Recognition as an art form

Hindu women who live in villages near the market town of Madhubani in northern India
maintain old traditions and teach them to their daughters. Painting is one of the traditional
skills that is passed down from generation to generation in the families of some of the women.
They paint figures from nature and myth on household and village walls to mark the seasonal
festivals of the religious year, for special events of the life-cycle.
But even though women in the villages around Madhubani have been practicing their folk art
for centuries, the world at large has come to know about these women and to consider them
to be "artists" only in the last thirty years. Even now, most of their work remains anonymous.
The women, some of them illiterate, are in any case reluctant to consider themselves
individual producers of "works of art" and only a few of them mark the paintings with their
own name.
Among the first modern outsiders to document the tradition of Madhubani painting were
William Archer, a British civil servant the local Collector, inspecting the damage in
Mithila's villages, saw these wall and floor paintings for the first time and
subsequently photographed a number of them. Recognizing their great beauty, he and
his wife, Mildred, brought them to wider attention in several publications. Works that the
Archers collected went to the India Records Office in London (now part of the British Library)
where a small number of specialists could study them as creative instances of India's folk art.
In the 1950s and early 1960s several Indian scholars and artists visited the region and also
became enamoured of the paintings. But it was not until 1966, in the midst of a major
drought, that the All India Handicrafts Board sent an artist, Baskar Kulkarni, to Mithila to
encourage the women to make paintings on paper that they could sell as a new source of
family income.
What led the women painters to share their work with the larger world was a major ecological
and economic crisis that resulted from a prolonged drought in 1966-68 that struck Madhubani
and the surrounding region of Mithila.
In order to create a new source of non-agricultural income, the All-India Handicrafts Board
encouraged the artists to produce their traditional paintings on handmade paper for
commercial sale.
Over time, aside from the growing diversity of people painting, the subject matter of the
paintings has expanded to include ancient epics, local legends and tales, domestic, rural, and
community life, ritual, local, national, and international politics, as well as the painters' own
life histories. Artists of different castes and genders are now borrowing themes and styles
from one another. Mithila painting has demonstrated extraordinary vitality and become a
vibrant and aesthetically powerful tradition.
Since then, painting has become a primary source of income for scores of families.
Production and initial marketing have been regulated by regional craft guilds.

Characteristics

Madhubani art is usually done by filling the colours with brush. This process is carried out either by filling or
hatching. Hatching refers to the use of line in the paintings. Many paintings use both filling as well as
hatching. This style of painting has been traditionally done by women of the region, though today men are also
involved to meet the demand.

These paintings are popular because of their tribal motifs and use of bright earthy colours.

Madhubani paintings are characterized by the vibrant and bold use of colours and traditional geometric
patterns that supports the main theme.

Some of the main attributes of all the Madhubani paintings double line border, ornate floral patterns, abstractlike figures of deities and bulging eyes and a jolting nose of the faces of the figures.

These paintings are done with mineral pigments prepared by the artists. The work is done on freshly plastered
or a mud wall.

Abstract-like figures, of deities or human. Scenes of royal courts and social events such as celebration of
wedding are also beautifully depicted in Madhubani paintings.

The main categories in Madhubani paintings are: Traditional, Monochrome, Tattoo, Contemporary, Animals
and Birds.

You can even find beautiful Madhubani paintings of sun, moon and tulsi or the sacred basil plant revered very
much by the Hindus. Scenes of royal courts and social events such as celebration of wedding are also
beautifully depicted in Madhubani painting.

Medium of painting
Wall Painting (Bhitti Chitra)
Canvas Painting (Pata Chitra)
Floor Painting (Aripan)
Art shifted to Drawing Paper in 1960s.This brought with it a new freedom and creativity as
paper is moveable. Painting on Clothes and Sun mica.
Now Bihari women use the style of Madhubani Paintings on Sarees, Dupattas with fabric
paint etc.

Motifs
The painting was usually done on walls during festivals, religious events (pujas, vratas), and
other milestones of the life-cycle such as birth, Upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony), and
marriage.
The walls were decorated for main purposes as:
The sacred thread ceremony (when a boy became an adult member of his caste)
The dedication or renovation of the family shrine (the gosain ghar)

Festivals such as Chhath, Chauth Chand, and the Devathan Ekadasi

The first` marriage when the bride and bridegroom were formally linked.

The `second` marriage when they entered their actual married state.

During the first three occasions, the corridors were decorated with paintings of gods and
goddesses. For the two wedding ceremonies at the brides house, mural paintings were done
in the marriage chamber.

The three types of paintings done on the bridal chamber were:

1. The paintings of gods and goddess. The paintings of Radha and Krishna Shiva and
Parvati, Vishnu and Lakshmi, Ganesha, Rama and Sita were seen on the chambers to
symbolize harmony and bliss in the married life of the couples. Among the paintings, Kali and
the Jagannatha trio were also depicted. Repeatedly, the bride and bride and bridegroom with
their attendants were also depicted so that they might appear to be participating in the scene
and thus be linked with these auspicious beings.
2. The paintings of propitious symbols as a ring of lotuses, flowers, a bamboo tree,
parrots, turtles, fishes, sun, moon, flowering trees and elephants. The painting of the moon
symbolized long life and the sun symbolized fertility and. Parrots were symbols for the bride
and bridegroom and are Indian equivalents of lovebirds. The people believed that buy
including all these paintings there will be marriage bliss and the couples will be blessed with
progeny.
3. In addition to these, paintings of the four servants of Durga were depicted in each
corner of the room to prevent anyone from bewitching the bride and bridegroom.

Animal Forms
There are images of birds & animals with natural phenomena. Then sign of fertility &
prosperity for good luck like elephant, fishes, tortoise, parrots, pea-cocks etc.

Human Forms
In this painting include various Gods & Goddesses. The subject matter varies according to the
occasion. God Goddess such as Vishnu-Lakshmi, Shiva-Parvathi, Rama-Sita, Krishna-radha etc.

Other Forms
In other forms, the flora, fauna, myth & legend, social customs & expressions giving ritualistic
symbols are painted. In these paintings include flower (lotus, tree, bamboo, forest etc.).

Some of the famous and common Madhubani paintings as part of wall hanging dcor or
frames include:

Male Divine Beings & Human Male Ideals

Rama Hunts the Golden Deer

Krishna And Radha

Krishna Subdues Kaliya

Krishna the Cowherd

Krishna Resting in a Tree

Female Divine Beings or Goddesses

The Snake Goddess or Manasa

Goddess Saraswati

Goddess Lakshmi with Goddess Saraswati

Goddess Durga

Goddess Kali

Nature-Animals & Birds (Fish, Lions, and Snakes)

The Champa Tree

Peacocks and Fishes

Lioness with Cub

A Meeting of Snakes

Goan Fishes

Monkey And The Crocodile

The Goan Fish

The Owl

The Four Turtles

Rites of the Human Life-Cycle

Kohbar Or Marriage Proposal

Bride Transported by Palanquin

Within the Honeymoon Chamber

The Married Couple as One

The Dancing Girls

Various Styles
Madhubani paintings are done in different styles by different sections of the society.It is
interesting to note that the styles of Madhubani painting are divided in the exact way the
Hindu ancient society was categorized. Each and every style of painting is named after the
four classes of the society (the Tattoo style representing the lowest strata of the social
hierarchy).
Though there were no class artists and most of the subjects were common, still based on the
preference of people from a particular caste, the different schools of Madhubani paintings
have been classified into many types:
Geru, Tantric, Gobar, Bharni , Kachni , Godhana.

Geru This is practiced by the harizans (lower class) of the society. They wash the paper with cow
dung and paintings are done using earth colours.Harijan style of painting is very simple without
much of intricate work.

Tantric - The tantric form is used for making puja yantra.

Gobar/ Kohbar (cowdung painting)
Kohbar Ghar paintings are elaborate wall paintings of the nuptial chamber with representations of
the lotus (purain), bamboo grove, fish, birds and snakes in union, which largely symbolizes fertility
and and caste, paint them on the occasion of a wedding.

The bride and groom spend three nights within the painted walls but are allowed to
consummate the marriage only on the fourth night.
Various motifs, each with a different symbol, are used: The Kohbar motif, Bans (facing each
other), Patia (mat woven from mothi), Nag-nagin (entwined male and female cobras), Pan
ke ghar (leaf house) and Naina jogin (Goddess with magical powers bamboo grove motif),
Latpatia Suga (parrots in union),Bidh-bidhata (a male and a female bird).
Women paint Aripana floor paintings on a sacred day of every lunar month.

Rice paste is used as pigment and a twig is used as a brush.

Gosain Ghar paintings (room for kuladevata or the deity of the family) are also prevalent.

Bharni (Brahmin Tradition)-Filling art)

Unlike the Kayastha, the Brahmin style of painting lavishly deals with rich variety of colours.
Their easy access to Hindu sacred literature has helped them immensely in portraying the rich
Hindu iconography and mythology.
The Brahmin tradition mainly deals with themes of gods and goddesses and magical symbols
connected with deities. This school usually used pigments on paper for their art.

Kachni (Kayastha Tradition) Line art

The unique feature of the Kayastha tradition is the use of mainly two colours, black and red.
The Kayastha style of painting basically was a practice of elaborate wall paintings (Kohbar
Ghar) of the nuptial chamber. These paintings were line drawings of sacred symbols.
They represented the lotus plant, bamboo grove, fish, tortoises, parrots, birds and all that
symbolised fertility. Thus even when this style is conceived in paper, single colour line work
defines the Kayastha style of painting even today.

Godhana (The Tattoo Tradition) tattoo

art
There is a third group of painters of Paswan community other than Kayasthas and Brahmins.
This third group of Harijans came forward much latter. Dusadh better known in the West as
the untouchables, have no right to represent deities and therefore based solely plant and
animal world. Their style, known as the Godhana painting is easily recognizable by the sepia
background they always recover their paper, it is made from cow dung diluted with water.
Dusadh In some drawings on very recent media such as paper, is directly inspired by the
patterns of their tattoos.
The women of Dusadh cast and some other Harijans as Chamar were doing all forms of
traditional paintings and art forms for ritual purposes and also for the decoration of their huts.
They were not allowed to represent divinities and can only find inspiration from the animals,
mineral and vegetable worlds. Their style of painting is known as Godna Painting. It is easily
recognizable due the very unique background which is done with diluted cow dung. They also
experimented Godna (tattoo) style and other bright colours in their paintings due to the
influence they got from the entrepreneurship and experiments of Brahmans and Kayasthas
women.
This style is also an old craft practised in ancient Bihar. This is an important style, especially
for those who are enthusiastic in the sociological and anthropological studies of Indian culture.
The Dusadhs were a low caste group and they were not allowed to represent divinities. Their
paintings themes included the flora and fauna, but eventually artists have begun to do
illustrations on Hindu epics and mythology. The main deity of the Dusadhs is Raja Sailesh
(also called Salhesh) whose village shrine (Gahbar) is usually adorned with paintings based on
their legends.
Their pictorial alphabet began to include lines, waves, circles, sticks and snails and became
more abstract.The Tattoo based paintings reflect the primitive art and creates its impact by a
serial replication of the same image.

The painting is originally in the form of a line drawing and is divided into several horizontal
margins.
Their themes are normally based on the legend of Raja Salhesh Considering its rich use of
colour it is closer to the Brahmin school of painting.

Difference between Mithila painting and Godhana

painting

Godhana Painting is done by the Paswans where Mithila painting is done by the
women of Brahmins and Kayasthas.

Godhana Painting is a lower casts (Harijan) painting where Mithila Painting is an

upper casts painting.

Godhana painting is a tribal painting where Mithila painting is painted by the land
lords.

Mithila painting got a worldwide recognition earlier than the Godhana painting.

The origin of Mithila painting seems very ancient than Godhana painting.

With the introduction of the Panji system in 1326, which laid down the rules for Brahmin and
Kayastha women, differences in style appeared based mainly on the caste. Upper-caste
women, who had a relatively confined existence, were made to adhere strictly to specific
themes and symbols pertaining to the rituals. It is possible that with the lack of variety in
themes, their paintings became more stylistic and intricate in their patterns, which led to the
development of the Bharni and the Kachni style.

Kachni Style of Black and White Compositions

Kachni means "Lines". In this style of painting, only one or two colours e.g. black or vermillion
is used. The artists draw fine pattern using hatching and stippling to create paintings with the
finest details. Double lines are used to depict the outlines and the gaps between the lines are
filled with crisscross or tiny straight lines Themes are of flowers, fishes, snakes in union
bamboo groves, birds etc. This form is appreciated for the complex rendition of detail, which
makes the paintings look like delicate embroidery composition.

Bharni Style [Compositions with colour fills]

Bharni means "filling". In this style of painting the subject is outlined with black and the
enclosed areas are filled with vibrant colours like Blue, yellow, pink, green, orange etc.
The subjects are represented in flat [two dimensional forms] and the colours applied flat
without any shading.

Colours

Madhubani can be described as a style of painting, rather than a set of pictures. The colours,
which are mostly bright, are used to impart two-dimensional imagery to the paintings. The
artists still stick to the traditional way of making colours from the juices of locally available
creepers and flowers, natural sources like plants, charcoal soot, ochre etc.
Traditionally, natural colours were obtained from plant extracts like henna leaves, flower,
bougainvillea, neem, etc. Then, to make the paint stick to the painting medium strongly, these
natural juices are mixed with banana leaves resin and ordinary gum.In recent times, synthetic
colours, which come in powdered form, are easily available in the market. However, artists still
use colours derived from natural sources.

Black colour is obtained by mixing soot with cow dung burnt jowar or kajal.

Yellow colour is obtained from turmeric or pollen or lime(chunam) mixed with the white
excretion of the banyan tree.

Blue from Indigo

Red from Kusuma flower juice, red sandalwood or rose.

Green from the leaves of apple trees/bilva leaf or the saim creeper.. Bel Trees

White from rice powder.

Orange from Palasha flowers.

Ochre and lampblack are also used for reddish brown and black respectively.

The raw materials were mixed with goats milk, gum arabic and juice from bean
plants.
There has also been a tradition of Brahmins and Kayasthas using Holi or bazaar colours in the
region.

How it is done?
Cow dung paste and mud is applied on the walls and floors to give a perfect black
background on which pictures are drawn with white rice paste; bright vegetable colours are
then applied on the figures making them more vibrant.
A great number of Madhubani painters still apply a thin layer of cow dung and mud paste
on their canvases to give a more authentic look and also because it helps in proper
absorption of colour.
The mud walls were plastered with cow-dung. The colours were directly applied on to
these walls or the walls would be white washed.
Powder paints were readily available from the bazaar and were mixed with goats milk. The
colours commonly used were pink, yellow, blue, red and green. Black colour was made by
the painters from burnt straw and white colour was made from rice-powder mixed with
water.
The brushes were made from a piece of rag tied to a twig for painting the bolder shades
and for painting the delicate lines they attached a sliver of bamboo at the end of the twig.

Traditional Method
Experienced women from the neighbourhood would come for help. The most skilled woman of
all would draw the shapes. If at all she makes a mistake she would quickly wipe out.
Mistakes were rarely committed. As a rule the experienced woman would have the whole
design fixed in her mind.
Preliminary marks were not made on the wall except when the great lotus circle was being
drawn.
Then a pair of bamboo dividers would be used to trace the circumference.
Once the circles are outlined, the women would fill in the shapes with colour.
It is the duty of little girls to hold the pots of paint and prepare the brushes.
At times these girls had to fill a small part of the design themselves. In this way, at a very
early age the girls of the family would learn the family designs by heart.
They were not allowed to direct the operation until they were middle aged. By the age of 15 or
16 the girls were experts in Maithili paintings. The girls could draw parrots, a tree and a
woman in the traditional Maithili style when they were in the Upper Primary School.
Some families kept a stock of paper patterns on which the familys current designs were
recorded, which were painted in pen-and-ink or and watercolours. These patterns provide
symbols for the bride and bridegroom and their attendants, for the god Brahma, for the lotus
ring, for Krishna and the circular dance. These were preserved as family possession and the
bride takes this when she leaves to her husbands home. So that she could continue her
familys tradition of painting and at the same time add it to the stock of her mother-in-law.
In the paintings made by Maithili Brahmin women, there was an attempt to place figures or
objects in a natural relation to each other. They depicted the figures as aimless creatures
floating in a tranquil aquarium. The paintings depicted showed Krishna and a peacock
standing above the head of a bridegrooms attendant, a bride and bridegroom walk below a
lotus ring, parrots perch at any angle. They depicted a fish as big as a tiger and a monkey was
depicted larger than a man.
The paintings were relaxed collections of images, which however gracefully combined with
one another in the picture space. The figures and objects are depicted on a single flat plane
which is defined by a thin and wiry line which bounds large segments of bright colour. The
bodies were depicted in triangular, rectangular and semi-circular shapes that gave them a
geometric dignity. For example, goddess Durga may stand firmly in her rectangular skirt, but
her arms and crown radiate like the petals of a sunflower. The colours depicted had a vivid
brilliance. The blue or black of Krishnas skin, are depicted by religious canons, but most of the
paintings had no relationship to life. Parvati may have a pink head or Shiva a yellow body and
it is these distortions, which give the figures an air of gentle vision.
Madhubani paintings are enchantingly beautiful, but not quite as difficult to make. A creative
bent of mind and some knowledge about the art style can get you going. They can be made
either on cloth or on paper. While drawing, you have to lay special emphasis on the double
outlining of the painting, which is filled with tiny colourful dots, crosses or any other symbol
that you may find appropriate. Proceed in a similar manner using black outlines and as many
colours as possible in between.

Artists and awards

Madhubani painting received official recognition in 1970, when the President of India gave an
award to Jagdamba Devi, of Jitbarpur village near Madhubani. Other painters, Mahasundari
Devi (2008), Sita Devi, Godavari Dutt, Bharti Dayal and Bua Devi were also given National
award. Smt Bharti Dayal won an Award from All India Fine Arts and Crafts for fifty years of art
in independent India and the state Award for kalamkari in Mithila Painting and her painting
"Eternal Music" bagged the top award in Millennium Art Competition from AIFAC for the year
2001. Smt Bharti Dayal is also honoured with The Vishist Bihari Samman amid festivities to
commemorate 100 year of Bihar. She has been honoured with Indira Gandhi Priyadarshini
Award 2013 for her exceptional work in Madhubani Art, globally too.

Uses of Madhubani art in our day today life

Application of Madhubani art is being seen in

Pots
jewellery
Table lamp
Winnowing Basket
Bed side Table
Bottles

Tea Coaster

Flower vas

Centre Table

Jewellery Box

Pen stands

Ladies clutch

Bed Sheet
Saree

Pillow Cover

Cushion Cover

Ladies Kurta
Wall Papers

Dress material

Wall Paintings

& Various other Home Decoration Articles