Cheriyal Scroll Painting
A story on a ten-metre vertical scroll, unrolled panel by panel by a singing narrator.
Cheriyal scroll painting is the Telangana branch of the Deccan patachitra tradition, made in and around Cheriyal in Siddipet district. Long vertical cloth scrolls, sometimes forty to sixty feet, are painted in horizontal panels like a comic strip and unrolled section by section by balladeer communities as they sing the origin myths and epics of particular castes. The Nakashi painters also make lightweight sawdust-and-tamarind masks and figures. The work is on a dominant red ground, with flat natural and poster colours and bold black outlines.
Craft at a Glance
Origin
Cheriyal, Telangana
Also Known As
Cheriyal patam, Telangana scroll painting, Nakashi art
Craft Type
Narrative scroll painting (Deccan patachitra tradition)
Practising Community
The Nakashi community of hereditary painters; only a few families continue
Materials
Khadi cotton; rice starch, tamarind-seed gum and white clay for the primer; natural pigments (from seashells, stones, lamp black, indigo, turmeric, geru) and poster colours; a squirrel-hair brush; and, for masks, sawdust, tamarind-seed paste and coconut fibre.
Known For
Long vertical cloth scrolls of caste-community epics, plus lightweight painted masks and figures
Where It's Made
Cheriyal and Hyderabad, Siddipet and Warangal areas, Telangana
Time to Create
Weeks to months for a full scroll; days for a single panel or mask
GI Status
Cheriyal Paintings is a registered GI of Telangana
Process Steps
Priming the cloth
Khadi cotton is coated several times with a starch, gum and white-clay paste and dried hard between coats to make a smooth painting surface.
Ruling and laying out the panels
The scroll is divided into a vertical sequence of framed scenes, with decorative bands marked between them.
Sketching the scenes
Each panel's composition is drawn lightly, following the narrative order of the community's epic.
Applying the red ground
The dominant red background is laid in, against which the figures will be painted.
Filling the colours
Flat colours are filled in over the ground in a set order — figures first, then landscape and detail.
Outlining in black
Every figure, feature and border is outlined in fine black to sharpen the image.
Painting the dividing bands
Floral or geometric bands are painted between the panels to separate the scenes.
Backing and rolling
The finished scroll is glued to a cloth backing, its ends are reinforced, and it is rolled from the bottom for the narrator.
Technique Glossary
Nakashi
The community of hereditary painters who make the scrolls, masks and figures.
Patachitra / patam
The pan-Indian tradition of painted narrative cloth to which Cheriyal belongs.
Suddha matti
The white clay ground mixed into the primer that gives the cloth its painting surface.
Kaki Padagollu / Goud / Madiga
Storyteller communities, each with its own epic, for whom the scrolls were painted.
Geru
Red ochre, used for the dominant background colour of the scrolls.
Tumma bank (tamarind) paste
The seed-paste adhesive used both in the primer and in building the papier-mâché-like masks.
Panel band
The painted floral or geometric strip that separates one narrative scene from the next.
A Craft Through Time
Pre-modern
Scrolls for the storytellers
Nakashi painters supply community-specific epic scrolls to Telangana's balladeer castes.
Mid-20th century
Storytelling declines
Radio, film and television undercut the itinerant narrators and demand for scrolls falls sharply.
Late 20th century
Adaptation
Surviving families make single-scene paintings, masks and small decorative items for craft markets.
2007
Geographical Indication
Cheriyal Paintings are registered as a GI of Telangana.
21st century
A handful of families
The tradition rests on a very small number of Nakashi households, some based in Hyderabad, who also teach workshops.
Present
Craft and memory
The scrolls survive largely as art objects and teaching pieces, keeping the epics and the technique alive.
Did You Know?
Each Cheriyal scroll was made for one specific storytelling community's epic — the painters had to carry dozens of caste origin-myths in their heads in order to illustrate them correctly.
Every craft has a story. Every story begins with tradition.