Mata ni Pachedi: another painted textiles of India

so as we talked about the painted textiles of india .......in that series only ....I am adding mata ni pachedi which are also called a s kalamkari fabrics of gujarat....they are the fabrics which like pabuji ki phad are used for religious purposes.

Graphical, vivid, multicolored animated images of gods and goddesses, devotees and followers, flora and fauna, splurge the magnificence of narrative art of Mata-ni-Pachedi. The unique feature of this temple hanging is the product layout; four to five pieces of Mata-ni-Pachedi are erected to form a shrine for the Mother Goddess.

Painted textiles: Pabuji ki Phad

I have lived in rajasthan for 12 long years of my life.........was always fascinated by the rich culture, the rustic look, innocent looking people and very rich traditions as far as textiles are concerned.
When I was studying in rajasthan, I came across a lot of textiles which have a rich traditional past but are gradually dying as less number of people are engaged in it and moreover, these traditional craft do not fetch them the money sufficient for living. The art of painting pabuji ki phad was one of them.
I have done a small research on this dying painted textiles of india and found that in order to keep it alive, we need to tell each other of this fascinating tradition of rajasthan. So, ......a glimpse of the same...............

The tradition of painting on cloth, palm leaf or leather for ritual as well as leisure find a frequent mention in the sanskrit literature of india. One of the earliest surviving pigment painted textiles of Rajasthan is Phad chitra or story image. Phad chitra are the large scroll which were used by travelling storytellers who would enact the story with dance, music and poetry.
Pabuji Ki Phad is the traditional story-telling art of Rajasthan India. The Rajasthani phad or scroll is a painting on cloth that is a visual accompaniment to a ceremony involving the singing and recitation of the deeds of folk hero-deities in Rajasthan, a desert state in the West of India.
Phad, a folk painting can simply be described as a large painting on cloth, which commemorates the deeds of a hero. A typical Phad is a long rectangular coarse cloth with paintings illustrating the life and heroic exploits of the two popular folk heroes Pabuji and Dev Narain. It displays much of the tradition in narrative form. Phads are painted by the Joshis of Shahpura, near Bhilwara, based on subjects like Bhagavad purana or other popular folk stories.

With Phad paintings rolled up on two shafts of bamboo, the bhopa who hails from Marwar (jodhpur- nagaur area) travels from village to village with the intent of singing the story of their hero god’s life and death . The bhopa chants the stories of phads at night. He usually performs in the company of two-three bhopas. They arrive in the village with the audio- visual paraphernalia, which includes the painted scroll and their stringed musical instruments called the Ravanhatta.

The narrative, rustic tradition of the recitation of a hero Pabuji has faded as have other similar oral traditions in India in the face of the mass media of the twentieth century. And similarly, the purpose of the phad painting has also changed. Many Rajasthani phads painted today are no longer meant for the bhopas use but are expected to be purchased by collectors.

People having genuine passion for textiles can bond together through this blog.

let the love for textiles remain,

reena