style and iconography has led to scholars variously identifying it as Sri, Lakshmi, and a yakshi among others. The figure is 25 cm high and 5 cm wide, possibly sculpted from a single elephant tusk. It consists of a primary female figure accompanied by two smaller, female attendants attached to either side. A hole on top of the primary figure suggests that the statuette might be a fragment of a larger object, like a piece of furniture or a mirror-handle. The statuette is relatively flat, but is sufficiently rounded and detailed to suggest that it was intended to be viewed from all sides. The primary figure is almost completely nude, with the exception of jewellery, including a necklace, bangles and a lotus-shaped head ornament. A flat belt is worn around the hips, while the right arm is raised and held behind the head. The left leg is placed in front of the right. The figure’s hair is braided in coils that reach the waist, with a large flower, perhaps a lotus, woven into the braids. The genitals are visible, suggesting that the figure may be a fertility goddess or yakshi. Scholars have also argued that it may be a syncretic form combining the Indian and Roman goddesses Sri, Lakshmi and Venus. The latter identification is suggested by the fact that a number of Venus representations in the Greco-Roman world show her accompanied by two attendants. While the lotus later came to be associated with the goddess Lakshmi, it has been argued that the Pompeii statuette’s ornament may not have been intended as a mark of a goddess or yakshi at all, but a general symbol of beauty. The statuette is marked with a Kharosthi inscription at the bottom, suggesting an origin in the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent, perhaps Begram in modern-day Afghanistan. Begram was a major production centre for carved ivories around the time the statuette was exported. Other scholars suggest that it was made in the interior of the Indian subcontinent, pointing out stylistic similarities to the Mathura school and to examples of yakshis from Bharhut and Sanchi. Similar statues have also been recovered at Bhokardan in present-day Maharashtra, which had steady trade with the Roman world. However, all of these centres did interact with each other; thus the statuette’s style is probably a mixture of influences, making it difficult to attribute an exact origin to it. It is generally assumed that the figure was produced in the early half of the first century CE and subsequently brought to Pompeii, probably via a port on the west coast such as Bhrigukaccha (present-day Bharuch). The house where the statuette was found is now named “The House of the Indian Statuette”, although the figure itself is now lodged at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy.  

The process of stamping designs and patterns on base fabrics such as cotton or silk using dye-soaked, hand-carved wooden blocks. The technique is central to a variety of printing traditions across India in which blocks are used to create a range of designs composed of floral and religious motifs, geometric forms, and calligraphy. Some of these block printing traditions include ajrakh, Bagh, Bagru, Sanganeri, saudagiri, mata ni pachedi, namavali, and balotra, as well as the less popular traditions of the Chhimba community in Punjab and the more recent printing practices in Serampore of West Bengal. While several Indian communities practise the craft, the Khatris and Chippas in the country’s northwestern regions are the oldest known communities to have been continuously involved in block printing, since at least the sixteenth century. Although, block printing is believed to have been practised in a rudimentary form as early as the Indus Valley civilization between 3000 BCE and 1200 BCE, direct textual evidence dates the craft of block printing on textiles to the eleventh century in Kerala. The earliest material evidence of these textiles and their international trade came from fragments of cloth from Gujarat found in Egypt and Indonesia dating back to a period between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It has been inferred that these textiles were printed and dyed in blue and red during that time — and some were hand-painted using the technique of kalamkari. Block-printed fabrics had experienced sustained international trade in the western and eastern regions of the Indian Ocean, before the establishment of first Europe-mediated and then European trade between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. The initially indirect trade was routed through the existing Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian markets by commercial officers from Portugal and the Dutch East India Company and French East India Company. The cultivation of a robust European market for Indian printed cloth such as Kalamkari and chintz, proved lucrative by British East India Company, which began to establish trade monopolies from the seventeenth century on. The visual appearance of any block printed textile depends on the quality of the carving on the block, the richness of the dye and the effectiveness of the mordant used with it. While engraved blocks of metal and terracotta are sometimes used, those made from types of wood such as sheesham, sagwan and rohida are often preferred for their texture and ease of carving. Woodblock carving has been traditionally carried out in Gujarat and Rajasthan, each with producing blocks in distinctive styles. While in Gujarat, Pethapur has been the centre of block making, in Rajasthan, it is Jaipur that serves as the primary centre, both serving printing and dyeing clusters in their respective states as well as in Madhya Pradesh. is the primary blocks from Jaipur are best known for their precise cuts, which allow for cleaner printing with a lower risk of smudging. Contemporary block makers still prefer to use hand tools such as chisels to carve the blocks, alongside some mechanised tools such as small drills. Teak is the preferred variety of wood for making blocks, as it remains undamaged even after frequent contact with water and other substances used in the printing process. Air passages known as pavansar are also often drilled into the blocks to prevent them from clinging to the fabric when lifted. A single printed motif may require the use of multiple blocks. For instance, one block can be used to create a rekh of the motif, another can be used to fill it, such as a datta, and a third block, such as gadh, can be used to create the background of the design. This requires both the block maker and printer to be aware of how every block will be used, and how the motifs will fit into the design. karigars also mark the date on each block, in case it needs to be repaired or altered, so that patterns will repeat perfectly when the fabric is printed. Prior to printing, a mordant is typically added to the dye to allow it to stick to the base fabric because many natural dyes do not easily adhere to the cloth. Only a few — such as indigo, which is used in several block printing traditions and was a key product in colonial extraction — do not require the use of mordants. Although natural dyeing and printing was a thriving practice in India until the nineteenth century, karigars eventually began relying almost entirely on inexpensive chemical dyes. The use of such dyes has allowed two types of manual printing techniques to emerge: direct printing and discharge printing. In addition to block printing, karigars also sometimes employ resist-dyeing, which includes techniques such as dabu printing and batik. Block printing, indigo dyeing and resist dyeing are often combined to produce complex, layered and multi-coloured patterns in traditions such as the aforementioned ajrakh, Bagru and Bagh. The block printing technique in each region of the country is distinct, localised in terms of the materials and tools used as well as the cultural influences and social characteristics of particular communities. Traditionally, the raw fabric, motifs, colours and intricacy of block printed garments have served as designators of the wearer’s identity, caste, community, status and occupation. However, with the onset of urbanisation and market-driven mass production, these textiles have been redefined and adapted for contemporary consumption and usage, losing much of their social and symbolic values. Block printing has had a long tradition in Asia, and particularly India, which though having undergone much change to meet varying market demands and technological and lifestyle changes, has mostly remained authentic and uncompromising in aesthetic and technique. Block printed fabrics have in recent years experienced an upsurge in Indian and international markets, leading to more concerted efforts towards the conservation and revitalisation of indigenous block printing traditions. One f the largest repositories of Examples of printed textiles and garments have constituted the collections of museums in India — such as Sanskriti Museum of Indian Textiles, Calico Museum, and the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing.

An umbrella term that broadly refers to motifs of flowers, leaves, trees, shrubs and buds. It derives its name from the Persian boteh, meaning “shrub” or “flowering plant” and is commonly used to decorate textiles. Butas appear in various sizes, colours and orientations and often in combination with butis. The term originally referred to the teardrop-shaped motif, also known as Boteh Jegheh, kairi motif, mankolam and paisley. The motif is believed to have originated in Babylon, c. 1700 BCE, and has been widely used to signify nobility and royalty. Although the exact origins of the buta in India are unknown, it has been in use since the sixteenth century, primarily in Kashmiri shawls, which were popular among the Mughals. While Indian craftsmen adapted the motif to represent indigenous flora and fauna such as genda, kamal, mor and gulab, fabrics meant for royalty portrayed non-indigenous flowers such as tall tulips, irises and poppies, interspersed with smaller butis of rose buds. The late eighteenth century also saw the emergence of the European cabbage rose as a popular motif in Indian textiles. Another widely used buta is the teardrop- or mango-shaped kairi/keri buta, also known as the mankolam, which is used along with symbols such as swastika and om as well as indigenous birds and flowers such as peacocks, parrots and lotuses. This buta is popularly used in Kanchipuram sarees in Tamil Nadu. Today, butas are used in a variety of Indian textiles such as shawls, sarees, bedspreads, cushion covers, ghagras and cholis, among other garments. Specific floral butas also appear in Bagru and Sanganeri prints, Benarasi brocades, Ashavali sarees and Pashmina shawls.  

Recognisable by its stylised almond-like shape, the badaam motif bears visual similarities to the Persian boteh, or buta, and the kairi, or kalka motif. Its name is derived from the Persian term badaam, meaning “almond”. The badaam motif has several variants and analogues in various textile traditions, the best-known among which is the Paisley motif. In India, the badaam motif is especially associated with the Kashmir Valley, where it developed in the sixteenth century with the arrival of the Mughals. It appears most commonly on the pashmina shawl as a part of the floral border design or as stand-alone outline motifs filled in with grouped flowers. The use of this motif has since extended beyond the traditional format of the Pashmina shawl and into other forms of printed, woven and embroidered fabric such as shawls and bed linen The motif entered the popular visual idiom with its adoption and subsequent adaptation by the hippie culture of the 1960s and 70s and, later, the cowboy culture in the American Southwest. This paved the way for its entry into contemporary formal wear produced by large European luxury fashion houses and the couture of high-fashion brands. In India, besides continuing to be seen in traditional Kashmiri shawls, the badaam motif is now also a prominent feature of the chikankari embroidery tradition of Uttar Pradesh.  

A glazed cotton fabric with a plain or tabby weave, typically printed with floral and geometric patterns, chintz is believed to have originated in Golconda, Hyderabad. Along with calico, it was traded across the Indian Ocean as far back as the fifteenth century, usually as painted (kalamkari) or printed cloth. It gained popularity during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when it began to be exported from India to North America and Europe. The word derives from the Hindi word chint, meaning “spotted.” Indian chintz is characterised by its printed or painted floral designs and vibrant, durable colours. This was primarily the result of natural dyes like chay and indigo, and the carefully guarded techniques employed by Indian dyers. The bright floral designs are considered to be the result of Mughal patronage as well as that of smaller sultanates in southern India, owing to similar designs in Mughal miniatures and architecture. Alternately, textiles for the European market were characterised by a light background featuring intricate floral imagery or larger, asymmetrical patterns and narrative scenes. A popular motif among British consumers was the Tree of Life, which was frequently depicted with deep red flowers characteristic of Indian chintz. The Netherlands, Britain and France were early manufacturers of imitation chintz in the late seventeenth century, often using plain cotton cloth imported by the Dutch East India Company. The fabric was exported to North America and Europe as well as Portuguese colonies such as Brazil and the Philippines. The Company dealt in Guinea cloth (a simple, striped cotton cloth) in and around present-day Indonesia through pre-existing trade routes between southern India and South East Asia, while exporting the more expensive chintz cloth to the Netherlands for sale in Europe. Chintz was either printed or painted, with the former being done at workshops along the western coast of India, whereas the painting tradition was particular to towns such as Masulipatnam (now Machilipatnam) on the south-eastern coast. Printing was the faster method and allowed for mass production even before British control over the industry. The production of Indian chintz involved covering the cloth in resin, which helped confine the mordant to certain areas of the cloth while also brightening the colours. The resin would later be washed off before the cloth was printed or dyed, making this technique unique to Indian chintz and differentiating it from imitation chintz produced by early European manufacturers; since resin alum had to be imported to Europe at high prices, the cotton cloth printed or dyed in Europe had duller, less defined colours. After being washed, the cloth was printed using wooden blocks that had the pattern carved onto them. The block was coated evenly with dye and pressed on the fabric, with a different block used for each colour and outline. Chintz is used extensively in upholstery and clothing. In Europe, until the nineteenth century, imported Indian chintz was the preferred cloth to make curtains, upholstery and, to a lesser extent, dresses. Some scholars believe that chintz began to be used for garments when maids were given old or damaged household textiles, which they would fashion into dresses. As chintz dresses became more fashionable, manufacturers began to sell the dull, heavier cloth for household use and a lighter, more glazed cloth to serve as clothing. By the early nineteenth century, chintz printing and glazing were being produced in Europe with the aid of synthetic dyes, specialised machinery and systems of mass production. Owing to the ban on imported Indian cotton, cheaper British cotton began to outnumber block-printed textiles from India, and Indian exports of the fabric became limited to a small number of painted chintzes from the Coromandel coast. Today, most chintz fabrics are produced through mechanised printing, which became the norm from the late nineteenth century onwards.

A textile tradition where cotton textiles are traditionally hand-painted with pictorial narratives through a bamboo pen known as kalam, kalamkari emerged across the Coromandel coast in southern India and the state of Andhra Pradesh has long been considered its focal centre. Concentrated largely around the town of Srikalahasti, kalamkari’s other major centres of production include Machilipatnam (formerly Masulipatnam) and Madurai. It was originally referred to as vraata pani, which stands for writing (vraata) work (pani) in Telugu and during the reign of the Qutub Shahi dynasty in the sixteenth century, it was renamed kalamkari. While the exact point of origin for kalamkari remains unknown, the oldest surviving samples of the craft are dated from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These samples were made as trade fabrics, to be exported to Southeast Asia, implying that kalamkari must have enjoyed sustained popularity in the region, pre-dating these samples. Kalamkari consists of twenty-three steps including treating the fabric by bleaching it and then softening it; sun-drying; preparing natural dyes; hand-painting; air drying; washing; and finishing. Commonly, cotton is used which is then treated with a solution of cow dung and bleach casting the fabric in an off-white colour. This is followed by the immersion of fabric in a mixture of buffalo milk and myrobalans so that it absorbs and retains the colour of dyes and paints without smudging. The fabric is then rinsed twenty times and dried under the sun before it gets ready to be painted over. When ready for painting, the artists sketch out their drawings and later fill them in with colours. Kalamkari features drawings rendered with a strong black outline and the use of naturally extracted colours; black was made by mixing jaggery and iron filings with water, red from the bark of madder or alizarin, blue from indigo, mustard by boiling pomegranate peels and green by combining yellow and blue colours. The painted kalamkari textiles were initially associated with temple worship as they were used as visual companions in both religious and secular contexts; they were used as hangings and canopies commissioned by Hindu temples, monasteries (maths) and by individuals. For the markets and court, kalamakari was used to produce textiles with secular narratives. The layout of the textiles was largely influenced by local traditions of mural painting as well as architectural forms such as lobed arches and pillars, trees and shrubs, which were used as framing devices. Themes depicted in the textile included scenes from Puranas and epics such as Mahabharata and Ramayana, with the latter enjoying a notable popularity. Other scenic depictions common to kalamkari were sacred sites of the region, such as the Kallalagar temple, Alagar Koyil and the Sriranganatha temple, Srirangam island. Additionally, Telugu epics, such as Katamaraju Katha, as well as biblical themes, were illustrated. The major centres of kalamkari production have their own thematic and stylistic peculiarities. In Machilipatnam, kalamkari was used to produce canopies with mythological scenes for Hindu clients, prayer carpets for Muslims, tentage with floral designs for the royal courts, as well as yardage of chintz to be imported to the European markets. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the city saw a flourishing printing and dyeing industry which dwindled in the twentieth century. Madurai was particularly famous for its fine red dye, which had a distinctly deep colour. The kalamkari here was produced on coarse cloth that was stained and dyed in only two colours – red and black. At Srikalahasti, which is a temple town located close to Tirupati, the craft practice remains active to date and it is probable that the history of kalamkari work in the city dates further back than the fifteenth–sixteenth century, but due to the corrosive nature of the textile and lack of written records, there are no ways to qualify the claim. The local zamindars (landlords) patronised the craft, most of which was carried out to make temple cloth. By the 1930s and 40s, with the independence of India and ousting of the zamindari system, the patronage tapered off. However, it was revived by the All India Handicrafts Board, which inaugurated a production-cum-training centre at Panagal, on the outskirts of Srikalahasti. The Weavers’ Service Centre also promoted and offered commissions and training to the artisans. Presently, kalamkari is predominantly secular in nature and caters to Indian and foreign markets with fabric for apparel and home linens such as curtains and bedspreads. In catering to these markets, the textile has witnessed a transformation, one that began with the trading textiles from Machilipatnam to European and Southeast Asian markets itself, wherein floral motifs were integrated instead of pictorial narratives and block-printing was employed for faster production becoming integral to kalamkari products especially when mass-produced. In 2006, Srikalahasti kalamkari registered a Geographical Indication (GI) tag, and Machilipatnam kalamkari did so in 2009.  

A popular motif used in textile design, in the shape of a curvilinear almond, the paisley motif’s popularity was facilitated by the trade interests of the British East India Company. The motif travelled around, especially due to its presence in Kashmiri shawls which were incorporated into European fashion of the time. Paisley was either woven into the shawls using the kani twill-weave or embroidered using sozni and amli styles. In its formative presence, the motif is found in kani shawls of Kashmir, bearing distinctive patterns associated with the Mughals was called the boteh which symbolised organic forms of flowers and leaves. Under the Afghans in Kashmir, the boteh became more stylised and abstract and came to be portrayed in a cone-like shape where the bouquet transformed into non-descript foliage; the enclosed curvilinear walls around the shape appeared during this period. In the period of Sikh rule that followed, certain elements of the boteh were developed further, such as the aigrette, the serrated leaf, the hooked vine and medallious, concentric cones. Developed alongside the principal weaving method of the period –tapestry shawl, the motif’s composition changed as the boteh was hollowed out. It also became detached from the dominant ground design of the fabric as a wide range of images and motifs were incorporated. In Europe, the design went through another transformation as the hollow of the boteh came to be filled in with intricately stylised floral compositions. The earliest iterations of manufactured Kashmiri shawls came from Edinburgh, Scotland which was soon eclipsed by another Scottish town, Paisley, hence giving it its popular name. It was also the first town to successfully adopt the Jacquard loom in production, which allowed an intricate pattern while easing the weaver’s task. With its integration into European fashion and industry, especially in Great Britain and France, the paisley motif was not only used on other garments besides the shawl, but also came to be painted and printed. The motif drew on more design references from Parisian design books from the 1840s than it did from the designs of the Kashmiri shawls. Through the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it came to be printed on dresses, coats, ties, wallpapers, bedspreads and so on. Additionally, during the 1960s, the fashion movement now termed as “Peacock Revolution” saw menswear become more flamboyant, employing the paisley motif. Today, the paisley remains one of the dominant motifs used in garments, decorative textiles and textile arts. It is difficult to pin down a source of origin for the boteh but the trajectory of its transformation from boteh to paisley records a significant episode in textile design history and qualifies its ubiquity.  

Also known as moksha patam, gyan chaupar is a board game originally played in medieval India and Nepal. The board in gyan chaupar is traditionally made of cloth or paper, and features a series of squares, snakes and ladders. Some more elaborate boards include additional imagery, such as portraits or decorative borders. Due to the materials used, most surviving gyan chaupar boards are no older than the eighteenth century. Historically, besides being a form of recreation, the game also served a spiritual and didactic purpose — gyan chaupar, literally translated as the ‘game of knowledge’, represents a lesson in the attainment of moksha or release from the cycle of death and rebirth. The origins of the game remain a matter of debate, with some scholars attributing its invention to Dnyaneshwar, a thirteenth-century Marathi saint, while others interpret a passage from the tenth-century text Rishabh Panchasika as an even earlier reference to the game. The oldest surviving example of the game is from seventeenth-century Mewar. Gyan chaupar was especially popular during the Jain Paryushan festival, when devotees fasted and played the game as a form of spiritual engagement.  Although the modern version of the board has been standardised as a hundred squares arranged in a rectangle, the medieval gyan chaupar varied widely in design. The most common number of squares among Hindu versions was seventy-two, while the Jain boards from present-day Gujarat and Rajasthan had eighty-four squares. A few Vaishnava boards from the Punjab Hills (or Pahari region) have over three hundred squares, with the board divided into left and right sections where snakes and ladders allow for as much lateral movement as vertical. Boards of all sizes were arranged in a grid, a cross or in a custom shape that followed a theme. For instance, in a Mewari board that is housed in the National Museum, the playing area is shaped like a Rajput fort. Some versions of gyan chaupar featured Vaishnava imagery and labelled the destination square as Vaikuntha, or the abode of Vishnu. In keeping with a moral lesson on overreaching, Vaikuntha was often located a few steps before the end, so that a snake’s head on the last square would send a player down to the start of the board as a punishment for crossing Vishnu’s abode. Some gyan chaupar designs depicted the playing area surrounded by an image of Lok Purusha or the ‘Cosmic Being’. In one confirmed case, a nineteenth-century board inscribed in Persian was made using ideas and designs from Islamic or Sufi spirituality, with the last square denoting the moment of merger with god. The snakes and ladders in gyan chaupar function as karmic devices, either thwarting or aiding a player’s efforts to reach moksha. To emphasise this, the squares from which the tokens either ascend or descend were labelled with names of various virtues or flaws. The positive attributes listed were dependability, asceticism, faithfulness, generosity and knowledge, while the negative attributes and crimes included rebelliousness, vanity, crudeness, theft, lust, debt and violence. These concepts were taken from Jain and Hindu theology, and thus also included ideas that did not have an equivalent in later versions of the game that used Victorian moral codes — such as maya or the illusion of the material world, and dharma, or divinely ordained duty. The squares on either end of a snake or a ladder were often related, illustrating, for instance, the link between ego and illusion, or devotion and paradise. In some boards, there was a prescribed order to a player’s moral progress, meaning that a sudden ascension to a particular square (such as Brahmaloka, or the abode of Brahma) had to be followed by a descent from a subsequent square down a snake (to prithvi, or earth) at least once in the game. In such cases, players were required to land on such squares with an exact roll of the dice and could not move past them. The game, as a whole, was meant to educate players on which traits and practices were morally desirable, how these would be rewarded, and what consequences lay in store for negative habits. The number of snakes was typically much larger than that of ladders — often twice as many — to underscore the difficulty of the path to enlightenment.  The gameplay of gyan chaupar is as follows: each player has a token and moves between numbered squares from the bottom to the top of the board, according to the roll of the dice or, in older versions, cowrie shells. Snakes and ladders function as conduits between squares on different vertical levels: if a token lands on a squares at the head of a snake, it immediately descends to the square containing the snake’s tail, and if it lands at the foot of a ladder, it ascends to the topmost rung. The objective of the game was to reach the last square at the top and exit the game. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, British officers took a number of contemporary Indian gyan chaupar boards to England, where they were examined and exhibited. A few unique boards following the Jain or Hindu design were also commissioned by British officers as collectibles. It was not until the 1890s, however, that gyan chaupar began to be sold as a children’s game in Britain, under the name ‘Snakes and Ladders’. While the British version retained some emphasis on ideas of morality — with illustrations of good and bad deeds on the squares that bookended each ladder or snake — it did away with the spiritual connotations and nuances of the Indian version that would have been puzzling to a British player, simplifying these into the more familiar Victorian templates of good and evil. Later, in 1943, the game was introduced in the USA by Milton Bradley under the name ‘Chutes and Ladders’, as the company felt that the image of snakes would scare children away. Other versions of the game include the German Leiterspiel, which used pictures of circus animals.  Today, contemporary versions of the game have done away with the moral element altogether, and are now played as a game of random chance. Medieval-era gyan chaupar boards are housed in the collections of the National Museum, New Delhi; the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Jodhpur; the Calico Museum of Textiles, Ahmedabad; and the British Library, London.  

A popular cross and circle board game that originated in India, pachisi derives its name from the Hindi and Urdu word for twenty-five, pachis. The game uses five cowrie shells as dice, with the highest throw valued at twenty-five. While the game is traditionally played on a cross-shaped cloth, any surface may be used, including a drawing or engraving on the floor. In contemporary India, ludo is the most commonly played version of pachisi, although the original version is still played in some parts.  The origins of pachisi are disputed, with some scholars speculating that a version of the game was played in the pivotal gambling scene in the Mahabharata, or is being played by Shiva and Parvati in a relief carving at Cave 29, Ellora. However, in the absence of any description of a board or gameplay, there is no evidence that these games were pachisi and may have simply been bets made on rolls of the dice. The oldest surviving evidence of the game is in the form of sixteenth-century pachisi courts built by the Mughals at Agra and Fatehpur Sikri. These were used for a life-sized version of the game in which Akbar’s courtesans took on the role of tokens who moved across the court as per the plays of the emperor and his noblemen. Details of these games and the gameplay have been recorded by Akbar’s biographer Abu’l Fazl, who notes that the game was already popular at the time, implying that pachisi substantially predates Mughal rule. Further evidence of the game exists in the form of surviving boards and tokens, as well as paintings from Mughal- and Rajput-era manuscripts, which depict people playing the game. Most cross and circle games use a board made of a circle enclosing a cross, usually in the form of paths. This can also mean that the tokens used by players follow a circular movement along the central cross without the presence of an actual circle, as is the case with pachisi. The board for pachisi consists of four pathways, each of which is eight tiles long and three tiles wide. All four pathways meet in a central area known as charkoni. Some tiles, usually three or four per arm of the cross, are marked with an ‘X’ and are called castles.  In traditional gameplay, four players are divided into teams of two, with players facing each other forming one team. Each player has four tokens, all of which are placed in the charkoni. Players take turns casting the cowrie shells, and the one with the highest roll makes the first move of the game, followed by the rest in a counter-clockwise order. Once the game begins, each player moves one of their tokens according to the roll of the cowrie shells, first going down the middle column of the arm that faces the player, then up and down the outer paths of each of the remaining arms in a counter-clockwise progression, with the last path being the same as the first. The first team to return all their tokens to the charkoni after completing a full circuit of the board wins the game.  Capturing and blocking tokens is also a major component of the gameplay. An opponent’s token is considered captured when a player lands on the same square as that token. Captured tokens are sent back to the charkoni and have to begin the game anew. In some versions of the game, a token could only finish at the charkoni if it captured at least one enemy token during its time on the board. Another Indian game similar to, and possibly also contemporaneous with pachisi, is chaupar (not to be confused with gyan chaupar), which uses stick dice in place of cowrie shells. Early European variations of pachisi include ludo, a British game invented in the late nineteenth century, and Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, an early twentieth-century German game. Later American adaptations of the game include Sorry! and Parcheesi.  Pachisi boards and tokens from various periods of Indian history can be found in the collections of the National Museum, New Delhi; the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; the Swiss Museum of Games; the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, USA; and in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art.

A professional photographer and engineer from Lucknow, present-day Uttar Pradesh, Darogah Abbas Ali is best known for his photographic albums featuring cultural sites and architectural views of the city. Although his books are well documented and discussed among scholars of Indian photography, little is known about the photographer’s own life. Darogah Abbas Ali attended the Thomason Civil Engineering College (which later became the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee), after which he worked as assistant municipal engineer for the British government in Lucknow. He took up photography after his retirement in the 1860s, eventually compiling and publishing three albums of albumen prints: The Lucknow Album and The Beauties of Lucknow were both published in Calcutta in 1874 and The Rajas and Taaluqdars of Oudh was published in Allahabad in 1880. Of these, the first and last are very clearly signed and authored by Abbas Ali, while the second is unsigned, but was attributed to him by a later photographer, PC Mukherjee. The Lucknow Album was intended as a guide for European tourists visiting the city and, in its sequence of photographs, follows the path of the East India Company troops who recaptured Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny. It also contains a detailed plan of the city drafted by Abbas Ali himself — evidence of his calibre as a municipal engineer. The Beauties of Lucknow documents courtesans and performer-entertainers working in Lucknow as living reminders of a much-feted royal court (of the former Kingdom of Oudh before its annexation in 1856) where they were valued as custodians of culture and wielded much social influence. The Rajas and Taaluqdars of Oudh consists of 342 carte de visite albumen prints of landlords and other members of Lucknow’s elite who remained loyal to the British during the Uprising. In the portraits of women, their figures are replaced entirely by medallions inscribed with the word pardanashin (woman in purdah) as a way of accommodating the Muslim tradition of veiled anonymity. All three albums have detailed textual descriptions of the photographs; the text being printed in English, as in The Lucknow Album — due to its intended British readership — or English and Urdu, as in the case of the others. The latter editions also carry stylistic and compositional traces of the Mughal muraqqa tradition of illustrated albums, as a tribute to Abbas Ali’s cultural lineage. The production of these albums, not inexpensive enterprises, was funded by the patronage of Sir George Couper, the Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Frontier Province and, after 1856, the Chief Commissioner of Oudh. Abbas Ali is thought to have developed a rapport with Couper during his employment with the government, which aided him greatly in his later photographic endeavours. The success of his practice has also been attributed to the goodwill he cultivated with the Company and its officials during and after his tenure. The last of his albums was published in 1880, after which there are no records of any active photographic or publishing activity. It is possible that his patronage began to wane, following the departure of Couper after the end of his service in 1882, or that colonial attention began to shift away from Lucknow after the dust of Mutiny settled. There is no information presently available, however, to ascertain the course of Abbas Ali’s life following the publishing of his final album.  

Born in 1894 in undivided Bengal, Annapurna Dutta was one of the first professional female photographers at a time when photography was largely a male-dominated profession. She is known for her portraits of families in the domestic space, as well as notable figures, such as Sarojini Naidu. Her husband, Upendranath Dutta, though a lawyer by profession, was also an amateur photographer himself. Dutta came to prominence as a photographer in the 1920s, producing a bulk of her work in the ’30s and ’40s. Since it was uncommon for women of the era to work outside the home, Dutta did not operate out of a studio; instead, she visited wealthy Indian families for commissioned portraits, and developed and printed the photographs herself in her home studio. Her portraits depicted subjects in their homes, usually wearing traditional clothing and surrounded by their families and possessions. Dutta frequently visited and photographed the Muslim elite, including the politician and Bengal’s erstwhile premier Hassan Suhrawardy, the poet Jasimuddin and the singer Abbas Uddin Ahmed. Interestingly, despite her being a female visitor to their households, the Muslim women in her photographs are shown in purdah, possibly because the photographs might later be seen by men. Her most well-known image is perhaps a self-portrait in which she stands beside her plate camera in a three-quarter profile, holding the lens cap while looking beyond the frame. In the image, she wears the clothing and jewellery typical of a married woman, suggesting that domestic life was still expected to be represented traditionally, even as more women became involved in newer practices such as photography. Today, this photograph, along with other glass plate negatives made by her, are part of a collection held by her son Amarendranath Dutta. Annapurna Dutta passed away in 1976, at the age of eighty-two.

A twentieth-century photographer known for his images of rural India and life in the princely states, Abid Miyah Lal Miyah Syed, commonly known as AL Syed, captured dramatically lit black-and-white images of pre- and post-Independence India. Active from the early 1920s, Syed was additionally interested in desert landscapes and portraiture, and also created stills for a number of Bollywood films, including Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Syed was born in Varnavada, Gujarat. His father, Lal Miyah Syed, worked as a physician to the Nawab of Palanpur, Zobdat al-Molk Shir Mohammad Khan. AL Syed’s older brother, Khanji Mian Lal Mian Syed (KL Syed), worked as the Nawab’s official photographer and is renowned for his image of the last Nawab of Palanpur, Taley Mohammed Khan Bahadur, made in 1930. Syed began assisting his brother from 1919, but his earliest known photograph is a 1923 image of the sunset at Chowpatty Beach in Bombay (now Mumbai), made on a school trip. The photograph won him the first prize in a contest held by the Illustrated Weekly of India, where his work continued to be featured for most of his career. From 1925 until 1940, Syed published a monthly column in the Gujarati magazine Kumar, featuring his photographs along with corresponding written pieces. He continued working for the Palanpur royal court alongside his brother, expanding the scope of his work to cater to other Indian kingdoms across present-day Gujarat and Rajasthan, such as Baroda, Saurashtra, Bikaner, Kotah, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Bundi, Dungarpur and Narisinghgarh, as well as much further north in Kashmir. He also became popular with the various royal families and established a personal connection with them, including the Nawab of Palanpur, the Maharana of Udaipur and Gayatri Devi of Jaipur. Syed accompanied the Nawab of Palanpur to Bombay in 1946 and continued living in the city until 1975. During and after this period, he travelled extensively to fulfill commissions from royal families while also making photographs independently. These images, made while travelling through rural India and developed in photographic studios across the country, make up the bulk of Syed’s surviving work and are the reason he is best remembered as a Pictorialist photographer. These images place him as one of the earliest practitioners in India to consciously create images with a commitment to this stylistic approach, often capturing his subjects from a lower angle and creating high contrasts between light and shadow, adding to the sombre tone of his black-and-white images. His photographs have been exhibited across the world. He gained recognition internationally with a 1934 photograph titled “Traveller of the East,” published as part of Odhams Press’ compilation of the World’s Best Photographs. The photograph was displayed in over forty exhibitions, including a solo show in New Delhi held as part of the sixth Convention of the Federation of Indian Photography. His photograph “Difficult Ascent” won the 1977 Asia Pacific Cultural Center for the UNESCO (ACCU) Photo Contest, Tokyo. In 1980, he inaugurated an exhibition held by the Illustrated Weekly of India in honour of the magazine’s centennial. In 1983, he was granted an Honorary Fellowship by the India International Photographic Council in recognition of his long career in photography. AL Syed was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1971 but continued to practise photography until his death in 1991.

A nineteenth-century photographer, doctor and academic, Narayan Daji was one of the few Indian members of the influential Photographic Society of Bombay and also one of its earliest council members (1857–61). A largely self-taught photographer, he achieved distinction through the knowledge and proficiency he demonstrated and the social privileges he had access to as a well-known public figure, medical practitioner and academic in Bombay (now Mumbai). Though known by many for his philanthropy, scholarship and passion for teaching, he is most commonly associated with early photography in and of Bombay and its surroundings. Daji’s work, which spanned landscape and architectural views and ethnographic studies and portraits, was exhibited at the Photographic Society of Bombay, the Bengal Photographic Society and featured in the ethnographic album The Oriental Races and Tribes, Residents and Visitors of Bombay (1863). Daji was born in a village near the present-day Maharashtra–Goa border. Although he came from a humble background — his father Vitthal Daji was a poet and painter of figurines — he, like his brother Bhau Daji Lad, received his education at Elphinstone College and then Grant Medical College, Bombay, from which he graduated in 1852. Although there is no published information on how he was first introduced to photography, some scholars believe that he may have taken an interest in it while studying practical chemistry, at which he excelled. He was also likely guided and influenced in part by his brother’s more fleeting involvement in photography. Daji applied for the position of lecturer for Elphinstone College’s first course on photography in 1855, citing his many awards and a glowing recommendation, but was ultimately turned down in favour of photography studio-owner and secretary of the Society WHS Crawford. Already comfortable with the waxed paper process, he submitted his photographs to the Bombay Photographic Society, of which two, including one of a Rajput man from Kathiawar smoking a hookah, were displayed at its first annual exhibition. Over the next year, he shared more images, this time of architectural views of the city, with the Society, which were well-received, leading to his formal induction in 1856. For the Society’s annual exhibition the following year, he contributed over two hundred photographs, mostly of architectural studies and landscape, attracting high praise from viewers. One newspaper even remarked ironically in their review of the exhibition that he surpassed Crawford in his photographic ability. That year, thirty one of his photographs — mostly ethnographic studies that comprised images of snake charmers, toddy tappers, ryots (farmers), Bhils, as well as group and individual portraits — were featured at the annual exhibition of the Bengal Photographic Society. From around 1858 and over the next decade, he operated his own studio at Rampart Row (now known as K. Dubash Marg), an emerging hub for independent photographic studios, making photographs using waxed paper negatives as well as the wet collodion process. Throughout his practice, his photographic direction — from landscapes and monuments in the 1850s to ethnographic portraiture from the 1860s — were aligned with or anticipated the British government’s interests in and imperatives for photographic documentation. As Daji’s work was not produced under financial or colonial compulsions, its success has been attributed to a combination of his social position and the commercially and visually fertile location of his practice. While the culturally diverse and cosmopolitan character of Bombay lent itself well to his ethnographic projects, his social stature and worldview, which he shared with the British elite, brought him closer to the elitist preoccupation with the practicalities and colonially driven objectives of photography. The resulting distance created between his lens and his subjects, and the attendant objectivity, a benchmark of colonial photography, ensured his success among his peers. Apart from photography, Daji was also involved in political and civic life, being appointed Sheriff of Bombay in 1856. As a medical practitioner, he ran a dispensary at Nagdevi where he, later joined by his brother, provided free service to the less privileged. He was also a professor of botany and pharmacology at his alma mater, Grant Medical College, during which time he published several texts on chemicals and dyes. Daji’s photographs were displayed publicly for the first time at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, as part of the exhibition The Artful Pose: Early Studio Photography in Mumbai, 1855-1940 (2010). Many of his surviving photographs and negatives are, at the time of writing, part of the Alkazi Collection of Photography. Daji passed away in 1875 from bilious remittent fever.  

An Indian portrait photographer and photojournalist who was active in the early twentieth century, Narayan Vinayak Virkar is best known for documenting the aftermath of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre by General Dyer, and also for his portraits of Indian nationalist leaders. Virkar was born at Ratnagiri, present-day Maharashtra. He studied photography under the artist, nationalist activist and Vedic scholar Shripad Damodar Satwalekar in Lahore. He then worked as an X-ray photographer aboard the hospital ship, HS Madras. Shortly after this, he set up his own studio in Girgaum road in Bombay (now Mumbai) and later in Nashik as well. As for other studio owners at the time, his clients were mostly local elites looking for portraits of themselves and their families. In addition to catering to this demand, Virkar, a staunch nationalist, also took portraits of leaders involved in the Indian freedom struggle such as Mahatma Gandhi, Chittaranjan Das, Subhas Chandra Bose and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. These portraits were usually set up in the aspirational aesthetic of European interiors, along with stacks of books, armchairs, and Greco-Roman art, but they also contained revealingly nationalist elements, as seen in Tilak’s portrait in which the stack of books beside him includes a copy of Kesari, his anti-colonial publication. Patronage from nationalist leaders was, apart from being important to photographers sympathetic to the cause, a useful market niche to occupy, even if in secret. Among other projects that were not linked to him at the time, Virkar was also tasked with documenting multiple meetings of the Indian National Congress (INC). He is best remembered for capturing photographs of the aftermath of the British-led massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 in Amritsar, a flashpoint of the freedom struggle. Virkar arrived on the scene a few days after the incident, and photographed the bullet holes in the walls, took portraits of the injured and generally documented all traces of the destruction and violence that had occurred there. The aim was to preserve evidence of the atrocity and share it with the public, a practice far removed from his usual work as a portrait photographer. The following year the INC published two of Virkar’s photographs in their Punjab Inquiry Report without revealing his identity. Virkar’s photographs and negatives, both from his commercial studio practice as well as his documentation of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, are housed at the Nehru Memorial Museum Library in New Delhi.

Known for his photographic practice and pro-reform state policies, Sawai Ram Singh II was the Maharaja of Jaipur, reigning from 1851 until his death in 1880. Informally known as the “photographer prince of India,” he was an avid photographer, creating over six thousand individual photographs and nearly two thousand glass plate negatives throughout his life. He was also a lifelong member of the Bengal Photographic Society. Ram Singh was born to Maharaja Jai Singh III of Jaipur. After his father’s death in 1835, he was appointed the successor, ruling through regency until 1851, when he formally ascended the throne as the Maharaja of Jaipur. He is believed to have learned photography from the British photographer T Murray, who visited Jaipur several times and was later appointed court photographer from approximately 1867–70. His passion for photography is evident from the personal studio at his court, called the photukhana or tasveer khana (meaning “the picture department”), where he housed his extensive collection of cameras and processing equipment and developed his images. Ram Singh primarily made portraits of himself as well as Indian and European royalty visiting Jaipur. He is also known for his photographs of landscapes and architectural views across the country, including Agra, Varanasi, Lucknow and Calcutta, always carrying his equipment with him during his travels. His photographs of foreign men and women follow the conventional portrait format, but with the subjects posed against backgrounds he painted himself. He would also experiment with the photographs, often superimposing the subjects’ faces on different bodies. Ram Singh is renowned for having photographed the women who resided in the zenana of the royal household, at a time when the women lived almost entirely out of public view and were rarely photographed. He used modes of representation similar to traditional Victorian portraiture. Some of these photographs show the women staring directly into the camera, with one image showing a woman dressed in men’s clothes and carrying traditionally male accessories such as a sword. He also occasionally showed his photographs to visitors, possibly with the aim of demystifying the zenanas. It is important to note that while his transgressions across the social divisions of his court were largely driven by aesthetic curiosity, the subjects were denied agency over their representation in the photographs, despite their royal status, and their names were never included in the final images. Most of what is known of the Maharaja’s photographic practices is from a journal he maintained in 1870, detailing his everyday activities, including information about the subjects he photographed, his process of developing prints from glass negatives and the problems he faced during the photographic process. He also collected prints from other photographers such as Samuel Bourne which, along with his own, he preserved in albums. He also initiated a project, along with Thomas Holbein Hendley, amassing a collection of arts and crafts in India that eventually resulted in the Jeypore Exhibition of 1883, and later contributed to the collection at the Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur. A collection of his photographs is currently on display at the Sawai Man Singh II Museum, Jaipur. The Maharaja died in Jaipur in 1880.  

A pioneering Indian photojournalist photographing for much of the twentieth century, Kulwant Roy was behind some of the most iconic images of the Indian freedom movement and the post-Independence decades. Although he fell into obscurity towards the end of his life, posthumous recognition of his work grew after a large number of his photographs and negatives resurfaced in 2008 and were subsequently archived by his legal heir, photographer and collector Aditya Arya. Roy was born in Bagli Kalan, Ludhiana, Punjab. He was introduced to photography by Raj Gopal, Arya’s great-granduncle, who ran the Gopal Chitter Kuteer Studio, Lahore. He began work as a photojournalist in the 1930s, trailing leaders of the Indian National Congress (INC) as they moved around the country for protests, marches, speeches and other activities aimed at garnering support for the freedom struggle. It is during this period that he did some of his most notable work, photographing prominent personalities such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He used a Speed Graphic camera, which allowed him to immediately process individual exposures as opposed to full rolls and shoot at high shutter speeds to clearly capture even the briefest of moments. An image of Jinnah and Gandhi having a private argument is a part of the Hulton-Getty archives (better known through its online presence, Getty Images) but is not formally attributed to Roy, despite Arya having recovered the original negative in 2008. Photographs from this period often went unattributed as photojournalism was still in its nascent stage and photographers had not yet begun to seriously safeguard against future appropriation of their work. By the late 1940s, Roy had become more cautious in this regard, often stamping his name on the photographs he took. In 1941, he joined the Royal Indian Air Force, and was stationed in Quetta (now in Pakistan) to photograph the North-West Frontier Province from the air. Two years later, however, he was ousted from the Air Force for protesting its discriminatory rules against its Indian members. He then returned to Lahore and set up a photojournalism agency, Associated Press Photos. He soon shifted the agency office to Mori Gate, New Delhi, where others in the profession were based. He hired assistants at the studio and for his shoots, considerably speeding up the process of capturing, developing and printing photographs. He continued to document the freedom movement alongside his studio work, photographing key moments like the transfer of power from Lord Mountbatten to Nehru, and Nehru’s famous speech on the eve of Independence. He also established a rapport with several INC leaders, as there were few photojournalists at the time and the Congress was keen on presenting a positive image of the movement through his work. Throughout most of the 1940s, it was difficult to procure photographic film due to the disruptions and shortages caused by the Second World War, and the colonial government’s aggressive censorship of press coverage of the freedom movement and the Bengal Famine. However, Roy’s former colleagues from the Air Force occasionally supplied him with short rolls of large film, which he would cut into single pieces to fit his camera and shoot individual photographs, which is why many of the negatives in the collection bequeathed to Arya are not part of a roll. After Independence, Roy stayed back in New Delhi and continued running his agency. His most prominent project at this time was documenting the construction of the Bhakra Nangal dam in Himachal Pradesh, which became a symbol for a rapidly modernising India. Between 1958 and 1962, he travelled to over thirty countries, sustaining himself through the sale of his existing photographs as well as other commissions he received on the way. Notably, his work appeared in the German magazine Stern and in an exhibition comprised of photographers shortlisted for the World Press Photo Contest during this time. Over the next decade, Roy remained busy. He shot the Sino-Indian war of 1962 and the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 from the frontlines. He also covered important diplomatic visits to India by foreign dignitaries, such as Jacqueline Kennedy’s trip to India in 1962. In the 1970s, he was diagnosed with leukemia. This, combined with the theft of the negatives of the photos from his world tour and the increasing difficulty of sustaining himself as an independent photojournalist, led to a steady decline in his practice and income between the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1984, soon after his last assignment — photographing the seventh conference of the Non-Aligned Movement at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi — Kulwant Roy passed away. Roy’s legacy was obscured for nearly thirty years between his death and the recovery of his negatives. Since then, Arya has archived all of his surviving images and incorporated them into the India Photo Archive Foundation. Three decades of his photography are featured in the book History in the Making: The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy (2010), authored by Arya and Indivar Kamtekar. Notable posthumous exhibitions of his rediscovered work, also organised by Arya, were held at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi in 2008; as a part of the show Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK in 2011; and at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi under the title The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy (2012), and then again at the NGMA, Mumbai in 2014.

A pioneering Indian photographer in British India, Lala Deen Dayal, also known as Raja Deen Dayal, was known for his architectural and landscape views of India, as well as those of the lives of the colonial and native elite in the country. Over the course of his career, Deen Dayal produced over thirty thousand glass plate negatives using the wet-collodion process. Born into a family of jewellers in Sardhana, Meerut, Deen Dayal trained at the Thomason College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee (now the Indian Institute of Technology). In 1866, he began his career as a surveyor and draughtsman in the Public Works Department, Indore, where he measured and documented the land through photographs. He began photographing infrastructural projects — primarily bridges, railway lines and other construction work — for the Central India Agency in the 1870s and subsequently found enthusiastic patrons, notably Maharaja Tukoji II of Indore and British Indian Army officer Henry Daly. Supported by Daly, Deen Dayal photographed then-Viceroy Lord Northbrook in 1874 as well as the Prince of Wales, during his visit to India in 1875–76. Later, he accompanied Daly as a photographer on his tour across Bundelkhand and subsequently, in 1882–83, travelled with Lepel Griffin of the Bengal Civil Service across central India, photographing temples, forts and palaces at Gwalior, Orchha, Khajuraho, Sanchi and Indore, among others; eighty-nine of these photographs were reproduced in Griffin’s book Famous Monuments of Central India (1886). By the mid-1880s, Deen Dayal had retired from government service to take a two-year furlough (1885–87) during which time he travelled to north India, documenting sites such as the Taj Mahal, and making photographs of visiting British dignitaries and their entourage. In 1885, Deen Dayal was appointed photographer to then-Viceroy of India, Lord Dufferin, followed by a Royal Warrant of Appointment as photographer to Queen Victoria in 1887. The same year, he was appointed court photographer to Mahboob Ali Khan, the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, where he photographed the royal palace and estates, processions, hunting parties, as well as sites and monuments including temples, mosques and newer infrastructural projects such as bridges and streets. Deen Dayal compiled 110 of these photographs in an album titled Views of the HH the Nizam’s Dominion, Hyderabad Deccan (1888), copies of which the Nizam presented as gifts to visiting dignitaries. Individual photographs from the collection were also sold as prints and postcards, as well as engravings in British magazines. Consequently, in 1894, the Nizam officiated Deen Dayal’s position with a salary and the title of Raja Musavvir Jung Bahadur (meaning “Bold Warrior of Photography”). Deen Dayal’s studio portraits were known for their painted backdrops as well as conspicuous staging and alignment of human figures to create a marked distinction between the background and foreground. His work was also characterised by conspicuous staging and alignment of human figures to create a marked distinction between the background and foreground. His photographs were instrumental in serving the interests of both the colonial government and the princely states by reflecting the interactions between both groups. Alongside his appointments, Deen Dayal also established a franchise of commercial photography studios named Deen Dayal & Sons. The first studio was set up at Indore in the mid-1870s, the second at Secunderabad in 1886 and the third and largest in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1894. He also opened a zenana studio in Secunderabad in 1892, which was run by photographer Mrs Kenny-Levick. In 1893, Deen Dayal was awarded a medal of excellence at the World Columbian Exposition, Chicago. His autobiography, A Short Account of My Photographic Career, was published in 1899. As of writing, his photographs are part of the collections of The Alkazi Collection of Photography; the Peabody Essex Museum; Robarts Library, Canada; University of Toronto, Canada; the Clark and Joan Worswick Collection, USA; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, USA. Deen Dayal died in 1905 in Bombay.  

One of India’s earliest commercial photographers who specialised in portraiture, Hurrychund Chintamon was based in Bombay (now Mumbai). He received his training at Elphinstone College in 1855 under WHS Crawford, a secretary of the Photographic Society of Bombay, where Chintamon also exhibited his work the following year. He subsequently set up his photography studio in the city, initially photographing members of local mercantile families and later expanding his clientele to aristocracy and important political, administrative and literary figures, including Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy and Manickjee Antarya. When Elphinstone introduced a course in photography in 1855, under instruction from the British East India Company, Chintamon was among the first batch of forty students to enroll. He graduated in 1856 with distinction, having twice earned the best photographs prize. The same year, he exhibited his photographs at the Bombay Photographic Society, along with others such as Narayan Daji, gaining the visibility he needed to operate as an independent professional. He also went on to produce a number of ethnographic images, some of which were displayed at the Exposition Universelle, or the Paris International Exposition, of 1867 for industrial, art and craft manufactures. His studio, Hurrychund & Co., which he set up at Rampart Row in 1858 flourished until 1881, when it ceased operations. The development of cost-effective processes such as wet collodion negatives and albumen prints, resulted in a greater demand of family or personal portraits among European residents and the affluent noble and mercantile classes of the local population. While running his studio, Chintamon recognised cost effective techniques, such as the wet collodion process, and also quickly adopted the newly introduced carte de visite format for making albumen-print portraits. The cartes de visite were convenient to mail, exchange and incorporate into albums (that were specially made), making them all the more popular and earning him a steady clientele among the local elite. It was, however, his photograph of Maharaja Malhar Rao of Baroda (now Vadodara) — who appointed him as his official photographer in the late 1960s— that gave his studio a significant boost. Accompanying the proliferation of independent photography studios in the mid-nineteenth century, was the development of a hybrid aesthetic, seen also in Chintamon’s work. He evolved a visual style that combined the Victorian iconographies of class and refinement with the Indian symbols of ethnicity, caste and status. In staging his sitters, he used the popular European conventions of painted backdrops as well as props such as printed carpets and flower vases. The sitters were often posed or arranged to suggest an air of casualness or informality, in conspicuous contrast to their own self-conscious formality — likely a result of having to hold still during extended individual exposure times. This unintended tension between setting and sitter is another notable characteristic of Chintamon’s portraits. His oeuvre also consisted of ethnographic images, typically in the form of group portraits of people representing various ethnicities, communities, occupational classes, castes and other social groups. Among the hundreds of such images that he produced were those of communities such as the Prabhus, Marathas, Parsis and Rajputs, photographed in their traditional costumes, carrying weapons, accessories and other markers of social identity. Several of his ethnographic studies were commissioned for use in the records of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) and some others featured in the multi-volume album The People of India published for the India Museum, London. The display of some of his works for the 1867 Paris exhibition also attested to his distinction in ethnographic photography. Despite his commercial success, there is very little information about Chintamon’s personal background or photographic career. It is known that he had been a disciple and representative of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, a Hindu religious leader, and that he was president of the Bombay chapter of the religious group Arya Samaj in 1878. Records also show that he was involved in the merger of the group with the Theosophical Society, but was subsequently expelled following allegations of mishandling funds. The dishonour of his expulsion and his subsequent departure to England spelled the end of his successful photographic practice in India. Although he was later dogged by scandal, it did little to sully his reputation as a photographer.  

An official photographer for the British government and a widely recognised photojournalist from the twentieth century, Homai Vyarawalla is best known for her work documenting the final days of the British Raj and the emergence of India as an independent nation. She was born in 1913 to a Parsi family in Navsari, Gujarat. Her father was an actor, and after spending a few itinerant years travelling with his theatre troupe, the family settled in Bombay (now Mumbai). Encouraged by her mother, she went on to attend the Bombay University and the Sir JJ School of Art, getting degrees in teaching and art. She first encountered photography through her cousin, Maneckshaw Vyarawalla – a photographer and accountant with The Times of India, who she married in 1941. Self-taught and using a Rolleiflex camera, Vyarawalla made images of urban life and young, modern women in Bombay. These were published in the Bombay Chronicle in 1939, following which she found work at the Illustrated Weekly of India in the early 1940s, publishing photographs depicting civil life during wartime. Entering photography at a time when the profession was a male preserve, she initially published her photographs using her husband’s name or under her pseudonym, Dalda 13. More contemporary accounts of her life and work have widely recognised her as India’s first female photojournalist. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the British Information Services (BIS) relocated to India and sought photographers on the ground. The Vyarawallas were recommended for the job by Stanley Jepson, then-editor of the Illustrated Weekly. In 1942, they moved to New Delhi, with The Times allowing her husband to work for a year with the British Information Service (BIS), while Vyarawalla became a full-time employee, with the provision to take on freelance projects. Vyarawalla’s training at art school proved useful for her work at the BIS, which needed photographers to generate material for information, advertising and propaganda. It has been reported that she had a quick instinct with her compositions, melding her photographic skill with her knowledge of visual aesthetics. She worked for the BIS as an official press photographer until 1951, and as a freelancer until 1970, covering events and ceremonies at the British High Commission, photographs of which would get published in magazines, including Life. At the same time, she was also chronicling the transition of India from a British colony to an independent nation. Her photographs of Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Lord Mountabtten and other members of the political establishment were published in national news outlets such as the Statesman and the Times of India, and internationally in the Picture Post. Some of the significant moments in India’s history documented by her include the victory parade by the Allied Forces through Connaught Place, Delhi in 1945; the swearing in ceremony of Lord Mountbatten as the first Governor General of India in 1947; Nehru’s first national address as Prime Minister at the Red Fort, also in 1947; Gandhi’s funeral in 1948; the first Republic Day parade of India in 1950; and then-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s visit to the country in 1962. In 1947, Vyarawalla started using a Speed Graphic camera for her photography of political events and later settled on less cumbersome cameras such as those made by Contax, Nikon, and Pentax, which required less manual manipulation between exposures. She also became a founder-member of the News Cameraman’s Association, one of the first photography unions of independent India, and presided over it for some time. In 1969, Vyarawalla’s husband passed away due to accidental poisoning. Grief-stricken by his death, she set her camera aside and retreated into semi-retirement. In 1982, she moved to Baroda (now Vadodara), where she lived until her death in 2012. Her life and legacy faded out of public memory until 1998, when Sabeena Gadihoke’s documentary Three Women and a Camera reignited interest in her work. Gadihoke’s biography of Vyarawalla, Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla (2006), further brought her into the spotlight. In 2011, a year before her passing, she was awarded the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India. As of writing, her work and photographs are in the collections of the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts and the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.  

One of the chief painters and photographers associated with the Shrinathji Temple at Nathdwara, Rajasthan, Ghasiram Hardev Sharma was a significant figure in the Indian art practice of the nineteenth century. He worked under the head priest and his foremost patron, Tilkayat Govardhanlalji. One of the most prolific Nathdwara artists, he undertook mural paintings for the Raja of Jhalawar, and went on to head the painting department as its mukhiya (chief). Together with his apprentice Narottam Narayan Sharma and associate Hiralal Udayaram, Sharma’s embrace of photography consolidated a particular style within his studio. The Ghasiram studio offered the devotees of Shrinathji (Krishna in the form of a seven-year-old child) an opportunity to have their portraits made, prints of which they could take back as souvenirs from their pilgrimage. These portraits were likely used as references for manorath paintings, which were commissioned by patrons to depict themselves in worship inside the Shrinathji shrine. Photographs became a very crucial visual source around the mid 1970s and entered the repertoire of Nathdwara artists. While photographic conventions didn’t supplant the prevailing visual style, rather, it broadened representational possibilities for the artist. Notably, it offered them an opening to develop a photographic aesthetic, where they could render portraits with Photorealistic semblance and Naturalism. This photorealism was distinct from hyperrealism — the artists sought to replicate even the black and white monochromatic tonality of the photographs and chose to paint over it in thin veils of colour. In addition to photography, the Ghasiram studio’s photorealism was also shaped by an encounter with the Academic Realism in the work of Raja Ravi Varma in Udaipur, after which he is said to have begun using oil paints. Khubiram Gopilal, another prolific Nathdwara artist, was also influenced by Varma and some of his earlier works are considered replicas of Varma’s chromolithographs. At a time when realism was elevated to a formal style, the integration of photography with Academic Realism was instrumental to the aspirations of many royal patrons in India.  

An Indian photojournalist whose work spans much of the twentieth century, Sunil Janah documented India through the waning decades of British colonialism as well as its post-Independence transformation. He is best known for his photographs of the Bengal famine, the burgeoning Indian independence movement, industrialisation under former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as his studies of Adivasi communities. Janah was born in 1918 in Dibrugarh, Assam to Sarat Chandra, a prominent advocate at the Calcutta (now Kolkata) High Court. He developed an interest in photography as a young boy, and although he never received formal training, he was able to learn the skill by working with professional photographers in their darkrooms. While pursuing his degree in English literature at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai – and later Presidency College, Calcutta – he became involved in left-wing political activism. He was a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), and received encouragement from the General Secretary PC Joshi to pursue photography. In 1943, Janah abandoned his studies and accompanied Joshi and the artist Chittoprasad across undivided Bengal to document the devastating effects of the famine. Together with a narrative text, his photographs were published in the Communist party’s paper People’s War, which at the time had a readership of nearly 36,000. His powerful black and white photographs of the Bengal famine presented a sympathetic picture of the impoverished masses, following the stylistic device of portraying the subject in a heroic mode, where photographs taken from a low-angle create an imposing figure. This coverage, which revealed the enormity of the crisis for the first time, soon became a staple at political meetings and funding drives across the country. The photographs were circulated as postcards and were republished in communist newspapers around the world. In 1945, Life magazine sent American photographer Margaret Bourke-White to India to witness the dwindling of the colonial empire. Compelled by his photographs and their impact, Bourke-White sought him out and they went on to have several collaborations. After covering the famine, Janah moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) to live in the Communist Party’s commune. Here, he became associated with the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) and the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). In 1948, following the split in the Communist Party, he was expelled along with other members who were associates of Joshi. After this, he completely dissociated from party politics and moved back to Kolkata. Here, he opened a photo studio and founded the Calcutta Film Society with CD Gupta, HD Gupta and Satyajit Ray, who also designed his first book of photographs, The Second Creature (1949). During this time, he also began working with the Government of India. He covered projects that came under the government’s first Five-Year Plan (1951–1956), which was part of its drive towards rapid industrialisation. Through the 1960s, he photographed the infrastructure and industries being set up by businessmen such as JRD Tata and GD Birla. His work for the government and the industrialists stands in stark contrast to his earlier framing, with the human figure now becoming subordinate to its surroundings. His later photographs are focussed on machines and factories instead, and the spectacle of modernity itself. These images celebrate the infrastructural strength and economic foundations of postcolonial India. Towards the end of his career, frustrated that his images were often used without credit or compensation, Janah retreated from public view and focused on photographing the life of Adivasi communities across India, which he published as his second book, The Tribals of India (1993). For several decades, his photographs had served a public and documentary function, but by the late 1970s they began entering the world of art as well. His photographs were exhibited at the Festival of India in the United Kingdom in 1982. In 1996, his work was shown at the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi, and the following year, it also appeared in a travelling group exhibition titled India: A Celebration of Independence, 1947–1997 at the Aperture Foundation, New York, USA. In 1998, Delhi-based photographer and activist Ram Rahman curated the largest retrospective show of his works at Gallery 678, New York, titled Photographing India, 1942–1978. The Government of India awarded Janah the Padma Shri in 1972, followed by a Padma Bhushan award in 2012.  

The multi-volume photographic and print publication, The People of India: A Series of Photographic Illustrations, with Descriptive Letterpress, of The Races and Tribes of Hindustan, was an illustrative document of the various social and ethnic groups across the Indian subcontinent. This included several of the country’s native castes and tribes that were represented through a clinical and taxonomic gaze typical of colonial ethnography at the time. Primarily consisting of 468 annotated photographs compiled by chronicler John Forbes Watson and historian John William Kaye, the series was published by the Government of India under the British Crown. Containing over five hundred (15 x 11 cm) albumin prints accompanied by detailed descriptions by Capt. T. Meadows (administrator, novelist and artist), the publication also formed an exhibit in the India pavilion of the 1862 London Exhibition. Produced shortly after the 1857 Rebellion, The People of India is considered a significant early publication that integrated photography and colonial ethnography as tools of administration and governance. The undertaking started out as a personal project for the first viceroy of India, Charles Canning, and his wife Charlotte, who wanted to build a collection of photos of the native people of India. When formalised in 1861 as a call from the colonial offices to military officers to submit photographs with detailed notes on various social groups across the Indian subcontinent, the initial result was a large collection of inconsistently annotated images of varying quality. The classifications of subjects specified in the official circular included ethnicity, caste, social group, regional power, language, clothing, profession and attributes such as trustworthiness, honesty and propensity of violence. The years leading up to the formal dissolution of British East India Company rule in 1874, and the reorganisation of administrative power under the British Raj, allowed publications such as The People of India to gain added significance as a form of colonial control. However, the subjectivity of some of the series’ parameters, and a general lack of organisation, resulted in discrepancies, overlaps and omissions (it completely excluded communities of fewer than two thousand people), delaying the project until it was eventually passed, after the demise of the Cannings, into the remit of the Government of India. Despite the scope afforded by its hundreds of images and its simple format, the series was received poorly by the colonial elite, for whom it was ostensibly meant to serve as a guidebook on the locals. According to scholar and educator Syed Ahmad Khan, one of the foremost critics of the series, the Indian elite also viewed it poorly, as they thought the categorisation was demeaning to their own identities. Whatever the original intent, the project — touted by some scholars as a surveillance program rooted in early ethnology and criminology — was quickly dismissed during its time. The series has however, in the last fifty years, received renewed interest, especially from postcolonial scholarship, for its overt, if unarticulated, ethnographic ambitions. Of particular interest to scholars is its frequent focus on the varying degrees of criminality among the indigenous groups of the subcontinent. Scholars argue that the photography–ethnography model was introduced as a pseudo-scientific justification of colonial rule, by categorising the Indian people as an aggregate of largely regressive and barbaric groups, in order to exercise a deep, precise control over them. In addition, its indexing of social groups further perpetuated ill-informed and at times outright discriminatory belief systems held by many aspects of the Indian caste system. The contemporary position on the book series is that it was fuelled by the insecurity following the 1857 Rebellion by Indian troops in the colonial military and was the result of a profiling exercise carried out to help prevent other such insurgencies. The various interpretations and analyses themselves are not without their flaws and controversies, as they are all largely derivative. The foundational scholarship that underpins much of the discourse on this ethnographic series has been attributed to John Falconer and Christopher Pinney; the former’s A Pure Labour of Love (2002) is credited as the most exhaustive publishing history of the People of India series and the latter’s Camera Indica (1997) is thought to lay down the analytical framework of the series. Aside from its discrepancies and harmful taxonomy, there is now a clear consensus on the value of The People of India as an illustrative historical document of the early British Raj’s strategic and discriminatory use of photography as an ethnographic tool. In 1908 and 1992, two other volumes bearing the same title were also published, but each separately and with different motivations that had no direct connection to the first series. Meanwhile, the 1868 multi-volume series continues to be a subject of much scholarly debate.

Also known as Bhimbetka Shelter III F-19 and Bull Rock, this rock shelter derives its name from its depiction of a large, boar-like creature and is prominent among the hundreds of structures that comprise the Bhimbetka cave paintings in the Raisen district of present-day Madhya Pradesh. The animal depicted in the painting has a large head, horns and what appears to be fur on its back. It appears to be charging leftwards, towards two figures — a human and a crab. The painting is rendered in deep red, which is believed to have been obtained from haematite, and is known for its magnitude, which is over 1.2 metres tall and 0.87 metres wide. Unlike the other hunting scenes depicted in the Bhimbetka rock shelters, the scene illustrated at Boar rock depicts a human figure being attacked by, and fleeing, a wild animal. While paintings of boars appear in several other instances in the region, scholars believe that the animal at Boar rock is mythical and seems to be a combination of a boar, an ox and an elephant. Apart from the Boar rock, the Zoo rock and the central Auditorium cave are notable sites at the Bhimbetka rock shelters. Although there are no clear conclusions regarding the purpose of the cave paintings in these shelters, archaeologists have used them to gain a better understanding of human behaviour and the social and cultural environment in the Prehistoric period. This region is also an important archaeological location and was marked as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.  

A life-sized Chunar stone statue of a female deity or guardian figure, possibly a yakshi, excavated from Didarganj, near present-day Patna, the Didarganj yakshi statue is widely celebrated for its intricacy, polished surface and overall symmetry, as well as naturalistic and standardised style. The figure is depicted carrying a fly-whisk in her right hand, while her left arm and nose are damaged. The statue rests on a 40-centimetre tall stand, bringing it to a total height of 203 centimetres — all of which was carved from a single block of stone. The Didarganj yakshi was rediscovered by accident on the banks of the Ganga by local residents in October 1917 and was worshipped for a brief period before being acquired by colonial-era archaeologists and moved to the Patna Museum. The explanation offered to the locals was that the statue represented a guardian figure, not a deity, and so was not intended for worship. This claim has been debated; the statue is widely, if not universally, considered to be a yakshi, qualifying as an elevated guardian deity meant to flank a more important figure on a temple wall or entrance. The interpretation rests on whether the fly-whisk is considered a sign of an attendant’s subservience or a guardian’s shared glory. Other features of the sculpture, namely its size, polished surface and carefully carved details such as the jewellery and drapery, have favoured the latter interpretation, indicating that the statue may have been positioned in a place of importance. The Didarganj yakshi has also been the focus of much debate on style, valuation, colonial and postcolonial biases and the representation of women in both ancient art and written art history. The age of the statue is also disputed, with earlier scholars placing it in the third century BCE while more recent scholarship places its origins in the first century CE. As a result, the artistic tradition and imperial patronage of the statue remains uncertain. Its naturalistic and standardised style may have been overvalued by colonial-era scholarship’s emphasis on Gandharan sculpture and Ashokan capitals. And so, possibly in an attempt to create distance between the history of Indian art and the Hellenic and Achaemenid roots of these sculptural traditions, the Didarganj yakshi, along with other sculptures, were dated to the third century BCE and presented as examples of a fully Indian style that was at least as old as sculptures like the Persianate lions of the Sarnath capital. The nationalistic fervour of the twentieth century encouraged the argument that the statue was of Mauryan origin, but without the Persian influence. This claim was further developed on the basis that the statue was made from polished stone — which is characteristic of Mauryan sculpture — and its discovery near Patna, the former capital of the Mauryan Empire. However, more recent scholarship asserts that both the polish and the naturalistic rendering of the figure was a lingering stylistic influence adopted by sculptors operating under the Central Asian Kushan Empire in the first or second century CE, about three hundred years after the Mauryans. This theory is supported by the double bundle in the yakshi’s hair, a popular style and artistic choice among sculptures of the Kushan Empire. This later date aligns with the progressive standardisation of Indian sculpture in the first millenium CE, whereas placing the yakshi in the third century BCE would create a centuries-wide gap in that history. The statue’s prominent breasts and wide hips have also been the focus of much debate. One interpretation has been that — much like the surasundaris on the walls of the Khajuraho temples from nearly a millennium later — the yakshi’s voluptuous form was seen as the beginning of an aesthetic path to spiritual understanding, wherein eroticism is seen simply as another play of form. Another view was that the yakshi’s exaggerated and sexualised features represented fertility and young motherhood, although both these views are at odds with the guardian duties or the iconographic role of a yakshi. It is generally agreed that her appearance was originally envisioned as an idealised version of the female body, and a depiction made as a matter of course rather than a conscious act of representation. The Didarganj yakshi was first housed in the Patna Museum and has been exhibited across the world as a fine example of Indian sculpture, including the 1947 exhibition “Art from the Dominions of India and Pakistan” in London and the “Festivals of India” exhibitions in France and the USA in the mid-1980s. Upon discovering slight damage to the yakshi’s left cheek when the statue returned to New Delhi, the Patna Museum refused to take it back without compensation to the Bihar government. The statue was finally returned to Patna in 1989 and moved to the Bihar Museum in 2017.

A bronze statuette depicting a free-standing nude female, the Dancing Girl was excavated from the Indus Valley Civilisation site of Mohenjo-daro (in present-day Sindh, Pakistan). Dated to c. 2500 BCE of the Mature Harappan Phase and recovered in 1926 by British archaeologist Ernest MacKay, the figure measures 10.5 centimetres in height, 5 centimetres in width and 2.5 centimetres in depth. Made using the lost-wax casting technique, this artefact is set apart from its terracotta counterparts by its representation of complete female nudity and its spare ornamentation. The Dancing Girl is so named for the assumed profession of the female figure — that of a nautch girl — and the pose she is shown holding. The slender figure is depicted as being exaggeratedly long-limbed and nearly bare, aside from some jewellery. Leaning slightly on the right leg, the figure’s asymmetrical stance mirrors the uneven distribution of ornamentation on her body. The left arm, covered almost entirely in approximately twenty-four bangles, hangs down to just above the left knee, against which she appears to be holding a pot-like object. The right arm, ornamented with just four bangles around the elbow and wrist, is cocked at the elbow and clenched into fist (with the thumb outside), which rests on the back of the slightly-raised right hip. Both legs are bent at the knees, but the left appears to be positioned ahead of the right. Around the neck and the chest is a necklace strung with three, or possibly four, large bead-like pendants. The slightly upward-tilted face has a high forehead, large eyes, wide nose and full cheeks and lips, with long hair that is tied and bundled, resting off to the right on the nape of the neck. As with many other Indus Valley artefacts, the identity and significance of this bronze figure is undetermined, with scholars presenting competing views. The original and dominant interpretation, by British archeologist John Marshall, that lent the artefact its name, has been challenged by more recent scholars who question its assumption (deemed inaccurate and discriminatory) of the figure’s stance as that of a dancing pose. These contemporary and alternate interpretations include that of the figure being a warrior — because of the uneven ornamentation of her hands — and a woman in a defiant stance. Some scholars even believe the Dancing Girl’s face to have Dravidian features, giving rise to various other theories about the ethnic identity of the figure depicted and the demographic makeup of the Indus Valley Civilisation. This artefact is a telling index of the Indus Valley Civilisation’s advanced understanding of metallurgical processes and its active patronage of the arts. The Dancing Girl is now displayed in the National Museum, Delhi, as a part of its Pre-History and Archaeology collection. The Dancing Girl statuette discovered in Bhirrana, in present-day Haryana, is the only known parallel, in any size or material, to the statuette of the Dancing Girl found in Mohenjo-daro.  

A well-known stamp seal from the Indus Valley, the Pashupati seal is carved in steatite and gets its name from the Sanskrit word for “lord of all animals,” referring to the Hindu deity Shiva. One of the earliest of the few similarly illustrated seals and tablets from the region, it is dated to around 2500–2400 BCE of the Mature Harappan Phase of the Indus Valley Civilisation and was excavated from the Mohenjo-daro archaeological site in the Sindh province of present-day Pakistan. Also designated as Seal No. 420 or the proto-Shiva seal for its evocation of the eponymous deity, it is 3.56 centimetres high, 3.53 centimetres long and 0.76 centimetres wide. The defining aspect of the pashupati seal, and the subject of much interpretive debate, is its iconography. The central figure is seated on a dias in a meditative pose resembling the yogic padmasana. The figure’s arms are covered in what appear to be bangles and the torso features a series of striations that may represent multiple necklaces or triangular pectorals. While the waist is adorned with a double-banded sash ending in hanging tassels, the lower body appears bare. The headdress, the most noticeable element, consists of two long, curved horns, pointing upwards and inwards to a fan-shaped central component. The face bears distinctive features as well — narrow, high-set, downward slanting eyes; a prominent, elongated nose; and a downturned mouth. On either side of the head are lateral projections that have been interpreted as having various meanings. Below the dias stand two creatures, believed to be deer facing each other with curved, downward-pointing antlers, and surrounding the figure are other animals, including a tiger, a buffalo, a rhinoceros and an elephant. This seal, like many others recovered from the region, has inscriptions in the Indus Valley script along its top edge. While the identity of the figure has been the subject of much debate, there is a consensus on its supposed associations with the divine. The earliest and most influential, as well as disputed, theory was advanced by British archaeologist John Marshall who was the first to document the seal. The interpretation of the main figure as pashupati emerged from his understanding of medieval iconography of Shiva — the trishula shape of the headdress, the yogic pose, the encircling of the figure by animals, tricephalic and ithyphallic extensions — leading to its identification as a proto-Shiva or the Rudra. Disagreements over this interpretation, believed by some to be erroneous, gave rise to other analyses. For instance, the lateral projections on either side of the face, interpreted as a bovine feature, led some scholars to claim that the figure represented a bovine deity, such as Mahishasura, or a divine bull-man such as was found on other masks and anthropomorphic figures excavated from the region. Other interpretations of the features of the visage, ornaments, and scenography suggested identifications with the Vedic deities of Agni, Anila and Varuna, and with the sage Rishyasringa. As the inscriptions are yet to be deciphered, the identity of the principal character of the seal remains contested. At the time of writing, the pashupati seal is housed in the National Museum, Delhi, as part of the Pre-History and Archaeology collection.  

A carved ivory statuette of a female figure, the Pompeii Lakshmi was recovered during archeological excavations at the site of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in 1938. The statuette, along with the city, had remained buried under volcanic ash since Mount Vesuvius had erupted in 79 CE. Its discovery established the existence of flourishing trade networks spanning the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. The statuette’s style and iconography has led to scholars variously identifying it as Sri, Lakshmi, and a yakshi among others. The figure is 25 cm high and 5 cm wide, possibly sculpted from a single elephant tusk. It consists of a primary female figure accompanied by two smaller, female attendants attached to either side. A hole on top of the primary figure suggests that the statuette might be a fragment of a larger object, like a piece of furniture or a mirror-handle. The statuette is relatively flat, but is sufficiently rounded and detailed to suggest that it was intended to be viewed from all sides. The primary figure is almost completely nude, with the exception of jewellery, including a necklace, bangles and a lotus-shaped head ornament. A flat belt is worn around the hips, while the right arm is raised and held behind the head. The left leg is placed in front of the right. The figure’s hair is braided in coils that reach the waist, with a large flower, perhaps a lotus, woven into the braids. The genitals are visible, suggesting that the figure may be a fertility goddess or yakshi. Scholars have also argued that it may be a syncretic form combining the Indian and Roman goddesses Sri, Lakshmi and Venus. The latter identification is suggested by the fact that a number of Venus representations in the Greco-Roman world show her accompanied by two attendants. While the lotus later came to be associated with the goddess Lakshmi, it has been argued that the Pompeii statuette’s ornament may not have been intended as a mark of a goddess or yakshi at all, but a general symbol of beauty. The statuette is marked with a Kharosthi inscription at the bottom, suggesting an origin in the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent, perhaps Begram in modern-day Afghanistan. Begram was a major production centre for carved ivories around the time the statuette was exported. Other scholars suggest that it was made in the interior of the Indian subcontinent, pointing out stylistic similarities to the Mathura school and to examples of yakshis from Bharhut and Sanchi. Similar statues have also been recovered at Bhokardan in present-day Maharashtra, which had steady trade with the Roman world. However, all of these centres did interact with each other; thus the statuette’s style is probably a mixture of influences, making it difficult to attribute an exact origin to it. It is generally assumed that the figure was produced in the early half of the first century CE and subsequently brought to Pompeii, probably via a port on the west coast such as Bhrigukaccha (present-day Bharuch). The house where the statuette was found is now named “The House of the Indian Statuette”, although the figure itself is now lodged at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy.  

Small ring-shaped stones, typically made from sandstone or steatite, with a carved upper surface that curves in towards a central void and an unmarked, but highly polished, underside. Ringstones of this type date back to the Maurya and Shunga periods, and are characterised by their uniformity of style and composition. Of the estimated seventy ringstones, measuring between 4 centimetres and 10 centimetres, most were found between present-day Punjab and Bihar with unclear provenance, suggesting their distribution and trade throughout the Indo-Gangetic plains of north India and Pakistan. So far, the only ringstone excavated from outside the Indian subcontinent was found in 2014 in peninsular Thailand and is unlikely to have been made with state patronage. The relief carvings on the convex surface of the ringstones are rendered in concentric bands of figurations with depictions of female figures, floral motifs, animal motifs or a combination of these — interpreted as representing fertility and prosperity. These bands are also separated by decorative geometric patterns such as cable-edging or rope borders. The innermost band usually contains alternating female figures and floral motifs that appear to be emerging from the central void. Figures of amorous couples or individual women, possibly goddesses, are typically rendered nude and in some cases with splayed legs, reinforcing the fertility symbolism. Creepers usually form a running base, terminating in trefoil forms between the figures. The Tree of Life motif, in its flowering form, is also commonly featured, possibly as a symbol of fecundity. The outer bands typically depict animal figures along with criss-crossing patterning that, in some cases, frames the overall design and has been compared to the Buddhist vajrasana motif. Due to the small size of the ringstones and the concentric-band format of the design, the figures depicted on them have minimal detailing. They have often been compared to discstones with which they share some characteristics — such as size, sculptural content and general provenance — but differ in shape and composition and, most notably, lack a central hole. Mauryan ringstones are amongst the most enigmatic artifacts of Mauryan and Shunga art. Interpreting their iconographic content as having socio-religious symbolism, scholars have speculated that they may have been used as amulets and ritualistic objects or designators. Some have also proposed that they could have been used as moulds for jewellery-making, a heavily contested view that has been bolstered by the recent discovery in Thailand, where pieces of embossed, gold reliefs were found near the site of excavation. While this discovery supports the possibility of its use in jewellery-making, it fails to definitively establish the original and intended purpose of the ringstones, which remains debated among scholars. At the time of writing this, these ringstones are housed in various museums in India and abroad, with some in private collections. The largest collection of ringstones exists at the Patna Museum, Bihar.

Thick, flat woven rugs or carpets, dhurries in India are primarily used as floor coverings. They are characterised by weft-facing weaves in plain, striped, extra-weft (peddle) or tapestry (cut-shuttle) designs. The decorative woven patterns of a dhurrie are based originally on the vernacular tradition of temporary or painted floor decorations such as rangoli and kolam. The word dhurrie has multiple etymologies in different Indic languages: the Sanskrit dara refers to a mat of split cane; dari in Sindhi and Punjabi means “a piece of matting,” while the same in Bengali, Oriya, Hindi and Nepali denotes “carpet.” Dhurrie weaving is also linked to the ancient tradition of grass mat weaving, which continued to develop independently. Dhurries are distinguished from carpets by their flat weave, their relative lightness and their often-reversible designs. The craft practice has a long heritage in several states in India, such as Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Delhi, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Odisha, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Telangana (formerly part of Andhra Pradesh), Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The earliest evidence of rug-like floor-coverings is from a 200–400 BCE fragment of woollen carpet with a tapestry base weave excavated from the Krorainic region of Western China. The material evidence is corroborated by documents in Kharosthi that refer separately to ‘rugs’ and ‘carpets’ from the region. The 200-300 CE treatise of the Arthashastra refers to different kinds of floor coverings, including the rug or pravaraka, that are made from the hair of animals. A tenth-century travelogue by Arab geographer al-Maqdisi makes a more definitive reference to rugs (called busut), specifically from the Sindh region of British India (now of Pakistan). Pictorial references to rugs are seen in sixth-century Ajanta murals; Sultanate period manuscript paintings — such as the Bustan of Sa’di (c. 1500); the sixteenth-century Padshahnama; and sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century Mughal and Deccan miniatures from the St. Petersburg Muraqqa. Later material evidence of a flat-weave Indian rug is provided by a seventeenth-century fragment from the Amber Palace in Rajasthan housed in the Calico Museum; a prayer rug dated to 1686 and from the Jama Masjid of Bijapur; and a dhurrie sample from the karkhana (workshop) of the Nizam of Hyderabad, attributed to 1700. These remains along with manuscripts from the period attest to the use of rugs for secular and religious purposes and to the existence of storehouses or farrashkhanas for palace dhurries in the various princely states. Dhurries are typically woven by hand, using horizontal pit looms, with some rare exceptions such as the Belgaum dhurries of Karnataka. The various types of dhurries, while sharing the overall process, differ in the materials used, their design vocabulary and some aspects of production. Commonly made with cotton, fleece, jute, wool and silk yarns in various combinations, the weaves are typically made in the weft interlocked or interlocking tapestry technique. First, a design is prepared and traced onto a graph paper along with the colour specifications. The loom is then prepared, first by winding the yarns, then passing them through a reed and finally by tying them to a warp beam. The warp yarns, usually made of undyed cotton or wool, form the backbone of the weft-facing dhurrie weave. The coloured weft threads are wrapped with a pirn rod to be transferred to a weft shuttle. The weaving process involves throwing the alternate weft thread across the stretched warp. After each line of the weft design is completed, it is beaten down with a metal comb or panja to tighten the weft-thread line. After the design is woven, the extra threads are trimmed and cut, while the fringe formed by the cut and lost threads of the weft are hard knotted to prevent the weave from unravelling. The design vocabulary for dhurries typically consists of stripes, geometric designs that are either abstract or inspired by architectural forms, or naturalistic motifs inspired by flora and fauna. Striped dhurries are amongst the most common, used in mosques, as tent rugs, festival and ceremonial floor coverings and as decorative and functional household items. Among the striped dhurries are the multicoloured ones, such as the jamkalams woven in Bhavani, Tamil Nadu; the blue-and-white striped varieties of Uttar Pradesh, such as the nili chitti and gilasdar patti; the shatranji and chindi or rag dhurries of Maharashtra. Prayer rugs or jainamaz dhurries contain intricate patterns prominently featuring a single mihrab (arched niche) motif and saf (multiple arch) motifs. The panja dhurrie integrates the motifs and designs of phulkari and bagh embroidery designs, used to symbolise birth, marriage and death. Colourful Warangal dhurries, produced in Andhra, are characterised by repeating geometric motifs and zigzagging lines, and more recently kalamkari and ikat patterns. The Navalgund jamkhans of Karnataka are woven with motifs of peacocks (mor) and choukas (dice game board), the latter of which also feature in the shahnashin of Punjab. Pictorial dhurries, popularised by the Mughals, are woven in the regions of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, with stylised motifs of trees, flowers (phuldar), birds, fish (machlidar) and reptiles around a central medallion. A popular pictorial theme that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was Noah’s Ark. The showcase of dhurries at the Great Exhibition in 1851, led to a surge in demand for floor coverings manufactured in India. Dhurrie manufacturing at the time was divided into private sectors, village production, and the prison industry. Private dhurrie enterprises, monopolised by British-owned cotton mills, propagated the striped dhurrie design in India. Introduced first by the Mughals and revived by Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II in 1856, prison dhurrie workshops became major production centres, several of them being subsequently established in Agra, Bikaner, Baroda, Hyderabad, Jodhpur, Lucknow, Sabarmati, Udaipur and Warangal in India and Bahawalpur, Multan, Lahore and Hyderabad in modern-day Pakistan. Production at jail workshops decreased by the mid twentieth century and dhurrie production primarily became a cottage industry. In the early twentieth century, the setting up of cotton mills in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh and the resultant migration of weavers to the city, resulted in a revitalisation of the dhurrie industry and the production of a new kind of unpatterned rugs known as Kanpur dhurries. This and the expansion of rail networks across India revitalised the dhurrie industry, which had suffered a blow from famine of 1876 and the bubonic plague of1897, and encouraged export centres such as Moradabad, Bareilly, Agra and Aligarh, also in Uttar Pradesh. Because of their versatility and portability, dhurries came to replace carpets as floor coverings especially in warmer regions or during warmer months. They were also used as mattress covers, cradle or crib liners and even as wraps in the cooler months. Dhurries were also placed underneath double-pile carpets to preserve them and protect against damp. Today, dhurries are widely sought-after craft objects and are produced chiefly in the centres of Hoshiarpur in Punjab, Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Warangal in Andhra Pradesh, Salem in Tamil Nadu, Panipat in Haryana, Belgaum in Karnataka, and Pune in Maharashtra. Several regional varieties of dhurries, such as the Warangal Dhurrie, Navalgund Dhurrie and Agra dhurrie, among others, have been recognised and protected under the Geographical Indications of Goods(Registration & Protection) Act, 1999.  

Woven in Kerman, Southeast Persia (now Iran), Kerman carpets were introduced to India through trade routes with Iran and were widely used during the Mughal era. The most popular varieties of the carpets include those woven by the Afshar community settled in Sirjand, Shahr Babak and Rafsanjan, as well as the Laver-Kerman carpets from Ravar. Kerman carpets are divided into three categories based on their density — 70/35, 80/40 and 100/50 — where the first number refers to the number of warp strings across the width of the fabric and the second number indicates the number of weft sets in the length, measured per gireh (1 gireh = 7 cm or 24 inches). The rugs are knotted and made of sheep wool, with the occasional use of cotton and animal fibre. The weft is closely woven to the warp using several loops of wool to create a piled rug. Generally, the piles are woollen, with a cotton base, and handspun wool is preferred to obtain the desired texture. The patterns are symmetrical with a double weft, though some may have a single weft and a knot. Traditionally, natural dyes were used to create colour patterns, with light pastel tones for the base colour and cochineal-based, plum red for the designs. The arrangement of the knots, warp and weft of the carpet can be used to determine the origins of the carpet. The weavers use a naksha to render the designs on the carpet. The design consists of geometric and floral motifs, including individual boteh, interlinked boteh and vases in the borders and background patterns. Whereas there are design variations depending on the village and region where the carpet is produced, all Kerman carpets feature floral motifs, such as the carpets produced by the Kijar Afshars, which are densely floral and feature medallions. While the vase carpets have been attributed to different places, the broadly held view is that they originated from Kerman. Another common motif is the palmette, lancet-leaf and the hooked diamond subsidiary motif, which reflect a Turkish lineage. The 1950s saw a French influence on Kerman designs, such as the incorporation of rococo on the scrolling leaves and flowers on the carpet. Kerman carpets were widely exported till the First World War, even incorporating Biblical themes in their designs. However, the rapid industrialisation of the industry in the twentieth century due to increased demand in Europe led to a decline in the quality of the product. Today, many of the traditional carpets are regularly auctioned. Examples of Kerman carpets are also held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur; and the Textile Museum, Washington DC.

Distinguished from most traditional carpets by its lack of a raised surface or pile, the kilim is a type of flatweave rug historically made in parts of West, Central and South Asia, as well as the Balkans, Caucasus and northern Africa. Named after the Turkish for ‘rug’, the kilim is also known as gelim, killim and kelim in various regions. It has traditionally been handwoven using yarn-dyed wool by women in nomadic communities, particularly in present-day Türkiye (or Turkey), Iran and Afghanistan. It uses primarily the slit tapestry weave, which restricts curved designs and lends the kilim its distinctive straight-edged patterns. Holding significant socio-cultural value in the communities they are made in, kilim textiles have been used, besides floor coverings, as hangings, prayer rugs, tent fabrics and for bags and satchels, among other everyday objects. From the nineteenth century onwards, the kilim has been an important export in international trade. While the precise origins of kilim weaving are difficult to ascertain, some scholars have been able to identify kilims from Egypt and Anatolia (largely present-day Türkiye) dating to the fourth and fifth centuries CE; the slit weave more broadly has been dated as far back as roughly 1000 BCE. The weaving of kilims was an established practice among the nomadic communities in Anatolia and Persia (present-day Iran), who used the hair and wool of their domesticated animals, dyed with locally available natural dyes, to make them. It is believed that the earliest kilims were woven on looms made from bushes and trees, mostly during the winter months when agrarian activity was low. Besides their utilitarian value for warmth, kilims were valued as currency, alongside jewellery, livestock, precious metals and knotted rugs — and were thus seen as a symbol of wealth among these communities. The skill of weaving kilims played an important role in the life of young brides as an additional source of income for their families after marriage. While most kilims are made entirely of wool dyed in natural pigments drawn from plants, animals and minerals, some types use wool as the weft yarn and cotton as the warp yarn. Others also use silk, or the hair of goats, horses or camels.  The warp and weft in a kilim are tightly interlocked in a flat weave using a narrow loom, and no additional yarn is knotted into it to create a pile. Traditionally, the kilim is woven using the slit-weave technique, in which a number of wefts are woven around the last warp of a single colour, leaving small vertical gaps or slits between two or more wefts of different colours. This restricts the kinds of designs possible, and most weavers prefer rectilinear or diagonal geometrical patterns as these preserve the strength of the slitted textile. Moreover, unlike the evenly spaced warp and weft of plain weaves, the kilim is a weft-facing textile, where the visible pattern is determined by the tightly wound and densely packed weft, which completely obscures the warps underneath. This also allows for reversible kilims showing similar patterns on both sides.  In the period since it was first used, weavers have experimented with a number of improvisations on the slit-weave technique. One such is dovetailing, in which two wefts of different colours return from opposite directions to the same warp, which forms a boundary between them. Another is double-locking, in which two wefts interlock and cover the slit between two evenly spaced warps. However, neither of these techniques is widely used. Besides the slit-weave, kilims are sometimes embellished with other techniques that help create complex patterns. In somak weaving, weft yarns are alternatingly wrapped over and under the warp yarns, giving rise to discontinuous, embroidery-like patterns. In brocading, extra weft is added to the surface of the rugs to create raised designs. Depending on the weaving technique used, kilims may feature geometric or fluid designs. For example, the slit-weave technique often produces diamond-shaped or triangular designs with cascading patterns, while the somak weaving technique creates continuous, flowing patterns. Decorative beads and silver, gold and silk threads are sometimes incorporated into the design.  In Anatolia, where kilims were first produced, weavers would adapt forms from the natural world into abstract rectilinear motifs and patterns. Most kilims carry motifs pertaining to specific beliefs and myths and also serve as symbols of luck, fertility and power. Traditional kilims also feature motifs drawn from the immediate surroundings of the weaver, primarily domestic items such as kettles and combs, and natural imagery such as flora. In the aftermath of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, weavers in the country began depicting war apparatus on their kilims, in a trend that continued through the United States’ 2001 invasion of Afghanistan to the present.  In South Asia, the modern-day states of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are known for kilim weaving. It was introduced in India through the imperial carpet-weaving workshops, or farrash-khanas, of the Mughal empire that flourished under the reign of Akbar (r. 1556–1605) in Agra, Delhi and Lahore. The carpets produced in these historic cities featured designs inspired by traditional Persian motifs and patterns, but used brighter colours.  Afghanistan has a rich culture of kilim weaving, though the history of its early emergence is not well documented. A wide range of Afghan kilims are identified based on the region of production and the predominant tribal groups making them. Among the most prominent are Turkmen kilims, named after the peoples of Central Asian descent renowned for their expertise in making carpets, who also inhabit parts of Iran and northern Afghanistan. In contrast with the multicoloured Turkmen rugs from Iran, those from Afghanistan are larger and more subdued in terms of colour and design. They are often characterised by repeating panels or medallions in the central field, which contain ancient totemic symbols or emblems, or gul, often pertaining to specific communities. Rugs of the Ersari tribe of Turkmen from Labijar in northern Afghanistan show motifs such as the arrowhead, which symbolises good luck in hunting; the hourglass, said to bring light and energy; and an S-shaped double-hook motif, which also brings good luck. They are known for their palette of deep reds, blues and browns offset by yellow. Kazakh and Uzbek populations settled in Afghanistan also produce distinctive kilims. The Kazakh rugs, known as lakai, feature a grid of rectangles containing star-motifs, with a three-band border containing repeating triangles and other geometric motifs. The chevron-patterned Uzbek rugs are made of narrow warp-faced strips sewn together, yielding intricate kilims locally known as ghudjeri. Other kilim varieties from the region include the Maimana, which sometimes includes a tulip-inspired design; the Mushwani, after the Persian-speaking tribe of Pashtun ancestry; and the Mukkur Kutchi, named after the town between Kabul and Kandahar.  Afghan communities produced kilims chiefly for personal use and for local markets until the 1960s and 1970s, when these rugs started to receive attention in Western markets following new trade and political connections between Afghanistan and the West. They have since been popular objects of export, not only as craft artefacts for study and display but for use as functional floor coverings. Today, kilims made with synthetically dyed yarn are used not just as rugs and floor coverings but also for mule saddles, bags, upholstery, cushion covers and wall hangings. Antique kilims are held in the collections of numerous museums and galleries.

Hand-felted and embroidered rugs produced in parts of Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan, namda use felting instead of weaving, a technique that came to India from Iran and Turkey during the Mughal period. The technique of making a namda involves beating and fluffing the wool fibres with a wicker punja (comb) and then layering, matting and flattening. A minimum of three layers are prepared and each layer is spread separately, sprinkled with soapy water and pressed with a pinjra tool to enmesh and interlock the fibres. Each layer is flattened to a uniform size and dimension using water and heavy compression. This layered wool is then rolled out to rinse excess water, is washed with a cleaning agent and left in the sun to dry. Once completely dry, the rug is ready to use as plain or can be decorated using embroidery or appliqué. In the Kashmiri namda, cotton is often mixed with the wool fibre, making the base colour a light shade of white, which aesthetically makes room for vibrant embroidery. Most often the namdas are decorated with colourful aari and kashidakari embroidery using floral patterns and animal motifs such as the chinar tree, dachh (vine), cherry blossoms and pamposh (lotus). Namda making is a household craft practised primarily by the Muslim community and passed on from one generation to another. In Kashmir, namdas are used as mattresses and floor coverings as they are warm and cater to extreme cold weather conditions. In eastern part of Kutch, Pinjara and Mansoori communities practise the craft of making namdas as floor coverings – for the use of Darbar communities – and their process varies regarding the appliqué technique where a pattern of dyed wool is laid out first and then fused with other layers through compression. The making of namda rugs is a labour-intensive technique where a craftsman needs the assistance of three people to make two namdas in a day. Prominent manufacturing centres are situated in Tonk, Rajasthan and Srinagar, Kashmir where the rugs are sold in craft bazaars. There remains a notable demand for namdas in the urban cities and the international market, sustaining the craft through the years.  

A thick, flat-woven rug or carpet produced in Karnataka, India, that is primarily used as a floor covering, is known as Navalgund dhurrie. Navalgund or navedu in Kannada, refers to the peacock which frequently appears as a design motif in the dhurries. The origin of Navalgund dhurries goes back to the sixteenth century Bijapur when for the sake of safety and continuity of their craft, the jamkhana weavers migrated from Bijapur to Navalgund, amidst the power struggle between the Deccan Sultanate and the Vijayanagara empire. Navalgund dhurries are woven along the width on a vertical loom, locally referred to as khadav magga, with precise calculations on a naksha (graph). These are mostly weft-dominant where the warp consists of white cotton yarn and each design is unique. The designs include striped, stepped, serrated patterns with bright coloured wefts of red, yellow, blue and green, geometric designs and motifs of choukhas (dice game board), mor (peacock), charmor (peacock motif in four corners) and stylised intricate patterned mihrabs (niched arches). The dominant colour for the background is a bright red in most jamkhanas. The Navalgund dhurries are of various types and sizes – depending on their use – such as the jamkhana, which is used as a floor covering; the jainamaz, used as prayer mats; totalle jamkhana, used for cradles; and guddar which is used as a protective cover when storing grains. Towards the end of the nineteenth century due to rampant commercialisation of weaving in rural India, the design, colour sensitivity, dyeing of the Navalgund dhurries deteriorated significantly, stagnating the industry. To support the weavers, the Karnataka state government established a production centre and brought in artisans to work there but the number of artisans has fallen significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the prolonged lockdowns in the state. In 2011, Navalgund dhurries received the Geographical Index (GI) tag from the government of India.

Made by the indigenous Mising community of Assam also known as the Mishing or the Miri, this gadu is a thick fluffy blanket used during the winter season. Traditionally woven on a mini handloom, the process of weaving a gadu is intensive and can take up to a month. The warp of a gadu consists of thick, coarse cotton yarn, while the weft is formed by inserting three-inch pieces of soft, spun cotton one by one using a tool called the sumpa. As a result, one side of the blanket is fluffy while the other is coarse. An average gadu is 3 x 2.5 metres in size and is often formed by stitching two separate pieces together. The gadu is traditionally washed by soaking it for several days in an alkaline solution made of banana leaf ash mixed with water. The gadu is culturally significant in the Mising community. It is one of the gifts given to a bride by her mother, and the presence of a gadu in a household is considered to be a marker of social standing.  

Comprising a set of miniature paintings, a ragamala depicts the visualised forms of six ragas, or melodies, of Indian classical music as well as their derivatives or raginis. The term itself literally means “garland of ragas,” referring to both the musical and pictorial aspects of ragas and raginis. Ragamala paintings began to be made in the late fifteenth century, while ragas themselves have been in use in Indian classical music since the fifth century CE. The most prominent patrons of these paintings were the Rajput courts in present-day Rajasthan, for whom ragamala sets became an area of patronage within miniature painting. Ragamala paintings were historically made as a set of thirty-six or more folios, each accompanied by a Sanskrit verse or a mention of the associated raga. A raga, also known as a raag or ragam, is a specific series of notes arranged in fixed ascending and descending orders, with a prescribed degree of stress (called chalan) on each note. Each raga is meant to evoke a particular mood or atmosphere, through which its musical framework may be applied to other art forms, including the visual arts. While there are hundreds of ragas, the six ragas traditionally depicted in ragamala paintings are: bhairava, shri, malkauns, deepak, megh malhar and hindol. Within a ragmala, ragas typically represent seasons, weather changes or times of day. Further, each raga is personified as a human man, who is then paired with consorts (raginis), daughters (ragaputris) and sons (ragaputras), all of which are further derivations of the ragas found in Indian classical music. While the list of ragas and raginis in most ragamala paintings remains standard, variations and substitutions often occur in particular sets as a result of artistic liberty or the preferences of the patron. While the ragas were meant to represent the essence of seasonal and temporal change, the raginis were characters or nayikas whose individual stories added a human element to those seasons or times of day. Though ragas and raginis were not necessarily depicted in the same painting, the raga’s presence was always a part of a ragini painting in some form. For example, the ragini Bhairavi is depicted as a lone devotee of Shiva, at whose shrine she offers freshly plucked flowers, and the ragini Lalita is shown as a woman asleep in her bed while her lover departs, looking at her over his shoulder. Both these images, despite their many apparent differences, are meant to evoke the early morning bhairava raga, played in all seasons. The relationship between the raga and ragini is particularly important in ragamala paintings as a site for the exploration for romantic, erotic and devotional love. The increased patronage towards manuscript painting across the subcontinent in the sixteenth century coincided with the rise of the Bhakti movement. This resulted, among other things, in the depiction of love and divine devotion as nearly interchangeable concepts in Rajput painting. The earliest surviving example of ragamala painting is a set of ten images showing five ragas and five raginis, painted in the margins of a now lost manuscript made in 1475. These ragas are clearly divine figures, at least two of which can be identified as Shiva and Vishnu. However, the next instances of ragamala painting a century later show scenes of ragas and raginis in human form, particularly ones where raginis are longing for an absent lover. Such ragamala paintings were seen as a set of images describing the love between the human and the divine, evoking moods that could be playful, mournful, serene or secretive. This conflation of god with mortal and love with devotion, set against a lush, natural backdrop, was a result of emerging ideas of worship inspired by the Bhakti movement. Apart from Rajput kingdoms, ragamala paintings were also made for the Deccan courts of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur in the late sixteenth century, a period in which illustrated manuscripts received generous patronage in the region. Scholars speculate that Hindu feudal lords in the northern Deccan may also have commissioned a few ragamala sets around this time. By 1650, however, few ragamala sets were being made in the Deccan and many of these were supported by the patronage of Rajput courts, resulting in a hybrid style that catered to the tastes of specific Rajasthani courts while retaining the hand of Deccani artisans. In some cases, the facial features, costumes and accessories of ragas and raginis would appear overtly Mughal, despite not being made for the Mughal court. These may have been attempts by the vassal kingdoms in Rajasthan to gain favour with the Mughals by emulating their style or even painting these figures in the likeness of the Mughal royal family. From the late nineteenth century onwards, manuscript painting as a court art suffered a decline and, today, most ragamala sets have been dispersed across the world. Some examples can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; the British Museum, London, UK; and the Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad, to name a few.

Characterised by the use of rich gold and silver zari to weave motifs that appear embossed, the Benarasi brocade, named for the handloom weaving centre of Varanasi (formerly Benaras) from where it arose, has a distinctive style and language that has been developed over centuries. It is surmised that weaving techniques used to make brocades originated in India’s Vedic period (1750–500 BCE), based on the mention of hiranya vastra (cloth of gold) in the Rig Veda considered an allusion to brocades with heavy gold zari work. The brocade tradition, especially of Benaras, also has proposed links to Buddhism: Some scholars have suggested that patterns carved into stupas at Sarnath inspired the designs of textiles produced during the eighth and ninth centuries, such as devadushyas, that were then used to wrap around these stupas. It is also believed that the Buddha, upon renunciation, gave up his royal robes and instead dressed in kashika vastra, or cloth from Kashi. It is in fact claimed by the weavers of Varanasi that the Buddha was wrapped in Benarasi silk when he was cremated. Beginning early in the sixteenth century, the ruling Mughals, who were great patrons of the arts, introduced Indian artisans to a variety of designs and techniques from Persia (now Iran), which were subsequently incorporated into existing textile traditions. The Mughal elite, and later royalty from across India, patronised the rich Benarasi brocades, using them as part of their royal garb as well as to decorate their residences and courts, causing it to gain widespread renown and the weaving practice to flourish. Motifs inspired from Mughal miniature paintings and architecture — such as jaali, ashrafi, chand tara — along with floral and foliate designs continue to appear on Benarasi brocades alongside newer and more contemporary motifs. One of the most popular brocade textiles is the Benarasi silk saree, which is typically dyed red, fuchsia, green or indigo. The body of the saree features scattered zari and silk butis, while the pallu often features extensive and intricate zari brocade work, with motifs interspersed among jaali patterns and the angled parallel lines. The two corners on the outer edge of the pallu often feature a konia that is usually a kairi, paisley or floral buti. Narrow fringe-like patterns called jhalar are also characteristically found on the inner and outer edges of the saree. In addition to sarees, ornamental kinkhab brocades, with zari work so heavy that the silk base is obscured, are woven almost exclusively in Varanasi. Buddhist monasteries across India continue to patronise Varanasi’s craftsmen, who weave ceremonial fabrics such as or gyaser (or thiugyamo) which feature Buddhist motifs in the kinkhab style. Converting silk and zari yarn into brocades is a laborious process that involves several people, both men and women, and has historically been largely the preserve of the Ansari Muslim community. Every weaving establishment is headed by a grihastha, and the weavers working under him are known simply as karigars. Traditionally, the warp of the loom is wrapped around the warp beam or tanari by women. In preparation for the weaving, silk yarn is first boiled to remove traces of gum left by the silkworm, and sorted into hanks which are then dyed to achieve the desired colour, either by in-house dyers or specialised dyeing establishments near the weaving workshops. Once dry, the dyed yarn is wrapped onto a wheel before being transferred to spindles. Tanaris are also involved in wrapping threads around individual shuttles used to create designs. The zari, which may be used either in the warp or weft of Benarasi brocades is sourced from Surat in Gujarat or made locally in Varanasi. The number of zari or silk weft threads introduced into the fabric during the weaving process dictates the intricacy and the thickness of the brocade. A particular speciality of Benarasi brocades is the minakari brocade, where motifs are formed out of plain silk on a zari base, causing them to appear inlaid or embedded. The motifs to be woven into the fabric are drawn on paper within a numbered grid known as a naqsha by designers known as naqshabands. The designs are then coloured in, punched into cards by artisans known as patthakati and typically loaded onto a jacquard loom. Many thousands of cards are strung together to weave the richly brocaded fabrics of Varanasi. Once the fabric has been woven, it is taken off the loom and threads projecting from the edges are tidied using a needle. After this, an artisan known as the katorna carefully cuts the extra threads connecting the motifs on the reverse side of the brocade without damaging the cloth. This cloth is then held against light and carefully checked for flaws and cuts. It is subsequently stretched over a frame, sprayed with cleaning agents and polished, improving the shine and glaze of the metal threads. In the case of sarees, the fabrics are then usually sent to be ironed and folded for display in shops. Due to the high cost of the materials as well as the intense labour and skill needed to produce them, Benarasi brocades are considered a luxury fabric. While handwoven versions continue to be produced today, weaving communities have come under increasing pressure from mechanised reproductions of the fabric, which are often printed as opposed to woven. Gold-hued muga silk is also increasingly being used to imitate the lustre of the zari threads found in these brocades. Traditional handwoven Benarasi brocades have received a fillip from increasing institutional recognition and, in 2009, the Geographical Indication (GI) status from the Government of India for their territory-specific production and characteristics. In 2014, Ramlal Maurya, a master brocade weaver from Varanasi, was also conferred with the Sant Kabir award by the government. The Benarasi brocade, although still largely considered a luxury textile, has received much stimulus from organisations, individuals and the burgeoning fashion industry, to keep the long tradition of its production alive.  

Used to embellish clothing as well as home furnishings with the iridescent wings, or elytra, of the Jewel beetle of the Buprestidae family, beetle wing embroidery has been historically used in India, Southeast and East Asia and the Middle East. Their earliest recorded use in India dates back to the fifteenth century when the blue-green jewel tones of beetle wings were often paired with lustrous zardozi embroidery to decorate clothing worn to signify high status in the Mughal courts. Examples of this form of surface decoration began to appear in Europe, especially in countries such as England and France, which had well-established trade and colonial relations with Asia. During the Victorian era in Europe, this style of embroidery began to appear on gowns and accessories, and by the nineteenth century such embroidery work was being created in Benaras (now Varanasi), Calcutta (now Kolkata), Hyderabad and Madras (now Chennai), solely for the export market. A famous example of this was the “Peacock Dress” worn by Mary Victoria Leiter, or Lady Curzon the Vicereine of India, at the 1903 Delhi Durbar. The dress, now at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, was patterned like a peacock’s tail and was embroidered with zari and beetle wings. The wing casings of the Sternocera aequisignata are usually preferred because of their blue-green-purple iridescence as well as their durable coat of colour. In Japan, the wing casings of Chrysochroa fulgidissima, known as Tamamushi (‘jewel insect’), are used instead. The process of decoration is generally the same with minor regional variations. The casings are either sewn as a whole onto the material to be embroidered or are cut into small pieces, shaped and then stitched on the fabric, usually fine muslin or net, like sequins. In traditional examples like Mughal era clothing and turbans, they are usually added only around the edges of fabric due to their fragility and pierced using a fine retaining thread. In a few cases, particularly Victorian garments such as Lady Curzon’s Peacock Dress, one can see the casings embroidered in the body of the cloth as well. Today, medieval and colonial examples of beetle wing embroidery are preserved in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the City Palace collection in Jaipur, the Bharat Kala Bhavan at Benaras Hindu University and the National Museum in New Delhi. Since the beetle wing casings were part of elaborate garments that were rarely worn, they have largely survived well, even in cases where the textile itself may have deteriorated.  

An ornamental technique of sewing in which patterns and motifs are created by stitching layers of carefully cut cloth onto a base fabric. Its name is derived from the French verb appliquer, meaning “to put on.” Appliqué styles originated independently in many parts of the world, often alongside similar practices such as patchwork and quilting, most likely following the practice of covering tears by stitching small pieces of cloth over them. Several analogues of the technique exist around the world, varying greatly on both the intended use of the finished product as well as the cultural and regionally-specific motifs that appear on them. Forms of appliqué are particularly prevalent in the sartorial and textile traditions of South and Central America, some examples of which are mola reverse appliqué, practised by the Guna (formerly Kuna) people from Panama and Colombia; Chilean arpilleras, or patchwork pictures sewn on burlap cloth; and quilts appliquéd with chintz in eighteenth-century North America. There are several applique traditions in India, most traditionally used as a means to recycle leftover fabric. The oldest extant craft dates back to the twelfth century in Pipili, Odisha, where it is called Pipili chandua. The names of appliqué traditions in India, like the craft itself, differ between the many communities and regions in which they are practised. While several of them remain confined to their respective communities, some have come to be better known for their style and uses. In Pipili and Madurai (Tamil Nadu), appliqué has historically been used to decorate temple chariots and chattris; in Gujarat and Rajasthan, where it is known as katab, the tradition has flourished among the nomadic and pastoralist communities where it has been used to make camel and cattle covers, dowry and household items; in Himachal Pradesh and also to a greater extent in Tibet, intricate applique is used to create thangkas, or tapestries showing Buddhist religious narratives; in Bihar, khatwa appliqués have been used on shamianas, torans and for smaller items such as children’s caps and pillow covers; and in Maharashtra, the Banjara of Khandesh have generally used the technique to produce home furnishings and garments. There are two variations of the applique technique. In one, the overlying cloth may be cut into the desired shape and then stitched onto the base fabric to create patterns; while in the other, sometimes known as reverse appliqué, incisions are made in the layer of overlying fabric, revealing the base fabric to make patterns. Piping and embroidery may also be employed to lend detail or create outlines. The functions of appliqué textiles have evolved over time, often due to shifts in patronage. Most varieties do not attract specialised demand from outside their local economy and are often marketed nationally and internationally as generic “appliqué” products, rather than as regionally-specific products. Furthermore, these handmade goods are typically expensive because of the elaborate nature of the craft, and therefore face strong competition from cheaper, mass-produced textiles. Although artisans still receive commissions for traditional appliqué work today, the technique is now largely used for adorning clothing and household textiles such as curtains, cushion covers and tablecloths.

A technique of embellishing textiles and other objects with gold or silver trims, gota work is popular in north and northwestern India, particularly the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. The trim or braid — gota in Hindi — is woven using flat gold or silver wire and cotton or silk. Considered auspicious and a marker of prosperity, gota is traditionally hand-stitched onto fabrics as decorative borders and motifs using appliqué and embroidery techniques. Generally attributed to Rajput nobility, gota was originally made and used for royal garments and odhnis or scarves for temple idols, and is known since at least the eighteenth century. Today, gota work using lurex, a synthetic fibre, is a popular form of fabric ornamentation, widely used across clothing and a number of other items as diverse as footwear, ceremonial fabrics, and sweet-box wrappers in India. Gota work evolved as one of many textile traditions across South Asia that have used gold and silver to assert the high social standing, prestige and good fortune of its wearers. Gota uses a flattened gold or silver fibre called badla, which is used in the production of zari, a gold or gold-covered silver yarn used in weaving and embroidery. It is thought to have developed in the same Persianate karkhanas, or workshops, of the Sultanate and Mughal courts in northern India where zari was used for intricate zardozi and ari embroidery since the fourteenth century. With the decline of Mughal power and patronage in the seventeenth century, artisans from these courts moved to provincial courts around India. By the nineteenth century, Jaipur, a significant centre of Rajput power in northern India, had emerged as the main centre for zari and badla production, alongside Lucknow and Surat, and become particularly known for weaving gota. The Rajput courts in Jaipur and Himachal Pradesh, and the Sikh courts in Punjab adopted gota work for garments, headdresses and footwear, and as an integral part of the bridal trousseau. The popularity of gota work here was possibly due to these rulers’ desire for a distinct yet opulent form of fabric embellishment, in the absence of the local silk weaving traditions and lavishly patronised workshops that were essential to support zardozi and ari embroidery.  Further, the Udaipur region of Rajasthan had previously been known for a type of decorative tradition called danka work or korpatti ka kam, in which flat pieces of solid gold or silver cut in various shapes were stitched onto stretched fabric, alongside zardozi work. When used along the hems of odhnis or ghagras, as they typically were, the weight of these metal trims aided the fall of these garments. Gota, besides being cheaper, was a flexible material that was easier to apply onto fabrics in versatile ways, and its low weight meant that the fabric could be much more lavishly embellished without getting too heavy. This made gota work the predominant decorative element on garments in these areas, and a distinctive feature of the poshak, the Rajput women’s ceremonial dress. In the eighteenth century gota work was being produced in the courts and wealthy households of present-day Rajasthan, as well as Lucknow, Mirzapur and Varanasi in present-day Uttar Pradesh and Aurangabad in present-day Maharashtra. It was also associated with a recycling tradition whereby old gota- and zari-decorated garments would be burnt and the metal retrieved to be used on new garments, so that the same gold and silver were passed down generations through textiles. Gota ribbons were traditionally made on a handloom using the badla as the warp, woven with a cotton or silk weft. Some scholars consider it more likely that the badla formed the weft within a cotton or silk warp instead. The flatness of the badla makes the textile relatively light for its width, and lends it a prominent shine. The textile is woven in different widths, in a plain, satin or twill weave, giving rise to various types of gota. Due to its metallic component, the woven textile can be embossed with various patterns.  Borrowing elements from Mughal art and Indo-Saracenic architecture, gota work employs motifs such as bel (‘vine’), jaali (‘lattice’), buta (‘plant’) and buti (‘herb’). Narrow gota ribbons produced in plain weave are called masya and range from about 0.5 centimetres to 2 centimetres wide. These are folded along diagonals to yield rows of repeating triangles or diamonds, such as beejiya (from the Hindi ‘beej’ meaning ‘seed’), beej bel (‘vine of seeds’) and shakkar pare ki bel (‘vine of a diamond-shaped sweetmeat’) — motifs that represent abundance and fertility. Wider gota woven in a twill pattern are called lappa, and range from about a centimetre to thirteen centimetres in width. These were traditionally used as trims for Rajput women’s ghaghras or skirts as part of the poshak, in what is often called lappe ka kam (‘lappa work’). Seekhiya gota is a thin ribbon, known for its delicate appearance, while gokhru gota embellishments are made by crimping together motifs cut from ribbons with thick wire, or pieces of the metal itself. Gokhru is no longer practised due to the expense and the weight it adds to the fabric. In modern times, gota is woven on electrically powered swivel looms.  Besides borders and trims, individual pieces of gota — in geometric and floral shapes such as patti (‘leaf’), phool (flower) or tukdi (‘piece’) — are appliquéd onto fabric, sometimes alongside embroidery. Phool gota is made by pleating the gota to resemble a flower and appliquéd onto the fabric as part of a larger pattern. In the popular gota patti work, the ribbon is folded into variations of an oval or diamond shape and back-stitched onto the fabric as part of motifs like florets, paisleys and peacocks, before being hammered flat with a wooden implement. Gota tukdi, another appliqué technique, involves cutting the ribbon into floral motifs and sewing them onto the base fabric. Gota appliqué is frequently paired with embroidery, usually along the borders of motifs. In addition to garments, gota work is also used on traditional household furnishings like toranas (auspicious bunting) and juttis, a type of Indian moccasin.  In the twentieth century, the gota work tradition underwent several economic and cultural changes. As India gained independence, princely states and their royal karkhanas began to decline, and gota artisans, hitherto exclusively male, moved their practice to their homes, leading to the inclusion of women in the craft. National schemes such as Training Rural Youth for Self-employment (TRYSEM) implemented in 1979 trained a number of women in gota work, and provided them with the opportunity to work from their homes.  By the late twentieth century industrialisation and mass-produced raw materials such as lurex, a synthetic yarn with a metallic sheen, made gota cheaper and more accessible. While lurex has almost completely replaced metal gota, it has led to the wide popularity of gota work in India’s rural areas. However, due to the lack of actual metal in lurex most contemporary gota work lacks the three-dimensionality that could be achieved by pinching or crimping traditional gota. Gilt, lurex or copper gota remain markers of auspiciousness and festivity, and are widely used across clothing and objects, while the rarity and value of gold and silver gota-embellished garments make these important heirloom objects. Parts of Jaipur city and the villages of Nyla and Khandela in Jaipur district are the major clusters of gota production today.

A practice of mural art, mandana comprises floor and wall paintings, as well as painted relief art, on the exterior and interior surfaces of homes. Mandana as floor paintings is practised by various communities in Rajasthan, but the tradition of mural painting and clay relief art is primarily associated with the Meena community, who reside in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. Within Rajasthan, the eastern districts of Sawai Madhopur, Tonk, Karoli and Dausa are considered to be the centres of the art form. The term, mandana, applies both to the technique and the completed piece itself. Traditionally made of red clay and chalk, mandana works are predominantly painted by women. As floor paintings, mandana are part of a diverse and long-established tradition of threshold decoration in India. In Rajasthan, floor mandana feature symbolic diagrams, wherein specific designs are created for specific occasions, from festivals such as Diwali, Gangaur and Makar Sankranti to ceremonies associated with childbirth, marriage and puberty. These designs are painted on the threshold of the house as well as in the prayer room, kitchen or inner courtyard. The knowledge of these designs and the technique of making them is passed down generationally from mother to daughter. In a traditional mandana, each section of the design links to a central area in the shape of a circle or a polygon and is bordered by a series of overlapping bands that lend the visual effect of a Moebius strip. The completed mandana is often surrounded by smaller motifs such as paglya, which symbolise footprints. Before mandana are drawn on the floor, the surface is prepared with wet cow dung and red clay or rati. The pigment is a solution of chalk, locally known as khari or kharia. While brushes may be used, the most common practice is to dip a cloth and squeeze it, letting the paint run down the fingers and onto the surface. A typical feature of floor and wall mandana is the intricate cross-hatching of varying thickness and style that fills the spaces between the outlines. In the case of wall mandana, the process begins after the monsoon, when mud houses are typically repaired and re-plastered. Following these repairs, a layer of cow dung and red clay is applied to the wall – a process locally known as lipai – providing a deep red base for the painting. Once the surface has been smoothened, the chalk solution is used to paint the surface. In Sawai Madhopur, wall mandana are made using two pigments: white from the chalk solution and red from the local red clay (geru) or haematite (hirmich). Brushes to paint wall mandana are made from date-palm or bamboo twigs, with one end of the twig crushed in a manner that forms bristles. Cotton swabs and reed grass are also used to apply the pigments. These wall paintings are usually done in the weeks leading up to Diwali, with women taking time out from their daily chores to paint. Within the Meena community, mandana are also used to adorn important spaces or add a decorative flourish in the interiors of homes. The granary — locally known as the kotha or kothi — is an important space in a Meena home and is decorated with geometric and floral mandana patterns. The hearth – also known as the chulha – is another space that is often decorated with mandana. A mandana made in relief and carved into the clay surface may further be embellished with mirrors, beads and coloured glass. While floor mandana have designs specific to an occasion, wall mandana use a wider array of motifs, inspired by wildlife or the social life of the community, as seen in motifs such as gujar-gujari (man and woman), bullock and camel carts. Unlike the mandana in Rajasthan, which is primarily made in white and red, more colours have been introduced in the designs made in Madhya Pradesh. Like other mural painting traditions that originated on mud surfaces, the mandana technique also faces a challenge with a decline in the number of mud houses. Local artists, however, have adapted their designs and motifs to paper and, in some cases, have also experimented with depicting modern themes using traditional techniques.  

A traditional mural painting used to decorate nuptial chambers, Khovar painting is practised by several indigenous and artisan communities residing in the Hazaribagh region of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. Along with Sohrai painting, Khovar is one of two historical mural-painting traditions of the region. Sohrai paintings mark the harvest festival – also called Sohrai – in October and November, whereas Khovar paintings mark the arrival of the wedding season, which begins in January and continues until the onset of the monsoon in June. The word Khovar is derived from kho, which locally means chamber or cave, and var, the word for a married couple. While there is little historical record of how and when Khovar painting emerged in the region, historians have linked these mural traditions to the rock art found in the Hazaribagh region, at the site of Isko and at the Satpahar Range, near the New Karanpura Valley. These sites – which were discovered in the early 1990s – are rock shelters and the painted art within these chambers has been dated to the meso-chalcolithic period (approximately 7000–4000 BCE). Historians have noted several similarities between the motifs and animal art in the rock shelters and the mural art practised by communities in the region. The painted shelters are locally also known as khovar and are believed to be ancient nuptial chambers. Among the Oraon people residing close to the rock shelters, the sites are still used for certain communal rituals. Khovar painting is done by women of the Santhal, Munda, Oraon, Agaria, Kurmi, Ghatwal, Ganju and Prajapati communities, as well as artisan groups such as the Ranas (carpenters), Telis (oil sellers) and Kumbhars (clay modellers). Under local marriage customs, the bridegroom spends the nuptial night at the bride’s home and this chamber is decorated with murals made by the bride’s mother and aunts. Khovar paintings may also be made on the exterior walls of the bride’s home. Like Sohrai painting, all pigments used are derived from different locally-found soils. A characteristic feature of Khovar painting is the use of the comb-cutting technique. The process begins with the application of manganese-rich clay, almost black in colour, onto a repaired and plastered surface. Once the black clay dries, the women apply a layer of white or cream-coloured clay and, while this layer is still wet, use pieces of comb or their fingers to scrape the layer and create paintings. The lighter layer of clay may be made of white kaolin (locally known as charak maati), cream-coloured earth (dhudhi maati) or yellow ochre (pila maati). The comb-cutting technique is also used to create Sohrai paintings, but these are distinguished from Khovar paintings by a wider colour palette. Themes commonly used in Khovar painting include the forest, aniconic forms, local animals and plants as well as geometric and linear patterns. In the Kurmi communities, Khovar art also features depictions of female animals, with their young shown in the womb, and human-animal conflict. With mud houses gradually being replaced by cement houses, Khovar painting is on the decline. The communities that practice it are also facing the challenges brought on by large-scale infrastructure projects in the region and the state. There has been an effort to help Khovar artists adapt the technique to paper or canvas. In such projects, the manganese-rich clay is dissolved using glue and water and then spread over the paper or canvas using cloth or a brush. The second, lighter layer is applied, and the pattern is crafted using a fine comb. In 2019, Khovar and Sohrai painting were accorded a Geographical Indications (GI) tag by the Government of India.  

A decorative floor design originating in Tamil Nadu, kolam is created traditionally with dry or wet rice flour and the designs are often geometric or based on a grid of dots. Kolam translates to “form” or “beauty” in Tamil and the earliest usage of the word as a form of decorative floor art is mentioned in texts such as the Madurai Meenatchiammai Kuram and Thiru Kutraala Kuravanji, dating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively. The kolam is considered to be an invitation to the goddess Lakshmi, associated with wealth and prosperity; it is also believed to ward off the goddess Moodevi, a symbol of misfortune. The drawing of the kolam is a daily ritual that is taken up by the women of the house, before the break of dawn. The foundation of most kolam designs is a grid of dots, known as pulli. The designs created based on this matrix may be classified into two kinds — one where the lines loop around the dots, known as kambi kolam and another where the lines connect the dots in a particular pattern, known simply as pulli kolam. Within kambi kolams all lines must be drawn as closed loops. In designs where curved lines are drawn around the dots, it is known as chikku or sikku kolam. Even within pulli kolams, based on the lines used to connect the dots, designs may further be categorised as neli (curve) kolam, kodu (tessellated) kolam, woda pulli (a looped kolam with hexagonally packed dots) kolam or ner pulli (looped kolam with square-packed dots). According to scholars, kolam consists of the six categories of mathematical skills: counting, locating (identifying), measuring, designing, playing (experimenting) and explaining. For the women who practice the art of kolam, the designs are either passed on through generations or are created by experimenting with the permutations of dots and lines. The thickness and number of lines used to make the design may also vary based on how elaborate the kolam is. The ritual of drawing the kolam daily normally begins with sprinkling the ground or the surface with a mixture of cow-dung and water, making the surface damp for the rice flour to adhere to. The dry powder is pinched between the thumb and forefinger and sprinkled to create lines and dots that form the design. The use of rice flour is also beneficial for ants, birds and other small creatures to feed on. The dry rice flour may sometimes be replaced by chalk, limestone or powdered stone. In the case of the wet rice flour, a small piece of paper or cloth is dipped in it and squeezed between the middle and forefinger, and thumb, allowing the rice flour paste to run freely through the fingers which then act as nibs used for the drawing, known as makolam. The designs created with the wet paste last longer than the ones with the dry flour, though the ephemeral nature of the kolam, meant to disappear within the day, is a part of the ritual of kolam making. For special occasions, the white design of the kolam may be further accentuated by a red paste, made out of crushed red brick, known as kaavi. Types of kolams may also be classified based on the occasions that they are made for. Nalvaravu, or welcome kolams are popularly made on the thresholds of homes and carry lotus motifs, as a sacred symbol. Kolams during the harvest festival of Pongal, feature the chariot of the sun god, sugarcane, or the sun as important motifs, and may also be created in the kitchen around the stove, apart from being made at the threshold. During Janmashtami, kolam designs depict the footsteps of an infant Krishna entering the house. In addition during the auspicious month of Margazhi, (mid-December to mid-January), large kolams are made outside most homes and competitions are held to judge the best kolams. Muggu in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, rangoli in Karnataka, sathiya in Gujarat, mandana in Rajasthan, aipan in Himachal, jhoti or chita in Odisha and chowkpurna in Uttar Pradesh, amongst several others, are other forms of floor decorative art that are similar to kolam. Contemporary designs of kolam have now come to accommodate other festivals such as Christmas. Additionally, stickers and stencils have also become popular and are available to recreate kolam designs.  

Along with Khovar, Sohrai is one of two historical mural painting traditions of the Hazaribagh region of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. Sohrai murals are created on the external walls of homes to mark the festival of Sohrai and the harvest season, which lasts from late October to December. The word has its roots in the ancient word soro, which refers to the act of driving animals with a stick. Sohrai painting is practised by the women of several indigenous communities, including the Santhal, Munda, Oraon, Agaria, Kurmi, Ghatwal, Ganju and Prajapati communities. Sohrai is one of the chief festivals of the region, celebrated over five days after Diwali, and it marks the beginning of the winter harvest season. The celebration of cattle, central to the agricultural practices of the communities, is the main feature of this festival. On the second day of Sohrai, cattle are taken to the forest to graze and are bathed and brought back into the village, where women have painted Sohrai murals and floor art locally known as aripan. In the 1920s, the murals decorating the homes of these communities had been observed and recorded by administrators in the colonial era and by Indian anthropologist Sarat Chandra Roy. The discovery of painted shelters at Isko and close to the Satpahar Range near Hazaribagh in the 1990s provided historians with a link between rock art dating back to the meso-chalcolithic period (approximately 7000–4000 BCE) and existing artistic traditions in the region. Studies have found similarities between the motifs used in the painted shelters and those of the Sohrai and Khovar traditions. Among members of the Oraon community, who reside close to the sites, the rock shelters still serve as sites for certain community rituals. Sohrai painting encompasses motifs such as geometric figures, animals, flowers and plants, as well as representations of Shiva depicted as Pashupati, lord of the animals, in zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms. The paintings are done by women, with the techniques and designs passed down from mother to daughter. The limited mobility of women in these communities has an influence on the motifs and designs and each village has developed a unique design style. When women move homes after marriage, they carry their traditional design knowledge with them into another environment, which introduces new characteristics into the existing styles. There is a more practical aspect to Sohrai painting as well: mud houses, on which these paintings are made, must be repaired and re-plastered following the monsoon, and the murals help provide another layer of protection to the structure, while also serving a decorative purpose. Once the mud houses have been repaired, women begin collecting materials for painting. All the pigments are obtained from local soils and, in some cases, from gruel made by mixing milk with ground rice from the previous year’s harvest. The palette is limited to black, red, yellow and white, although there may be variations depending on the soil available to different communities. Black is derived from manganese-rich clay, sourced from fields bordering forests. Red is derived from red ochre, locally known as gerua, or from haematite. Yellow comes from yellow earth ochre, which is locally known as nagri or pila maati, and white is derived from kaolin, locally known as charak maati. A cream-coloured soil, locally known as dhudhi maati, is also used in Sohrai painting. Kaolin is sourced from local tunnels, also known as chunna khaan. In the Sohrai art of the Ganju community, a purple-red pigment is also used, which is derived from haematite of the same colour. Water is used to dilute the soils, but the artists do not use any binders. The tools to apply the pigments include swabs of cloth, broken combs, nails, and twigs of the Sal tree fashioned into teeth cleaners, which are known as datwan or kuchi. The painting may be done by one of two methods. In the first, women coat the surface with a layer of white mud and, while the layer is still wet, paint on it using datwan or cloth swabs. Here, pigments are used in an order and carry symbolic value. Red is painted first, to denote the ancestors and fertility. Black represents the mark of Shiva and white, made from rice gruel, denotes food. In the second method, also known as the comb-cutting technique, a base layer of black clay is covered with white clay and, while the upper layer is still wet, patterns are drawn on it using a broken comb, fingers or nails. These details are then filled in with other pigments. Sohrai paintings of different communities have their own distinct characteristics. Those by the Kurmi community feature kamalban – a popular motif depicting a forest of lotuses – where finer details are made with the help of nails. The paintings of the Ghatwal and Agaria communities resemble stencil art: after the kaolin-clay layer has been applied, the wall is divided into rectangular segments and, on this layer, artists paint with darker clay in a way that leaves the base white layer exposed. Within the Munda community, which resides close to the rock-art site of Isko, artists paint community deities with their fingers and add vermilion and white spots to their art. Pashupati is often depicted as riding an animal or taking the form of a leaf. Sohrai painting, and mural painting traditions in the region in general, have been challenged by an array of factors over the last few decades. Cement and concrete houses are gradually replacing traditional mud houses. Jharkhand is also the site of several large-scale development and infrastructure projects, which threaten several communities with displacement. Efforts are being made by local organisations and individuals, such as Imam, to provide incentives to the artists to continue with the tradition and to train them to adapt the technique to paper and canvas. In 2019, Khovar and Sohrai painting were accorded a Geographical Indications (GI) tag by the Government of India.

Established by photographer Lala Deen Dayal in the mid-1870s, Deen Dayal & Sons was one of the first Indian-owned photography studio franchises and was known for its architectural and topographical views, as well as portraits of royalty and social elite. Deen Dayal established the first studio c. 1874 in Indore with the support of his patrons Maharaja Tukoji II and Henry Daly. He set up a second branch at Secunderabad in 1886, which was followed by a zenana studio in the same city in 1892, run by Mrs Kenny-Levick, the wife of a Times correspondent. The studio’s sizable collection of portraits of female subjects can be credited to such an arrangement. The Indore branch closed in 1894 — around the same time that the third and largest studio was set up in Bombay (now Mumbai). From 1885 onwards, Deen Dayal started enlisting the help of his sons and a growing roster of more than fifty Indian and European employees to run his studios. His staff included two German oil painters, an English manager, printers, mounters, attendants and chowkidars, as well as the Goan realist portraitist Antonio Xavier Trinade, who tinted photographs at the Bombay studio for a brief period. The studio’s vast body of work covered various scenes, from tea parties and hunts to processions and portraiture. As business grew, the studio also started selling prints. Copies of the studio catalogue reveal a large market for their “views” of native subjects, such as portraits of Indian dancing girls. They also sold albums which included collections of architectural views of India, as well as souvenir albums commemorating tours and visits of royal dignitaries such as the Czar of Russia, the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia and Lord and Lady Lansdowne. The studios extended Deen Dayal’s visual idiom to incorporate tonal shifts, contrasts in size and scale, and a juxtaposition of forms. Some of the images attributed to Deen Dayal were also likely produced by his studio, including an album documenting state-sponsored famine relief efforts commissioned by the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1899 (currently housed at the Andhra Pradesh State Archives). Following Deen Dayal’s death in 1905, the studio was taken over by his son Gyan Chand, and later his grandson Ami Chand, who dedicated himself towards the consolidation of Deen Dayal and the studio’s legacy. Nevertheless, the studio dwindled over time as competition grew and royal patronage reduced. After Ami Chand’s death in 1984, the family donated nearly 2,900 glass plate negatives, as well as a collection of studio registers and camera equipment, to the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, New Delhi, in 1989.  

An early-twentieth-century commercial photographic studio in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Del Tufo & Co specialised in portraits. It was established c. 1900 by the Italian photographer Innocenzo del Tufo (1844–1912) and his second wife Inez Maria Gibello (1876–1952), the latter of whom went on to achieve prominence as a documentary photographer herself. The studio also established branches in Madras (now Chennai), Bangalore (now Bengaluru) and Ootacamund (now Ooty) in India, which were run by del Tufo’s first wife E. del Tufo, and later her son Francesco Carlo.    The studio primarily provided individual and group portraiture services to military personnel as well as affluent civilians, and announced itself with a storefront sign claiming the proprietors to be ‘Photographers by Special Appointment to the King of Italy’. Though the veracity of this claim has not been established, it ostensibly gave the studio an edge in the increasingly competitive arena of studio photography at the time. Besides its standard photographic offerings, which included developing and enlarging of negatives, it provided services such as hand-finishing and retouching of photographs using pencil and paints, and repairing wooden components of cameras. The studio mounted its portrait prints into cabinet cards, which had replaced the smaller carte de visite format by the late nineteenth century; meanwhile, the landscapes and archaeological views that the studio produced in smaller numbers, took the form of postcards.  Following the death of Innocenzo in 1912, Inez Maria became the sole owner of the studio and renamed it Madame Del Tufo in 1914. She undertook personal photography projects as well as commercial studio work under this name. Born to an Italian merchant in Kutch in western India, she established herself as one of the early women photographers in Ceylon, becoming renowned for her extensive photographic documentation of houses in the city. As a result of this phase of Inez Maria’s career, she and the firm are still closely associated with Sri Lanka, possibly more so than with Madras or India. The studio closed by 1930, and Inez Maria died in 1952. Photographs produced by the studio were shown at the 2015 exhibition Imaging the Isle Across, curated by The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts and shown at the National Museum, New Delhi; as well as the Spectacular: Cities and People exhibition as part of the 2019 edition of the Krishnakriti Festival, Hyderabad.

Owned by the Mahatta family since its establishment in 1915, Mahatta & Co is a photography studio that has had branches in cities including Rawalpindi, Murree, Srinagar and New Delhi, where it is currently located. Apart from its famous clientele, the studio is also known for its long history, spanning the decades before and after India’s independence. Over the years, Mahatta & Co has undertaken traditional studio services such as portraiture for institutions and individuals, wedding photography and the development of photographic film. It previously provided services for hand-colouring monochrome photographs, and used to retail camera equipment and photographs of historic events and people. The first of its studios was established at the Bund, Srinagar, then a popular commercial part of the city by Amar Nath (AN) Mehta, who allegedly modified the spelling of “Mehta” when naming the studio to fit the way it was pronounced by British clients. Briefly, the studio also operated from a houseboat on the Jhelum river that flows through Jammu and Kashmir, possibly to better cater to the area’s many tourists, who might have been attracted to the novelty of a houseboat studio making simple portraits or selling idyllic prints of the landscape and lifestyle of the locals. In its early years, the studio — essentially AN Mehta — was also commissioned by the British military to document their troops in Kashmir. The next branch was opened in Gulmarg in 1921 but was destroyed in a fire in 1930. After this, two studios were set up at Rawalpindi and Murree in present-day Pakistan, but these were closed down after the Partition separated the establishments and the Mahatta family on either side of the new Indo-Pakistan border. The New Delhi branch was established in 1948 and continues to run as the main studio under AN Mehta’s grandsons Pavan and Pankaj, alongside the first branch in Srinagar. Madan Mahatta, the most well known member of the family, is considered to have introduced colour photography in commercial studios in India in 1954 when he returned to the country after completing his studies at Guilford School of Arts and Crafts, Surrey. Many of Mahatta & Co’s commissioned photographs of dignitaries during the British Raj are portraits taken after hunts along with the remains of the dead animals, as was typical of the time. Key figures whose portraits were shot by the studio include Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Jacqueline Kennedy and the Dalai Lama. The studio also had a long association with royal families, especially Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir who regularly commissioned family portraits from Mahatta & Co. His son, and later Indian National Congress member, Karan Singh, has written the foreword to Pavan Mehta’s book Picturing a Century: Mahatta Studio and the History of Photography in India, 1915–2015, which traces the history of the studio’s work and was launched on World Photography Day, August 19, 2015, to commemorate the studio’s centenary year. Singh also inaugurated the exhibition accompanying the launch at the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, which featured many iconic photographs made by the studio. At the time of writing, Mahatta & Co operates mainly from the first floor of its New Delhi establishment, having closed down its retail operations in 2017 on the ground floor due to the dwindling sales of film cameras and related products. The Srinagar branch now functions as a museum and photographic archive of the studio’s history and also houses a cafe. The studio founded indiapicture.in in 2006, which functions as a stock photography aggregator for Indian audiences, and launched a film production company called Studio Mahatta in 2012. Its main source of income remains the studio’s services, particularly wedding photography, which has been expanded to Bangkok by the family’s fourth-generation photographer, Arjun Mehta. Mahatta & Co continues to be regarded as an adaptive business in the dwindling field of photographic studios.

Founded in 1882 by PA Johnston and Theodore Julius Hoffmann, Johnston & Hoffmann was the first and largest studio based in Calcutta (now Kolkata), with later branches being opened in Darjeeling, Shimla and Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar). The firm, probably the second-largest in India at the time after Bourne & Shepherd, produced portraits of British officers, wealthy Indian families and royalty. They were also commissioned with long term projects that involved travel, typically for ethnographic portraiture. The Calcutta studio was established in 1882 at 22 Chowringhee Road and continued to be the centre of operations throughout the firm’s lifetime. The next branch, in Rangoon, opened in 1889 but closed within a year. In 1890, Johnston & Hoffmann opened another branch in Darjeeling, and then later one in Shimla in the mid-1890s, a conjecture based on a surviving advertisement poster. After Johnston died in 1891, Hoffmann retained the firm’s name and continued to run the studio with the help of assistants. One of these, hired in 1905, was AD Long, who went on to take over the studio in 1928, after Hoffman’s death in 1921. The firm’s main source of income was the studio portraits of British officials, dignitaries and Indian elites belonging to royal families, including cabinet cards and cartes de visite. Notably, these include a portrait of a young Rabindranath and Mrinalini Tagore, a group photograph of Maharana Fateh Singh of Mewar with various British officers on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 and a portrait of Maharaja Sir Bhagwati Prasad Singh of Balrampur, dated 1900, that was likely hand-coloured by an independent artist. At times, the firm also made photographic postcards featuring celebrity sitters, such as the actress Maie Ash, for whom they travelled to Southampton, England in 1906. Apart from studio portraits, Johnston & Hoffmann also accompanied European travellers and scholars on ethnographic surveys in the eastern Himalayan region and surrounding areas. In the 1880s, the firm was commissioned by LA Waddell to shoot and develop portraits of local people in Nepal, Sikkim and Tibet to highlight their cultural and ethnic identities. These were subsequently published in Waddell’s 1889 book, Among the Himalayas. Scholars have pointed out that with these images, as with many such ethnographic projects at the time, the presumed objective truth of a photograph masked certain deceptions and obscured the cultural fluidity of the region, such as the fact that many of the sitters were made to wear clothes that appeared sufficiently exotic to the European eye, or that some of the sitters were not from the areas that the book claimed to cover but instead from surrounding regions that had a shared population, mode of dress and customs with some variation. In July 1891, Hoffmann travelled with John Claude White, the Political Officer in Sikkim, to Kanchenjunga. The photographs from this trip were later published in White’s album Sikhim & Bhutan: Twenty-one Years on the North East Frontier 1887–1908 (1909), which was also printed by Johnston & Hoffmann. The franchise closed down sometime in the 1950s due to reasons presently unknown.

One of England’s largest photography printing studios and archives of the nineteenth century, Francis Frith & Co produced and published prints of scenic views and monuments across England, continental Europe and Asia. Established by businessman-photographer Francis Frith in 1860, the company was a key player in the development of travel photography in nineteenth-century England and beyond, publishing prints in formats such as catalogues, albums and picture postcards. The studio remained active for over 110 years, until 1971, building an archive of 2,50,000 photographs and 60,000 plates depicting views from across the world. Among this collection are 882 images of views of India in three series, which although relatively few, evidenced an increasing interest among the British public for images from the unfamiliar lands and cultures in general, and India in particular. Frith’s business targeted the mass market by catering to Victorian aesthetic ideals of beauty and the lure of foreign lands, through visuals that conjured up spectacle and mystery. Scholars have also noted an orientalist aura in these photographs — Europeans posing among monuments in foreign lands and natives of those lands presented in an awkward, staged manner — elevate the landscapes through association in the former and render them mysterious and ‘other’ in the latter. The company was built on the commercial success of Frith’s photographic work from three expeditions to Egypt, Nubia (earlier part of Sudan), Palestine and Syria between 1856 and 1859. His travels to the historical and religious sites in these places were initially born of a personal interest and subsequently of an awareness of the commercial potential of such photography as his own. Bolstered by the reception to his photos in the lectures and exhibitions he held, Frith set up Francis Frith & Co in Reigate, a town in Surrey, which specialised in factory-scale, rapid, centralised printing of glass plate negatives. During his travels, and in his printing business, he made images in the standard (20 x 25 cm), mammoth (40 x 50 cm) and stereoscopic formats. In order to keep up with the demand for idealised and romantic travelscapes in England, Europe and beyond, the company began to acquire negatives from photographers and studios elsewhere; by 1876, it had acquired about four thousand images of Asia, Canada and the United States. Starting in 1850, the company commissioned three separate catalogues of topographic and architectural views of India. The first, thought to have been printed around 1870, consisted of about three hundred photos – many of which were of Kashmir, Spiti and Kulu; some of the Bombay Presidency ; and some assorted images of Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares, Calcutta, Madras and Cawnpore (now Kanpur). The second, printed in 1874, contained three hundred more photographs, while the third 1893 edition consisted of 260 large-format (25 x 31 cm) photographs and smaller cabinet-card sized copies. Some of these formed a part of other series, such as the larger Universal Series — featuring some of their earlier prints from the Middle-East and elsewhere. Although most photos bore the stamp of the company, a few were signed by the photographers themselves. Some early images of Bombay and Calcutta, however, have been ascribed to William Johnson, JM Drury and Oscar Mallitte. Although travel photography was hardly a new phenomenon — French photographer Alexis de la Grange’s photos of India were published as early as 1850 — there were few in England who undertook the publishing and dissemination of such prints on the same scale as F Frith & Co While some such as the London publisher J. Hogart had already begun publishing views of India (especially of Tamil Nadu and Agra) by 1859, their stereoscopic prints, which had to be distributed with stereoscopic glasses, didn’t have the same impact in a rapidly-growing marketplace. In India as well there were photographers and successful owners of studios, such as Lala Deen Dayal and Samuel Bourne, who tended to concentrate more on the subjects and their aesthetic potential, rather than purely demand and commercial potential. Francis Frith & Co. therefore had a nearly unbroken monopoly until the 1940s, well after Frith’s death in 1898, especially in the postcard business after the postcard was approved by the British Post Office in 1902. The studio’s collection continued to grow through contributions from photographers who still abided by the strict standards imposed, until 1971 when the studio closed. The evolution of other photographic technologies and changes of taste and topography relegated the photographic products to a bygone era, and their collection fell into neglect. A substantial collection of the original glass plates was restored and is now maintained at the Birmingham City Library as an important record of nineteenth-century England and other geographies. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, also carries a collection of over four thousand prints from their various catalogues.  

One of the first commercial photography studios in India, Bourne & Shepherd was established in 1863 in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, as a partnership between photographers Samuel Bourne and Charles Shepherd. The studio gained recognition for its architectural, landscape and topographical photographs, as well as portraits of Indian nobility, British officials and European travellers. While much of the studio’s work was sold commercially as travel souvenirs, it also gained prominence for its documentation of the geographical and topographical features of South Asia, particularly the Himalayan region. The studio’s photographs were also widely utilised in the scientific community for the topographical and sociological study of the Indian subcontinent. Beginning as a partnership between Bourne and photographer William Howard in Allahabad and known as Howard & Bourne, the studio was relocated to Shimla in 1863. Within a year, Shepherd joined the establishment, forming Howard, Bourne & Shepherd; Shepherd began managing the printing process in the studio, while Bourne photographed in the field. Bourne’s photographs of the Himalayas and Northern India, made from 1863–66, were well received in the international market. He also made the highest altitude photograph in the world at the time, at Manirang Pass, located at an altitude of 5,669 metres, which further boosted the popularity of the studio. By 1866, the studio had published a catalogue featuring over 1,500 images. The same year, following Howard’s departure to England, the studio was renamed Bourne & Shepherd, and a new branch was opened in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). During the Second World War, the studio received several contracts to photograph British, American and Indian personnel. It was also commissioned to make photographs during the Delhi Durbar, when King George V visited India. After Bourne’s departure from India in 1870, photographer Colin Murray replaced him as the principal photographer at the studio and opened a branch in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in 1876. In 1878, Shepherd also departed for England, and the studio and its archive were purchased by Murray. In 1991, the Kolkata branch of the studio caught fire, destroying much of the structure and archives. After a prolonged legal battle with the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), which owns the building in which the studio was housed, Bourne & Shepherd shut down in 2016.  

A photographic format for small albumen prints, the carte de visite — French for ‘visiting card’ — is typically associated with portraiture and consists of a 9 x 6 cm photographic print mounted on a slightly larger card of greater thickness. Introduced in the market in 1854, the carte de visite (or CdV) was very popular and widely distributed in Britain, France and their colonies due to its relative ease of production, small size and affordability. Its popularity peaked between the 1860s and 1880s, especially among the rising middle classes who sought CdV portraits to express their social status and social connections as well as to use them as calling cards. In India, this format found patronage among the landed and mercantile classes, businessmen and the elite ranks of British officers, being produced by several notable photographers and studios, such as John Saché (of Saché and Westfield), Samuel Bourne (Bourne & Shepherd), Johnston and Hoffman, Hurrychund Chintamon, Darogah Abbas Ali and Lala Deen Dayal. The innovation was patented by French photographer André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although the general idea of a card-sized photograph has been independently attributed to many individuals before and after the patent. Disdéri’s patent initially described the process of exposing ten small images on one wet collodion plate, instead of a single picture. In addition to producing more exposures, this allowed the sitter to assume a variety of poses and for different props to be used in a single sitting.  Disdéri’s cartes de visite portraits of monarchs and celebrities, when sold as collectibles to the general public in the 1850s, widened their appeal and made portraiture more accessible to the middle classes. Aspiring to the symbolic status and aesthetic of aristocratic portraiture, the middle classes began to commission portraits for family albums and for use in keepsakes such as pendants and pocket watches.  When introduced in India by commercial photographers in the 1860s, the CdV was received with enthusiasm by the Indian elite. In the cosmopolitan and commercial hub of colonial Bombay (now Mumbai), CdVs were popularised largely by the photographer Hurrychund Chintamon, among the earliest Indian photographers to have specialised in it. Here his patrons were mostly the local mercantile and business families — among whom were the Parsis, who not only enthusiastically received but also began producing these prints — as well as royalty, especially the Maharaja of Baroda, Malhar Rao. Further east, in Lucknow, the landed gentry were featured in the form of 260 CdV portraits in photographer Darogah Abbas Ali’s An Illustrated Historical Album of the Rajas and Taaluqdars of Oudh (1880), which by dint of being printed in English and Urdu, catered equally to the local and the British elite.  The British administrators found additional use for this format in their criminal and population management operations: similar sized photographs of prisoners could be taken en masse and moved swiftly between offices of the various police commissioners and superintendents to facilitate quick responses across the subcontinent in the event of prison breaks or large-scale searches. Such photographs were made by both official photographers of the British government and independent commercial studios such as Bourne & Shepherd and Raja Deen Dayal & Sons. By the late nineteenth century, cartes de visite began to go out of fashion, mainly due to the introduction of larger cabinet card prints in 1866, which were favoured for their clarity and detail, as well as the space available on the reverse side for personal messages and studio branding.

The multi-volume photographic and print publication, The People of India: A Series of Photographic Illustrations, with Descriptive Letterpress, of The Races and Tribes of Hindustan, was an illustrative document of the various social and ethnic groups across the Indian subcontinent. This included several of the country’s native castes and tribes that were represented through a clinical and taxonomic gaze typical of colonial ethnography at the time. Primarily consisting of 468 annotated photographs compiled by chronicler John Forbes Watson and historian John William Kaye, the series was published by the Government of India under the British Crown. Containing over five hundred (15 x 11 cm) albumin prints accompanied by detailed descriptions by Capt. T. Meadows (administrator, novelist and artist), the publication also formed an exhibit in the India pavilion of the 1862 London Exhibition. Produced shortly after the 1857 Rebellion, The People of India is considered a significant early publication that integrated photography and colonial ethnography as tools of administration and governance. The undertaking started out as a personal project for the first viceroy of India, Charles Canning, and his wife Charlotte, who wanted to build a collection of photos of the native people of India. When formalised in 1861 as a call from the colonial offices to military officers to submit photographs with detailed notes on various social groups across the Indian subcontinent, the initial result was a large collection of inconsistently annotated images of varying quality. The classifications of subjects specified in the official circular included ethnicity, caste, social group, regional power, language, clothing, profession and attributes such as trustworthiness, honesty and propensity of violence. The years leading up to the formal dissolution of British East India Company rule in 1874, and the reorganisation of administrative power under the British Raj, allowed publications such as The People of India to gain added significance as a form of colonial control. However, the subjectivity of some of the series’ parameters, and a general lack of organisation, resulted in discrepancies, overlaps and omissions (it completely excluded communities of fewer than two thousand people), delaying the project until it was eventually passed, after the demise of the Cannings, into the remit of the Government of India. Despite the scope afforded by its hundreds of images and its simple format, the series was received poorly by the colonial elite, for whom it was ostensibly meant to serve as a guidebook on the locals. According to scholar and educator Syed Ahmad Khan, one of the foremost critics of the series, the Indian elite also viewed it poorly, as they thought the categorisation was demeaning to their own identities. Whatever the original intent, the project — touted by some scholars as a surveillance program rooted in early ethnology and criminology — was quickly dismissed during its time. The series has however, in the last fifty years, received renewed interest, especially from postcolonial scholarship, for its overt, if unarticulated, ethnographic ambitions. Of particular interest to scholars is its frequent focus on the varying degrees of criminality among the indigenous groups of the subcontinent. Scholars argue that the photography–ethnography model was introduced as a pseudo-scientific justification of colonial rule, by categorising the Indian people as an aggregate of largely regressive and barbaric groups, in order to exercise a deep, precise control over them. In addition, its indexing of social groups further perpetuated ill-informed and at times outright discriminatory belief systems held by many aspects of the Indian caste system. The contemporary position on the book series is that it was fuelled by the insecurity following the 1857 Rebellion by Indian troops in the colonial military and was the result of a profiling exercise carried out to help prevent other such insurgencies. The various interpretations and analyses themselves are not without their flaws and controversies, as they are all largely derivative. The foundational scholarship that underpins much of the discourse on this ethnographic series has been attributed to John Falconer and Christopher Pinney; the former’s A Pure Labour of Love (2002) is credited as the most exhaustive publishing history of the People of India series and the latter’s Camera Indica (1997) is thought to lay down the analytical framework of the series. Aside from its discrepancies and harmful taxonomy, there is now a clear consensus on the value of The People of India as an illustrative historical document of the early British Raj’s strategic and discriminatory use of photography as an ethnographic tool. In 1908 and 1992, two other volumes bearing the same title were also published, but each separately and with different motivations that had no direct connection to the first series. Meanwhile, the 1868 multi-volume series continues to be a subject of much scholarly debate.

A photographic album made in 1874 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), The Beauties of Lucknow consists of twenty-four portraits of women employed in the court of the princely state of Awadh (or Oudh) in northern India. Although the album is unsigned, its photographs and authorship have been attributed to the Indian photographer Darogah Abbas Ali, who wrote introductions for its English and Urdu editions both. With handwritten introductions and hand-pasted photographs, the album was produced as a luxury item, with no more than a few copies, and suggests an aesthetic link to the Mughal muraqqa tradition of illustrated albums. The extant English copies are today scattered across four collections, while part of an Urdu copy is housed in a fifth, and one Urdu copy in its entirety is held in a sixth. The full title of the album as it appears in the English edition is ‘The Beauties of Lucknow Consisting of Twenty-Four Selected Photographed Portraits, Cabinet Size, of the Most Celebrated and Popular Living Histrionic Singers, Dancing Girls, and Actresses of the Oudh Court and of Lucknow’. The Urdu edition is titled Haseenain-e Lucknow. In 1856, the kingdom of Awadh was annexed by the British East India Company, according to whom it was being ruled poorly by Wajid Ali Shah, a king known for his patronage of the arts, particularly theatre and courtesan culture. Despite its denunciation of the king, the Company continued to hold a fascination with his legendary court; this prompted it to engage a photographer to capture and preserve the vitality and mystic appeal of royal courtly entertainment for posterity, in the form of a photographic album. The album features individual portraits of performers known as tawaifs — each of whom assumed the role of singer, courtesan, dancer as well as actor — at the Lucknow court, with a particular emphasis on those who regularly enacted the popular Urdu work Indar Sabha. The photographs in The Beauties of Lucknow appear to have been taken in a studio setting. They are printed in a cabinet card format (15 x 10.9 cm) as albumen prints, and hand-pasted into albums. The larger size of these photographs, as compared with the carte de visite format common at the time, is all the more notable because the women’s faces are uncovered in all the images — something considered inappropriate at the time, especially for Muslim women. While the women photographed are the same across the extant copies, their poses and angles differ slightly between copies of the album, suggesting that Ali captured and printed multiple shots from each session with his sitters. These differences, as well as the handwritten introductions, highlight the uniqueness of each copy, indicating the album’s nature as an item of luxury. The distinct introductions in the English and Urdu editions serve to reinforce ideas of oriental luxury for the British public in the mainland while providing material memories of a gloried past for the Indian elite. It is believed that Ali attempted, through these albums, to advance the Indian cultural ethos (especially regarding women courtesans) as an alternative to the prevailing Victorian model.  It is known that following the annexation of Awadh, the tawaifs of the former king’s court, who had some of the highest incomes in the city and exerted much cultural influence, either fled or accompanied the king into exile, while subsequent performers lived in relative impoverishment under the new Victorian moral code. Therefore, despite its mandate to reenact history, this photographic project could only go so far as to reimagine a lost era with the only remaining actors at its disposal. Lastly, when the surviving copies of the book are compared, a few of the women appear to have been given different names across copies, even after allowing for variations in spelling. These oversights were likely a side effect of Ali’s focus on appealing to the nostalgia that had now become attached to Lucknow and its dancers in the minds of his audience, rather than on representational accuracy and consistency. The album is commonly acknowledged as one of the earliest products of a centuries-long popular fascination with the tawaifs of Indian courts. Photographs from The Beauties of Lucknow are housed in the George Eastman Museum, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the artist Amit Ambalal’s personal collection in Ahmedabad; the New York Public Library, USA; the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bengaluru; and the Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi, which holds the only complete Lucknow-published and Urdu edition of the book.   

  A two-volume photographic album of albumen prints by William Johnson and William Henderson, it details the appearance, costumes and lifestyles of the ethnic groups that constituted the population of colonial Bombay (now Mumbai). The volumes, titled The Oriental Races And Tribes, Residents And Visitors Of Bombay: A Series Of Photographs With Letter-press Descriptions, were published in London in 1863 and 1866, respectively. They are considered the first published ethnographic study of Indian people to use photographs. Whilst the focus of the albums were the people of Bombay (now Mumbai), the scope extended to surrounding regions — the first volume covers the regions of Gujarat, Kutch and Kathiawar, while the second encompasses the erstwhile Maratha region — to create an illustrative document of the local, immigrant and itinerant populations in and around the city. Introducing both volumes is an outline of the broad ethnographic composition of the country, the classifications and denominations used to map it and characterisations of communities including Parsis, Mohemmadans and Malays, likely to be found in Bombay. Prefacing each set of photos is a detailed description provided by scholars and British officials. Most of the images, composed in the style used in ethnographic studies, are of groups of figures attired in their traditional costumes, with captions detailing their caste, sect, race or other ethnic and cultural markers. Unlike comparable works such as The People of India (1868–75), the album focuses primarily on Bombay, which – to Johnson and Henderson – had come to assume an ethnic profile that seemed like a microcosm of South Asia. The city had not only become a major trading hub under British rule, attracting migrant workers and merchants from other parts of India, it had also become a gateway to the western coast of India for much of the historical Indian Ocean trade from West Asia and Eastern Africa. This strategic trading port therefore grew in cultural and commercial value, earning a reputation for being diverse and cosmopolitan. The album produced, therefore, served both as an ethnographic survey of the key regions of its colony and as a reminder of the authority and perceived civilisational superiority of the Crown, meant in part to quell the unease caused by the Indian Mutiny (1857–59). A majority of the images, produced as calotypes rather than the then-more-popular daguerreotypes, were taken by Johnson and Henderson and date back to the 1850s, during the early decades of photography’s invention in Europe. Several of these had previously appeared in the Indian Amateurs Photographic Album (IAPA), a monthly publication by the Photographic Society of Bombay. A small number of photos were taken by other professional photographers, such as Narayan Daji, brother of the reputed scholar Bhau Daji Lad – both of whom were also members of the Bombay Photographic Society – as well as by other society members, scholars and some amateurs. Images taken from the IAPA that had no distinctive backdrops were incorporated into the album using a process known as combination printing. In such instances, the portrait negatives were superimposed on landscape negatives that were carefully painted over to prevent overlap to produce images that showed the ethnic communities in their seemingly-original locales. The publishers had initially planned to publish three volumes of the book, with the third meant to cover miscellaneous groups of people not covered by the first two, but this was never published, for reasons presently unknown. At its time of publishing, the album was an important photographic record and administrative document of the Empire’s key territories in the subcontinent. It now serves as testimony to the thoroughgoing efforts of the British crown to enlist text and image in carrying out and consolidating its imperial mission. Copies of both volumes are, at the time of writing, maintained in the British Library, London, UK.  

A book of photographs authored by Darogah Abbas Ali and published in 1874, The Lucknow Album was intended as an illustrated guide to the monuments and ruins of Lucknow, the erstwhile capital of the kingdom of Oudh. The album was published in Calcutta (now Kolkata) by G. H. Rouse Baptist Mission Press, with the descriptive title The Lucknow Album Containing a Series of Fifty Photographic Views of Lucknow and Its Environs Together with a Large Sized Plan of the City. The albumen prints of the architectural views, each 9.5 x 6 cm, feature in the second half of the book along with the detailed fold-out map drafted by Abbas Ali himself, through skills acquired as a municipal engineer.The first contains the introductory text, explaining the rationale behind the album, followed by detailed descriptions of each of the monuments featured. The album, though primarily meant as a historical city guide for European tourists and visitors, also sought to memorialise the struggles of the ultimately triumphant Garrison of Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny. The order in which the photographs are presented follows the path taken by the British troops as they entered Lucknow from the southwest, circled to its easternmost end and proceeded westward through the city. Palaces, mosques and other religious and secular structures of historic importance that were damaged in the ensuing battle were photographed in their east–west orientation, following the logic of their sequencing. This attempt to visually retrace the passage of troops is believed to have been inspired by two earlier photographic series of the immediate aftermath of the Mutiny by Ahmad Ali Khan and Felice Beato, which allegedly followed the same direction of ordering of images. The sites and monuments featured are predominantly of local heritage and include Aulum Bagh (now part of the settlement of Alumbagh), Moti Mahal, Qaisar Bagh and the Najaf Ashraf. A smaller number of colonial structures and sites, such as St. Joseph and Christ’s Churches, La Martinière Boys’ College (now La Martinière College), Wingfield Park, Bruce’s Bridge and the Memorial of the Massacre of European Captives, also form a part of the photographic sequence. Strongly propagandist in its tone, the album presents Lucknow to a European audience as a site of pilgrimage — a memorial to the tragic (for the British) events of 1857. Made in response to the rising popularity of Lucknow as a tourist destination, especially after its devastation by the yearlong uprising, the album appealed to the Western and colonial tastes by providing a document of its rich architectural landscape on the brink of erasure; sentimentalising the city as a site of martyrdom (of slain soldiers and British residents); and providing eagerly sought-after glimpses of a famously decadent kingdom. To follow its mandate as a guidebook, the text also touches upon aspects of the local culture, such as the lifestyles and livelihoods of its ordinary people, popular events and festivals and what to expect on those dates. In a departure from the overall theme, The last three photographs in the album bear no connection to the Mutiny or the cultural splendours of the capital. They instead show the Shia shrines Dargah Hazrat Abbas, Kazmain Karbala and Talkatora Karbala — all of which were important religious hubs of the city. In the accompanying text, Abbas Ali urges travellers to join the Muharram procession, explaining the significance of the festival and its rituals. Some scholars have taken this thematic deviation to mean that he intended to introduce visitors to parts of Indian culture that they might otherwise miss, while some others believe that this might have been an attempt to draw a parallel between the martyrdom of British troops in Lucknow and those of Karbala, mourned during Muharram. Both these views demonstrate that the deviation was deliberate and most likely the result of an attempt, by the author, to leave an imprint of his identity in an otherwise expressly colonialist work. The original prints of work are held, at the time of writing, by the British Library, the Alkazi Collection and the Getty Research Institute.

Mythical composite creatures sculpted on pillars and pilasters across temples in South Asia, yalis, also known as vyalas, are most frequently depicted in late medieval and early modern temples in southern India. A yali is usually shown to have the body of a lion and the head of another animal, such as an elephant (when they are called a gaja yali), a human (known as a nara yali) or a dog (termed a svana yali). When the body is that of a tiger, the creature is called a shardula. It may also have horns and hooves. The term “yali” is derived from the Tamil and Sanskrit words for “fierce monster”. Among the earliest known yali sculptures were produced in the seventh or eighth centuries during the reign of the Pallava Dynasty of present-day northern Tamil Nadu, usually in temples related to Puranic Hinduism. These early depictions of the creatures positioned them squatting at the base of a column. They were also produced in Buddhist contexts through the early medieval period, where they were known as vyalakas and were usually paired with a makara. Yalis emerged as a ubiquitous decorative element in South Indian temples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in temples built by Nayaka polities across Tamil Nadu in the post-Vijayanagara style. Nayaka period yali sculptures are usually two to three metres high, depicted in a rearing position with gaping mouths and bulging eyes and with a rider holding a sword or bow. They are usually shown emerging from composite columns; they may stand on smaller elephants or the mythical makara, or be accompanied by smaller yalis. Yali figures are considered to be a type of grotesque sculpture, meant to inspire fear and awe, and have iconographies similar to other composite mythological creatures, such as the hippogryph and sphinx of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. They are also associated with the mythical griffin. In northern India, yalis are common in the gajasimha (Sanskrit for “elephant-lion”) motif, depicting a fight between a lion and an elephant, showing the lion in a victorious pose. Yali figures are believed to act as guardians and protectors, shielding a temple from threats. The tame form of the yali, typically shown flanking short stairways attached to temple plinths with waterfalls emerging from their open mouth, is known as the surul-yali. Yalis were also considered divine vehicles for deities, and were used to signify heroism and the elemental forces of nature, tamed and controlled by being incorporated into architecture and sculpture. Yali figures are found at numerous cave and structural temples across India, including but not limited to the Tiger Cave at Saluvankuppam, the Airavateshvara temple at Dasarum, the Minakshi-Sundareshvara temple at Madurai, the Virupaksha temple at Hampi, Karnataka, the Kailasanatha Temple at Ellora and the Sun Temple at Konark.

Mythological figures often represented visually in a pair, the yaksha and yakshi are found across early Buddhist, Jain and Hindu art. Yakshas are male figures, and yakshis are their female counterparts. They were believed to be spirits that inhabited trees, mountains, rock mounds, rivers and oceans. Their prevalence in sculpture, usually in association with natural elements, is considered a sign of widespread nature worship in the early historic period. The earliest mentions of yakshas are found in the Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana, where the word is used only to describe a wondrous thing. By the time that epics such as the Ramayana were composed, yakshas were referred to as spirits or a group of figures similar to, but elevated and distinct from, ghosts and demons. In early Buddhist literature and sculpture, yakshas frequently appear in subordination to the Buddha; sources such as the Therigatha refer to them as guardian spirits who impart good morals. However, outside of the bounds of organised religions, many monumental yaksha figures were produced in the early historic period; these and some references in texts suggest that yakshas were worshipped as tutelary deities in some areas, as well as independent deities of trees or other natural entities. In Tibetan Buddhist sources, yakshas and yakshis are claimed to be people who served an individual or a community during their lifetime, reborn as benevolent spirits. Jain texts similarly claim that these spirits are reborn as mortal human beings once their merit has been exhausted. These may indicate that growing Buddhist and Jain institutions attempted to appropriate hitherto independent nature deities and cults into their metaphysical systems. Among the earliest known images of yakshas and yakshis can be found in sculptural reliefs on the Bharhut and Sanchi stupas. They are generally depicted as attendant figures, sometimes to the aniconic Buddha. This may be seen in sculptures from the Mauryan and post-Mauryan period, such as the yakshas from Parkham and Vidisha and the yakshis of Besnagar and Didarganj. In the last centuries BCE and early centuries CE, the yaksha iconography adopted softer features such as a prominent belly. This is especially prevalent in sculptures of Kubera, considered the king of yakshas in some traditions, but also the god of wealth in others. He is depicted with abundant jewellery and wears a dhoti tied underneath a protruding belly. The yaksha figure from Pitalkhora, Maharashtra may be considered an example of Kubera iconography. Kubera’s mounts include a horse, elephant or a ram. He is also depicted holding a mace or a club. The yaksha Manibhadra was also considered an important figure, with several Buddhist, Jain and Hindu literary references to his popularity and worship. The yaksha sculpture from Parkham is widely believed to be a representation of Manibhadra. Yakshis are generally depicted as voluptuous figures with nude upper bodies, wearing necklaces, bangles and anklets; their lower torsos and waists are decorated with clothing and more jewellery. Due to their associations with the natural world, they are often represented next to or holding onto trees; such yakshis are referred to as shalabhanjikas, which may reference the birth of the Buddha under the sala tree by Maya. They might also hold a pot with water or a lotus flower, both associated with fertility, or might be represented alongside a makara or naga.Yakshi figures are sometimes depicted standing on top of grotesque, dwarf-like figures, as seen in the Kushan period Bhuteshwar yakshi reliefs. Though yakshas and yakshis faded in popular Buddhism and Hinduism in the mid-first millennium CE, they were propitiated in some Tantric Buddhist rituals as the fulfillers of wishes. They continued to be depicted and sometimes worshipped in Jainism through the mediaeval period, where they are portrayed as attendant figures to the twenty-four Tirthankaras, with the yaksha on the left and yakshini on the right side.    

Belonging to the influential Tagore family of Jorasanko, Calcutta (now Kolkata), Abanindranath Tagore emerged as an artist and writer at a time of great political and cultural upheaval in nineteenth-century India. He is credited with the first formal response to European artistic and aesthetic conventions and values, founding and spearheading the Bengal School — a movement that aimed to reimagine a distinctly Indian approach to visual art. Through his paintings, he rejected European and Academic Realism, promoting instead the ideals of Hindu spirituality and aesthetics to convey an authentic ‘Indianness’.  For the development of this framework, he drew inspiration from the Japanese ink wash technique, a sombre colour palette, and stylistic elements from Mughal, Rajasthani and Pahari miniature painting. In his depictions — which included themes from Hindu mythology, history and Indian rural life — he sought to extract a pan-Indian visual motif and identity. As the Bengal School and his practice were contemporaneous with the Swadeshi movement of the early twentieth century, his work is also interpreted through a nationalist lens. This is perhaps most evident in his painting Bharat Mata (1905), which personified India in the form of a divine Hindu deity and went on to become an enduring symbol of the nation and India’s struggle for independence.  Tagore was homeschooled during his early years, and when his talents became evident, he was sent to study art at Sanskrit College, Calcutta in the 1880s. He began his career as an illustrator, with some of his earliest works appearing alongside the poems of his uncles Rabindranath Tagore and Dwijendranath Tagore in the magazine Sadhana in 1892. In 1890, he enrolled in the *Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, where he met its principal EB Havell, an Orientalist scholar and pedagogue. Havell had advocated for and secured curricular changes that incorporated the study of Mughal miniatures and emphasised the importance of traditional handicrafts in the syllabi of the fine arts and decorative arts departments, respectively. His search for a unifying image for Indian art that foregrounded tradition over prevalent Indian and Western conventions found resonance in Tagore’s work and outlook. As such, his Modernism emerged as an alternative to that of the Western-influenced painter Raja Ravi Varma, announcing a clear break from the practical, aesthetic and social aspects of colonial art production and distribution.  While Tagore’s status continued to be associated with social and cultural privilege, as was the case with Ravi Varma, he began to challenge the conventions within which his art was produced and consumed. Tagore took strict exception to the academic doctrines of life study, oil painting and Realism. He envisioned an environment where an informed and discerning class of art professionals (such as artists, critics and collectors) would be able to produce and consume art free of the demands of formal training, professional success and livelihood. Havell’s continued support of Tagore — in the form of journal articles introducing his works to a European audience and an exhibition of his paintings in the Government Art Gallery, Calcutta — along with AK Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivedita’s endorsements in the journals of Ramananda Chatterjee, Probashi and The Modern Review, brought him and his cause national and international recognition. Accompanying this increased visibility was the establishment of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, which grew organically out of a series of exhibitions of the members of the Bengal School — and with the aid of a number of influential Calcutta-based European Indophiles — around 1907. The Society, by virtue of being the first art salon in India, provided the ideal platform for the consolidation of the ‘Indianising’ agenda of the Bengal School. In the early experimental phase of his career, Tagore painted the Krishna Leela series (1895–97) based on Jayadeva’s text Geeta Govinda. Inspired by Kalidasa’s lyric poems Meghaduta and Ritusamhara, he painted The Traveller and The Lotus, The Banished Yaksha and The Siddhas from Upper Air. In these, he attempted in different ways — using composition, tone and technique — to inject elements of Romantic Naturalism into canonical pictorial traditions. Paintings that Tagore made in the Mughal miniature style between 1902 and 1905, which incorporated bhava, were met with great success, winning him awards in the Congress Industrial Exhibition (1902–03) and the Delhi Durbar Exhibition (1911). The most celebrated work from this experiment is Passing of Shah Jahan, where the intricate and material image of the Agra Fort stands in stark contrast to the frail and dying figure of Shah Jahan, who is attended to by his daughter Jahanara. The death of Tagore’s daughter during the plague in Calcutta at the end of the nineteenth century had created an impact on the artist that became apparent in the emotive quality of the series, and of this painting in particular. His iconic Bharat Mata painting was modelled after his daughter and directly reflected this loss.  Tagore is famously credited with introducing and promoting the use of the Japanese ink wash technique, which he learnt from the disciples of Japanese artist Okakura Kakuzo, whom the Tagores hosted at Jorasanko in 1903 and who shared his desire for formulating a pan-Asian aesthetic in opposition to Western Realism. His appointment as vice-principal of the Government College of Art in 1905 also allowed him to incorporate Indian painting into the curriculum. This gave a much-needed boost to traditional Indian art forms and nurtured the emergence of modern Indian artists.  By the 1920s, however, as the influence of the Bengal School decreased, Tagore withdrew from public life and into a more personal practice of painting, illustrating and writing. He resigned from his post at the Government College of Art in 1915, but continued to remain active in academia, delivering a series of twenty-nine lectures on Indian art, aesthetics and philosophy at Calcutta University as the Rani Bageswari Professor of Indian Fine Arts between 1921 and 1929. While these developments took place, Tagore continued his artistic practice, distancing himself from the demands of nationalism and the Swadeshi movement. In this final phase of his career, he painted the Playmate (1925) and Pigeon series (1939–40) —  landscape and animal studies that explored themes of talking animals and mythological tales inspired by his childhood stories. His Arabian Nights series (1930) recasts the stories of ancient Baghdad in contemporary urban settings. The Kabikankan and Krishnamangal series (1939) are his last known works. Tagore’s contribution to art and the evolution of an autonomous identity for modernity in India is bolstered by his legacy of children’s literature and illustration. A prolific writer with a gift for narration, Tagore authored and illustrated several books for children and young adults; notable among them are Raj Kahini (1916), Sakuntala and Khirer Putul (1895–96), Nahush and Buro Angla. He also wrote several treatises on art, such as Bharat Silpa Sadanga (‘Six Limbs of Painting’) (1921) and Artistic Anatomy (1914). Towards the end of his career, he released a three-part memoir comprising Apan Katha (published as a book only in 1946), Gharoa (1941) and Jorasankor Dhare (1944), the first of which was authored by him and the others by Rani Chanda, to whom he had narrated the stories.   After his death in 1951, his entire collection of paintings was donated to the Rabindra Bharati Society, where they were kept in storage and not displayed publicly. In the last few decades, the paintings from the second phase of his career have been rediscovered by scholars such as KG Subramanyan, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and R Siva Kumar, who have attempted to read his later work outside the nationalist mould he was cast into during his lifetime.   

One of the oldest art institutions in India, the Government College of Art and Craft is regarded as the birthplace of the *Bengal School, a nineteenth-century art movement that rejected European Modernism for a distinctly Indian approach to visual arts. Founded in 1839 by the English surgeon Frederick Corbyn at Garanhata, Chitpur, as the Calcutta Mechanics Institution, it was renamed and moved to its present location near the Indian Museum, Kolkata in 1892. It is also known as the Government School of Art and Craft, the Calcutta School of Art and the Government School of Art. The College was originally established with the aim of providing Indian youth with an education in industrial skills to widen their intellectual horizons and expand their scope for employment. Under HH Locke’s leadership (1865–85) the institution produced artists and designers trained in the Western academic tradition, through courses on lithography, wood engraving, photography, painting and modelling design. This changed after EB Havell took charge as the principal in 1896 and discontinued instruction based on British academic principles. Along with the vice principal Abanindranath Tagore, Havell worked to develop the tenets of Indian Modernism and incorporate them in the curriculum.  During this period, the College rejected the Western pedagogical and aesthetic sensibilities predominant within art institutions in the country, instead shifting the focus to Indian design, applied arts, traditional handicrafts and the decorative arts. Several new courses were introduced, teaching techniques such as fresco painting, lacquerwork and stained-glass painting. This provided the early impetus for the development of the Bengal School, which emphasised traditional Indian art forms, including Mughal and Pahari miniatures, the traditional handicrafts of India and ancient scriptures such as the Vedas.  Several alumni of the College emerged as founding figures of Indian modernism, such as Asit Kumar Haldar, Nandalal Bose, Biren De, Haren Das, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Paresh Maity, Mukul Dey and more. Dey served as the institution’s principal from 1928 to 1943 and initiated its first publication, Our Magazine, in 1931, publishing reproductions of works by faculty and students.  Now affiliated with the University of Calcutta, the College offers Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts programmes in sculpture, graphic design, textiles, ceramic art and pottery, design (wood and leather) and painting. It also began offering a doctoral degree in the fine arts in 2005 and is one of the only institutions in the country to offer specialised programmes in Indian painting. Additionally, it organises cultural events such as film screenings, workshops, lectures and annual exhibitions.  At the time of writing, the institution is headed by Chhatrapati Dutta, who has been the principal since 2017. 

An artist, actor, and stage and costume designer, Gaganendranath Tagore belonged to the distinguished Tagore family of Jorasanko in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Events in his personal life, the influence of his family members, his own taste in the theatrical arts, and his love for literature and travel helped him develop a largely original and individualistic style of art. Tagore’s works — the earliest of which date back to 1905 — depict an extremely wide variety of subjects in various styles, evidence of multiple influences including Japanese ink wash techniques and Cubism. Although he was an artist in his own right, Tagore’s life and works have not received as much scholarly attention as those of his younger brother Abanindranath and his uncle Rabindranath. Although he was actively involved in acting, designing stages and costumes for various plays under the influence and encouragement of his uncle, it was not until 1907 that Tagore seriously began painting, after the untimely death of his son. He had no formal education in art, although he later took art lessons under Harinarayan Basu, a painter and then-principal of the Government School of Art. Tagore had been active in the nationalist politics of the time, took part in the Swadeshi movement and was part of the anti-colonial organisation Anusilan Samity. Simultaneously, the Bengal School began gaining traction under EB Havell and Abanindranath, and through this association as well as his own contributions, notably the co-founding the Indian Society of Oriental Art with the latter in 1907, Tagore came to the fore as an artist in his own right. The earliest phase of Gaganendranath’s paintings include sketches, mostly sea views influenced by Japanese brushwork and sumi-e ink painting — done with a few quick brush strokes and thin washes of colour on postcards he sent from Puri to his daughter in 1907. Tagore was not only influenced by the technique of the Japanese but also what conceptually formed the subject of their art — such as everyday sceneries — as seen in his landscapes Early Morning Scene in Calcutta and Women at the Ganges. One of his finest works from the period, Banyan Tree (1911), depicts an instance of ink painting where bright and dark tones of fluid ink are juxtaposed to highlight the density and largeness of the huge banyan tree. He also created landscapes with minimal contrast in tone and hue, such as Boat Padma with Flock of Birds, suggesting influences of Impressionist art. His other early works include portraits in pencil and ink of his family members, such as his sister Sunayani Devi, acquaintances such as the art historian Anand Coomaraswamy, as well as visitors to his home, such as pundits and Bengali kirtankars. It is said that in order to relieve the shock of Tagore losing his son, the larger family arranged kirtans and kathas in which he made many sketches of kirtankars, most notably of Shibu Kirtania. Other important works from exhibiting this style include his illustrations for Rabindranath’s autobiography Jeevansmriti (1912), Crow (1912), Arrival of Tutor in Rain, Abanindranath Tagore Painting while Smoking Hooka and Portrait Study of Mrs. Gaganendranath Tagore. Besides Jeevansmriti, Tagore also made illustrations for some of Rabindranath's short stories, including Kabuliwala, Phalguni and some poems from Gitanjali. He was adept at using creative elements to depict light in his paintings, best showcased by his use of a gold background in some of his Himalayan landscapes from around 1912, such as the Head of the Mahadeva and Kanchangjunga to depict shimmering light. Pilgrims, religious figures and scenes of rituals, formed one of his main subjects across different styles of painting. This was visible in his paintings derived from the text Chaitanya Charitamala, which were exhibited along with works of Abanindranath in an exhibition of the Calcutta School of Art held in Paris and London in 1914. Rabindranath had also set up the Bichitra Club at the Tagore residence in 1915 with Abanindranath as its first teacher and Tagore as its first director, later becoming its driving force. Soon after though, he began to withdraw from his brother’s nationalist leanings and moved into a more poetic and dramatic style of painting with fantastical imagery, most prominently seen in his Himalayan landscapes and night scenes from 1916 onwards. In 1916, he also drew a Plan of a Stage, probably for Rabindranath’s play titled Dakghar, which showed the relative positioning of all the elements of a stage including the backdrop and the position of doors and curtains. His theatre-related activities also led him closer to satirical paintings, which were caricatures and cartoons based on critical perspectives on contemporary middle-class Bengali society, particularly on the so-called Bhadralok culture. Birup Bajra (“Strange Thunderbolt”) and Adbhut Lok (“Realm of Absurd”) — both published in 1917 — are some of his earliest satirical works. From the 1920s, he went on to experiment with the Cubist style of painting, which involved depicting multiple viewpoints and jagged edges. The first of his Cubist paintings were published in the journal Rupam in 1922, with an accompanying article by the art historian Stella Kramrisch titled An Indian Cubist, crediting Tagore for introducing Cubism in India along with his own successful stylistic and conceptual reinvention and innovation. In the same year, his Cubist paintings, including his famous House of Mystery, had their first public viewing at the exhibition of famous Bauhaus artists, marking an important milestone in Indian art. His works, including Dwarkapuri and Swarnapuri from 1925, are examples of him imagining legendary and mythical images of cities in Cubist watercolour. In his later paintings we find increasing references to stage props, partition screens, overlapping planes and artificial stage lighting, including portraits in black and white or darker shades, such as Nandini: Heroine from Rabindranath’s drama Rakta and Jagadish Chandra Bose Demonstrating his New Apparatus, both from 1925. In 1930, at age sixty-three, Tagore suffered a cerebral stroke that left him paralysed and unable to speak. He died eight years later, without being able to produce any paintings during this final period. Most of his works today can be found at the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, which were transferred from the Rabindra Bharati Society. His illustrated copies of Jeevansmriti can be found in Kala Bhavana.

A British art historian, educator and administrator who worked in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Ernest Binfield Havell is known for pioneering a shift in art education in India from Western to Indian modes, leading to the emergence of the Bengal School — a movement aimed at reimagining a distinctly Indian approach to visual art. He is also well-known for  advancing the cause of Indian art in European art markets and encouraging Western art patrons to support Indian artists and artistic traditions. Havell was born in Berkshire, United Kingdom in 1861 and graduated from the Royal College of Art, London. He studied art in Italy and worked in studios in Paris until 1884, when he travelled to India as the superintendent of the Madras School of Art (now the Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai). After his arrival, Havell conducted a series of surveys on art industries in the Madras Presidency for the colonial government. In 1896, Havell was appointed principal of the the Calcutta Art School (now the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata) and the attached art gallery — a role he held until 1905. Along with the artist and founder of the Bengal School, Abanindranath Tagore, Havell revised the curriculum at the institution to move away from traditional European arts pedagogy and focus on a Modernism that derived from Indian art forms, transforming the school from a fine art academy to a school of Indian design and crafts. Among other measures, he incorporated the study of Mughal miniatures and emphasised the importance of traditional handicrafts in the syllabi of the fine arts and decorative arts departments, respectively. He also replaced the European paintings and sculptures in the gallery with Asian art objects.  Havell’s reforms focused on three areas — advocating for the inclusion of traditional Indian art forms within the international canon; reimagining the British art education policy in India and rejecting the practical, aesthetic and social aspects of colonial art production and distribution prevalent at the time; and adapting traditional Indian art forms to Modern approaches to art. These reforms, particularly his focus on the traditional decorative arts, were also subject to considerable scrutiny, with critics accusing him of seemingly fostering an orientalist, and by extension, imperialistic attitude towards India. Despite this, his reforms contributed significantly to the emergence of the Bengal School as well as the establishment of the Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta in 1907. Havell returned to England in 1906, where he continued working towards mobilising support for Indian art and promoting a reformed British art education policy in India. He established the India Society in London in 1910 with support from prominent figures in the arts such as designer William Morris and AK Coomaraswamy. He also published several works on Indian art history influenced by his understanding of Indian philosophy and mythology, including Indian Sculpture and Painting (1908), The Ideals of Indian Art (1911) and Indian Architecture (1913).  Havell died in Oxford in 1934.

Founded at the turn of the twentieth century by EB Havell and Abanindranath Tagore, the Bengal School was a Modernist Indian art movement that came about in an atmosphere of nationalistic fervour in colonial India. During this time, undivided Bengal had emerged as an epicentre of cultural agitation that, among other things, initiated a concerted move away from formal European aesthetic ideals. The search for a national visual identity that was both historically rooted in the subcontinent and modern in its outlook came to be realised as the Bengal School. It sought to reject the aesthetic sensibilities of European Academic painting and replace it with cultural frames of reference which its members considered authentically Indian. The Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, the Indian Society of Oriental Art, the Bichitra Club and Jorasanko, were the centres of pre-Independence India’s first major campaign for artistic freedom and its first attempt to define Modernism by its own terms. Artists influenced by and associated with the Bengal School include Nandalal Bose, Kshitindranath Mukherjee, AR Chugtai, Asit Kumar Haldar, Sunayani Devi, Mukul Dey and K Venkatappa — many of whom were taught directly by Tagore. At its core was a Revivalist agenda that found resonance in the anti-colonial sentiments and the Swadeshi ideology that was gaining currency at the time — and which grew stronger after the partition of Bengal in 1905. This coincided with a growing distaste among the Indian intelligentsia for the Company Paintings commissioned by British collectors and administrators, which its dissenters believed imposed a colonial and exotising gaze on India’s natural, cultural and social landscape. The Bengal artistic programme was also, in part, a response to the populist paintings of Raja Ravi Varma, which portrayed Hindu mythological themes in the Western Academic tradition. The subsequent mass production of these paintings was criticised and rejected as inauthentic and profane by idealogues such as Sister Nivedita and AK Coomaraswamy. Simultaneously, the Bengal School undertook an examination of pre-colonial artistic traditions, including Mughal miniature painting, Rajasthani miniature painting, Pahari miniature painting and folk visual culture, as well as corresponding materials and subjects such as tempera and religious mythology. They sought to create a pan-Asian aesthetic that was a counterpoint to European Realism and Academic Formalism. The visual idiom that emerged was characterised by the use of a sombre colour palette and Romantic depictions of themes such as landscapes, rural life, Hindu mythology and history. However, evidence of the influences of Art Nouveau and a Pre-Raphaelite affinity to nature and natural forms challenged the Bengal School’s claims to homegrown authenticity. Instead, some scholars offer a model of divergence from Western art movements and pedagogy. As the principal of the Government College of Art and Craft between 1896 and 1905, Havell encouraged the study of decorative arts in the handicrafts traditions of India, as well as the visual vocabulary of Mughal miniatures, in an attempt to elevate the values of Indian spiritualism over Western industrialism and materialism. However, this notion of spiritual contrast, which steered him towards the codified traditions of the Vedas and other Hindu scriptures, resulted in his problematic conflation of Indian nationality with Hinduism. This approach of valourising an idealised Indian past was criticised and denounced for subverting the emerging nationalist movement in the subcontinent. Whatever the criticisms that may have arisen, Havell is responsible for laying the pedagogical foundations of the Bengal School by ushering in curricular changes and shaping revolutionary thinkers and new visual idioms. Its influence can also be attributed to the proliferation of the journals Probashi and The Modern Review, which promoted painting from India. Several of Abanindranath Tagore’s students were also instrumental in disseminating the values and methodologies of the Bengal School across the nation through their contributions to both art and academia. As such, it gradually created a space for modern art in India outside Western academic institutions and brought with it a culture of art journals, critics, art salons and a new art-consuming middle class that espoused its revivalistic thrust as a product of and a response to the dominant colonial forces. By the 1920s, the influence of the Bengal School began to wane. The painters associated with it introduced little to no alterations to their style and soon began facing the same problems as the traditions to which they were responding. Further, the establishment of Kala Bhavana at Shantiniketan (in erstwhile Bengal) under Rabindranth Tagore brought with it different ideals and conceptions of both art and the nation. Nandalal Bose’s appointment at Kala Bhavana in 1922, following his exit from the Indian Society of Oriental Art, marked a final and decisive break from the Bengal School’s dual approach and its mission of formulating universal standards of ‘Indianness.’ The legacy of the Bengal School, in terms of its aesthetic and technical contributions, if not its ideological foundations, still lives on in the Government College of Art and in Kala Bhavana.

Founded in 1915 in Calcutta (now Kolkata) by the Tagore family, the Bichitra Club was a studio that explored various styles and methods of painting and printmaking. It derives its name from the Bengali word bichitra, meaning “variety,” a reference to the plurality of styles and artistic and intellectual visions of its members. The Club was an important cultural institution in Calcutta in the early twentieth century, providing a space for writers and artists to meet and hold discussions. Rabindranath Tagore was its primary patron, while Gaganendranath Tagore served as the director and Abanindranath Tagore was its first teacher. Other notable members included Mukul Chandra Dey, Surendranath Kar and Nandalal Bose. The meetings and salons of the Club were held in the Tagores’ ancestral home in Jorasanko. The Club also offered studio space and lessons in drawing, music and theatre, and later, industrial arts such as pottery and carpentry. It also acted as a library that housed over seven thousand books from the collections of the Tagore family. The Club was created by practitioners of the Bengal School, but its members adopted several artistic and intellectual approaches. For instance, Gaganendranath Tagore abandoned the Revivalist aesthetic of the Bengal School and turned to exploring Cubism in his work, while Abanindranath Tagore, who used the Japanese wash technique in his paintings, also encouraged printmaking techniques, woodcuts and lithographs. In 1916, after Rabindranath Tagore travelled abroad, the club’s activities dwindled and eventually stopped altogether. Tagore subsequently appointed Japanese artist Kampo Arai to reignite membership and interest in the club. Between 1917–18, Arai encouraged the adoption of new techniques and collaborations, including Japanese methods of painting, initiating what is considered to be the club’s most fruitful year. Interest and activity in the club nevertheless dwindled by the mid-1920s, and it was eventually dissolved, although the exact year of its conclusion remains unknown.  

A pedagogue and one of the first Indian Modern artists, Nandalal Bose is known for his contributions to the visual identity of the Indian nationalist movement and newly-independent India. As the first principal of the pioneering art school Kala Bhavana in Shantiniketan, he was among the earliest and most influential art educators in India. Working in watercolour and tempera, he is also considered one of the earliest practitioners of linocuts in India, a number of which he printed on postcards that later came to acquire significant value as collectibles. His works demonstrate a range of styles and influences, including the Revivalism and cultural nationalism of the Bengal School, as well as the ideas of scholars such as EB Havell and Sister Nivedita. His later, more individualistic work was informed by his direct and indirect associations with influential figures such as Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, AK Coomaraswamy and Okakura Kakuzo, along with his documentary study of the Ajanta murals.  Born to a middle-class Bengali family at Haveli Kharagpur, in the Munger district of Bihar, Bose was introduced to art at a young age. Influenced by his mother, Kshetramoni Devi, who would fashion innovative toys and dolls to keep him entertained, Bose proved especially adept at clay modelling, and used his skills in decorating the pandals, or floats, for the annual celebration of Durga Puja. He moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1897 to study at the Central Collegiate School and later pursued commerce at his family’s insistence at the Presidency College in 1905. He eventually managed to convince them to let him attend the Government School of Art (now the Government College of Art and Craft), Calcutta, where he practised under the tutelage of EB Havell and Abanindranath Tagore, along with his peer Surendranath Ganguly. His first exposure to the works of Raja Ravi Varma and Abanindranath Tagore was through the monthly Bengali magazine Probashi (or Prabasi), started in 1906. Abanindranath Tagore’s paintings from this time made a particularly strong impression on the young Bose, reflected in his own work, such as the exemplary Mahasweta. His other early watercolour paintings, such as Sati (1907) — later reproduced by Bose as an aquatint in 1943 — internalised the nationalist politics of the time, and brought him recognition even while he was a student. In 1907, he obtained a travel scholarship from the then-newly established Indian Society of Oriental Art, for which he accompanied the scholar OC Gangoly on a study tour of the temple art of South India.  About a decade later, Bose’s artistic outlook and aesthetic sensibilities underwent a change after two related events — a personal encounter with Japanese art through the works of Arai Kempo in 1916, and his first visit to China and Japan in 1924. By the time Bose took the reins of the newly established Kala Bhavana in 1922, he had already gained eminence under the ideological guidance of the Bengal School and grown dissatisfied with the limits placed upon art by the Swadeshi movement. His engagement with Rabindranath Tagore deepened his distrust of the prevailing nationalist doctrines and opened his mind to the possibility of an original, modern Indian art that could also be universal. His subsequent experiences of teaching and practising at Shantiniketan brought him closer to his immediate environment. His work moved away from mythological subjects and embraced art as an extension of life. During this period, he focused on a number of projects closely tied with daily life at Shantiniketan — he organised art fairs, worked on murals, set design, posters and costumes, and illustrated children’s literature. Thus, in his most productive phase in the 1930s and 1940s, Bose brought his wide range of styles and influences to bear not just on his art, but also in his contributions to the community at Kala Bhavana. In his role of principal and teacher there he influenced students who later became eminent artists, including Ramkinkar Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee. Bose also published his own books on art: Drishti o Srishti and Shilpa Charcha (1956). In 1930, when Gandhi launched the Dandi March, Bose commemorated the event with a linocut image of him with his walking stick, which has become an archetypical image since. On Gandhi’s request, he also made a number of posters for the Haripura Session of the Indian National Congress in 1938, drawing on the art traditions, celebrations and everyday scenes of rural India. He also illustrated Rabindranath Tagore’s book collection Sahaj Path (first published in 1937) with linocut prints. Bose also produced a number of paintings in his distinctive idiom, among which was the celebrated work, Sabari in Her Youth (1941–42), depicting a scene from the Ramayana in which a young girl, possibly of indigenous background, is perched upon the branches of a tree waiting for Rama to redeem her.  Inspired to revive the mural painting tradition of India, he produced important works such as the landscape Bagadar Road (Hazaribagh) (1943) — rendered in tempera, like the frescoes at the Ajanta Caves, which it sought to pay tribute to — and Abhimanyu Vadh (1946–47), a narrative scene from the Mahabharata that portrays the entrapment and killing of the mythological hero, Abhimanyu. In 1946, he also created wall murals for the Kirti Mandir, a memorial for Mohandas and Kasturba Gandhi in Baroda. Among the many testaments to his commitment to building a visual and cultural national identity was the original manuscript of the Constitution of India (enacted in 1950), which he, along with his students, hand-illustrated. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, famously requested Bose to design the emblems of the Government's highest civilian awards — the Padma Shri and the Bharat Ratna — underlining Bose’s status as an artist at the forefront of a newly independent India. Most of his paintings are held today by the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and in private collections in India and abroad. Bose’s public participation in nationalist discourses, his pedagogic contributions and the wide visibility of his art positioned him among the most influential new Indian Modernists. A recipient of the Padma Vibhushan in 1954, Bose was also awarded a Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1956, an honorary DLitt from the University of Calcutta in 1957 and the Tagore Birth Centenary Medal by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1965. In 1993, the Government of India issued a postage stamp of Bose’s painting Pratiksha to commemorate his birth centenary.

Originating with the Bengal School in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the mid-nineteenth century, Revivalism is a key art movement of Indian Modernism, characterised by a focus on Indian cultural, political and artistic identity through the revival of art forms such as folk art, Hindu imagery and a celebration of humanism. Prominent artists of the movement include Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Sunayani Devi, Mukul Dey and Asit Kumar Haldar, among others. The origins of the movement can be traced to the Great Exhibition of 1851, London, which presented new trends in industrial design and the Arts and Crafts movement of British artist William Morris, perpetuating a desire for the revival and preservation of traditional art industries in England. This sentiment was reflected in India and further reinforced by the showing of Indian ornamental arts in the Great Exhibition. The Swadeshi movement and the Bengal School were also instrumental to the perpetuation of Revivalism and its reinvigoration of Indian classical culture and artistic methods in the face of British colonisation, therefore counteracting European impositions on Indian cultural practices. In India, the movement sought to promote national industry and artforms by encouraging the practice and production of uniquely Indian styles. The interpretation of a new ‘Indian’ art and aesthetic is usually attributed to Abanindranath Tagore and developed during the turn of the nineteenth century, when European realism was at its peak in Indian art, notably in Company paintings and the works of artists such as Raja Ravi Varma. In contrast, Revivalist works were marked by the adoption of traditional Indian art forms and styles, such as Mughal, Rajashtani and Pahari miniature styles. Abanindranath Tagore also adapted Japanese and Chinese artistic practices, such the wash painting technique, to Indian themes with the aim of developing a pan-Asian artistic style that exists independently of Western ideals. The adoption of such techniques was instrumental in lending Revivalist works their characteristic colour-harmony, as in Abanindranath Tagore’s The Birth of Krishna (1895–97). While there were stylistic differences among the Revivalist artists, they were nonetheless marked by a commonality of palette and materials, with sombre colour schemes and simplistic figures, as well as Indian symbolism. A notable work is Abanindranath Tagore’s Bharat Mata (1905), which shows a young woman holding objects representative of India in her four arms. Similarly, Bose’s painting Sati (c. 1908), while widely differing in style and content, demonstrates a similar tonal palette and lightly washed colour gradations to create a naturalistic figure in a dream-like background. The movement also gained traction among critics, notably AK Coomaraswamy and EB Havell. Coomaraswamy advocated for the independent evolution of Indian idealism and art historical achievements in his essay Art and Swadeshi (1912), whereas Havell supported the Bengal School’s Revivalism in his role as principal of the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, urging students to investigate Indian as opposed to British modes of artistic expression. While Revivalism developed as a means of honouring the artistic past of the Indian culture in the face of colonial forces, the movement’s inclination towards idealism and the religious undertones in the artworks have been strongly critiqued, with proponents such as Havell being variously considered champions of Indian art and artists and propagators of British colonial agenda and ideological nationalism that were instrumental to extending British rule in India. Works by Revivalist artists remain imperative to illustrating the cultural landscape of India at the turn of the century, with the nation moving towards independence. In 2014, the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru, exhibited works by core Bengal School artists such as Abanindranath Tagore, Bose and Devi to mark India’s sixty-eighth year of independence. Curatorially split into two segments, the first segment showed works by practitioners of Revivalist traditions while the second segment showed the works of artists who broke from Revivalist traditions, such as Jamini Roy and Prodosh Das Gupta. Revivalism dwindled in the early-twentieth century with the development of individualistic and Modernist practices and schools. Despite the movement’s emphasis on a return to historical and traditional art forms, it has also been considered vital to the development of Modernist and individualistic art practices in India, enabling artists such as Roy and Das Gupta to break away from the strict artistic trajectories to explore new aesthetic movements.  

Born into the influential Tagore family of Jorasanko in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1861, Rabindranath Tagore was a famed poet, philosopher, writer, dramatist, educationalist and artist in colonial India. An important literary figure in the twentieth century, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for his collection of poems, Gitanjali (1912). Tagore’s pedagogic and artistic career marks an important shift for art in India, as it moved away from the nationalist-revivalist Bengal School and envisioned a Modernism based on cross-cultural exchange and universal Humanist values. As a self-taught painter, he produced over 2,500 works throughout his life, which were exhibited across Europe, the USA and Asia in the 1920s and 1930s.  Tagore’s views on Indian art evolved through the first half of the twentieth century. In the early 1900s, he endorsed the Academic Realism of Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings, which combined a post-Renaissance Western style with subjects and scenes from Indian mythology and history. Then, he aligned his views with those of EB Havell, his nephew Abanindranath Tagore and the Bengal School, supporting their rejection of Western Realism and revival of Indian art forms. He was among those who supported Havell’s controversial change in the syllabus of the Government School of Art, Calcutta (now Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata), in which Mughal miniature paintings were introduced into the formal academic curriculum.  With the end of his involvement in the Swadeshi movement in the early 1900s, Tagore’s politics also began to shift away from the brand of nationalism that viewed Western influences and the revival of authentic Eastern traditions as a binary. His philosophy of art sought to bridge the gap between the East and the West by pursuing a non-hierarchical exchange of ideas. He rejected the Bengal School’s idea of an authentic and essentialised ‘Indianness’ and was inspired by the developments in the Western art world, including Impressionism, Surrealism, Primitivism and art forms and practices from China and Japan.  His final and most decisive ideological shift took place in the wake of his extensive travels, between 1912 and 1932, and encounters with Modern and Postmodern art in Europe and the USA. During his first visit to Japan in 1916, Tagore was deeply moved by the culture and its linking of art, everyday life and nature. He invited the students of Okakura Kakuzo to Jorasanko to share the techniques and values of their art in support of a pan-Asian aesthetic. In 1918, he established Kala Bhavana in Shantiniketan, where his ideas of universal Humanism and cross-cultural exchange found resonance. The school later became a part of Visva-Bharati as the first faculty of fine arts in an Indian university. Here, he taught his students the value of cultural and intellectual openness and the interconnectedness of art, nature and life through unconventional and alternative approaches. Through Shantiniketan, he not only espoused a willingness to learn from other cultures, but also attempted to make art that catered to the needs of its immediate community, inspired by the Japanese view of beauty in everyday art. During his last visit to Japan in 1924, however, he became disillusioned by the country’s move towards a Western-inspired nationalism and was vocal about his dissenting opinion. Tagore’s own artistic career began with drawing over the struck-out lines in his manuscripts. These spontaneous and unplanned sketches often took the shape of flowers, beasts, fantastical creatures and abstract figurations. He started painting in the 1920s, when he was well into his sixties, after he had already formulated his philosophy of art and gained international repute for his literary achievements. Scholars believe that Tagore began painting as a result of being influenced by the different art styles and movements he encountered during his international travels. His art was introspective, an expression of his own individuality, personality and a deep-rooted cultural consciousness. He designated art to the realm of the unconscious, due to which his artistic productions had abstract elements. Though he was partially colour-blind, he used bold pigments, albeit in a limited palette, uninhibited strokes and unorthodox materials such as rags, swabs of cotton and his fingers to paint.  Geometric shapes appear regularly in his work, as do giant ovoid faces. A sense of rhythm was central to his style, with themes ranging from faces, masks, natural and zoomorphic figures, human groups, individual figures and landscapes. This rhythmic articulation of lines has led some scholars to see traces of the Art Nouveau style in his work but only as incidental to his more immersive and Expressionist style. The most famous, and perhaps most discussed, of his works features a series of faces that are interpreted as masks. The haunting face of a woman with pensive eyes — a recurring motif in his repertoire — is often interpreted as the looming memory of his intellectual companion and sister-in-law Kadambari, who died by suicide a few months after Tagore’s marriage. His later portraits were known to cause discomfort to viewers, owing to the subjects staring back at them. These portraits had heavily lit foreheads, exaggerated noses and a despondent and dramatic air, shot through with a sense of darkness and pain. Tagore also painted landscapes depicting rural Bengal, inspired by Shantiniketan and his time at the Tagore family estates in erstwhile East Bengal. He also famously never named or dated his paintings in order to free them from the constrictions of identity, specificity, language and chronology in keeping with his universalist philosophy. After Tagore’s death in 1941, the legacy of his art was preserved and perpetuated through the Kala Bhavana. His art was proclaimed a national treasure in 1972 and was prevented from being exported out of the country, although his work had already come to be found in collections abroad. In 1997, art historian *R Siva Kumar curated the show, Shantiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism for the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, to celebrate fifty years of Indian independence. Since then Contextual Modernism has become an important framework to examine the work of Tagore and other early Kala Bhavana artists.

Painting in the years 1817–52 while primarily based in what is now New Delhi, Ghulam Ali Khan is best known for his work in the Company School. His career traces a period of transformation of painting in North India, as Khan adapted his style for patrons varying from Mughal emperors in his early years to the officers of the East India Company from the mid-point of his career. From 1817 onwards, Khan was a painter in the courts of the Mughal emperors Akbar II and Bahadur Shah II, following which he worked intermittently for the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, until 1852. As the Mughal court’s political influence and financial resources dwindled, he maintained simultaneous employment at the regional courts of Alwar and Jhajjar, while also working on commissions by officers of the East India Company such as William and James Fraser and James Skinner. By the 1830s, William Fraser was his principal patron, for whom he worked on the Fraser Album. Khan came from a family of court painters. His uncle Ghulam Murtaza Khan was a painter in the court of Akbar II and was known to render his figures with controlled naturalism. Faiz Ali Khan, his brother, worked on architectural views for Thomas Metcalfe, and another relative, Mazhar Ali Khan, was the principal architectural painter commissioned by Metcalfe for the Delhi Book. Khan’s work travelled between different conventions and modes — portraiture, architecture, topography, genre scenes and manuscript illustration. His 1817 painting of the diwan-e-khas (Hall of Special Audience) of the Red Fort established a trend towards topographical and architectural subjects in the Mughal idiom. He was the first Mughal artist to move out of the conventions of miniature painting and towards a picturesque mode. This is evident in his architectural views, such as the exterior of the Red Fort painted in 1822. At the court of Maharao Raja Binne Singh of Alwar, he made paintings for the illustrated manuscript of Gulistan by Sa’di. While working on the Fraser Album, he developed a unique Indo-European pictorial vocabulary. In his work for Skinner, his unique style is rendered in great detail and proportion with a series of large watercolour and gouache paintings that depict Skinner’s military regiment, life on his estate and sweeping views of his grounds. Khan’s multifaceted career elucidates the shifting tides of painting with the transformation of political life in the subcontinent as well as the newly emergent aesthetic that was mediated by it.

A school of painting that emerged in the Indian subcontinent during the late eighteenth century, Company painting was a hybrid style that was influenced by European painting styles as well as existing painting traditions in India, bringing together the visual idioms of Mughal and Rajput miniature painting with Western modes such as Victorian Illusionism and the picturesque. Other influences included prints from Europe as well as the works of landscape painters such as Thomas and William Daniell. Notable artists of the Company painting school included Sewak Ram of Patna and Ghulam Ali Khan of Delhi. Company painting emerged out of a sustained interaction between Indian and European culture after the British East India Company gained administrative control over Bengal in 1757. Company rule resulted in the loss of courtly patronage for artists in India, which led to artists and craftsmen from the courtly centres in Bengal migrating to cities such as Patna and Murshidabad, which had viable commercial markets. Indian artists who had been trained in the conventions of Western art, such as perspective, chiaroscuro and the picturesque, were absorbed in the administrative apparatus of the East India Company and employed to create an ethnographic record of the people, landscape, culture and traditions of India, including costumes, professions, architecture and street scenes. There were also a number of artists who came from Europe, particularly Britain. Sustained by the East India Company and its officials, such as William Fraser and James Skinner, the Company School had several centres across the subcontinent, with the work influenced by the local subject matter and pre-existing styles. Commonly commissioned subjects included depictions of flora and fauna, personal collections of animals, estates, monumental architecture, banquets and parties, servants, carriages and horses. Beyond commissions, the artists also began producing standard sets of paintings. Instead of the traditional gouache, the paintings were characteristically made in watercolour and and introduced visual depth through devices such as linear perspective and tonal variation through shading. They were rendered on paper, occasionally on ivory, and bound as folios in albums. Even as it spread over the subcontinent, the Company Painting style remained concentrated in centres of British influence such as Delhi, Lucknow, Varanasi, Kolkata, Murshidabad, Patna, Thanjavur and Tiruchirapalli. It lasted through the nineteenth century, also spreading to colonial centres in Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka, until being replaced by the medium of photography. A large number of Company paintings were entrusted to the East India Company’s Museum as gifts from Company officials. After its closure, the collection was transferred to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which, along with the British Library, contains the largest body of Company paintings.  

A soldier and leading patron of Delhi artists in the nineteenth century, James Skinner is known for his authorship of several books, notably the Kitab-i tashrih al-aqvam (“History of the origin and distinguishing marks of the different castes of India”), as well as raising the cavalry regiment known as Skinner’s Horse. Skinner was born to a Scottish father and a Rajput mother in Calcutta (now Kolkata). His mixed ethnicity prevented him from becoming a confirmed officer under the British crown, and he began his career as a mercenary in the Maratha cavalry, later joining the Irregular Cavalry Corps, which served the British Army when needed. When William Fraser was appointed the Commissioner of Delhi, Skinner was given the responsibility of establishing his cavalry on the outskirts of Hansi, Haryana. Around the same period, in the early 1820s, Skinner began absorbing the painters working for Fraser into his own circle. Skinner was fluent in Persian and wrote two books — Kitab-i tashrih al-aqvam (1825), which contained 120 paintings and is currently in the collection of the British Library, and Tazkirat al-Umara (“Biographies of the Nobles”) (1830), which featured thirty-eight paintings. While the former is a taxonomic and ethnographic record of castes in India, accompanied by individual and descriptive portraits of the subjects, the latter presents the history of royal families of Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan. From 1825 to 1828, he commissioned Ghulam Ali Khan to paint a number of images, notably three watercolours: one portraying his cavalry regiment at Hansi in 1827–28 and the other two depicting his newly built St James Church in Delhi in 1836. These paintings served the purpose of both documentation as well as positioning Skinner as a land-owning noble and an elite military officer in Delhi society. Skinner was made lieutenant-colonel (1828), and later, a colonel within the British army. He died in 1841 in Hansi.  

Also known as Patna Kalam, the Patna School is a style of painting grouped under the Indo-British Company School of painting. It originated in Patna and various other parts of Bihar, primarily Danapur and Arrah, in the mid-eighteenth century in response to early British travellers’ interest in documenting the country and its people. The resulting paintings provided a glimpse into the prevailing local environments, livelihoods, clothing and festivals, as well as extant flora and fauna, and were made and sold as sets of snapshots, or firkas, patronised primarily by employees of the British East India Company. Prominent artists of the school include Hulas Lal, who is considered an early master, Sewak Ram, Sona Bai, Shiv Lal, Daksho Bibi, Shiva Dayal and Mahadeo Lal. The School is a derivative of Mughal miniature painting, which was largely practised in courts. The decline in patronage under Aurangzeb’s rule in the seventeenth century, coupled with a shift in the tastes of Indian patrons – who favoured the work of visiting European painters – forced several local artists to migrate to various parts of the country, away from these courts. One such group settled in Murshidabad, Bengal, enabled by the support of Nawab Mir Jafar, the first Nawab of Bengal installed by the British East India Company. During this period, the painters came in contact with officials from the British East India Company, as well as local businessmen who commissioned paintings of the people, monuments and flora and fauna of India. However, dwindling support and patronage from Mir Miran, son and descendant of Mir Jafar, and the subsequent decline of Murshidabad uprooted the painters, who then resettled in Patna around 1760. By then, Patna had become a prosperous centre of new activities following the influx of Dutch, Chinese and Portuguese settlers trading in cotton, sugar, indigo, opium and spices. Artist groups settled primarily in the Maccharhatta, Lodi Katra Chowk and Diwan Mohalla localities of Patna city, making portraits for local kings, nawabs, landlords, officers, businessmen and soldiers. Some artists of the School flourished in the court of Raja Ishwari Narayan Singh of Benaras (now Varanasi), while others worked in smaller provinces such as Bettiah, Darbhanga, Purnia, Gaya and Arrah. The result was the emergence of a composite style of painting, in which the brilliant colours of the Mughal style met the British manner of shading. The ornate borders of Mughal painting were abandoned in favour of a plain white background, which helped draw attention to the subject. Despite thorough knowledge of the scientific perspective, painters of the School, like their Mughal antecedents, used this knowledge only when it contributed to the pattern or decorative quality of the overall image. The style also largely adhered to the material conventions of Mughal miniatures, with the exception of the surface — whereas Mughal miniatures were executed on paper or cloth, artists from the Patna School used a variety of surfaces, ranging from paper to mica, silk, vellum, bone and round ivory. The paper used was either locally produced or imported from Nepal. Colours were made from mineral or natural materials, such as fruits, flowers, barks of trees and blue and red stones, and were prepared in the monsoon (to avoid dust particles) and applied in the winter. All paintings were executed in Kajli Siyahi, which involves applying paint directly on the surface with the brush without a prior drawing or outline. The Patna School is also notable for its depiction of night scenes, which were illustrated by artists using deep shades such as crimson red and peacock blue that were otherwise absent from Company Paintings. Artists created their own brushes with hair from squirrels and horses and feathers from pigeons and eagles for variations in thickness. Java stippling, which consists of dots that look like barley grains, was characteristic of the School’s work, as they gave the painting the appearance of a print. Since these paintings were bought by European traders as souvenirs, portraiture emerged as the prevalent subject, and the depiction of everyday activities and occupations of the locals became an enduring theme. The School’s paintings were an articulation of the people, especially the working classes within the city, depicting drummers, coppersmiths, local congregations, dancers and singers, as well as various religions and celebrations. The established demand for firkas also coincided with the establishment of the Bihar Lithography — a press set up by Sir Charles D’Oyly and assisted by Jairam Das — which produced books on Indian life and customs that were possibly inspired by and in turn influenced the School’s artists. The press was instrumental in producing prints in large volumes to meet growing demand which, coupled with the advent of photography, led to the School’s decline. The passing of Ishwari Prasad, widely considered to be its last famous artist, in 1950 marked the end of a two-hundred-year-long tradition. The Bihar government has since attempted to revive the art form, notably through releasing calendar prints of the School’s paintings in 2010. Institutional collections of work from the Patna School exist in the Patna Museum; Khuda Baksh Oriental Library, Patna; Patna University’s College of Arts and Crafts; The National Museum, New Delhi; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and private collections around the world.

A prominent Company School artist, Sewak Ram’s work defined the distinct stylistic elements of the Patna School of Painting. However, little is known about his early or personal life; it is believed that he moved to Patna in the 1790s from Murshidabad to find work as a painter in the bazaar, where he attained popularity. The period between 1750 and 1760 witnessed the political ascendancy of the British East India Company and the waning power of the Nawab of Murshidabad. It was during this time that artists, who were left with little or no royal patronage, migrated to Patna. Despite its political instability, Patna was a booming commercial centre and the artists of the Patna School found a market for their art in the city. By the time Ram began working, the Patna School was well established. Similar to the Murshidabad School, the Patna painters had absorbed European influences such as the use of watercolours and painting subjects such as festivals, which held great appeal for Europeans. Ram’s work introduced a formal style which became characteristic of Patna painting; he painted in a technique known as Kajli Siyahi where pictures were painted directly with a brush, instead of first creating outlines. The human figure was painted with precision, with identifiably sharp noses, thick eyebrows and deep-set eyes. The paintings have a sombre colour palette, influenced by European prints, with either sepia and ochre overtones, while clothing is depicted with dull whites and greys and using light and occasional colour. Ram was well known for his crowd scenes depicting festivals, processions and interiors which he painted in the Murshidabad model, while also focusing on figure studies in the foreground. Among his most popular works are scenes of Muharram processions and prayers at an imambara. By the 1820s, his large-scale paintings of ceremonies and festivities were being collected by governors-general of India such as Lord Minto and Lord Amherst. His work was studied by the Patna painters, as evidenced by the presence of his paintings in the collection of Ishwari Prasad, who was grandson to Ram’s contemporary Shiva Lal. His successors continued following his model of painting until the nineteenth century. Presently, his work is part of private collections as well as on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.