Kerala mural paintings are the

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plast ...

s depicting

Hindu mythology Hindu mythology is the body of myths and literature attributed to, and espoused by, the adherents of the Hindu religion, found in Hindu texts such as the Vedic literature, epics like ''Mahabharata'' and ''Ramayana'', the Puranas, and ...

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South Ca ...

. Ancient temples and palaces in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

, display an abounding tradition of

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanis ...

paintings mostly dating back between the 9th to 12th centuries CE when this form of art enjoyed royal patronage. The scriptural basis of these paintings can be found in the Sanskrit texts, 'Chithrasoothram'' - (Chitrasutra is a part of the Vishnu Dharmottara Purana, a book written in Sanskrit about 1500 years ago. It contains 287 short verses in nine chapters and a few prose in the second chapter. There is no other book on painting as detailed as the Chitrasutra. This book answers hundreds of questions about what a painting is, why, its purpose, role, relationship with the painter, connoisseurs, and other arts. Chitrasutra will be useful to understand the true Indian painting.)''Tantrasamuchaya,'' the fifteenth century text authored by Narayanan, '' Abhilashitartha Chintamani'' of the twelfth century and ''Silparatna'' by Sreekumaran of the sixteenth century. Iconography of the mythological character in murals are based on the Dhyanaslokas. Vaikom Temple Sreekovil Murals

The murals of

Thirunadhikkara Cave Temple Thirunandikkara Cave Temple, also referred to as Thirunanthikarai rock-cut Shiva temple, is a 9th-century rock-cut Hindu cave temple in Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu, India. It is dedicated to Shiva, with murals and inscriptions. It is attri ...

(now ceded to

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

) and Tiruvanchikulam are considered the oldest relics of Kerala's own style of murals. The masterpieces of Kerala mural art include: the

Shiva Shiva (; sa, शिव, lit=The Auspicious One, Śiva ), also known as Mahadeva (; Help:IPA/Sanskrit, ɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐ, or Hara, is one of the Hindu deities, principal deities of Hinduism. He is the Supreme Being in Shaivism, one o ...

Temple in

Ettumanoor Ettumanoor, sometimes spelled Ettumanur, is a major town and municipality in the Kottayam district of Kerala, India, located 11 kilometers north-east of Kottayam city, 50 kilometers south of Cochin, and 70 kilometers south of Cochin Internation ...

, the

Ramayana The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages ...

murals of Mattancherry Palace and Vadakkumnatha

kshetram {{Hinduism small Kshetram (Kshetra) literally means a place. In Hindu mythology, it is referred to as the physical holy location where a temple or a collection of temples, its tank and deities exist. Sacred geography There exist privileged region ...

Other fine mural paintings are depicted in temples at Trikodithanam, Vaikom Temple, Pundarikapuram, Udayanapuram, Triprangode,

Guruvayoor Guruvayur () is a municipal temple town in Thrissur District, of Kerala State in India. It is a suburban town of Thrissur city, located from Thrissur towards the north-west. It houses the Guruvayur Shri Krishna Temple. It is located at ...

Kumaranalloor Kumaranalloor is a suburb of Kottayam city, Kottayam taluk, Kerala, India. Kottayam city is just 5 km south of Kumaranalloor. The region was administrated by the Kumaranallur grama panchayath till 2010, before the local self-governing body ...

, Aymanam, the Vadakkunathan temple in Trichur, the Thodeekkalam temple in Kannur and the

Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple The Shree Padmanabhaswamy Temple is a Hindu temple located in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the state of Kerala, India. The name of the city of 'Thiruvananthapuram' in Tamil and Malayalam translates to "The City of Lord Ananta" (The City ...

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

. Other mural sites are in the churches at Ollur, Chalakkudy, Kanjoor, Edappally, Vechur, and Mulanthuruthy,Menachery, ''St. Thomas Christian Encyclopaedia'', II, Trichur, 1973; ''Indian Church History Classics'', Saras, Ollur, 1998 and at palaces such as the

Krishnapuram Palace The Krishnapuram Palace is a palace and museum located in Kayamkulam near Alappuzha in Alappuzha district, Kerala in southwestern India. It was built in the 18th century by Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1729–1758 CE), the Travancore kin ...

near Kayamkulam and the Padmanabhapuram Palace.

Revival

Although the traditional mural artisans were under the patronage of various rulers in Kerala, under British administration the art form suffered enormously, even at the danger of extinction. After India's independence in 1947, a revival of mural tradition in Kerala took place as major temples in Kerala. The Centre for Study of Mural Paintings, a school established by Guruvayur Dewaswom Board in the Thrissur district of Kerala under the chief instructorship of Mammiyoor Krishnan Kutty Nair, represents this revival phase, as does the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit in Kalady under the instructorship of Dr.Saju Thuruthil.

Technique

Traditionally the painting involves four different processes, # Preparation of the ground (

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

and

laterite Laterite is both a soil and a rock type rich in iron and aluminium and is commonly considered to have formed in hot and wet tropical areas. Nearly all laterites are of rusty-red coloration, because of high iron oxide content. They develop by ...

walls) # Sketching of the outline # Application of colours and # Addition of decorative details Sanskrit texts discuss in detail the style, effectiveness of different colours, desirable combinations that could be brought out by mixing various pigments and methodology of preparing the base for application of colors and for preparation of colors from different natural sources in general terms.

Wall preparation

Preparing a wall involves three stages of plastering the wall with different substances. # Plaster of a mixture of lime and clean sand in the ratio 1:2. # Plaster of a mixture of lime and sand in the ratio 1:2, and cotton (''

Gossypium herbaceum ''Gossypium herbaceum'', commonly known as Levant cotton, is a species of cotton native to the semi-arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Arabia, where it still grows in the wild as a perennial shrub. Description ''G. herbaceum'' has high stems ...

''). Cotton is used to give a gleaming white texture to the wall. # 25-30 washes of a mixture of

quick lime Calcium oxide (CaO), commonly known as quicklime or burnt lime, is a widely used chemical compound. It is a white, caustic, alkaline, crystalline solid at room temperature. The broadly used term "''lime''" connotes calcium-containing inorganic ...

and the juice of very tender

coconut The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family (Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, the seed, or the f ...

Colour preparation

Traditional murals used ''panchavarana'' () exclusively i.e. red, yellow, green, black and white, white being the colour of the wall itself. Colours are prepared from vegetable and mineral pigments. Red is derived from red

, yellow is derived from yellow laterite, white from lime, and black from oil-lamp

soot Soot ( ) is a mass of impure carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons. It is more properly restricted to the product of the gas-phase combustion process but is commonly extended to include the residual pyrolysed ...

. Leaves of ''Neelamari'' (Indian Indigo; ''

Indigofera tinctoria ''Indigofera tinctoria'', also called true indigo, is a species of plant from the bean family that was one of the original sources of indigo dye. Description True indigo is a shrub one to two meters high. It may be an annual plant, annual, bi ...

'' ) plant are squeezed and the extract is used after drying up to be mixed with ''Eravikkara ( Garcinia morella)'' for obtaining the green pigment. Wooden utensils are used for mixing the colours and the binding media used is derived from tender coconut water and extracts from the Neem tree (''

Azadirachta indica ''Azadirachta indica'', commonly known as neem, nimtree or Indian lilac, is a tree in the mahogany family Meliaceae. It is one of two species in the genus ''Azadirachta'', and is native to the Indian subcontinent and most of the countries in Af ...

''). The characters in the murals are coloured according to their characteristics as illustrated in the relevant Hindu mythological scriptures. Spiritual, divine and dharmic characters ( satwika) are depicted in shades of green. Those influenced towards power & materialistic wealth ( rajasic) are painted in shades of red to golden yellow. Evil, wicked and mean characters ( tamasic) are generally painted in white or black.

References

External links

* {{Culture of Kerala Murals in India Schools of Indian painting Arts of Kerala