Pithora Photographs

According to Mr. Subhas Ishai, who gathers stories of the Rathwa and other indigeneous Gujarati tribals for the tribal-languages journal DHOL, the pithora is not a painting but a text. It tells the story of its people. It is created by the community, often with a master painter (in this case Man Singh) doing the centerpiece and the rest of the group doing the other "writing" on three walls inside the building. There are ritual and religious dimensions to the production. The festivities begin on a Tuesday, with the preparation of walls and materials. Rice paste whitens the walls; bamboo and neem twigs are frayed for brushes, and natural dyes cooked up. The painting itself occupies the community all during the next day, with appropriate blessings and investitures. The following day is for feasting, singing, drinking and dancing. The completed pithoras are books which deserve and repay close and repeated study.

While the marriage procession on horseback along a string of mountains dominates these two pithoras, other aspects of tribal life are also represented. Thus, you will see groups of musicians, groups of dancers, people plowing,sowing, sacrificing, protecting, and feasting. You will find tobacco and corn, pheasants, goats, and a wonderfully androgynous cow.

Modern life makes its way into the representations too. In the pithora at Rathwa Naginbhai's family home, you will see soldiers with rifles, buses, trams, bicycles, a dacoity, an armory, a granary whose oversized lock is almost its most prominent feature. All these texts testify to the currency of the "writing". Aruna Joshi, editor of DHOL, told us of a pithora in which the marriage procession and scenes of daily life are all framed within a wall-sized sketch of a television set, complete with tuning knobs.

The Rathwa are not part of mainstream Hindu culture. Rather, they occupy a position comparable to Native Americans in the USA. However, their growing closeness to Hindu traditions is symbolized in one of these photographs by the way in which Hindu calendar art has been hung over the tribal images. Naginbhai is studying Sanskrit and hopes to teach it someday.

Any use of these pictures is meant to benefit the Rathwa tribals in Gujarat. If you wish to download a picture, you must remember and honor that condition.

The address of Rathwa Naginbhai Jiriaybhai is as follows: Hardaspur. Post Tejgadh, Chhota Udepur, Baroda District, Gujarat, India 391156.

The address of Prof. Subhash Ishai is: Near T.V. Relay Centre, Old Palace Compound, Chhota Udepur, Baroda District 391165.

The journal DHOL is produced in eight tribal languages under the auspices of the Sahitya Akademi Project on Literature in Tribal Languages and Oral Tradition. DHOL is edited by Aruna Joshi, who can be reached at 62 Srinathdham Society, Near Dinesh Mill, Baroda (Varodhara) Gujarat, India 390007.

The project director, G.N. Devy, can be reached at the same address.

You can email me at: bdelmoni@truman.edu. My research was sponsored by Truman State University, Kirksville, MO 63501.