Maharashtra

The word that names this entire art form is Marathi, and its homeland is here. Maharashtra’s rangoli is the family’s great freehand tradition — flowing curves under balanced symmetry, structure first and ornament last, the trained eye doing the measuring — practised daily in white and opened into colour at festivals. The member essay below describes the practice at home: its two-register palette, its motif repertoire, its Marathi calendar, and the named styles (tipkyanchi, sanskar bharti) whose full entries await sources. How the word rangoli travelled from this region to become the umbrella for every Indian floor art is told in The Names of Indian Floor Art; the family it came to name is surveyed in One Idea, Many Languages.