Kohbar
Leela Devi
Life Story
The Mithila region covers a part of the northern state of Bihar in India and extends into the Terai lowlands of southern Nepal. Most Mithila artists today live in the Indian town of Madhubani and its surrounding villages, so Mithila art is sometimes termed Madhubani art. Literary references indicate that Mithila’s women were painting gods and goddesses on their homes’ interior walls at least as early as the 14th century. The images created for domestic rituals promoted fertility, abundance, marital felicity and family wellbeing. Mithila’s women used colours made from organic and mineral pigments, applying them to cow-dung and mud-plastered walls with simple bamboo and raw cotton brushes.
In 1934, following an earthquake near Madhubani, collapsed walls in the region revealed interior murals to the British colonial official William G Archer. Archer photographed many of these paintings through the 1930s, and in 1949 published an article about them in the Indian art journal, Mārg, bringing wider attention. In 1966-67, in the midst of a drought in Mithila, Pupul Jayakar came up with the idea to commission Mithila women to paint on paper, for sale, to support dwindling family incomes. Jayakar, at the time director of the All India Handicrafts Board and also Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s cultural advisor, employed Bhaskar Kulkarni, a Bombay-based artist, to encourage Mithila’s women to transfer their wall paintings onto paper. This formed the genesis of what is known as Mithila art today. While initially centered on women from the upper castes (Kayastha and Brahmin), today, the practice extends to male artists and to many castes, including especially the oppressed Chamar and Dusadh castes.
Note: This text draws upon an essay by Aurogeeta Das and David Szanton in Das, Aurogeeta et al (2017) Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India, Washington D.C.: International Arts and Artists (IA&A), pp. 18-25
The kohbar image derives its name from the kohbar ghar (conjugal chamber) in Mithila, India. The bride and groom spend their first nights as a married couple in this chamber. It was primarily the kohbar ghar murals that formed the genesis of the initial transfer to paper that is referred to as Mithila art today.
Traditional motifs painted in this chamber are believed to be symbols (not representations) of male and female fertility. A kamaldah (lotus pond) symbolises women’s fertility and the bamboo grove symbolises male potency. Together, both also symbolise the earth’s fertility. Other common motifs in the kohbar tableau include a representation of the bridal couple, an idealised divine couple (nowadays usually Shiva and Parvati), the sun, the moon, the chequered mat on which the bridal couple sleep, and other wedding imagery, such as the kalas (auspicious pot filled with ritual foods).
Leela Devi’s Kohbar focuses on the lotus pond, interspersing nature’s abundance with wedding symbolism. On the top corners are the sun (left) and moon (right), who witness the wedding. The faces around the pond are women representing female fertility. Flanking the female face at the top centre are two deep platters shown with leaf-like forms. To the left, these forms represent navagraha (the nine planets), who also bear witness to the wedding, as do the pancha tatwa to the right (the five elements: ether, wind, fire, water and earth). On the bottom left corner are symbols of conjugal harmony and marriage, including amorous fish, canoodling birds, and a pair of earthen pots, as well as the bridal couple in their wedding finery. At the bottom centre is the chequered mat, on which the bridal couple spend their first conjugal nights. To the mat’s right, the bride performs the Gauri Puja ahead of the wedding, to pray for a good husband and marital harmony. Gauri is a manifestation of Parvati, who is in turn goddess Durga’s manifestation. The Gauri Puja is performed exclusively by women.
Encircling the female face at the centre are lotus buds and all around are eels (perhaps elvers too), a turtle and a fish. The women’s faces along the outer circle form a flowering lotus, encircled by parrots and the whole interspersed with flowers and leaves. These collectively symbolise abundance, as does the border with pairs of birds pecking at flowers, who are perhaps deliberately shaped like mangoes, also symbols of abundance. On the top right corner is bans. As Jain explains, this symbol metaphorically represents the bridegroom and “epitomises the male regenerative energy . . . The bamboo plant . . . multiplies and spreads rapidly and has therefore become associated with male fertility”. [1] (1997: 57) The entire drawing, executed in black and red ink, is rendered in Leela Devi’s characteristically delicate line work, in Mithila’s kachni style.
Leela Devi reportedly started learning Mithila art from the renowned Ganga Devi, in 1976. She received a State award from the government of Bihar in 1985 and a National Award for crafts from the central Government of India in 1987.
Aurogeeta Das, 2024
References
[1] Jain, Jyotindra (1997) Ganga Devi: Tradition and Expression in Mithila Painting, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing
Selected exhibitions (that the artist’s work has featured in, not this particular artwork per se):
Tradition and Transformation: Mithila Art of India, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Mansfield (USA), 2022
Mithila Painting: Evolution of an Art Form, Syracuse University Art Galleries (USA), 2014
Not on display
Title/Description: Kohbar
Artist/Maker: Leela Devi
Born: 2004
Object Type: Painting (mithila)
Materials: Ink on handmade paper
Measurements: h. 558.8 x w. 762 mm
Inscription: Signed Leela Devi, with place name Raseedpur, in Devanagari script, in ink, recto, bottom off centre.
Accession Number: 50892
Production Place: Bihar, India
Credit Line: Donated by The Ethnic Arts Foundation
