Kamrul Hasan

David J McCutchion and Suhrid Kumar Bhowmik
Patuas and Patua Art in Bengal

Idea for this book began in 1960s when David McCutchion, in the process of searching the temples in the districts of Bengal, came to Hooghly district. In 1966 he gave a lecture on the temples of the locality which showed his special interest in a particular terracotta plaque depicting the battle between Rama and Ravana. Some of those in the audience commented on the similarity of style of terracotta artists with the local scroll painters or patuas.

Suhrid Bhowmik showed a Ramayana pat to David, collected in his native village. Before long they started to meet regularly exchanging notes and to visit the scroll painters, despite long and arduous journeys along the narrow paths by the side of a canal or through the rice fields.

So this book is the result of an eager collaboration taken up some fifty years ago in which both of the scholars exchanged and shared a deep common interest. It contains an invaluable introduction on the subject by David McCutchion and four important articles on the subject along with a collection of songs and a metrical study of the same. The book is complete with three original ‘pat’ and 32 pages of colour and b/w reproductions.