Interview with Anna L. Dallapiccola

Sita and Hanuman in Ravana’s garden, from the kalamkari 5457A  in the V&A’s collection

Kalamkari is probably best known in India for its use in kurtas, saris, pajamas and bedsheets.  In the 18^th century, it was the British who favoured the use of the block-printed cotton cloth for clothes; now it’s trendy Indian lifestyle stores and social groups who promote it for its traditional techniques and natural dyes.  Less well known and certainly less readily available are the hand-painted kalamkari textiles depicting epic and mythical material which were made from the 13^th century onwards and spread all along the Coromandel Coast and as far as Japan, where they proved very popular. 

Professor Anna L. Dallapiccola, former Professor of Indian Art at the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg, Germany, recently wrote the British Museum’s catalogue of South Indian Paintings and is currently working with the kalamkari collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).  Professor Dallapiccola talks to Venetia Ansell about several of these kalamkari canopies and the art that produced them.

19^th March 2009

Professor Dallapiccola talks about kalamkari hangings with unreserved enthusiasm.  Late last year she came to India for Siyahi’s Mantles of Myth – The Narrative in Indian Textiles and discussed two hangings from the V&A which both depict an entire version of the Ramayana.  She wanted to explore “what was deemed to be interesting”: which bits of the story the artists highlighted and which parts they have skipped over.  The canopies, both of which date from about the 1880s and originate from coastal Andhra Pradesh, are large (about 2 by 3m) but even so space is limited when you are illustrating events from an epic the size of the Ramayana.  “Both devote a lot of space to the Bala [childhood] Kanda [book] with all of its pageant”, says the Professor, while the Kishkinda [the monkeys’ kingdom] Kanda is almost entirely omitted, and the Aranya [forest] Kanda makes only a guest appearance.  Neither includes the controversial ending in which Rama throws his wife out after their return to Ayodhya.  Professor Dallapiccola has seen that only once, in a Sri Lankan kalamkari, “but there it is complicated by regional myths.” 

It is not clear what exactly these enormous canopies were used for, but there are “extensive Telugu captions” on the Andhra ones which suggest that they may have been displayed to an audience while a narrator went through each scene of the story.  (See image above of a Chirala Ramayana scene, Kamadhenu and the parijata tree, with particularly lengthy notes.)   They were commissioned by temples and were probably used to decorate temporary pandals for festivals, although the Professor admits that “it is very difficult to know for certain”.

The hangings consist of simple pieces of unlined cloth sewn together.  They are not designed to be durable especially in a climate like India’s.  Many of the kalamkari temple hangings from Tamil Nadu have seen such heavy use that they are in a terrible state.  One of the best preserved is a piece from Chirala, Andhra Pradesh, signed and dated by the artist, which was bought almost immediately by the then Director of the Indian Museum in 1883 and so never actually used.  If there are hangings still housed in temples, the Professor has not seen them and suspects that almost all the extant ones are now in private collections or museums. 

The art itself though has not died out, thanks to a post-Independence effort by art activists to set up a government kalamkari training centre in Sri Kalahasti, Andhra Pradesh.  One of the best living artists, Gurappa Shetty, made what Professor Dallapiccola calls an “absolutely extraordinary” kalamkari canopy depicting the life of Jesus.  The canopy was later bought by the V&A. 

The representation of Christ is presumably fairly new, but the pre-twentieth century kalamkari artists did not limit themselves to the Ramayana, they also worked on Mahabharata versions as well as regional Telugu literature.  The Professor describes some Tamil kalamkari hangings which focus on a particular temple, such as Srirangam, and illustrate the events from that temple’s mahatmya [devotional Sanskrit text glorifying the local deity] on the border.

It may not be possible to see these canopies in their original temple settings, but there are several museums in both India and abroad that house them.  In India, the Calico Textile Museum of Ahmedabad is probably the best bet. In London, the British Museum has a few and the V&A itself has about 20 in total.  Professor Dallapiccola, who is currently writing the V&A kalamkari catalogue, recommends the V&A.  You must make an appointment as the canopies are not on general display, but the museum is apparently extremely helpful and keen to organise special viewings for those who are interested. 

Subahu and Maricha pollute the rishis’ sacrifice

All images courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

A Sanskrit potter

An interview with Rachel Webb, a London-based potter who uses Sanskrit prayers to embellish her work. 

22^nd October 2008

Venetia Ansell

What made you work with Sanskrit? 

I chose Sanskrit because of its aesthetic beauty as well as its beautiful meaning.  I studied the language as a child and have been singing the prayers I engrave on the bowls for as long as I can remember.  My father also studied and taught Sanskrit in the School of Philosophy.  He devised the Sanskrit font which I use about 15 years ago along with a couple of others in the school.  It is a beautiful font and I feel privileged to have access to it.

 

How do you choose the prayers?

I started by writing my favourite prayer onto the first bowl, Om Purnamadah:

ॐ – पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदम् पूर्णात् पूर्णमुदच्यते

पूर्णस्य पूर्णमआदाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते

ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः

Om – purnamadah, purnamidam, purnat purnamudachyate,
Purnasya purnamadaya purnamevavashisyate.

Om shanti shanti shanti

This is perfect, that is perfect, perfect comes from perfect,

Take perfect from perfect and the remainder is perfect.

May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.

[Invocation of the Brihadaaranyaka Upanishad]

 

I exhibited this piece in a small exhibition in London where I took a commission for a bowl with Om Sarve Bhavantu Sukhina.

 

ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः सर्वे सन्तु निरामयः।

सर्वे भद्रणिपश्यन्तु मा कश्चिद्दुःख भाग भवेत्॥

Sarve bhavantu sukhina, sarve santu niramaya

Sarve bhadrani pashyantu, ma kascit dukha bhaga bhavet

May all be happy, may all be free from disease

May all have well-being and none have misery of any kind.

[Brihadaaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.14]

 

This was commissioned as a present for my brother in law who is Chairman of Lucca Leadership [a transformational leadership charity] in North America, and this prayer was adopted as the ‘Lucca Leadership prayer’.  In short, I love that I am using literature with such penetrating meaning.

 

Could you describe how you make the pottery?

 I throw a large bowl on the wheel, and when it is leather hard, after about a week in a damp store, I turn the foot ring. To decorate the bowl , I paint the whole thing in a coloured liquid clay called slip, and use a darker coloured slip to stencil on the prayer.  The stencil is cut out of paper with a knife and as it gets wet in the process can only be used once, therefore each bowl is unique.  The stencil is made so that the prayer will exactly fit around the inside rim of the bowl, so the font size is chosen carefully before it is printed and cut out.  Once the stencil is cut and ready each word is temporarily stuck to the inside rim of the bowl with water so that slip can be applied and the stencil removed. This process is done, word by word, until the whole prayer is complete. 

 

 

 

 

What kind of response do you get from customers?

As I have only made three of these bowls as of now, I cannot really say who is interested in them. So far it is those who have a knowledge of Sanskrit and also those who appreciate the difficulty involved in creating lettering on ceramics.

 

The bowls cost between £80 to £120.  Those who wish to know more are welcome to get in touch with Rachel at rachelmay.webb@virgin.net.

Leather puppetry – Interview

Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath

Bangalore

13^th September 2008

Narrating scenes and episodes, and at times abridged versions of the entire story, of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the art of leather puppetry is found all over India and South East Asia.  Or rather was found.  Nowadays, performances are few and far between, and more often than not reconstructions as it were rather than the traditional village show.  Indonesia’s thriving leather puppetry, Wayang Kulit, is the exception. In July of this year, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath (CKP) opened a new gallery dedicated to the leather puppets of Karnataka, of which it has collected 3,000 over four decades.  General Secretary of the Parishath, Professor MJ Kamalakshi, talks to Venetia Ansell about the tradition and the CKP’s collection.

The art, called Togalugombayeta in Karnataka, involves acting out well known epic episodes using puppets made of flat leather pieces operated by a stick.  The perforated leather is illuminated from behind, making this a form of shadow theatre.  It is thought that the puppets were invented to avoid having gods and goddesses – who feature prominently in Indian epic – depicted by humans.

The shows used to run at night, starting after supper at about 9 and lasting until dawn.  The villagers believed that the performances would bring them good rain during the monsoon season, so the puppeteers would be invited to the village and given food and goods in reciprocation.  If the rains yielded a good crop, the puppeteers might be invited to perform once more – this time to entertain the villagers, exhausted after the harvest – and they would be given a sheep or goat with which to make their puppets.  There are still a few spots where the practice continues, but it is, says Professor Kamalakshi, “very rare”.

At one point, the puppeteers enjoyed the patronage of the king of that area.  They would then function more as itinerant performers, whose task was not only “to teach the villages about the morals and traditions contained in the epics” but also to have a nose around the village.  As they went from house to house collecting their dues, they would note who was rich and find out the latest gossip, and then report back to the king.  Indeed, they were often labelled ‘spies’.

So who were the puppeteers?  Research has identified them as a caste called killekyatha.  Puppetry was very much a family tradition and every aspect of the art was passed on orally – including the details such as which raga to play when and what moral to pronounce at which point.  The killekyathtas‘ mother tongue was always Marathi, but they would use the local language of the place for the show’s dialogue, with the occasional Sanskrit shloka thrown in for good measure.

Professor Kamalakshi, a student of Sanskrit herself, mentions several notable similarities between the structure of the puppet show and that of a typical Sanskrit drama.  At the beginning of the performance, there is an invocation to Ganesh and the audience and sponsors.  This is followed by a conversation between the Killekyatha (represented by a special puppet) and his wife, in which he describes the events they are about to witness.   These two seem to play a role of the sutradhara in a play, as the Professor comments, although their crude humour is also suggestive of the clown or vidushaka.  They also touch on local issues and gossip, a key element in tailoring each performance to its particular audience.  “The preamble is very important to the puppet show”, notes Professor Kamalakshi, “just like in a play, you cannot dive straight into the story”.  During the performance, the use of certain ragas is dictated by the particular rasa that is being evoked – the srngara rasa for instance has a correlative raga.  Although the episodes may contain some grim and terrible material – and much of the Mahabharata particularly does of course revolve around war – the show will never end on a sorrowful note.  The happy ever after ending of Sanskrit drama (and Bollywood films) is to be found here too.  The performance is concluded by the re-entry of the Killekyatha puppet, who, even if he doesn’t say anything, denotes, as Professor Kamalakshi comments, something similar to the ‘The End’ screen of old fashioned films.  And yet, “these people are not literate, or only barely literatre; everything is learnt orally”, which raises interesting questions as to how such links developed.

Professor Kamalakshi’s tutor was the renowned MS Nanjunda Rao, who set up the Parishath and drove the leather puppet intitiative.  The newly-inaugurated gallery is dedicated to him, and CKP has also brought out a book authored by him which provides a detailed survey of the tradition in Karnataka and elsewhere.   As Professor Kamalakshi notes, the thing that sets Karnatakan puppets aside is that they are “a compositon in themselves”.  While other puppets are single characters with greater mobility, these are more like murals, with up to 12 human characters plus the animal figures.  They were designed for performance of course, but can also be decorative.

As you look closely at these puppets, the level of detail is indeed striking.  In one, for instance, you have several women churning curds to make butter.  A small boy scoops a bit of butter out of the urn with his hand.  Above the women the pots where the butter is stored are hanging from a tree to keep them safe from rats, but several cats are already creeping along the branches towards the jars.  Several depict social scenes such as toddy tappers or the unwelcome visit of a tax collector.  History too intruded at times, as the picture below of the British suggests, and the story of a freedom fighter might be interwoven with the epic material. 

The majority of the puppets, though, represent favourite scenes from the two epics, such as Arjuna’s creation of an arrow-ladder stretching from earth to heaven in order to send a message (inscribed in Kannada) to Airavata, the supreme elephant of Indra, asking him to come down and assist his mother in her elephant pooja.  At times, the puppets twist the story slightly.  For instance, for the famous scene where Sita and Ravana are in the grove (Ashokavana) with Hanuman watching, the artist has shown Hanuman high up in a tree above the pair with his long tail hanging down and dangling between them on its tip the ring that Rama sent to Sita.  At times, the puppets are even ‘signed’ by their creator, who writes his own name plus that of his patron.

CKP has organised performances for scholars and interested parties, although they trim the night-long shows down to about an hour.  And indeed many scholars from the US and Germany in particular have gratefully used the rich material available here for their research.  One in particular, Professor Mel Helstein, was instrumental in highlighting this art form in the West.  One anecdote stands out:  In 1980, a Karnatakan troupe travelled to Washington to perform.  After 20 shows, a reporter asked why they had produced no rain.  The troupe leader told him that there were still two shows to go.  The next day there was a downpour.  There is no mention of whether the residents of Washington were as thankful as the village audiences. 

Professor Kamalakshi notes that this is a truly dying art, preserved only through efforts like that of CKP.  Indeed the main way that the puppet making tradition is kept alive is by artisans selling them to tourists.  “It has become commercialised.  They don’t make the puppets as such anymore, instead they make lampshades because they sell better.”  MS Nanjunda Rao was more optimistic, believing that if leather puppetry can adapt itself for modern times it will survive.  “We have to start reorienting the puppets”, he writes.  If the puppeteers could contemporise Ramayana battles by giving the monkey army cannons and dressing Ravana’s army in European uniforms, there should be plenty of scope.

The leather puppet gallery at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath is open Monday to Saturday; tickets are 10 rupees.  MS Nanjunda’s book ‘Leather Puppetry in Karnataka’ is available at the CKP bookshop. 

Interested people may contact Professor Kamalakshi for more details on +91 80 2226 1816/ 2226 3424 or by email on kamalakshimj@yahoo.co.in

All images taken from ‘Leather Puppets in Karnataka’ by MS Nanjunda Rao, courtesy of Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath