Secrets of the Sacred — Vol. 34
The village of Raghurajpur is unlike any other village in India.
Every house is an artist’s studio. Every family is a family of artists. The walls are painted with murals. The courtyards decorated with patterns. And inside every home, on every available surface, there are paintings — on cloth, on palm leaf, on paper — painted in colours so vivid they seem to glow. These are Pattachitra paintings — from the Sanskrit patta (cloth) and chitra (picture). One of the oldest continuous art traditions in India, with roots going back at least a thousand years. Painted by the Chitrakara community — hereditary artists whose identity, livelihood, and spiritual practice are inseparable from the act of painting. And they are disappearing.
The Making of a Pattachitra
Before a single brushstroke is made, months of preparation are required. The canvas is made — layers of cotton cloth glued with tamarind seed paste and chalk powder, creating a surface that accepts pigment in a way no commercial canvas can replicate. The pigments are made — white from ground conch shells, black from lamp soot, red from hingula mineral, yellow from haritala (orpiment), blue from indigo. Each ground by hand, mixed with kaitha tree gum, stored in coconut shells. The brushes are made from squirrel hair or calf’s ear hair tied to bamboo sticks — the finest sometimes a single hair for intricate details.
Before the first brushstroke, the artist prays. The Chitrakara are devotees of Lord Jagannath. Every Pattachitra painting is an act of worship. The artist is not making a picture. They are making an offering.
The Stories
Pattachitra paintings tell the stories of Lord Jagannath, of Krishna, of Rama, of the ten avatars of Vishnu — in a way standardised over centuries and immediately recognisable. Figures are stylised — large eyes, elongated bodies, specific mudras carrying precise meanings. Borders are elaborate, layered with meaning. Backgrounds are a single rich colour — red, yellow, or black — against which figures stand with extraordinary clarity. Stories unfold in sequence, like a visual scripture designed to transmit sacred knowledge to people who cannot read text.
The Pattachitra is not just a painting. It is a book — a visual scripture, transmitting the sacred stories of the tradition across generations.
The Tradition of the Mahaprasad
Traditionally, the Chitrakara were the official painters of the Jagannath temple at Puri — one of the four sacred dhams of Hinduism. They are considered sevakas — servants of the deity. Their art is a form of seva — service to the divine. When a Chitrakara artist paints Lord Jagannath, they are not making a representation of the deity. In the understanding of the tradition, they are making the deity present — giving form to the formless, making the invisible visible.
What Is Being Lost
Natural pigments are being abandoned for commercial acrylics — faster and cheaper, but paintings that will fade within decades instead of lasting centuries. Traditional patta canvas is being replaced by commercial paper. Complex narrative scrolls are being simplified into single-image tourist souvenirs. And the young people of Raghurajpur are leaving — the art takes years to learn, a lifetime to master, and the cities offer easier money.
What is being lost is not just a style of painting. It is a complete system of knowledge — how to prepare materials, grind pigments, tell sacred stories in visual form, make an act of painting into an act of prayer.
Why It Matters
The Pattachitra tradition is a living example of what happens when art, spirituality, craft, and community are unified — when the making of beautiful things is also an act of devotion, a form of livelihood, and a way of transmitting sacred knowledge across generations. The Chitrakara artists are not just painters. They are priests, storytellers, craftspeople, and devotees — all at once.
The next time you see a Pattachitra painting — in a museum, a gallery, a shop — look carefully. Look at the borders, the figures, the colours. Look at the stories being told. And know that what you are looking at is the work of hands that learned from hands that learned from hands — a chain of transmission stretching back a thousand years, to artists who understood that every brushstroke was a prayer.
Jai Jagannath. 🙏
— Divya India | Spiritual Lifestyle | Wear the Sacred
#SecretsOfTheSacred — Vol. 34