Koshi and Koshikant (Salhesh’s Nephews)
Shanti 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
A skilful colourist, Dusadh* artist Shanti Devi favours a vibrant palette. She had to work hard to find her idiom, partly because Brahmin and Kayastha women dominated the Mithila art market at the time. As Mani Shekhar Singh explains, “By modeling her paintings on those of Sita Devi, Shanti Devi hoped for recognition and entry into the emerging market for Mithila/Madhubani painting. The art world initially had a very limited notion of what constituted authentic Maithil [adjective for Mithila] art.” [1] (forthcoming, n.p.) In the absence of established Dalit* aesthetic traditions, Dusadh painters first turned to unfamiliar upper caste idioms, themes and narratives. This changed first with the government representative Bhaskar Kulkarni encouraging Dalit artists to paint on paper (countering his instructions to focus on upper caste artists) and thereafter by him advising them to turn to their own themes. The Chamar artist Jamuna Devi was at the forefront of these changes, though in the 1970s, the Dusadh artist Chano Devi would likewise adopt the tattoo idiom at the urging of the German anthropologist Erika Moser-Schmitt. Although Shanti Devi initially emulated Sita Devi (an upper caste Brahmin), being a second-generation Dalit artist, she later benefitted from the two Dalit stalwarts, cherry-picking their techniques to amalgamate them into her idiom. She was also inspired by their thematic departures, frequently choosing to depict the legend of Raja Salhesh (also spelled Salhesa), a semi-mythological deified king and a Dusadh hero.
In Martine Le Coz’s retelling of the Salhesh narrative, he is born as “the high-born prince Jaybhardan, destined to be a great warrior and king. Instead, he questioned social inequalities and sought to establish a new, egalitarian kingdom in the mountains.” [2/3] (referenced by Das 2022: Essays 2) Other oral versions present Salhesh born as a Dusadh, overcoming caste prejudices to become a king. Here, Shanti Devi uses a vivid palette to show Salhesh’ nephews, who – along with Salhesh, his queen Chandravati, his cousin and rival Chuharmal, his brother Motiram and the malin (flower maidens) Dauna and Reshma – all constitute key figures in Salhesh mythology (note that the characters often have variant spellings and pronunciations). In this fighting scene, which shows one figure on a lion (left) and another on a crocodile (right), apparently holding a mace and a club, the background’s flora and fauna and the decorative border are elements used frequently by Jamuna Devi, but Shanti Devi leans heavily towards the bharni style here, using double outlines with angled stripes rather than dots, as well as selective planes of filled in colours, e.g. lemon yellow (bottom right corner).
For her contributions to Mithila art, Shanti Devi received a Padma Shri in 2024. In 2012, she had received the National Merit Award from the Indian Government, for Mithila Painting. She lives and works in Laheriya Ganj village in Bihar’s Madhubani district. Her work is represented in Radford University Art Museum, Radford (USA), and Mithila Museum (Japan), among others.
*Chamar are leatherworkers, including tanners, for instance. Due to the nature of their work, dealing with ‘dead’ animal skins, like the Dusadh (watchmen and agricultural labourers), the Chamar were (sadly, still are) considered hors caste. Such castes are collectively often termed ‘Dalit’. Marathi social activist Jyotirao Phule first used this term in the 1880s; from the Sanskrit, it means ‘divided, split, broken, scattered’.
Aurogeeta Das, 2024
References:
[1] Singh, Mani Shekhar (forthcoming, 2025), “Color, Rhythm, and Repetition in Paintings by Dalit Women of Mithila” in India’s Mithila Painting, eds. David L. Szanton and Paula Richman, Seattle: University of Washington Press
[2] Das, Aurogeeta (2022) “Flowers from the Earth” in Raja Salhesh’s Garden: Contemporary Dalit Art and Ancient Myths of Mithila – Volume 1, eds. John H. Bowles and Andrew S. Arbury, Radford: Radford University Art Museum and Radford University Foundation Press (eBook), pp. Essays 1-9
[3] Le Coz, Martine (2019) Le roi de la montagne: L’Épopée du Roi Salhesh, Paris: Éditions Massot (in French)
Selected exhibitions (that the artist’s work has featured in, not this particular artwork per se):
Raja Salhesh’s Garden: Contemporary Dalit Art and Ancient Myths of Mithila, India, Covington Gallery (Radford University Art Museum), Radford (USA), 2022
Mithila Medley: Contemporary Arts from an Ancient Culture in North India, Floyd Center for the Arts, Floyd (USA), 2022
Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India, multiple venues in the USA and Canada, 2017-2020
Painting is my Everything: Art from India’s Mithila Region, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (USA) 2018
Mithila Painting: The Evolution of an Art Form, Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco (USA) 2005
Shanti Devi: Madhubani/Forest of Honey, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington (New Zealand), 2005
Not on display
Title/Description: Koshi and Koshikant (Salhesh’s Nephews)
Artist/Maker: Shanti Devi
Born: 1980
Object Type: Painting (mithila)
Materials: Ink and natural colours on handmade paper
Measurements: h. 558.8 x w. 762 mm
Inscription: Signed ‘Shanti Devi, Harijan’, further identified as ‘Wife of Shivan Paswan’ and addressed ‘Village Laheriya Ganj, PO Madhubani, Zila [District] Madhubani’ in Devanagari script, in ink, verso, bottom right corner.
Accession Number: 50901
Production Place: India
Credit Line: Donated by The Ethnic Arts Foundation
