The ancient kingdom of Mithila was home to a number of great figures in Indian history (e.g., King Janaka and his daughter Sita, wife of Rama) whose stories are told in epic poems. It is home also to great sages (e.g., Yajnavalkya) from the Upanishadic epoch, whose teachings are the foundation of Indian religious philosophies. The Buddha spent time in Mithila, and the region produced several noted poets during the Middle Ages. The region is also home to artistic traditions that were described in ancient and medieval texts. In two of these domestic arts traditions, women paint the floors and walls of domestic spaces as parts of ritual ceremonies.
The region of Mithila is located in the present state of Bihar, in northeast India. It is bounded by the foothills of the Himalayas to the north and the River Ganga to the south. The region is comprised of several present-day districts, including Darbhanga, Saharsa, and Madhubani. During the 20th century, the tradition and style came to be known as Mithila painting, after the region, or as Madhubani painting, after that district (whose name means “forest of honey”) that is prolific in producing paintings.
The floor paintings are known as aripana (alpana in Bengal, where the tradition also persists). They are associated with domestic rituals, such as a child’s first haircut, birth and death, fasts, etc. Women of the household use ground rice paste mixed with water to paint aripana—using their fingers instead of brushes—on the floors of courtyards, thresholds, and other locations in the house. The paintings are typically geometric designs or abstractions of natural objects, such as lotus flowers.
Wall paintings are typically produced for three ritual occasions: boys’ sacred thread ceremonies, dedications of family shrine rooms, and weddings. The first two occasions call for paintings in the shrine itself. The latter requires paintings in the kohbar ghar, the room in the bride’s house where the marriage ceremony takes place and in which the newlyweds spend the first few days and nights of their married life. A wedding also requires paintings in the verandah outside the kohbar ghar.
This art is practiced in Mithila by women of the Brahmin and Kayastha castes, each of which has its own distinctive style. The Brahmin women’s wall paintings exhibit bright colors applied in flat areas. Kayastha women produce drawings in black, and sometimes red, the outlines of which are not colored in.
To begin the work, walls are prepared with cow dung, mud, or plaster. Traditionally, natural pigments are then applied. For example, black is produced from lampblack, yellow from turmeric, and green from leaves of the bel tree. However, since the later 20th century, commercial pigments are sometimes substituted. Outlines and details are painted with a small bamboo twig as brush. Areas of color are applied with a cloth wrapped around a twig. Often a group of women work together on a painting, supervised by an experienced elder.
The subjects of paintings are Hindu deities, especially the goddesses Durga and Kali, whose devotion is popular in the region. Vegetable and animal forms are also common. In kohbar paintings, symbols of fertility abound, both animal (e.g., turtle, parrot, fish) and plant (e.g., lotus, bamboo). A common image is a bamboo tree piercing a circle of lotuses. Some scholars of Madhubani art interpret these elements as symbols of the male and female. These paintings may also include heavenly bodies, naina-yoginis (goddesses who protect against the evil eye), and pictures of the bride and groom.
The figures in these paintings are abstracted, linear, and not necessarily placed in natural relation to one another. They may be partly drawn as geometric figures. As noted, Brahman women’s paintings are brightly colored. A frequent convention in painting faces is to prolong the nose in the forehead and display an eye in profile.
The Madhubani women’s painting tradition began its encounter with the modern and international art world in 1967, when a visiting western woman viewed some of the bright wall designs in one artist’s house. She asked the artist to reproduce this image for her on paper, which the artist readily did. Following this incident, and with the subsequent assistance of a government minister and a young city artist, the women of Mithila were encouraged to paint their traditional images on paper as a way of earning money in the wake of a famine. This effort proved extremely successful and these paintings have continued to be popular among folk art collectors both in India and abroad.
With the growing popularity of Madhubani paintings, in the late 20th century, occasionally Harijan (so-called untouchable) women produce Madhubani paintings in a less refined style, and male tantric devotees sometimes paint images of tantric deities. Among the Mithila Brahman and Kayastha artists, many of these women have developed new themes in the process of adapting the tradition to a folk art market. These themes may be variations on Hindu mythology, scenes from village life, and interpretations of events in the artists’ own lives. A number of especially talented women, such as Ganga Devi and Sita Devi, have achieved a measure of artistic fame. These skilled and insightful artists have succeeded in maintaining their roots in the art of their community and in allowing the wider world to expand their own artistic vision.
For More Information
Jain, Jyotindra. (1997). Ganga Devi: Tradition and Expression in Mithila Painting. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd.; and Niigita, Japan: The Mithila Museum.
Jain, Jyotindra, and Aarti Aggarwala. (1989). National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, New Delhi. Museums of India Series. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing; and Middletown, NJ: Grantha Corporation.
Rossi, Barbara. (1998). From the Ocean of Painting: India’s Popular Paintings 1589 to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press. (See section, “Mithila or Madhubani Paintings,” p. 36).
Thakur, Upendra. (n.d. [ca. 1982]). Madhubani Painting. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications.
Three folk art traditions of northeast India