Craft

ডাকের সাজ

Daker Saj

Zamindari Bengal, 18th-19th century; centred on Kumartuli and Hooghly

Where it stands

Endangered

The Malakar decorator families of Kumartuli's saj-para, Kolkata (approach via Kumartuli Mritshilpi Samiti)

The ekchala Durga of Shobhabazar Rajbari in silver daker saj, seen through a doorway under the family's old chandelier.Sampuron, via Wikimedia Commons

The most traditional-looking ornament on a Bengali Durga idol is named after the colonial postal system. In the great household pujas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the goddess was dressed in beaten silver and tin foil imported from Germany, which arrived by post, dak, and so the style became daker saj, the ornament that came by mail. Foil is cut, embossed with a stylus, crimped and pasted over a sholapith core to build crowns, haloes, breastplates, arm bands and the lion's caparison. It is deliberately mirror-bright, designed for oil lamps in a dark thakurdalan rather than floodlights. German foil stopped coming long ago; the name, and the glitter, stayed.

ইতিহাস History

Where it came from

Daker Saj is named after the post office. In the zamindari pujas of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal the goddess's ornament was built from beaten silver and tin foil, and the foil was imported — chiefly from Germany — and arrived by mail. Dak (ডাক) is Bengali for post. Daker saj is, literally, "the ornament that came by post". The most self-consciously traditional element of the Bengali Durga image is named after the colonial postal system, and the name has stuck for two centuries without anyone finding it odd.

The style is usually credited to the Shobhabazar Rajbari, whose puja began in 1757, and to the network of aristocratic households that imitated it. It suited the setting exactly. A thakurdalan — the pillared hall of a Calcutta mansion, open on one side — was lit by oil lamps and later by chandeliers, and beaten foil reads brilliantly in that light in a way that paint does not. The ornament was designed for flame, not for electricity, which is why daker saj can look flat and fussy under a modern LED wash and extraordinary under a lamp.

The supply chain ended with the Second World War. German foil stopped arriving between 1939 and 1945, and never resumed on the old terms. What filled the gap was indigenous: sholapith, the white spongewood of Bengal's marshes, worked by Malakar craftsmen who had been making garlands and ceremonial ornament for regional deities all along. The substitution was permanent. Most of what is called daker saj today is a hybrid — shola or paper base, Indian zari, metallic sheet and machine-stamped foil — and the purely imported-silver version survives only in a handful of household pujas that can pay for it.

A Durga group at a Chittagong pandal dressed in white pith and silver foil, with matching filigree arches behind each figure.Prititunna, via Wikimedia Commons

সংস্কৃতি Culture

Who does it, and who used to

Daker saj is made by decorators, not by sculptors. In Kumartuli the saj-para is a separate trade with separate hands: the Pal family builds and paints the image, and a Malakar or a specialist decorator supplies the crown, the halo, the breastplate, the arm-bands, the lion's caparison and the chandmala. The two are often contracted independently by the same puja committee. This division is old and it means that no single person makes a Durga.

Who commissions it now has changed completely. For most of its history daker saj marked a household's standing — it was expensive, it announced a bonedi bari, and community pujas could not afford it. From the 1990s onward it became a theme. Large sarbojanin pujas began marketing sabeki (সাবেকি, "traditional") as a deliberate style choice against the theme-puja wave, and daker saj is its clearest signal. The result is that the ornament is now bought as heritage by committees that never had it, while some of the old families that always had it have quietly switched to cheaper substitutes.

Practitioners are almost entirely anonymous. There is no nationally famous daker saj maker in the way there are famous sholapith or patachitra artists, partly because the work is contracted through the Kumartuli Mritshilpi Samiti and the decorator trade rather than sold as authored art, and partly because the ornament is understood as the idol's dress rather than as a work in itself.

Close view of a Durga head crowned and framed in white filigree saj work, the ornament built up in cut relief.Iamjfcal, via Wikimedia Commons

তাৎপর্য Significance

Why this, and not something else

The goddess of the ekchala is dressed, not carved. Her jewellery is not modelled in the clay; it is applied, and it can be removed. That is unusual, and it changes what the image is. A stone Durga in a Pala-period temple has her ornament cut into her body. A Kumartuli Durga in daker saj is a clay figure wearing metal, in the same way a woman of the household wears her wedding silver — which is precisely the reading Bengal wants, because in this festival Durga is a married daughter home on a visit.

The metallic surface does specific ritual work. Foil catches and throws lamplight, so during arati the ornament moves while the figure does not: the crown flickers, the halo pulses, and the image reads as animate under smoke and flame. Colour on clay cannot do this.

The chandmala, the moon-garland of linked discs hung behind the deity, carries the most explicit meaning. It is a garland of offerings — a visual record that the goddess has been honoured — and in some traditions its discs are counted as the heads of demons or as lunar phases. It is the one part of the saj that is not clothing but a statement about what has been given.

কীভাবে How it is made

The work itself

The base is cut from shola pith or from stiff paper and card. Over it go sheets of rangta (রাংতা) — tin or silver foil — and coloured foil, which are cut to shape, embossed from the back with a blunt stylus so the design stands up in relief, then crimped, folded and pasted down. The stylus work is what makes daker saj look like beaten metalwork rather than like foil. The pieces built this way are the mukut (মুকুট, crown), the arched halo behind the head, the buker paat or breastplate, arm-bands and anklets, the weapons, the caparison for the lion, and the chandmala (চাঁদমালা), the garland of linked discs hung behind the group. Adhesive is traditionally tamarind-seed or bel-fruit gum; modern workshops use synthetic glue. Sequins, glass beads and zari braid are added last. Nothing is moulded and nothing is machine-formed in the older method — every element is cut freehand with scissors and a knife and shaped against the thumb. The cheaper contemporary version substitutes thermocol for shola and stamped metallic sheet for hand-embossed foil, which is faster and reads from a distance but has no relief.

ডাকdak: Post, mail — the word that names the whole style, because the foil arrived by post from Germany.
রাংতাrangta: Tin or silver foil, the sheet material that is cut and embossed to make the ornament.
মুকুটmukut: The crown, the largest and most elaborate single piece of the saj.
চাঁদমালাchandmala: The "moon-garland" of linked discs hung behind the deity, read variously as lunar phases or as demon heads.
সাবেকিsabeki: Traditional, old-style — now a marketed category of puja, defined largely by the presence of daker saj and a painted chalchitra.
ঠাকুরদালানthakurdalan: The pillared, open-fronted worship hall of an aristocratic Bengali house, the lighting condition daker saj was designed for.
সাজপাড়াsaj-para: The decorators' quarter within Kumartuli, a separate trade from the idol-makers.

কাহিনি The stories

What people tell each other about it

The ornament that came by post

The name is the fact. Through the nineteenth century the silver and tin foil and the sequins that made the goddess's jewellery were imported, chiefly from Germany, and reached Bengal by mail — dak. The households that could afford them called the style daker saj, the dress that came by post, and the name outlived the supply chain by a century. It is a useful corrective to anyone who assumes the sabeki Durga is the untouched ancestral form. The most traditional-looking Durga in Kolkata is wearing a colonial import, named after a colonial institution.

The war that changed her clothes

Between 1939 and 1945 the German foil stopped coming. Puja committees and bonedi households that had ordered their ornament by post for generations had no ornament. What replaced it was already in Bengal: sholapith, the white spongewood of the marshes, worked by Malakar families who had supplied garlands and headgear for village deities all along. Sholar saj rose as a wartime substitute and never left. A great deal of what is confidently labelled daker saj in Kolkata today is in fact shola with foil on top — the two traditions fused in an emergency and stayed fused.

Built for lamps, lit by LEDs

Daker saj was engineered for a specific lighting condition: the oil lamps and, later, the crystal chandeliers of a thakurdalan, the open-sided worship hall of a Calcutta mansion. Beaten foil under a moving flame does something paint cannot — the crown and halo appear to shift while the clay stays still, so the goddess reads as animate through the smoke of arati. Under a flat LED wash in a modern pandal the same ornament goes dull and busy. Several heritage pujas now deliberately cut the electric lighting during evening arati for exactly this reason.

দেখুন Watch

Bonediyanar Itikotha | Ep 2 | Shobhabajar Rajbari | Kumortuli Dot Com | Durga Puja DocumentaryKumortuli Dot ComA long documentary episode on the Shobhabazar Rajbari puja of 1757, the household usually credited with popularising daker saj, filmed in the thakurdalan it was designed for.

এখন Now

What state it is in

Daker saj is endangered as a craft and commercially healthy as a product, which are not the same thing. German silver foil has not been available for eighty years; artisans use Indian metallic sheet, zari and machine-stamped foil, and at low budgets thermocol has largely replaced shola as the base. The hand-embossed work is slow and therefore expensive, and it survives mainly at bonedi bari pujas and at the large community pujas that have adopted sabeki tradition as a marketable theme — which has given the style a genuine second life since about the year 2000. The trade is contracted rather than branded. Most daker saj sold in Kolkata comes from decorator families in the Kumartuli saj-para and from Malakar workshops in Hooghly and Bardhaman, and is supplied to order with the idol. Prices for a full set of ornament for a life-size group run from a few thousand rupees for thermocol-and-sheet to a lakh or more for hand-worked foil on shola. Nobody publishes the numbers, because the ornament is quoted inside the price of the image.

Sources for this page

Beforeকৃষ্ণনগরের মাটির পুতুলKrishnanagar Clay Dolls After শোলার সাজSholar Saj (Sholapith)