Tradition · cloth scroll painting
Paṭṭachitra, Raghurajpur
Also known as Patachitra, Raghurajpur, Puri painting, Paṭṭachitra — Raghurajpur
Painting on prepared cloth by the chitrakara families of Raghurajpur and Danda Sahi near Puri, in a fixed Odia line and a palette of five mineral colours, on Jagannatha subjects. The same painters make the temple's substitute images during the fortnight when the deities are hidden.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 20.040, 85.800
Worth knowing
The craft exists because of a liturgical requirement: when the Jagannatha images are withdrawn for anasara after the bathing festival, painted pattachitra stand in for them and receive worship in the temple. The village is a service settlement of the shrine, and its painters' rights are inherited along with the obligation.
Connections (7)
- Craft tradition ofKālīghāṭ painting and the Patuas
Both are Patua or chitrakara work — hereditary scroll painters who sang the scroll as they unrolled it — but they went opposite ways. The Puri painters stayed attached to a temple that needed them liturgically and kept the old line and mineral palette; the Bengal Patuas who came into Calcutta lost their village patrons, started selling single sheets to pilgrims at Kalighat, and within a generation were painting court cases and adulterous babus in a fast new brushed style.
- Craft tradition ofJagannātha Temple, Puri
Raghurajpur is a service village of the Jagannatha temple, and its painters hold a liturgical office: during the anasara fortnight after the bathing festival, when the wooden images are withdrawn from view, painted pattachitra stand in their place on the throne and receive worship. The craft is therefore not decoration of a cult but a part of it, and the right to paint the substitutes is inherited along with the obligation to do so.
- Patronage networkMahari and Odissi, Puri
Raghurajpur is a service village of the Jagannatha temple, and so is the Gotipua dancing that the same village trains — boys dressed as girls who perform for the deity, and from whose repertoire, with the Maharis' temple dance, modern Odissi was assembled in the 1950s. One village supplies the temple's substitute images and a strand of its dance, which is what a service settlement actually means.
- Patronage networkAnantavarman Choḍaganga
The Jagannatha temple needs painted substitutes: when the wooden images are withdrawn for the anasara fortnight after the bathing festival, pattachitra painted by the chitrakara families of Raghurajpur stand in their place and receive worship. The craft is therefore an office of the establishment Chodaganga founded, inherited along with the obligation to perform it, and the village is a service settlement of the temple rather than an artists' colony that happens to be nearby.
- Craft tradition ofBishnupur
Bishnupur made three things the Mallas' peace paid for: the terracotta temples, the Bishnupur gharana of Hindustani music — the only substantial one in Bengal — and the Dashavatar taas, round hand-painted playing cards with the ten avatars as suits, which the same families still make. Puri's Raghurajpur produces its pattachitra under a temple establishment; Bishnupur's crafts were produced under a court, and when the court went they became a village industry.
- AnalogueJadopaṭiā scroll painting
Jadopatia and Odisha's pattachitra are both painted scrolls unrolled and narrated, and they belong to the same eastern Indian family as Bengali patua singing. The difference is the occasion: the Chaksudan pat is shown to a bereaved Santhal family and said to restore sight to the dead, and the painter is paid for that specific service rather than for a picture.
- Site withinRaghurajpur
Paṭṭachitra, the cloth-and-palm-leaf painting tradition of Odisha, has had its heartland for five centuries in Raghurajpur, the heritage craft village 10 km south of Puri. Every household in Raghurajpur paints; the state recognised the village as its first Heritage Crafts Village in 2000. The pigments are still ground from indigenous minerals and plants.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Pattachitra”. Geographical Indications Registry (Government of India) filings; Ministry of Textiles and Sangeet Natak Akademi craft documentation.
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