The Grace of Four Moons

Pravina Shukla

Description

Winner, Millia Davenport Publication Award, Costume Society of AmericaWinner, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize

Because clothing, food, and shelter are basic human needs, they provide excellent entries to cultural values and individual aesthetics. Everyone gets dressed every day, but body art has not received the attention it deserves as the most common and universal of material expressions of culture. The Grace of Four Moons aims to document the clothing decisions made by ordinary people in their everyday lives. Based on fieldwork conducted primarily in the city of Banaras, India, Pravina Shukla conceptualizes and realizes a total model for the study of body art—understood as all aesthetic modifications and supplementations to the body. Shukla urges the study of the entire process of body art, from the assembly of raw materials and the manufacture of objects, through their sale and the interactions between merchants and consumers, to the consumer's use of objects in creating personal decoration.

Contents
Acknowledgments

Part 1. Introduction
1. Body Art in Banaras
2. Getting Ready
3. Gaze, Sacred and Secular

Part 2. Production and Commerce
4. Shopping for Clothes
5. Weaving Saris
6. Making Jewelry
7. Kanhaiya Lal
8. Shopping along the Vishvanath Gali
9. Assembling Bangle Sets

Part 3. Personal Adornment
10. Nina Khanchandani
11. Neelam Chaturvedi
12. Mukta Tripathi

Part 4. Body Art in the Lifecycle
13. After the Wedding
14. Before the Wedding
15. The Wedding

Part 5. Conclusion
16. The Study of Body Art

Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Outsider Art
• Folclore
• Folk
• History of art
• Folk art
• General officer
• South
• History of Asia
• Art
• General
• Asia
• India
• Folklore

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 16 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253021212
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Grace of Four Moons

The Grace of Four Moons
Dress, Adornment, and the Art of the Body in Modern India
Pravina Shukla
Photographs by Pravina Shukla and Henry Glassie
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
First paperback edition 2016
2008 by Pravina Shukla
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
The Library of Congress cataloged the original edition as follows:
Shukla, Pravina.
The grace of four moons : dress, adornment, and the art of the body in modern India / Pravina Shukla ; photographs by Pravina Shukla and Henry Glassie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-34911-8 (cloth)
1. Clothing and dress-India. 2. Saris-India 3. Wedding costume-India. 4. Dress accessories-India I. Title.
GT1460.S55 2008
391.00954-dc22
2007032051
ISBN 978-0-253-02113-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-02121-2 (e-book)
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
For my mother ,
Neeru Shukla,
whose beauty and strength of character have always inspired me
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part 1. Introduction
1. Body Art in Banaras
2. Getting Ready
3. Gaze, Sacred and Secular
Part 2. Production and Commerce
4. Shopping for Clothes
5. Weaving Saris
6. Making Jewelry
7. Kanhaiya Lal
8. Shopping along the Vishvanath Gali
9. Assembling Bangle Sets
Part 3. Personal Adornment
10. Nina Khanchandani
11. Neelam Chaturvedi
12. Mukta Tripathi
Part 4. Body Art in the Lifecycle
13. After the Wedding
14. Before the Wedding
15. The Wedding
Part 5. Conclusion
16. The Study of Body Art
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I N MY CHILDHOOD , when my mother would choose a sari to wear to a dinner party, she would place the sari on her bed, and assign me the task of assembling a matching bangle set for her to wear later that evening. I got an early entry into the creative and satisfying endeavor of bodily adornment, one in which color, texture, sound, and material come together, daily, into a dazzling, portable work of art. I dedicate this book to my mother, Neeru Shukla, who encouraged my personal interest in dress and bodily adornment by creating her own ensembles with care and even designing her own saris. My sisters Divya and Bobby, along with my mother, have all provided me with positive female role models, showing me that loyalty, integrity, and beauty can graciously coexist.
My second debt is to my teachers, who encouraged my scholarly interest in folklore, material culture, dress, and adornment. I thank Alan Dundes, who introduced me to folklore at UC Berkeley, and I thank my teachers and friends at UCLA: Robert Brown, Donald Cosentino, Robert Georges, Fran Krystock, David Mayo, Owen Moore, and Peter Tokofsky. I am especially grateful to my wonderful mentors, Michael Owen Jones and Doran Ross, for teaching me how to study art in culture.
This book could not have been possible without the generosity of the many people in India who valued my fieldwork and provided me with hours of interviews, welcoming me into their homes, shops, ateliers, and into their lives. I am especially grateful to the following friends and family members in India: Hashim Ansari, Neelam Chaturvedi, Vidhu Chaturvedi, Mathuri Chaubey, Anjali Devi, Jitendra Dubey, Kamala Dubey, Nirmala Dubey, Shipra Dubey, Hemant Khanchandani, Nina Khanchandani, Parmanand Khanchandani, Anand Kumar, Chaman Lal, Ashok Kumar Manik, Preetam Kumar Manik, Priya Kumar Manik, Sant Kumar Manik, Gopal Prashad Meenekar, A. P. Mishra, Garima Mishra, Sheela Mishra, Vaibhav Mishra, Vikas Mishra, Priya Misra, Sarala Pandey, Shantibhandra Shah, Shashi Shah, Shalini Shrivastava, B. D. Soni, Mukta Tripathi, and Alok Upadhyay.
For supporting my fieldwork in Banaras and India, and for funding other trips to study body adornment, I acknowledge the following sources: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Robert C. Altman Memorial Award, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Arnold Rubin Memorial Award, Los Angeles Bead Society, Indiana University Summer Faculty Fellowship, The Ford Foundation, and the Silk Road Project.
The following people read versions of this book, providing me with support and helpful suggestions: Donald Brenneis, Henry Drewal, Bill Ferris, Ann Grodzins Gold, Sarah Lamb, Margaret Mills, and Jerry Pocius. I am especially thankful to the members of the editorial board of this series for their help with shaping the final manuscript: John Burrison, Marjorie Hunt, George Jevremovi , and Terry Zug.
I thank Zsuzsanna Csel nyi, Linda D gh, Carrie Hertz, Arle Lommel, Fernando Orejuela, Chapla Verma, and Adam Zolkover for help with locating sources and with the style and language of the book. I also acknowledge the help and support of Karen Duffy, Pat Glushko, Sarah Lash, Samantha Matlock, Hilary Virtanen, and Rich Walter. I am also grateful to the useful comments and insights of the students in my graduate seminars on dress and body art. Some of those comments have helped me clarify parts of this book.
I am indebted to the able staff at Indiana University Press for their help throughout the long process of publication, especially to Janet Rabinowitch, Michael Lundell, Rebecca Tolen, Laura MacLeod, Miki Bird, and to Candace McNulty for her copyediting.
My thinking about material culture has been enhanced by the various opportunities I have had of working collegially with bright scholars. I am fortunate to have worked at the American Museum of Natural History with Enid Schildkrout and Heather Nielsen, and I benefited from interactions with the following folklorists in New York City: Robert Baron, Kathy Condon, Kay Turner, and Steve Zeitlen. In 2002, at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, I was privileged to work with Richard Kurin, Diana Parker, Marjorie Hunt, and Diana Baird N Diaye.
Many colleagues at Indiana University supported my work. In the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, I thank Dick Bauman, Sandy Dolby, Jason Jackson, Portia Maultsby, John McDowell, David Shorter, and Ruth Stone. I am lucky to have colleagues nearby who share my interest in the study of Indian culture, and for that I thank Purnima Bose, Sumit Ganguly, Radhika Parameswaran, and Rakesh Solomon.
My greatest debt is to my husband, Henry Glassie, for shaping this book and for changing my life. Henry accompanied me twice to Banaras for long periods of fieldwork, and in addition to drawing the maps, he took many of the beautiful photographs in the book. Through his exemplary studies of Ireland, Turkey, and Bangladesh, Henry has taught the world about art and the craft of ethnography. Through his support and affection, he has taught me about love-unconditional and blissful.
Part 1. Introduction
1
Body Art in Banaras
E VERY ONE OF US gets dressed in the morning, every day of our lives. Clothing is one of the principal ways by which we express at once our personal identities and our culture. Dress, along with architecture and food, fulfills basic human needs for protection and creativity, while responding to environmental and social conditions. Since all people engage in these shared mediums of expression, one way to understand and compare cultures-and to see regional, local, and personal differences within cultures-is to examine specific modes of clothing, housing, and feeding the body. Schools and museums often utilize this basic triad in introducing children to the diversity of the world s populations. 1 But in contrast to the study of vernacular architecture, and, to a lesser extent, the study of foodways, the examination of everyday clothing is not yet fully developed. Surveys of national dress tend to generalize, homogenize, and anonymize individuals, discounting personal interpretations of social norms. Other books focus on extreme cases-the counter-cultural young with their tattoos, the economic elite with their enthusiasm for high fashion. It is my aim to provide a study of the clothing choices made by ordinary people, in keeping with the theoretical premises of my discipline, folklore, which, to begin, I will define as the study of creativity in everyday life. 2
I call the realm of my concern body art, intending to denote all aesthetic modifications and supplementations to the body. 3 My interest in the forms, functions, and meanings of dress and adornment, and especially in the choices individuals make within a web of social constraints, led me to India, an optimal locale for analysis. Decoration abounds; people lavish ornamentation on a wide variety of objects-temples, altars, vehicles, animals, and, especially, themselves. Adornment heightens beauty and wraps the bodies of gods and human beings with auspiciousness. Dress and adornment play a critical role in communication; they are symbolically integral to the lives of Indian people.
The cultural significance of adornment is reflected in language