Finding Warli where it belongs

It is impossible to miss Warli art in Mumbai. You walk into any gift store, and you'll easily spot the animated white stick-figures on tea coasters, trays, boxes and paintings.

As art forms go, Warli is pretty old. Yashodara Dalmia, in her book The Painted World of the Warlis suggests that Warli represents a continuous art tradition stretching back to 2500 or 3000 BC.

That sounds plausible. If you check out the rock carvings at Bhimbetka, in Madhya Pradesh, you'll see the similarity to Warli. The Bhimbetka caves have had continuous occupation from Paleolithic times, and the art dates from the Mesolithic period (10,000 years ago) to medieval times.

I was shopping recently with an overseas visitor, when we spotted a typical Warli painting, neatly framed. "You mean this is traditional art?", he said. "It looks almost contemporary, very stylish!" And I thought to myself, perhaps that's what folk art is all about, perhaps it is timeless in some sense.

In Bombay's fancy gift stores, Warli art has been transformed into something fashionable. But this week, on my way to Mumbai's Kanheri Caves, I was very pleased to Warli art in its natural setting for the first time - on the walls of a mud house. The house was 'adobe' style, a mud hut, but with a tiled roof. The men of the household were on the roof, repairing it before the monsoon set in.

Here is a closer look at one section of the painting:

The entire village seems to be illustrated in it - dogs, cats, cows, women, men, houses, the village well. Notice how everyone is busy - drawing water, sweeping, tending cattle, cooking, carrying things. In fact, when I saw the painting it was like seeing the sleepy village come alive. My favourite bit though, are the village hens, check them out! I suspect one of them is the rooster, and the rest his harem!

The name JAG is written on the wall in both English and Marathi, obviously it is the name of the painter. I can't tell whether that's a male name or a female one...Warli is traditionally a woman's art though. Warli paintings are typically done before weddings, to seek the blessings of the goddess. So perhaps they had a wedding in the family recently.

If you want to see Warli painting in progress, or the inside of a Warli home, you simply shouldn't miss Dr. Stephen Huyler's wonderful collection of photos on his Painted Prayers website.

Complex complex

Guess what this is!

This is a map of the Buddhist caves at Kanheri. A bit like a rabbit warren, don't you think? Kanheri grew over a period of eight centuries to become one of Western India's largest Buddhist monk settlements. As it grew, the monks carved out more and more caves, until the entire hill was dotted with prayer halls, sleeping quarters and water tanks.

Here's the key to the map. As you can see there are over a hundred caves - with lots of tanks and cisterns to store water.

If you ever get to Kanheri, use the map to figure out how to get from cave to cave. The starting point is the Booking Office, which you can see illustrated at the bottom of the map.

It can be interesting. One overseas couple who tried it had this to say: "The map in the guide book looked bizarre. It was simply a series of dots and numbers that resembled a child's connect-the-dots puzzle. However, like so many other systems in India that seem totally illogical or unintelligible on the surface, those amazing little numbers helped us find all the caves we wanted to see in that honeycombed ravine. That was just as well, because there was no one to ask for directions!".

Kanheri is set well inside Sanjay Gandhi National Park, so it is calm and quiet and green, very different from Bombay's usual bustle and noise. See for yourself.

Not just another tree

If you stand at the Police Headquarters on Regal Circle and look towards the Prince of Wales Museum, you'll spot a large pipal tree.

How do I recognise the pipal, you ask? By the leaf, of course! What other Indian leaf has such a perfectly pointed end?

And what other tree has inspired so much devotion? This is the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment.

At Bodhgaya, the place of his enlightenment, people still worship this tree. And everywhere in India, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists treat this tree as sacred. Women pray to the pipal to be blessed with children. (By the way, the Latin name for this tree is Ficus Religiosa).

In the early years, the Buddha forbade images of himself - so his followers looked to other symbols for inspiration. The pipal tree, the wheel of dharma, the deer recalling the sermon at Sarnath, Buddha's footprints, all symbolized him till about the 1st century AD. This austere form of Buddhism is called the Hinayana tradition.

It was only later, when Mahayana Buddhism transformed the Buddha into a God, that carven images of Buddha came to be made. Legends of Buddha's previous births, the Jataka tales, and episodes from his life, all formed sources of inspiration for Mahayana painters and sculptors. You can still see the austere legacy of Hinayana Buddhist monks at Kanheri Caves in Mumbai.

And because Kanheri was a thriving settlement for many centuries, you can also see how more and more ornamentation crept into this beautiful simple religion as Mahayana became popular. Check out the add-on Buddhas carved into niches in the first four photos on this page. They're so clearly an after-thought! And on the other hand, in the more recent caves, there are large figures of the Buddha hollowed out of stone, very much a part of the planned design.