Phad

1. Regional setting and cultural significance

Phad belongs to Rajasthan’s interconnected traditions of visual storytelling, heroic balladry and worship of local deities. Its best-known production centres are Shahpura and Bhilwara in south-eastern Rajasthan. The tradition has been transmitted over several centuries, although claims assigning it a precise founding date should be treated cautiously. Surviving paintings, hereditary craft knowledge and oral performance traditions together provide evidence for its history.

Its principal narratives concern Pabuji and Devnarayan. Pabuji is remembered as a heroic protector associated with cattle, pastoral life and the camel-herding world. His worship has particular importance among Raika or Rabari pastoralists, although it is not confined to them. Devnarayan is especially revered by Gurjar communities and is worshipped as an incarnation of Vishnu. The painted narratives connect divine power with protection, kinship, conflict, promises and the concerns of rural society.

The categories of folk art, religious art and performing art overlap in Phad. Calling it merely decorative painting misses its traditional purpose. Conversely, describing it as an exclusively tribal art is misleading: its makers, performers and patrons belong to distinct artisan, pastoral and other social groups. This interaction makes Phad useful for understanding how regional religious traditions are sustained outside monumental temples.

• Locate Phad in Rajasthan, not in the Odisha Pattachitra or Telangana Cheriyal traditions.
• Distinguish the community that paints a scroll from the communities that perform or sponsor its narrative.
• Treat regional deity traditions as living practices, not simply as illustrations of pan-Indian mythology.

2. Materials, technique and visual language

A traditional phad is painted on a long cotton cloth. The surface is sized with a starch-based preparation and burnished to create a smooth, relatively non-absorbent ground. Rice starch is commonly described in accounts of the craft. Preparation matters because the textile must support detailed painting while remaining flexible enough to be rolled, transported and repeatedly displayed.

The painter sketches the composition and fills it through an organised sequence of colours, details and outlines. Traditional practice uses pigments derived from natural materials, including mineral and plant sources, though contemporary workshops may also use commercially prepared colours. Reds, yellows, oranges, greens, blues and black outlines contribute to the recognisable palette. It would therefore be inaccurate to assume that every phad sold today uses only natural pigments.

The visual field contains numerous episodes rather than one isolated scene. Principal deities and important figures are usually larger than subordinate characters, expressing hierarchical scale. Architecture, animals, battles, processions and courtly or domestic settings help organise the story. Figures frequently face one another, creating a sense of interaction within the painted world. Bold contours and relatively flat colour areas make the imagery legible during performance.

Narrative arrangement is not necessarily a simple left-to-right sequence. Episodes may be grouped around major figures and settings, while the performer supplies connections between them. Scroll dimensions vary with the deity, commission and intended use. Traditional performance scrolls can be several metres long; smaller contemporary paintings should not be mistaken for the full ritual format.

• Core identifiers: prepared cloth, elongated format, dense episodic composition, bold outlines and hierarchical figures.
• The painting serves as a narrative framework rather than a written script.
• The completion or opening of the deity’s eyes is associated with ritual significance in traditional accounts of the craft.

3. Bhopas, music and the portable shrine

The bhopa is a priest-singer and custodian of the narrative, not simply a guide explaining an artwork. During a traditional performance, the scroll is unfurled and erected before the audience, often at night. Invocation, singing, instrumental accompaniment, spoken explanation and gestures transform the cloth into a temporary sacred setting. Patrons may commission performances to seek protection, fulfil a vow or express gratitude.

In Pabuji performances, the bhopa commonly plays the ravanhatta, a bowed string instrument. A bhopi, often his wife, assists through singing and illumination of the relevant painted episodes with a lamp. The light helps direct audience attention across the crowded composition. The performers’ knowledge allows them to move between scenes, elaborate a character’s actions and relate the narrative to the listeners’ concerns.

Devnarayan performance has its own conventions and is associated with the jantar, a string instrument distinct from the ravanhatta. These associations are useful examination facts, but they should not lead to the assumption that all Phad performances follow identical musical arrangements. The two deity traditions have different epic repertoires, ritual contexts and communities of support.

A phad consequently brings together a material object and embodied knowledge. Preserving only the painted cloth cannot preserve the pronunciation, melody, interpretive skill, ritual protocol or social relationships involved in its performance. This distinction between tangible heritage and intangible cultural heritage is central to its contemporary conservation.

• Pabuji: remember the association with the ravanhatta.
• Devnarayan: remember the association with the jantar.
• Bhopa and bhopi: performers who connect the painted episodes through oral narration and ritual.

4. Makers, transmission and contemporary adaptation

Joshi painter families traditionally maintained the specialised knowledge required to produce phads. Training involved surface preparation, drawing conventions, pigment handling, iconography and the placement of episodes. Historical restrictions on access to training have gradually loosened as workshops, teaching initiatives and new patronage networks have brought additional learners into the craft.

Shree Lal Joshi, also written as Shri Lal Joshi, was a prominent modern exponent who received the Padma Shri in 2006. He and other practitioners helped bring Phad to audiences beyond its customary ritual setting. Contemporary artists have experimented with smaller formats and subjects drawn from wider mythological, historical and social themes while retaining elements of its visual language.

These changes create opportunities as well as tensions. Paintings made for homes, museums and tourism can generate income and sustain artistic skills. However, a framed decorative work does not necessarily support the bhopa’s livelihood or preserve an entire epic repertoire. Conservation policy must therefore consider painters and performers separately, while also recognising their historical interdependence.

Useful interventions include fairly paid commissions, community-led documentation, apprenticeships, recordings made with informed consent and support for live performance. Museums should identify the deity, artist, place of production and original function wherever possible. Marketing every Rajasthani cloth painting as Phad weakens public understanding of the tradition.

• Innovation is not automatically a loss of authenticity; distinguish adaptation from inaccurate attribution.
• Documentation should record songs, instruments, performance occasions and patron communities alongside the paintings.
• Avoid assuming UNESCO inscription or a particular legal protection without checking the relevant official register.

5. Examination approach and wider connections

For Prelims, study Phad through a linked set of identifiers: Rajasthan, cloth scroll, Pabuji or Devnarayan, Joshi painters and bhopa performance. Questions may test a correct regional pairing, the relationship between an instrument and a narrative tradition, or the difference between a painting’s maker and its performer. None of these identifiers alone fully explains the form.

For broader cultural analysis, Phad demonstrates how oral and visual media reinforce each other. The painting helps organise memory, while the singer provides movement, sequence and interpretation. It also shows that religious spaces need not be permanent buildings: a rolled textile can become a travelling focus of worship.

Comparison with other painting traditions should use several criteria together: region, support material, subject matter and use. Pattachitra and Cheriyal may share narrative or religious features with Phad, but their histories and performance relationships differ. Equally, not every narrative scroll is a ritual shrine. Such distinctions prevent superficial matching based only on bright colours or mythological subjects.

• High-value themes: syncretic cultural processes, oral transmission, pastoral patronage and craft livelihoods.
• Conservation principle: safeguard the object, the knowledge and the community that gives it meaning.

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