Across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana the threshold art is the muggu — plural muggulu — a tradition that shares the dot-grid logic of its Tamil neighbour and yet reads differently at a glance: larger festival scale, elaborate border work, and a readier use of colour laid over a white structural framework. It is also among the earliest Indian threshold arts to receive a careful published ethnography, in Kilambi’s 1985 Hyderabad study.
The tradition’s great stage is the Sankranti season, when the daily dawn chukkala grids grow through Dhanurmasam toward street-scale festival displays and the gobbemma conventions appear within the designs. The articles in this chapter describe the Telugu forms; the chapter essay follows the season.