The painted puranas of Telangana: A study of a scroll painting tradition in South India

This dissertation is about a recently, discovered tradition of scroll painting from the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh in South India. It is about a tradition of art that is deeply religious in its premises, complex in its ideological motivations, and embedded within the caste system of the region. The dissertation is based on fieldwork done in 1993, it is the first major study of this living legacy.; The painted scrolls of Telangana range in length from twelve to thirty feet, they are made to be used in storytelling performances. Auratic, impressive and imbued with divine presence, the paintings receive public displays of obeisance in elaborate ritual contexts. The scrolls are owned by professional, itinerant storytellers, and it is their responsibility to ensure that the deities on the scrolls are properly venerated and periodically appeased.; The earliest extant painting from this tradition dates from 1625 A.D., but the dissertation itself is based primarily on my work with a family of artists working in Telangana today. The dissertation is concerned with the making, commissioning and consecration of the scrolls in the artists' studios, and with the systems of their inheritance and circulation within (and among) the storyteller families. The dissertation attends to the formal language of the paintings, as well as to the wide array of pictorial devices and artistic resources that artists employ in narrating the stories. Not only does it propose an oral basis for the scrolls, but by situating them back into the events that surround the ritual enactments of their narratives, the dissertation shows how the paintings are used in fluid and performative ways by their storyteller owners.; Finally, the dissertation seeks to understand the paintings through the themes that they depict. The painted scrolls of Telangana are painted caste puranas, they narrate the origin myths of the sudra and the panchama (dalit, "untouchable") castes in the region. The paintings represent the rank and status claims of these castes, they read therefore as strident and ideologically charged documents. The dissertation argues that the scrolls serve both as repositories and as evidence for these claims, and it asks, therefore, that the exegetical programs of their painted narratives be understood in the context of this address to their intended viewers.