Tradition · women's spring festival · India
Gangaur
Eighteen days from the day after Holi in which women of Rajasthan and the western Deccan make and worship clay images of Gauri and Īśara — Pārvatī and Shiva — feeding them, dressing them, singing to them, and on the last day carrying them to water and immersing them. Unmarried women ask for a husband like Shiva and married ones for his long life. The Jaipur procession, with the royal images brought out from the City Palace, is the public face of a domestic observance.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 26.912, 75.787
Worth knowing
The images are made afresh in clay each year by the household, not bought, and the songs sung over them are transmitted between women without ever being written down or attributed.
Connections (2)
- Shrine within cityJaipur walled city
Gangaur is a domestic festival with one public face, and Jaipur is where the public face is. Women across Rajasthan make clay images of Gaurī and Īśara at home, feed and dress them for eighteen days and immerse them; in Jaipur the royal images are brought out of the City Palace and taken through the walled city in procession, watched from the Hawa Mahal, which was built in part so that the women of the household could watch processions exactly like it.
- Site withinJaipur
Gangaur lies within Jaipur — the two sites sit about 0 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Gangaur is one of the specific sites that give Jaipur its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Gangaur”. Rajasthan language and culture department records; Ann Grodzins Gold on women's ritual song in Rajasthan.
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