Rangoli in India – decoration, symbols, charms

Borchers Dörte

Abstract

When walking through South Indian residential neighbourhoods one is likely to spot drawings at the thresholds of houses' front doors. These drawings are more or less elaborated designs of knots, pictures composed of several separate elements, outlines of objects of daily or ritual life or gods. These pictures are called Rãgāvalī and may be interpreted by painters and onlookers as art, daily ritual, one of the tasks of women, symbols of religious ideas, spells against evil spirits, invitations for good luck or expressions of mathematical ideas. The art of producing Rãgāvalī is mostly practiced by women who first clean the floor by sprinkling it with a mixture of water and cowdung before creating the drawing of the day by letting rice flower slip from the fingers of their right hand. The motives and movements are passed on from mothers to daughters and from grandmothers to granddaughters. Nowadays, Rãgāvalī designs are also drawn with different kinds of powder or pastes and the designs may come from pattern books or may be produced with the help of stencils. There are Rãgāvalī-competitions and internet-sites featuring Rãgāvalī. Rãgāvalī represent a scope of graphic expressions, ranging from purely decorative pictures to meaningful signs. The function and arrangement of some Rãgāvalī is similar to the pictorial notation system used by Aztecs in precolumbian times for recording historical events while other Rãgāvalī have more in common with charms like Pennsylvania Dutch Hex signs and again other Rãgāvalī are just supposed to please the eye. Rãgāvalī illustrate how graphic signs belonging to various functional categories are comprised in a single cultural category in which the borders between the functional categories are non-existant.