Craft

বিষ্ণুপুরের পোড়ামাটির কাজ

Bishnupur Terracotta and the Bankura Horse

Bishnupur and Panchmura, Bankura district; Malla dynasty temples, 17th-18th century

Where it stands

Evolving

The Panchmura Kumbhakar potters' cluster, Bankura, GI-registered as Bankura Panchmura Terracotta Craft since 2018

A Bankura horse: the long neck and pricked ears are a direct consequence of assembling the animal from wheel-thrown parts.Sumita Roy Dutta, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There is no stone in the Bengal delta. So when the Malla kings of Bishnupur built their temples, they built them in brick and clad every surface in moulded, carved, fired clay, battle scenes, hunts, the Ramayana, Krishna among the cowherds, all of it in red-brown baked mud. It is narrative architecture made from the only material the floodplain had. Nearby, the potters of Panchmura make the Bankura horse, long-necked, ears pricked, radically abstracted, and now the national symbol of Indian handicrafts. Around seventy families still throw and fire it. In Kolkata, terracotta is the cheapest and most eloquent way a pandal can say the word Bengal, and it is used every single year.

ইতিহাস History

Where it came from

The Bengal delta has no building stone. What it has is alluvium, which fires hard, and that constraint produced one of the most distinctive temple architectures in India. Bishnupur, in Bankura, was the capital of Mallabhum, ruled by the Malla dynasty whose foundation is traditionally dated to about 997 CE under Jagat Malla. The dynasty's turn to Vaishnavism under Bir Hambir in the late sixteenth century, and the patronage of his successors Raghunath Singha and Bir Singha, made the town a centre of temple building, music and textiles.

The temples themselves are laterite and brick, faced with moulded and carved terracotta plaques. The Rasmancha is the earliest of the major brick structures; Shyam Rai, the five-towered pancharatna temple, dates to about 1643; the Jor Bangla or Keshta Rai temple to about 1655; Madan Mohan to about 1694. Their plaques run to battle scenes with cannon and cavalry, hunts, boats, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Krishna among the cowherds, and daily life. This is narrative architecture: the wall is the manuscript. The temples of Bishnupur have been on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list since 1997.

Twenty-one kilometres away at Panchmura, hereditary potters make the Bankura horse — long-necked, ears pricked, radically abstracted. It is a votive object before it is an ornament: in the Rarh country, terracotta horses and elephants are massed under trees at shrines of Dharmathakur and Manasa as offerings, standing in for the animal that once would have been given. Four villages are recognised as centres — Panchmura, Rajagram, Sonamukhi and Hamirpur — and Panchmura's work is usually judged the finest. The figure entered national iconography in the 1950s: it appeared on an Indian postage stamp in 1957 and was adopted as the crest of the All India Handicrafts Board, which is why it is now shorthand for Indian craft as such. The popular claim that the form is unchanged since antiquity is not supportable; what is old is the votive practice, not this particular silhouette, which was refined for a twentieth-century market. On 28 March 2018 the craft was registered as a geographical indication under the name Bankura Panchmura Terracotta Craft.

Terracotta work at Panchmura in Bankura, the village whose sixty-odd potter families still supply most of the trade.SuvadipSanyal, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

সংস্কৃতি Culture

Who does it, and who used to

The makers are Kumbhakars — the potter caste, and the surname is simply the occupation. In Panchmura the community is small and shrinking: around sixty to seventy families are still working the craft, against three to four hundred artisans within living memory. The ORF study quotes potters like Mahadeb Kumbhakar, in his fifties, whose son has gone to Kolkata, and Toton Kumbhakar in his thirties, on exactly this: the money is thin and the labour is punishing, and the young leave.

The division of labour inside a household is gendered and rarely acknowledged in the marketing. Men throw on the wheel and fire the kiln; women and children prepare and levigate the clay, join parts, burnish, carry, and stack. The named artisan on an award certificate is almost always a man.

Its place in Durga Puja is double. Terracotta is the cheapest and most legible way a pandal can say the word Bengal, so Bishnupur temple facades and Panchmura horses are among the most frequently reproduced pandal themes in Kolkata — sometimes in real fired clay commissioned from Bankura, sometimes in painted plaster, which the potters resent. And the old votive logic survives directly: the same families still supply the horses and elephants that are stacked at village shrines during the autumn festivals, which is not a craft transaction at all but a vow being paid.

Terracotta reliefs on the Kalachand temple at Bishnupur, where the fired plaque is both ornament and structural facing.Pinakpani, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

তাৎপর্য Significance

Why this, and not something else

Bishnupur is the answer to a material problem, and it is worth stating plainly because it explains the whole visual character of Bengal. Without stone, the region built in brick and told its stories in fired clay, at the scale of a wall. The result is an architecture where ornament is not applied to the structure but is the same substance as the structure, and where the subjects are secular as often as they are scriptural — a musket, a boat, a hunting party.

The Bankura horse carries a different weight. It is the most widely reproduced object in Indian craft, stamped on emporium logos, airport murals and government stationery, and almost nobody who buys one knows that its original job was to be left under a tree as a substitute for a sacrificed animal. That gap between the votive object and the national emblem is the honest subject here. The craft persists because it is beautiful and because about seventy families in one village have kept firing it, not because the emblem generated any wealth for them. When a Kolkata pandal is built as a terracotta temple, it is quoting a technology that solved a real constraint, and it is usually quoting it in plaster.

The Jor Mandir group at Bishnupur, brick temples of the Malla period built in a region that has no building stone.Vikas Singh, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

কীভাবে How it is made

The work itself

The clay is local alluvium, levigated and wedged. A Panchmura horse is not modelled in one piece: the parts are thrown separately on the wheel — four legs, the neck in two sections, and the face, seven components in all — then luted together with slip, with ears and tail moulded by hand and set into cut grooves. The joins are smoothed and the surface burnished. Drying is slow and indoors, six to seven days in a closed room, with vent holes pierced to let the interior dry evenly and prevent cracking, before the pieces go out into the sun. Firing is in an open updraught kiln, and colour is controlled by atmosphere: vents left open give an oxidising fire and the characteristic red-brown, vents sealed give a reducing fire and black. Temple plaques are a different process — pressed in carved wooden moulds, or carved on the leather-hard slab, fired, and then set into the brick facade.

পোড়ামাটিPoramati: Literally 'burnt earth': the Bengali word for terracotta, used for both the temple plaques and the village figures.
কুম্ভকারKumbhakar: The potter caste and the surname carried by almost every working family in Panchmura.
বাঁকুড়ার ঘোড়াBankura ghora: The Bankura horse: a votive terracotta figure with an erect neck and pricked ears, now the crest of the All India Handicrafts Board.
পঞ্চরত্নPancharatna: 'Five jewels': the temple plan with four corner towers and a central one, as at the Shyam Rai temple of about 1643.
জোড়বাংলাJor Bangla: A temple form built as two thatched-hut roofs joined together, translating village bamboo-and-thatch construction into brick.
মনসা চালিManasa chali: A terracotta plaque or shrine-piece for the snake goddess Manasa, one of the standard votive products of Panchmura.
পোনPoon: The open updraught kiln in which the pieces are fired; sealing or opening its vents decides whether the ware comes out red or black.

কাহিনি The stories

What people tell each other about it

The horse that became a logo

The Bankura horse was a votive object: you took one to a Dharmathakur or Manasa shrine and left it under the tree, in place of a live animal. In the 1950s it was noticed by the people building an idea of Indian craft for the new republic. It appeared on an Indian postage stamp in 1957 and was adopted as the crest of the All India Handicrafts Board, and from there onto emporium signage across the country. The potters of Panchmura acquired a national emblem and no royalty. Sixty years later, around seventy families still make it by hand, and their sons are moving to Kolkata for work.

Seven pieces and a hole in the belly

A Panchmura horse looks like a single modelled figure and is not. It is thrown on the wheel in seven parts — four legs, a neck in two sections, and the face — then joined with slip, with the ears and tail pressed separately and slotted into cut grooves. Before it goes near the sun, the potter pierces holes so the inside dries at the same rate as the outside; a body that dries unevenly splits in the kiln. Then six or seven days in a closed room. The abstraction that reads as modernist design is in fact a direct consequence of building an animal out of wheel-thrown cylinders.

Cannon on a temple wall

The terracotta plaques of the Bishnupur temples are usually described as illustrations of the epics, and many of them are. But the Malla builders of the seventeenth century also put on their walls what they saw: matchlock muskets, cannon, cavalry with European-looking riders, river boats under sail, hunting parties, and musicians. The Jor Bangla temple of about 1655 and the Shyam Rai of about 1643 both carry this documentary layer alongside the Ramayana and the Krishna cycle. It is one of the few substantial visual records of seventeenth-century Bengali military and river life, and it exists because there was no stone to carve instead.

দেখুন Watch

Terracotta Doll | Panchmura Terracotta | DocumentDD BanglaA public-broadcaster documentary filmed in Panchmura itself, following the wheel-throwing, joining and kiln stages in sequence.

Terracotta Temples of Bishnupur: Malla Dynasty of BengalThe RangerA concise survey of the Malla-period temples and their plaque programmes, useful for placing the village craft next to the architecture.

এখন Now

What state it is in

Around seventy Kumbhakar families are still working at Panchmura, and the trade's problems are logistical as much as aesthetic: breakage in transport, no direct route to urban buyers, dependence on middlemen and on seasonal festival orders, and almost no working capital. The GI registration of 28 March 2018 as Bankura Panchmura Terracotta Craft gave the name legal protection but has not by itself changed the terms of trade. Younger members of the community are leaving for Kolkata. On the temple side, the monuments are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India and have sat on UNESCO's tentative list since 1997 without advancing; plaques continue to spall and are in places replaced with cement. Durga Puja is now a meaningful income stream — Kolkata committees commission real fired terracotta panels by the truckload — but it is five weeks of work a year, and the rest is a village economy under pressure.

Sources for this page

Beforeচন্দননগরের আলোকসজ্জাChandannagar Illumination After ডোকরাDokra Metalcraft