Warli
The Warlis or Varlis are an indigenous tribe or Adivasis, living in Mountainous as well as coastal areas of Maharashtra-Gujarat border and surrounding areas.They have their own animistic beliefs,life,customs and traditions,as a result of acculturation they have adopted many Hindu beliefs. The Warlis speak an unwritten Varli language which belong to the southern zone of the Indo-Aryan languages.[1]
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[edit] Etymology
The word Warli is derived from warla, meaning "piece of land" or "field".[citation needed]
[edit] Demographics
Warlis are found in Dahanu and Talasari talukas of the northern Thane district, parts of Nashik and Dhule districts of Maharashtra, Valsad District ofGujarat,[2] and the union territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.[3]
Their oral tradition tells us that the Warlis moved southwards in search of lands for shifting cultivation to the foothills of the Sahyadri (also known as the Western Ghats), where they live now. With a view to putting an end to what they considered the wasteful practice of shifting cultivation, the British evictedWarli villages deep into the forests, and resettled them on the fringes.
[edit] Language
The Warli speak their own Indo-Aryan dialect, which is mixture of Khandeshi Bhili and Marathi. They also speak Marathi and Gujarati, and use them from written communication.[4][1]
[edit] Warli painting
In her book The Painted World of the Warlis Yashodhara Dalmia claimed that the Warlis carry on a tradition stretching back to 2500 or 3000 BCE. Their mural paintings are similar to those done between 500 and 10,000 BCE in the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, in Madhya Pradesh.
Their extremely rudimentary wall paintings use a very basic graphic vocabulary: a circle, a triangle and a square.There paintings were monosyllbic. The circle and triangle come from their observation of nature, the circle representing the sun and the moon, the triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees. Only the square seems to obey a different logic and seems to be a human invention, indicating a sacred enclosure or a piece of land. So the central motive in each ritual painting is the square, known as the "chauk" or "chaukat", mostly of two types: Devchauk and Lagnachauk. Inside a Devchauk, we find Palaghata, the mother goddess, symbolizing fertility.[5] Significantly, male gods are unusual among the Warli and are frequently related to spirits which have taken human shape. The central motif in these ritual paintings is surrounded by scenes portraying hunting, fishing and farming, festivals and dances, trees and animals. Human and animal bodies are represented by two triangles joined at the tip; the upper triangle depicts the trunk and the lower triangle the pelvis. Their precarious equilibrium symbolizes the balance of the universe, and of the couple, and has the practical and amusing advantage of animating the bodies.
The pared down pictorial language is matched by a rudimentary technique. The ritual paintings are usually done inside the huts. The walls are made of a mixture of branches, earth and cow dung, making a red ochre background for the wall paintings. The Warli use only white for their paintings. Their white pigment is a mixture of rice paste and water with gum as a binding. They use a bamboo stick chewed at the end to make it as supple as a paintbrush. The wall paintings are done only for special occasions such as weddings or harvests. The lack of regular artistic activity explains the very crude style of their paintings, which were the preserve of the womenfolk until the late 1970s. But in the 1970s this ritual art took a radical turn, when Jivya Soma Mashe started to paint, not for any special ritual, but because of his artistic pursuits.
[edit] Concept of Nature as Mother
Nature is considered as mother by the Warlis. It is central to all their customs and traditions. The midwife gives a newborn male an axe and a female a sickle - the two tools necessary to access the bounties of nature. She tells the child not to fear the tiger or the bear or any wild animal; and not to flee from the 'forces of nature'. He should live in harmony with them.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Kumar Suresh Singh, Rajendra Behari Lal, Anthropological Survey of India (2003). Gujarat, Part 3. 1597 pages (see page:1431-1438): Popular Prakashan. ISBN 8179911063, 9788179911068.
- ^ Census of India 2001, The Scheduled Tribes of Gujarat
- ^ Census of India 2001, The Scheduled Tribes of Dadra and Nagar Haveli
- ^ Masica, Colin P. (1993). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1597 pages. ISBN 8179911063, 9788179911068.
- ^ Tribhuwan, Robin D.; Finkenauer, Maike (2003). Threads Together: A Comparative Study of Tribal and Pre-historic Rock Paintings. Delhi: Discovery Publishing House. pp. 13-5. ISBN 81-7141-644-6. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=lBXdIQVeIS0C&pg=PA13&dq=Dev+Chowk&hl=en&ei=9f3CTKHMAou4vgO_ncDOCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Dev%20Chowk&f=false.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Warli paintings |
- The Warlis and the Dhangars: The Context of the Commons
- Warli Folk Painting Summary of Warli art by the Indian government
- www.warli.in Warli art dedicated web page by tribals
[edit] Further reading
- Dalmia, Yashodhara, (1988). Painted World of the Warlis: Art and Ritual of the Warli Tribes of Maharashtra, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi.
- Dandekar, Ajay (ed.) (1998). Mythos and Logos of the Warlis: A Tribal Worldview, New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, ISBN 81-7022-692-9.
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