MAJULI
MASK - ART & CULTURE
News:
Assam's Majuli Gets GI Tag for Mask
Making,
Manuscript Painting
What's
in the news?
●
Traditional Majuli masks of Assam were
given a Geographical Indication (GI) tag by the Centre. Majuli manuscript painting also got the Gl label.
Key
takeaways:
●
Majuli, the largest river island in the
world and the seat of Assam's neo-Vaishnavite tradition, has been home to the
art of mask-making since the 16th century.
Majuli
Masks:
●
The handmade masks are traditionally used
to depict characters in bhoonas, or theatrical performances with devotional
messages under the neo-Vaishnavite
tradition, introduced by the 15th-16th century reformer saint Sankardeva.
●
The masks can depict gods, goddesses,
demons, animals and birds-Ravana, Garuda, Narasimha, Hanuman, Varaha Surpanakha
all feature.
●
They can range in size from those covering
just the face (mukh mukha), which take around five days to make, to those covering the whole head and body of the
performer (cho mukha), which can take up to one-and-a-half months to make.
●
According to the application made for the
patent, the masks are made of bamboo,
clay, dung, cloth, cotton, wood and other materials available in the
riverine surroundings of their makers,
Practised
in Monsteries:
●
Sattras are monastic institutions
established by Srimanta Sankardev and his disciples as centres of religious,
social and cultural reform.
●
Today, they are also centres of
traditional performing arts such as borgeet (songs), xattriya (dance) and
bhaana (theatre), which are an integral part of the Sankardev tradition.
●
Majuli has 22 sattras, and the patent
application states that the mask making tradition is concentrated in four of
them Samaguri Sattra, Natun Samaguri
Sattra, Bihimpur Sattra, Alengi Narasimha Sattra.
●
Hemchandra Goswami, sattrad- hikar or the
administrative head of the Samaguri Sattra and a well-known practitioner of the
art, said that while the masks were traditionally made only for bhaonas, over
the past couple of decades, the Samaguri sattra has been trying to promote
mask-making as an art form in its own right.
Go
back to basics:
Majuli
Paintings:
●
It is a form of painting, also originating
in the 16th century, done on sanchi pat, or manuscripts made of the bark of the
sanchi or agar tree, using homemade ink.
●
This art was patronised by Ahom kings.