Wall ArtThe Bhils and Gonds have retained the tradition of decorating the walls of their houses and this activity has its roots in the cave dwelling traditions of their ancestors. The walls of their huts are decorated with colours or symbols. Mud huts have provided an attractive surface for decoration. This flat surface has always been an inspiration for the…
A plethora is generally depicted in terms of a marriage procession of Babo Pithora with Pithori Devi. The most significant of the elements in a pithora are the horses in the uppermost row (usually five, of Ganesha, Babo Pithora, Pithori Devi, Indra (the king of all Gods) and Hudol (the benevolent female spirit) whom they worship. There are other horses…
The Bhils and Gonds are an authority in the Pithora form of art. Jyotindra Jain of Lalit Kala Academy has in fact devoted a complete treatise to this style of painting that is limited mostly to the Bhil tribe. Significantly, the form depicts the Bhili ‘Creation myths’. The artist brings to his art, extreme devotion and hard work and like…
Madhya Pradesh is an ethnically heterogeneous State, embracing as many as seven major and a few minor tribes of mainly Hindu, Christian and Muslim faiths. These are mainly the Bhil, Baiga, Gond, Saharia, Agaria, Ahir, Dhoba, Korku, Kol and Muslim. Tribe-wise distributionAfter the division of Chattisgarh from Madhya Pradesh, culturally and geographically the scheduled tribe (ST) population of the latter…
Baigas Baigas are the acknowledged superiors of the other tribes, they are their priests and authority on all points of religious and temporal observances. Giving a detailed account of the Baigas, Sir G.Grierson* states in his treatise The Tribes and Castes ofCentral Provinces, that “the language of the Baigas of Mandla and Balaghat is a form of Chhattisgarhi which clearly…