Jivya Soma Mashe

of specialists or art enthusiasts. In the early 1970s, they discovered most of the artists who have since become the major representatives of Indian tribal art. 

Jivya Soma Mashe was one of the first to benefit from national, then international, recognition. Jivya Soma Mashe belongs to the Warli tribe. Based in the Thane District, about 150 km north of Bombay, the Warli tribe numbers over 300,000 members. They have their own beliefs, life and customs which have nothing in common with Hinduism. The Warli speak an unwritten dialect mingling Sanskrit, Maharati and Gujarati words. The word « Warli » comes from «warla» which means a piece of land or a field. In his book, The Painted World of the Warlis, Yashodara Dalmia claimed that the Warli carry on a tradition stretching back to 2 500 or 3 000 BC. Their mural paintings are similar to those done between 500 and 10 000 BC in the Bhimbekta caves, in Madya Pradesh.

Their extremely rudimentary wall paintings use a very basic graphic vocabulary: a circle, a triangle and a square. The circle and triangle come from their observation of nature, the circle representing the sun and the moon, the triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees. Only the square seems to obey a different logic and seems to be a human invention, indicating a sacred enclosure or a piece of land. So the central motive in each ritual painting is the square, the cauk (or caukat); inside it we find Palaghata, the mother goddess, symbolizing fertility. Significantly, male gods are unusual among the Warli and are frequently related to spirits which have taken human shape. The central motif in these ritual paintings is surrounded by scenes portraying hunting, fishing and farming, festivals and dances, trees and animals. Human and animal bodies are represented by two triangles joined at the tip ‹ the upper triangle depicts the trunk and the lower triangle the pelvis. 

Their precarious equilibrium symbolizes the balance of the universe, and of the couple, and has the practical and amusing advantage of animating the bodies. Without this balance, Warli art would be devoid of rhythm and life. The pared down pictorial language is matched by a rudimentary technique. (next page)