rangoli

rangoli, intricate traditional floor art that women in India design at the thresholds of their homes’ front doors, in their homes for puja (worship), and, often in more-resplendent forms, for festivals. Across India the designs have different names and styles, and women employ various materials to draw rangolis that range from simple to elaborate. The floor designs are made of powders, flowers, or chalks and are intended to be ephemeral, lasting a short time before fading or being eaten by creatures. The word rangoli comes from the Sanskrit rangavali, meaning “line of color,” which is composed of the words ranga (“color”) and avali (“line” or “row”). In this way, the term is similar to Diwali, from the Sanskrit deepavali, meaning “row of lights.” Diwali is a festival for which Hindus make elaborate rangolis, further decorated by brilliant burning deepas (“lamps”).

History and diversity

The earliest clear reference in Indian literature to an art form like rangoli occurs in the Kamasutra, written in the 3rd century ce, which lists among the 64 art forms tandula-kusuma-vali-vikara, meaning “making lines of rice powder and flowers.” Floor paintings in general, and specifically rangavalis made on the floor for wedding decorations, are mentioned in the Narada Shilpa Shastra, an architectural textbook from approximately the 6th century. By the 10th century, Sanskrit texts of various genres used the word rangavali for artwork made at doorsteps and for festive occasions. Many Sanskrit texts on art and painting refer to this art form as dhuli citra (“powder painting”) or bhauma citra (“floor painting”).

In different regions and vernacular languages across India, this art form goes by a variety of names. The term rangoli, which originated in what is now Maharashtra state, is used throughout much of central and northern India and has become a pan-Indian umbrella term for daily or festive floor art. In Tamil Nadu state in southeastern India, this art form is called kolam, which has a rich tradition as a daily morning household ritual, being practiced as an art of prayer and protection and even as a competitive endeavor.

While men also make floor art throughout India as part of various ritual practices, rangoli is predominantly a women’s folk art. Especially in southern India women create such designs early in the morning just outside the front doors of their homes as a part of their morning household rituals. They also create them inside their homes for puja spaces and at the thresholds of temples, businesses, and any other place deemed sacred and intended to be set off as a zone of auspiciousness—a sacred space of prosperity, divine favor, and purity. In some parts of India women also craft these designs as part of competitions.

Designs and methods

Throughout India rangolis come in a variety of forms, and, while there is ample leeway for artists to design them as they wish, there are general tendencies in style. Rangolis can be figurative designs in the shape of gods, animals, plants or flowers (lotuses are common), or footprints (especially of the goddess Lakshmi). The swastika symbol of auspiciousness or the symbol of the sacred mantra om are often included. In other instances, this art form consists of geometric nonfigurative patterns employing lines, dots, and shapes to make designs that range from quite simple to more intricate to even labyrinthine. Their use of symmetry, dots and lines, patterns, fractals, and even Fibonacci sequences make them mathematically intriguing. Modern rangolis can also include words, such as “Happy Diwali.”

Southern Indian styles generally eschew figurative designs in favor of purely geometric ones, or, occasionally, geometric ones with a floral flourish. Southern kolam and muggu designs are predominantly white, being made only with rice flour or sometimes chalk, though a bit of red or other colors may be added. Elsewhere in India the art form tends to be a mix of figurative and geometric designs or purely figurative ones, and they are often vibrantly colorful. The materials used for rangoli include flowers, rice flour, colored powders, chalk, and colored sand. Stencils, piping tools, sieves, and other implements may also be employed to create the designs. Some women today use paint in order to avoid having to remake their designs daily.

Many lines, many meanings

Rangolis are appreciated as art forms relished by those who take pleasure in looking at and crafting them, and some who make them see the process as meditative. In addition, rangolis have numerous ritual and symbolic meanings. As a design on the threshold of a home, the rangoli serves as a marker of auspiciousness and good fortune as well as a means of averting misfortune or the evil eye. Women who draw rangolis consider them to be a way of welcoming good fortune, specifically by welcoming the goddess Lakshmi (goddess of wealth). Her footsteps are often depicted in them. The designs can serve as a sign of welcoming and hospitality not just toward gods but toward people in the local community.

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The rangoli can also serve as a mark of ritual purity and its absence as a mark of ritual pollution. Among those who follow traditional Hindu customs, it is not usually drawn when a woman is menstruating or when members of a household are grieving for a lost relative—times when the household would be deemed ritually impure and would not be welcoming of others. For this reason, scholar Vijaya Nagarajan likens the kolam to the bindi (Tamil: pottu) on a woman’s forehead—a threshold design that, for those following traditional customs, can mark purity and auspiciousness in its presence and pollution and inauspiciousness in its absence.

The kolam can also function as a means of communication. As one woman told Nagarajan,

In the time before phones and telegraphs, the kolam was the way we found out what happened in the house during the night. If there was a huge vishesham [special] kolam and we knew that there was no wedding planned that day, then we may guess that the girl in the house has come of age or a baby has been born.

Just as the rangoli demarcates a division of space between the outdoors and the home to be sanctified, its creation early in the morning also marks a separation between night and day and is considered by women who make such designs to be a way of welcoming the gods into the home at daybreak.

Furthermore, the rangoli is fleeting, being an ephemeral art form intended to be created with the utmost care and then allowed to disintegrate. For some women, the impermanence reflects the transience of life itself. In this way, such drawings are similar to Tibetan Buddhist sand mandalas. Women who use rice flour say that the drawings feed the innumerable ants, birds, and other tiny creatures who carry off the creations for sustenance. Unlike artwork meant only to be viewed, the rangoli is to be eaten by hungry souls. It is also an artwork that can be stepped on. While some people avoid it out of respect (a tricky task in bustling urban India), others consider it sacred space: ‘‘Stepping on the kolam is like stepping into the Ganges River,’’ one woman told Nagarajan.

Rangolis are drawn on many festive occasions (utsavas) and for life-cycle rituals (samskaras). Women craft particularly prominent and elaborate rangolis for Diwali, the colorful lines being combined with lighted lamps. As one woman commented to The New York Times about the rangoli: “The Christmas tree is to Christmas as rangoli is to Diwali. The festival is incomplete without it.” Rangolis are also made for Makar Sankranti, Pongal, Navratri, and other festive occasions. They are drawn for various celebratory life-cycle rituals, such as those for births, naming ceremonies, girls’ first menstruation, and weddings. At Sikh weddings an elaborate rangoli is drawn at the feet of the bride and groom. Indeed, rangolis are not limited to Hindus, as Sikhs and Jains also make these elaborate floor designs. Even Christians in India have adopted the practice, using Christian imagery.

The full meaning of the rangoli and its local variations is complex, being more than the sum of the art form’s physical lines and figures, its religious and cultural meanings, and its transience. Indologist David Shulman eloquently paints a picture of the kolam’s symbolism thus:

The kolam is a sign; also both less and more than a sign. As the day progresses, it will be worn away by the many feet entering or leaving the house. The rice powder mingles with the dust of the street; the sign fails to retain its true form. Nor is it intended to do so, any more than are the great stone temples.…For temple and kolam both express a sense of the real as that which is hidden and yet held in external form.…Both mark a transition and suggest a movement. (The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry [1985])

Likewise, women in India and those who have emigrated around the world continue to design rangolis, and the styles, materials, and locations continue to evolve, indicating unfolding transitions and continuities of space and time.