Odisha Pattachitra

Pattachitra painting on starched cloth or palm leaf, practised by the chitrakar families of Raghurajpur, Dandasahi and the villages around Puri, is the single oldest surviving school of Indian narrative painting with an unbroken tradition from the twelfth century — the Jagannath temple at Puri uses pattachitra anasara patti images of the three deities during the fortnight when the main icons are removed during Rath Yatra, and this ritual function has preserved the technique across eight centuries. Mineral and vegetable colours — hingula red from mercury, haritala yellow, lampblack — are ground on stone, applied over a tamarind-paste priming, and bordered with fine geometric and floral kalinga patterns. Pattachitra received a Geographical Indication tag in 2008.