Craft

শোলার সাজ

Sholar Saj (Sholapith)

Wetland Bengal, Bardhaman, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Nadia, Hooghly, Malda

Where it stands

Endangered

Sandip Biswas (National Awardee, Murshidabad); Ananta Malakar (Birbhum, National Awardee); Samir Saha (President's Awardee)

Ananta Malakar of Birbhum, National Award-winning sholapith craftsman, photographed in Kolkata in 2015; he carves the white pith under a magnifying glass.Biswarup Ganguly, via Wikimedia Commons

Shola is the milk-white pith inside the stem of a marsh plant, Aeschynomene aspera, cut from Bengal's wetlands in the monsoon and peeled into ribbons thinner than paper with one curved knife. It is often called Indian cork; it is better described as a vegetable ivory. The Malakar caste, garland-makers, one of Bengal's nine artisan castes, curl, layer and paste it into the goddess's crown, her halo, the moon-garland behind her, and the white armour that dresses the whole family. No moulds, no lathe, no templates, everything is cut freehand. It is also completely biodegradable, which makes its cheap replacement, thermocol, one of the quietest ecological reversals in the festival.

ইতিহাস History

Where it came from

Shola is the stem of Aeschynomene aspera, a leguminous herb that grows wild in the waterlogged margins of Bengal's paddy fields and marshes. It is usually described as pith; botanically it is the wood — the secondary xylem — and it is among the lightest woods in the world. It is milky white, cuts like firm foam, and takes a knife edge without splintering, which is why it has been called Indian cork and, more accurately, vegetable ivory.

The craft belongs to the Malakar caste — mala (garland) plus kar (maker) — one of the nine Nabasakha artisan groups of Bengal. Their older function was liturgical rather than decorative: Malakars supplied the garlands, the headgear and the ceremonial ornament of regional deities, and in many village shrines the deity's crown is still a Malakar's work rather than a goldsmith's. The Malakar origin myth, told across Bengal, has Shiva demanding a white crown for his wedding to Parvati and creating a man from his own hair to make it; the man emerges from the water with a shola stem. It is a caste charter, not history, but it correctly locates the craft at a wedding and at the waterline.

The craft's promotion from ritual supply to the centre of the Durga image is datable. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the prestige ornament was imported German foil — daker saj. The Second World War cut that supply off between 1939 and 1945, and sholapith moved into the gap. Sholar saj has held the position ever since, and the white filigree crown and halo that most people now picture when they think of a traditional Bengali Durga are a wartime substitution that became the norm.

A peacock-prowed boat with rowers, oars and canopy, carved entirely from white shola pith without moulds or templates.Iamjfcal, via Wikimedia Commons

সংস্কৃতি Culture

Who does it, and who used to

Malakars have a respectable ritual rank and a poor economic one. They are not untouchable, they are counted among the clean artisan castes, and their product is required for weddings and worship across communities — but the work is seasonal, piece-rate and almost entirely undocumented. Roughly five thousand artisans still practise in West Bengal, concentrated in Bardhaman, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Nadia, Hooghly, Malda and South 24 Parganas. Bankapasi in Bardhaman and the Murshidabad cluster are the best-known villages.

Inside a Malakar household the work is not gendered in the way idol-making is. Men and women both cut and assemble; the heavy peeling of the stem tends to be men's work and the fine assembly women's, but there is no bar on either. What is gendered is the market. The bridal topor and mukut — the conical shola headgear of a Bengali groom and bride — are the craft's most reliable annual income, and they are made by the same hands and often in the same workshop as the goddess's crown.

Recognition has come to individuals. Ananta Malakar of Birbhum, a National Awardee, still works with a magnifying glass. Sandip Biswas of Murshidabad holds a National Award for carving of ivory-like fineness; Samir Saha is a President's Awardee with forty-five years in the material. These are named, photographed, exhibited craftsmen, which is more than most Bengali craft castes have managed.

A cut stem of Aeschynomene against a centimetre scale: thin reddish bark outside, the white workable core within.RIT RAJARSHI, via Wikimedia Commons

তাৎপর্য Significance

Why this, and not something else

Whiteness is the argument. Shola is used because it is the whitest natural material available in Bengal — whiter than ivory, whiter than bleached cloth — and in Shakta practice the ornament of the goddess should read as unpolluted. In wedding use the same logic gives the groom a white topor and the bride a white mukut. The material is chosen for what it is, not for what it can be made to look like.

The second property is that shola dissolves. An entire Durga group can be dressed in ornament that goes into the river with the clay and comes apart in it. In a festival whose central artefact is designed to be destroyed, sholar saj is the only ornament that is fully consistent with the theology. Gold would have to be removed first; thermocol does not decay at all.

Which makes the present substitution an exact ecological inversion. Thermocol — expanded polystyrene — is now the default at low-budget pujas because it is cheaper and faster, and it looks broadly similar from ten feet away. A biodegradable marsh plant harvested by a hereditary caste has been displaced by a petroleum product, inside a ritual whose entire structure is about returning the image to water. Very few visitors notice, and the substitution is rarely mentioned in the eco-puja conversation.

A Bengali groom's topor: conical shola headgear built from curled white pith ribbon and trimmed with red, gold and mirror.Iamjfcal, via Wikimedia Commons

কীভাবে How it is made

The work itself

Stems are cut in the monsoon when the plant is standing in water, bundled and dried. The craftsman strips the thin reddish bark and works the white core with a single tool: the kath (কাঠ) or shola knife, a short curved blade ground by the maker himself and used at a shallow angle. There are no moulds, no lathes and no templates. Ribbons are pared off the stem in continuous shavings, sometimes thinner than paper, then curled against the blade or the thumb, layered and pasted. The adhesive is traditionally tentul bichir aatha (তেঁতুল বিচির আঠা), tamarind-seed gum, sometimes bel-fruit gum. Assembly builds up the mukut (মুকুট, crown), the arched prabhamandal or halo, the chandmala (চাঁদমালা), the armour and jewellery of the whole Durga group, and outside the festival the bridal topor (টোপর) and mukut, decorative flowers, peacock boats, elephant howdahs and palanquins. Colour is added sparingly — red and gold foil, glass, mica — because the point of the material is that it is already white. Everything is cut freehand, and a large crown may take a week.

শোলাshola: The white spongewood stem of Aeschynomene aspera, a marsh plant; botanically wood, not pith, and among the lightest in the world.
মালাকারMalakar: The hereditary garland-maker caste who work shola, one of the nine Nabasakha artisan groups.
টোপরtopor: The conical white shola headgear worn by a Bengali Hindu groom; the bride's equivalent is the mukut.
চাঁদমালাchandmala: The garland of linked discs hung behind the deity, one of the standard shola pieces.
শোলার সাজsholar saj: The whole set of shola ornament for the Durga group — crown, halo, armour, jewellery and lion's caparison.
তেঁতুল বিচির আঠাtentul bichir aatha: Tamarind-seed gum, the traditional adhesive for assembling shola work.
প্রভামণ্ডলprabhamandal: The arched halo or aureole behind the deity's head, built up in layered shola ribbon.

কাহিনি The stories

What people tell each other about it

Shiva orders a white crown

The Malakar caste tells its own origin. Shiva, preparing to marry Parvati, demanded a crown of pure white, whiter than anything then made. No craftsman could supply it. Shiva plucked a hair from his own head and from it created a man, who went into the water and came back with a shola stem, and cut from it the first white crown. The man was the first Malakar. Read as history it is worthless; read as a caste charter it is precise, because it places the craft exactly where it belongs — at a wedding, in a marsh, and under divine rather than royal patronage.

A war makes a tradition

Between 1939 and 1945 the German silver foil that made daker saj stopped reaching Bengal. Households and committees needed ornament and could not import it. Malakar families, who had been making shola garlands and village-deity crowns for centuries without being part of the prestige trade, supplied it instead. Sholar saj entered the Kolkata Durga image as a wartime substitute and never left. The white filigree crown that most Bengalis now think of as the oldest and most traditional form of the goddess's ornament is, in its current prominence, younger than the Second World War.

Working with a magnifying glass

Ananta Malakar of Birbhum, a National Awardee, was photographed in Kolkata in 2013 and again in 2015 by Biswarup Ganguly — an elderly man in spectacles with his shola knife. He works at a scale that requires a magnifying glass, cutting the pith into carved forms that look like ivory and are meant to be mistaken for it. He has an award, a Wikimedia Commons category and no pension. His is one of about five thousand Malakar households left in West Bengal, most of them competing against thermocol at a price they cannot meet.

Plastic replaces the marsh

The substitution nobody names during eco-puja week: thermocol has displaced shola at the cheap end of the ornament market almost completely. Expanded polystyrene is a fraction of the price, needs no curved knife and no seven years of practice, and photographs acceptably. Shola is a wetland plant, harvested by hand, entirely biodegradable, and designed — in the only sense that matters — to go into the river with the goddess. The festival that markets itself on immersion and return has quietly swapped a marsh plant for a petroleum product, and it did so on cost.

দেখুন Watch

Sholapith - The Divine Craft of BengalSahapediaSahapedia's film on sholapith, which follows the whole process from cutting the stem in the marsh to the finished ornament.

Making of Shola Craftbanglanatak dot combanglanatak dot com's record of shola making, produced under its wetland-craft revival project with the artisan clusters.

BANKAPASI SHOLACRAFT - BANKAPASI DOCUMENTARY - ASHISH MALAKAR - SHOLA DOCUMENTARYBongs out of Bong A documentary on Bankapasi, the shola village in Bardhaman, following the craftsman Ashish Malakar.

এখন Now

What state it is in

Endangered, with clear causes. The raw material is the first: shola grows in wetlands, and Bengal's wetlands are being filled for housing and converted to year-round paddy, so stems are harder to get and worse in quality than they were a generation ago. The second is thermocol, which undercuts shola on price at every level of the market and has taken over the low-budget end entirely. The third is that young Malakars are leaving — the work is seasonal, the piece rates are low, and a National Award does not come with an income. About five thousand artisans remain in West Bengal. The main institutional responses have been the Rural Craft and Cultural Hubs programme, which documents and markets the clusters, and banglanatak dot com's shola revival project, which produced the film Shola Gantha and pushed the material into non-ritual product lines — lampshades, jewellery, installation panels. The most interesting current use is architectural. Theme pujas have begun commissioning entire shola interiors, carving what used to be jewellery at the scale of a room. It pays better than crowns, and it is the one direction in which demand is growing.

Sources for this page

Beforeডাকের সাজDaker Saj After চালচিত্রChalchitra (Painted Backdrop)