Pyatkar Scroll Painting of Jharkhand

Pyatkar is a well-known scroll-painting tradition of Jharkhand, practised primarily by the Goria community among the region’s tribal groups. It is distinguished by its immediacy and situational nature: artists customarily visit the household of a deceased person soon after death, where they gather accounts of the individual’s life. These accounts—often brief biographical episodes or significant incidents—form the basis of the visual narrative that is produced on site.

At its core, Pyatkar is a narrative art form that closely parallels oral and written modes of storytelling. The scrolls unfold sequentially, using pictorial episodes to structure a life story much as a literary text would. The tradition is also closely linked to the cult of Goddess Manasa, the serpent deity widely venerated in Bengali households, situating Pyatkar within a shared cultural and ritual landscape extending beyond Jharkhand into eastern India.

A defining feature of Pyatkar painting is its subjectivity. Rather than adhering to fixed iconographic templates, artists respond directly to the stories they hear, producing spontaneous sketches that interpret the life of the deceased. These visual narratives are accompanied by self-composed songs and rhymes, performed as the scroll is gradually revealed. Once the outlines are completed, the images are filled in with colours prepared from natural sources, including vegetable dyes, leaves, and locally available soils and clays of varying hues.

To enhance durability and surface finish, Pyatkar artists mix their pigments with natural binding agents. These gums are traditionally extracted from wood apple (bel) and from the resin of the neem tree, lending the paintings both permanence and a subtle sheen. Through this combination of improvised narration, performance, and materially grounded practice, Pyatkar functions as a powerful medium of remembrance, ritual expression, and living cultural heritage.

Prepared pigments are typically stored in coconut shells, which function as simple, portable containers during the painting process. Black is produced from lamp black, obtained by collecting carbon residue from kerosene lamps. Brushes are handmade, using squirrel and goat hair bound together and affixed to slender bamboo sticks. When applied to paper scrolls, these materials yield strikingly vivid visual effects, whose expressive intensity often stands apart from, and implicitly challenges, conventions of modern aesthetic restraint.

The practice of Pyatkar is largely concentrated in villages around Jamshedpur and across the Santhal Parganas region of Jharkhand. Traditionally, Pyatkar painting has been undertaken primarily by men. In recent years, however, women have increasingly entered the practice, sharing in both the labour and the responsibility of visually narrating the lives and deaths of community members. This shift not only reflects changing social roles but also signals new possibilities for continuity and renewal within the tradition.

In recent decades, traditional scroll formats have increasingly been replaced by single-sheet paper works. Alongside this shift, indigenous natural pigments have often given way to synthetic poster colours. While the materials have changed, the iconographic language remains largely consistent: figures continue to be defined through bold black outlines and filled with vivid, contrasting hues. These paper-based Pyatkar paintings are frequently framed and repositioned as decorative objects, enabling their circulation within urban art and craft markets.

This transformation has introduced new forms of economic value and visibility. As a result, the technique has attracted interest from both tribal and non-tribal younger generations, who recognise the expressive power and narrative immediacy of the form. Pyatkar paintings now appear in contemporary interior settings, including hotels, restaurants, and museums, where they are appreciated as distinctive visual artefacts rather than solely as ritual objects.

Pyatkar painting is traditionally associated with the village of Amadubi in eastern Jharkhand, long regarded as a centre of the practice. Despite its cultural significance, artists today face considerable challenges in sustaining interest among younger community members. More than a hundred artisans continue to depend on Pyatkar as their primary source of livelihood, yet economic precarity has compelled many residents of Amadubi to abandon the tradition. In search of stable income, they have turned to other forms of work, including agricultural labour, carpentry, repair services, and tailoring.

The survival of Pyatkar thus remains closely tied to questions of livelihood security and cultural policy. With appropriate and sustained government support—through training, market access, and heritage-sensitive interventions—this long-standing artistic tradition holds the potential to be safeguarded and meaningfully sustained for future generations.