Untitled Document
About the Book:
The images presented in this book take us into the heart of the rich folk tradition
of India. Of that heritage, the display of paintings accompanied by comments
recited or sung has been a part of since very early times, as attested by references
and legends in Sanskrit sources, including the Har?acarita, a 7th century work
by Ba?abha??a. Known as pa?acitras or pa?as in short, these illustrated narratives
on rectangular fabric or paper as well as on scrolls are a type of performed
art that reaches out to audiences, mostly rural, conveying the artists’
responses to legends and social themes of common knowledge across a wide range
of audiences from varied social and cultural bases. A particularly powerful
class of such paintings that come from the Bengali-speaking region of eastern
India comprise the depiction of events from the Ramaya?a in the form of scrolls
that are unrolled as the painter displays and explicates them. The vividly colourful
images presented in this book occupy a special niche in the history of Indian
art, remarkable because they are not only visual objects but narrative expositions
of a text that has been part of vast numbers of the Indian people and often
their source of moral guidance. Especially remarkable is that these pa?as by
Bengali folk painters diverge so often from the magisterial Ramaya?as of adikavi
“First Poet” Valmiki, leave out important parts of it and import
into the Rama saga episodes from local narrative caches. Following conventions
of both art and storytelling as they do, these portrayals constitute what is
now recognized as the tradition of counter-Ramaya?as that embodies alternative
alignments of ethical judgment.
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