Tribal Village Mural Painting Tradition

A Khovar village scene in the Barkagaon Valley

The village wall paintings of Hazaribagh are now world famous. The simple subject matter involves common design patterns which are both natural and symbolic and linked with the rock art. The village mural painting tradition is a matriarchal one, and for this reason it is a sacred tradition in an essentially original matriarchal indigenous order. The art is made by married women (Devi) during the marriage and harvest seasons. Young girls learn the art from their mothers and aunts. The marriage art is called Khovar after the Bridal room and bridegroom, and Sohrai is the other kind of village painting done during the winter harvest in which the paintings are painted using cloth swabs or chewed twigs of the local Saal forest tree used for brushing their teeth by the villagers.

A Kurmi Sohrai house in Bhelwara village

The art may be divided into as many as one dozen stylistic groups, but there are two major art forms- Khovar or the Comb-Cut art done during the marriage season, a type of sagraffito art using Reversed Slip pottery technique, in which dry black slip is covered with wet white slip and then designs are cut with fine combs revealing the under-coat in unique relief designs of black on white.   Sohrai is the painted art done during the harvest season in which the paintings are made on earth treated wall with the natural pigments of red, white, and black ochre using brushes. Only water is used as a dilutant.

The Painted Houses of Hazaribagh

The village mural painting tradition is a matriarchal one, and for this reason it is a sacred tradition in an essentially original matriarchal indigenous order. The art is made by married women (Devi) during the marriage and harvest seasons. Young girls learn the art from their mothers and aunts.  The marriage art is called Khovar after the Bridal room and bridegroom, and relates to an ancestral cave dwelling origin (Kho) related to the painted caves of the Mirzapur, Vindhyan, Jharkhand complex called Kohabara. It is full of plant forms and fertility symbols which are perhaps older than the Calcolithic mandalas reflecting a comparatively recent order in the rockart. It is more deeply connected with a Palaeolithic tradition, i.e. Sariya, which is matriarchal and shamanstic I believe. That is why the Godna or rockart tattoo is made on the woman by the woman as a protective emblem. Godna in our area in Hazaribagh is made by the wife of the Malhar metal caster (Godnakari), whose husband practices also a sacred artform in metal casting, an essentially Chalcolithic tradition. The highlight of Khovar art is the welcome of the bridegroom compared to Indra on an elephant, with decorations of the wild animals of the forest who are the companions and plants symbolizing fertility. The harvest art of Sohrai deserves it nomenclature from the Mundaric word Soroi , meaning ‘to whip, or beat’, relating to cattle, and finds its root in Soro,  meaning ‘to close the door’, and thus points to the first domestication of cattle in a Mundaric society. Its manifestations directly derives from the rockart in which the Tree of Life, a favourite West Asian and Indus symbol, may be traced to the rockart of the pre-mesolithic in Hazaribagh (Saraiya). The highlight  of Sohrai art is the welcome of the cattle which are taken to the jungle on the morning of the festival day, and at noon brought in over the rice-gruel aripans made by the Devis in the rockart forms of Khandar etc. the head which consists of a clay cone with a sprig of latlatiya grass representing Devi, and the welcome aripan representing the Tree of Life drawn in the form of cattle hoves.

Prajapati Khovar, Kharati

Kurmi Sohrai, Bhelwara

Oraon Sohrai by Juliet Fatima, Sanskriti Centre

Ganju Sohrai by Putli Ganju, Sanskriti Centre

Peacock by Malo Devi, Jorakath

Kurmi Sohrai, Bhelwara

This art tradition known as Khovar (done for marriage) and Sohrai (done for harvest) art is painted exclusively by the Adivasi tribal women folk, Who now bring the mural tradition to high quality art paper, using  natural earth and oxide pigments like earth ochres, with art exhibitions (40+) in major Art galleries in India and abroad (UK, USA, Australia, Europe).