Voices: Dossier of Texts on Tamil Threshold Designs
The following section presents a collection of short texts to provide background information on the Tamil practice of drawing threshold designs. It comprises excerpts from anthropological and art historical texts as well as a newspaper article. The spelling of kolam in this section reflects the spelling in the original texts that I consulted.
1Kolam. A Changing Ritual Folk Art of Tamil Nadu
Edited excerpts from Swiss Indologist Ralph Steinmann’s article ‘Kolam: Form, Technique, and Application of a Changing Ritual Folk Art of Tamil Nadu’ on kolams.1
2Priya Performs Her Morning Duties
Excerpts from the PhD thesis ‘In Conversation with the Kolam Practice’ in social anthropology by Anna Laine.2
3Kolams. A Female Art of the Street
Excerpts from art historian Renate Dohmen’s article ‘The Home and the World’ on traditional Tamil threshold designs.3
4Kolams in Everyday and in Ritual Contexts
Excerpts from ‘To Keep the Tali Strong’ by anthropologist Holly Baker Reynolds.4
5Kolams make the Guinness Book of Records
Excerpts from a newspaper article about Vijayalakshmi Mohan, who holds the world record for creating the largest rangoli pattern.5
1Kōlam. A Changing Ritual Folk Art of Tamil Nadu
The cultural heritage of a people often survives in its folk arts. On the Indian subcontinent, it is the people of Tamil Nadu who have preserved many ancient elements of Hindu tradition in their purest form. […] Kōlam design is one of the folk arts of Tamil Nadu. Today, especially in the rural areas, the drawing of a kōlam still forms an essential part of the daily work routine of women. […] The kōlam art as well as related arts […] are not well known in the Western world. […]
Let us note […] that the term kōlam in its meaning as ‘floor design’ can be documented only from the sixteenth century onwards, and that the kōlam as an art form cannot be identified reliably with any of the classical Indian arts [… T]he above fact leads one to look for the origins of the kōlam art in pre- or non-Aryan cultures with matriarchal traits6 […]
Traditional art forms related to the kōlam are also known in other parts of India: the ālpāna in Bengal, the jhetti in Orissa, the aripanā in Bihar (including the murals and floor designs in Mithila villages), the sañjhi in Uttar Pradesh, the mandana in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the sathiya in Gujarat, the rangoli or rangavalli in the Deccan, the aniyal in Kerala, and especially the muggu(lu) in Andra Pradesh. This diffusion throughout India and the fact that these arts share certain motifs and symbols point to a common origin. Furthermore, all these regional variations are related by the following factors: they are (almost) exclusively practised by women; they are intimately linked with agricultural life and village tradition; they are connected with folk rituals and archaic beliefs in magic;7 the material used for the designs was originally in most regions rice or rather rice flour. […]
With regard to the nature of its design, the kōlam in its most typical and most frequent ‘loop form’ […] can be defined as a pattern consisting of one continuous line or of artistically interlaced or combined forms which most often are enclosed by a frame.
[… A]lmost all the motifs are symbols of fertility and procreation or of the cosmic life force and regeneration and all of them […] are ‘symbols of life’ and therefore highly auspicious. This life-affirming trait of the kōlam also finds its expression in the choice of purely decorative forms, which, combined with symbol motifs, allow for an infinite variety of new designs. […]
When we speak of the kōlam technique, we have to stress again that kōlam art is mainly practised by women, that is, by women from all levels of the society and of every age group.8 Let us not forget, however, that the whole society takes part in this art, inasmuch as the kōlam is the most conspicuous artistic expression of the people and for many the only opportunity to give their houses and dwellings a decorative and appealing look.
The dexterity and agility which the women and adolescent girls display in the placing of even very large and complex kōlam can be explained in terms of its being a daily work, a duty deeply rooted in the life rhythm of the people, initiated before going to bed and performed in the early morning. As a rule, the preparations begin the previous evening when the entrance and the square in front of the house are cleaned with water. Early next morning, often before dawn, this area is then sprinkled with a solution of cow dung and water […]. This treatment of the floor or ground enhances the effect of the kōlam and causes the design to adhere better than it would on a dry and dusty surface.
The material with which the kōlam is drawn is either a white (in rare cases coloured) stone powder or rice flour […]. With the rising cost of rice, rice flour is rarely used today9 or only for small kōlams inside the house. For the larger designs in front of the house, white quartz stone powder […] is used […]. In the modern, multi-storey houses of urban areas, white chalk has become a convenient substitute.
2Priya Performs Her Morning Duties
The chilly village streets lay embedded in dark silence. In the vague light of a distant lamp post, Priya prepares the ground outside her house for the drawing of the morning kolam. Although she has just splashed cold water on her face and brushed her teeth, the darkness makes awakening slow. Priya walks across the street and collects fresh cow dung at the back of the house where her neighbour keeps a few cattle. The dung is mixed with water in a large aluminium bowl. With one hand Priya holds the bowl steady against her hip. With the other, she sprinkles the liquid over the ground from the front wall of the house up to the middle of the street. The liquid is left to sink in for a while, until the dust becomes one with the ground. After sweeping this damp area thoroughly, Priya brings a half coconut shell filled with white powder which she keeps at hand just inside the door. With this powder she will draw an image on the street, the kolam. Facing the entrance of the house, she bends her back and takes a handful of powder. This is made to trickle down between her thumb and index finger into a grid of dots. With swift rhythmical hand movements, she draws a thin line which twists and turns around the dots. When the dots are joined properly, the end of the line meets its beginning. The symmetrical image shines brightly on the damp soil in front of the door. By drawing vertical lines and a couple of small geometrical forms on the step and threshold, Priya completes the act. As she stretches her back, she exchanges a few words with the neighbouring women who are still working on their morning kolam. They are in a hurry to finish before the other daily responsibilities have to be attended to. Priya longs for the coming temple festival when time is given to create large, elaborate kolams in which she can experiment with new ideas and combine the white powder with colours. Still, she is confident that the gods and goddesses will accept today’s small kolam as her offering and invitation to them. They will appreciate her effort to beautifying and completing the appearance of the house. Priya believes that at the break of dawn, the goddess Mariyamman will walk the village streets. Satisfied with Priya’s invitation, the goddess enters the house and gives divine blessings. Mariyamman thus increases the prosperity of Priya’s family members and their home.
Before sunrise and sunset every day, the majority of women in Tamil Nadu , South India, perform the kolam practice outside their homes in a similar way to Priya. The invitation to the deities through the kolam is part of women’s work for the well-being of their family members and surrounding community, and it also provides space for individual creativity. In addition to the daily street performances, kolam are drawn regularly in front of deities and temples. It is mainly an act of Hindu worship, but many Catholic women have incorporated the practice into their religious devotion. Few Protestants and very rarely Muslims are involved. Social and religious ideas and meanings are embodied in the practice, and importantly, it is also constitutive of ideas and meanings in a continuous process of change. Throughout most of India, women enact related practices of drawing images on the ground or on walls. […] They vary regionally and are named differently in the particular local language.10 But it is only in Tamil Nadu, and the bordering states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka11 that the practice is done on a daily basis.
Jayakar, Pupul (1980) The Earthen Drum: An Introduction to the Ritual Arts of Rural India (New Delhi: National Museum).
Rossi, Barbara (1998) From the Ocean of Painting: India’s Popular Paintings 1589 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Stein, Burton (1998) A History of India (Oxford and Massachusetts: Blackwell).
3 Kolams. A Female Art of the Street
Whether one is walking the main streets of Tiruvannamalai – that is weaving one’s way through the bustling crowds, honking motorcycles, throngs of cyclists and cows calmly negotiating the traffic – or making one’s way along the meandering paths linking rows of huts and the occasional shrine, white powdery hand-drawn designs of various sizes will appear and disappear from view as buildings are approached and passed. Placed in front of entrances of private dwellings, shops and municipal buildings alike, these designs form a constant presence on the streets of this small town. And if on the road around sunrise or tea time, one can observe women busily bending over, drawing fresh designs by first erasing the remainders of earlier designs. These well-practised movements only take a few minutes and are carried out twice daily as part of everyday household routines.
The designs are determined by a grid of dots laid down on the ground and are generally classified as either ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’. While both types of designs are based on a grid system, the traditional designs are created by circling what is ideally one continuous loop around these dots, creating abstract knot designs. In contrast, modern designs link rather than circle these dots and frequently also aim to create a recognizable image such as, for example, a bunch of flowers.12 These everyday designs are created by trickling13 finely ground white stone or chalk powder14 through the fingers, guiding the flow with the thumb and index finger.15 When making designs, the executing woman will hold a small bowl, tin or coconut shell vessel with the required supply of powder in one hand, from where handfuls of powder will be taken in quick succession, Following by dotting and drawing the designs in fluid motion, without showing any sign of interruption, if skilfully done. As can be imagined, the drawing, especially of larger designs such as those executed on festival days, requires considerable skill. The woman needs to twist and turn, often 180 degrees, while drawing, without producing even the slightest wobble in the flow of the white powder. She also must not smudge the emerging pattern with her feet as she is moving between the dots and lines of the design.
Once drawn, however, the designs are immediately claimed by the street: people can be seen walking across freshly drawn patterns, and bicycles and other modes of transport are propelled over the designs as a matter of course. This is somewhat unsettling conduct for the Western visitor who, accustomed to different cultural routines, seeks to avoid stepping on the designs when entering buildings, at least when visitors are newly arrived and not yet accustomed to local mores. However, upon probing deeper, this apparent ‘overlooking’ and lack of interest proves to be a misconception. When, for example, local women are approached about their designs, they take great pride in their drawings.
4 Kōlams in Everyday and in Ritual Contexts
There are two contexts for drawing threshold designs or kōlam. One is the everyday context of creating kōlams drawn in front of a building, referred to as entrance kōlams in this text. Second, there are the kōlams drawn in the context of rites performed by women throughout the year, referred to as nonpu kōlams. These rites are related to women’s life cycles and invoke the power of goddesses to achieve and sustain fertility, prosperity and other desired outcomes.
The drawing of kōlams of whatever variety belongs to the province of women, and it is their prerogative, and even duty, to draw them. It is true that males draw kōlams when there are kōlam drawing contests, and sometimes win the competition, but the contest kōlams divorced from their ritual context, secularized into an interesting series of designs, belong only to the realm of the decorative arts, whereas the kōlams women draw on ritual occasions belong to that of the magical arts.
The most commonly encountered kōlams are those drawn at the gateway, entranceway, or threshold of the home. Women draw such kōlams every day, except for those days when the household operates under the structures of death pollution. The drawing of gateway kōlams is a discrete activity, one that takes place independently of any other ritual activities. There is, however, one exception to this rule. On the main ritual day of Varalaksmi Nōnpu, the act of drawing the entranceway kōlam is an act of the nōnpu. This appropriation is unusual for nōnpus. Generally, nōnpu kōlams are drawn inside the home at the pace designated for ritual performance and bear no relationship to the gateway kōlam.
Regardless of where the kōlam is to be drawn, the surface upon which the woman draws the kōlam must first be prepared. This preparation is not comparable to preparing a canvas, for unlike the application of oil paint to canvas, the preparation of the kōlam surface is not a matter of technique imposed by the nature of the materials, but rather one of ritual necessity, purpose, and efficacy. Preparation involves levelling, smoothing, and sweeping so that not a pebble, not a mark, interrupts the surface of the plane. The area is then purified by sprinkling a mixture of cow dung and water over it. In preparing the ground or floor of the home in this way, the woman transforms the area into a qualitatively different ground, a sacred space. All traces of ordinary space are swept and washed away. [...]
The variety of kōlam designs is as extensive as the imaginations of the many women who draw them, but within the variety, there remain two configurational constants: a) the designs are made out of either a continuous unbroken line or superimposed twisting, curving lines; and b) the designs are made with reference to geometrical shapes, either explicitly in cases in which the total design is made up out of triangles, squares, rectangles, or circles; or implicitly in the cases of designs which are formed with a suppressed linear or circular framework, such as lotuses.16
Some nōnpus allow no latitude in the kōlam design, but require instead a specific image. Varalaksmi Nōnpu, for example, requires an eight-petalled lotus. Within this prescription, there is, however, great variety in the execution of such a lotus. The lotus is not exclusive to Lakshmi, but it is pre-eminently one of her symbols. When used in Varalaksmi Nōnpu, the lotus attracts to itself the mythology of Lakshmi; in other contexts, the lotus assumes a more diffused, generalized meaning.
At this point we must refine our definition of kōlam. Besides being a diagram made of white rice flour, what is a kōlam? Two kōlam drawing manuals provide answers. A kōlam is a yantra,17 an ‘instrument for holding or restraining or fastening, a prop, support, or barrier’.18 A kōlam is also a mandala,19 a circle, a ‘map of he cosmos’.20 ‘Except in its greater linear simplicity the yantra, indeed, does not differ from the mandala.21 The three terms – kōlam, yantra, and mandala – are used synonymously.
We have stated that it is by means of kōlams that sacred space is demarcated. This is the first ritual function kōlams perform. Tucci rightly notes, however, that ‘a mandala [read kōlam] is much more than just a consecrated area […]. It is the whole universe in its essential plan, in its process of emanation and or reabsorption.’22 Thus, the drawing of a kōlam is homologous to establishing the world, a centre, a cosmos. In drawing a kōlam the woman becomes a fashioner, an artificer of the cosmos, for she calls into being the spatial and temporal dimensions of the world.
The kōlam is not only a cosmos; it is or can be also the aniconic form of divinity. In its most diffused meaning, for example, the lotus is the eight-directional unfolding cosmos. Less diffuse, the lotus is Devī, the goddess; and more concretely, the lotus is Lakshmi, who is lotus-born, lotus-eyed, and seated on the lotus. Thus, the woman fashions not simply the cosmos, but the cosmos in the form of deity. The kōlam is, then, the cosmos and the deity.
There is yet another dimension to the meaning of the kōlam. As a yantra, the kōlam is a support and a receptacle for divine power. One kōlam manual states that kōlams are to be drawn ‘to invoke the deity’.23 Sacred presence, sacred power, is drawn into the diagram.
The kōlam is then the cosmos, the deity, and a receptacle for the deity, and the periphery of the kōlam delineates the outermost limits of the cosmos and the area to the deity, the two being co-extensive. The outer lines form also a barrier which serves both to protect movement inwards toward the centre made by untoward forces and outwards on the part of the deity who is confined within the demarcated space. It is then not only an apotropaic device; it is also a restraining device. Once the deity is brought into existence, there is to be no dissipation of the deity’s power. The concatenation of interlocking, unbroken lines makes entry to the centre difficult while it simultaneously binds and harnesses the power of the deity at the centre from which it cannot escape.
The centre of the kōlam is a power centre, and in nōnpus, the task of the performer is to appropriate that power to herself. […]
By drawing a kōlam, a woman ‘knows’ the name and/or form of the deity. To know the name of form is to gain power to manipulate and control that deity at will. The woman who knows how to draw the kōlam knows the origins of the world, the origins of the deity. The deity, ordinarily beyond human access, is made accessible to humans, and due to her knowledge of origins, the woman can appropriate the power of the deity or make the deity respond to her wishes, which is simply another form of appropriation, manipulation, and control. […]
The kōlams of nōnpus perform several interrelated functions. They, first of all, consecrate the space where the ritual is to be performed. This consecrated space is cosmic in structure and dimension, and hence the kōlam orients ritual activities not only towards the sacred but towards the cosmos as well. Because their creation is homologous to the creation of the world, in its temporal and spatial dimensions, kōlams propel woman into the strong times of the beginnings. And kōlams make effective in a delimited space the power of the deity. Without the orientation and power centre kōlams provide, succeeding ritual acts are at best futile gestures, barren movements, nugatory deeds.
5Kolams make the Guinness Book of Records
Vijayalakshmi Mohan holds the world record for creating the largest rangoli pattern.
The little girl walked about the streets of Srirangam at dawn to admire the kolams that glowed in front of the houses. In the dim early morning light, women unleashed their creativity on a small area with rice flour. Some of them were masterpieces that went unnoticed. The patterns amazed her; they stuck on in her mind, and years later, she went on to create a Guinness record for the world’s largest rangoli pattern. And Vijayalakshmi Mohan’s love for kolams started at the veranda of her home. ‘My mother Jayalakshmi Ammal drew kolams in front of our house at around 5.30 a.m. every day. I sat by and watched her fingers work.’
The morning ritual trained her in the art of kolams, so much so that Vijayalakshmi could draw her own kolam by the age of five. When in college, she did kolams with 1,000 dots! Kolams were a part of Vijayalakshmi’s life wherever she went. When she settled in Singapore after getting married, her art made her popular in the country. ‘I was invited to schools, colleges, museums, libraries and women’s organizations to demonstrate kolams’, she says.
In 2003, Vijayalakshmi set a Guinness Record with her freehand kolam that measured 2,756 square feet. – the size of three badminton courts. ‘I worked nonstop from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. to finish it’, she says. The previous record was for a 30 foot by 30 foot kolam done by three women in London over three days.
Kolams have taken Vijayalakshmi to several countries, including the US, Australia and Dubai. Patterns out of gem stones on acrylic sheets, weather-proof designs […] she has come up with modern variations to the kolam. ‘The materials I use are new, while the designs are traditional.’ With over 5,000 designs in her repetoire, Vijayalakshmi’s kolams will decorate the Serangoon Road in Singapore this Deepavali.
Vijayalakshmi believes that art can soothe the mind. She volunteers in homes for senior citizens, differently abled and the mentally challenged to teach her art. ‘It works. Art changes people. It gives them emotional release and makes them happy’, she says. ‘If I create a colour kolam when I have fever, I immediately feel better. Kolam gives me energy. It’s also good exercise.’
There is a science behind kolam. Every dot and curve is calculated; there is technique involved in drizzling the right amount of flour on the floor. ‘Traditionally, they were drawn using rice flour at dawn, when the air is pure and oxygen content is high. The flour attracts sparrows, ants and also earthworms’, she says. There is no limit to the number of ways one can improvise a design. Some women maintain books with their own intricate designs. Passed on from mother to daughter, these books carry a bit of history. Vijayalakshmi, for instance, has 300 of her mother’s designs, some of which she refers to even now.