Warli
From Wikipedia:
The Warlis or Varlis are an Indian Scheduled Tribe who live in the talukas of Thane, Nasik and Dhule districts of Maharashtra, Valsad District of Gujarat, and the union territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. They have their own beliefs, life, customs and traditions, which is the part of the Composite Hindu Culture. The Warlis speak an unwritten Warli language which belongs to the southern zone of the Indo-Aryan languages, mingling Sanskrit, Marathi and Gujarati words. The word Warli is derived from warla, meaning "piece of land" or "field".
Their oral tradition tells us that the Warlis moved southwards in search of lands for shifting cultivation to the foothills of Sahayadhris, where they live now. With a view to putting an end to what they considered the wasteful practice of shifting cultivation, the British evicted Warli villages deep into the forests, and resettled them on the fringes.
In her book The Painted World of the Warlis Yashodhara Dalmia claimed that the Warlis carry on a tradition stretching back to 2500 or 3000 BCE. Their mural paintings are similar to those done between 500 and 10,000 BCE in the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, in Madhya Pradesh.
Their extremely rudimentary wall paintings use a very basic graphic vocabulary: a circle, a triangle and a square. The circle and triangle come from their observation of nature, the circle representing the sun and the moon, the triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees. Only the square seems to obey a different logic and seems to be a human invention, indicating a sacred enclosure or a piece of land.
So the central motive in each ritual painting is the square, the cauk or caukat (pronounced "chauk" or "chaukat"); inside it we find Palaghata, the mother goddess, symbolizing fertility. Significantly, male gods are unusual among the Warli and are frequently related to spirits which have taken human shape. The central motif in these ritual paintings is surrounded by scenes portraying hunting, fishing and farming, festivals and dances, trees and animals.
Human and animal bodies are represented by two triangles joined at the tip; the upper triangle depicts the trunk and the lower triangle the pelvis. Their precarious equilibrium symbolizes the balance of the universe, and of the couple, and has the practical and amusing advantage of animating the bodies.
The pared down pictorial language is matched by a rudimentary technique. The paintings are usually done inside the huts. The walls are made of a mixture of branches, earth and cow dung, making a red ochre background for the wall paintings. The Warli use only white for their paintings. Their white pigment is a mixture of rice paste and water with gum as a binding. They use a bamboo stick chewed at the end to make it as supple as a paintbrush. The wall paintings are done only for special occasions such as weddings or harvests. The lack of regular artistic activity explains the very crude style of their paintings, which were the preserve of the womenfolk until the late 1970s. But in the 1970s this ritual art took a radical turn, when Jivya Soma Mashe started to paint, not for any special ritual, but because of his artistic pursuits.
The Warli culture portrays one of the best examples of man - environment interaction. Their indigenous practices are proof of how the tribals, though illiterate, had the mechanism to preserve the environment. Life of the Warlis begins with the cradle ceremony by which a child is admitted into the tribe. The next is the lagin (initiation into adulthood with marriage); and the third is the maran and the dis (rites of death and ancestor-ship). The fourth is the zoli ceremony which has two parts: 'empowering' the child to face life in the forest and introducing the child to the community, which is the basis of Warli life.
Nature is considered as mother by the Warlis. It is central to all their customs and traditions. The midwife gives a newborn male an axe and a female a sickle - the two tools necessary to access the bounties of nature. She tells the child not to fear the tiger or the bear or any wild animal; and not to flee from the 'forces of nature'. He should live in harmony with them.From the Govt of India art/craft site:
Women are mainly engaged in the creation of these paintings. These paintings do not depict mythological characters or images of deities, but depict social life. Images of human beings and animals, along with scenes from daily life are created in a loose rhythmic pattern.
These tribal paintings of Maharashtra are traditionally done in the homes of the Warlis. Painted white on mud walls, they are pretty close to pre-historic cave paintings in execution and usually depict scenes of human figures engaged in activities like hunting, dancing, sowing and harvesting.
Stylistically, they can be recognized by the fact that they are painted on an austere mud base using one color, white, with occasional dots in red and yellow. This colour is obtained from grounding rice into white powder. This sobriety is offset by the ebullience of their content. These themes are highly repetitive and symbolic. Many of the Warli paintings that represent Palghat, the marriage god, often include a horse used by the bride and groom. The painting is sacred and without it, the marriage cannot take place. These paintings also serve social and religious aspirations of the local people. It is believed that these paintings invoke powers of the Gods.
In Warli paintings it is rare to see a straight line. A series of dots and dashes make one line. The artists have recently started to draw straight lines in their paintings. These days, even men have taken to painting and they are often done on paper incorporating traditional decorative Warli motifs with modern elements such as the bicycle, etc. Warli paintings on paper have become very popular and are now sold all over India. Today, small paintings are done on cloth and paper but they look best on the walls or in the form of huge murals that bring out the vast and magical world of the Warlis. For the Warlis, tradition is still adhered to but at the same time new ideas have been allowed to seep in which helps them face new challenges from the market.More info at Matsya here and here about the Tarpa Dance and Tree of Life.
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