Durga Puja/The Pratima or the Group of Figures/Painting the Idols

by Pratap Chandra Ghosh

PAINTING THE IDOLS.

As soon as the idols are dry, the painter comes in and lays on the figures three or four coatings of a water-paint made of chalk. This forms the ground, and when it gets sufficiently dry, Durga, Lakshmi and Kartikeya are painted yellow with harital, sulphurate of arsenic, which is ground and mixed carefully with water and gum from the Vel fruit. Ganesa is painted similarly with hingul, a coarse ore of sulphuret of mercury, and the demon with jangal, verdigris, done up with a varnish of garjan oil⁽⁶⁾. And all these figures are subsequently covered with a varnish. The Lion and Sarasvati are painted with another preparation of chalk, and are polished by the surface being rubbed with fine linen. The painter forgets not to put on the forehead and arms of the goddesses the usual tatoo marks.

As soon as the painting of the idols is finished, the remnants of the paint are taken to the ladies of the house, and they paint with the same a particular spot in the room alloted to the family idol. After the paints are sufficiently dry, at an auspicious moment the entire group is removed to the place of worship, and is set up on a raised platform of wood, which is washed and painted over by the ladies of the house with a white paint made of ground rice, the designs on the platform being a bed of lotuses, the feet of the goddesses, and a series of yantras, mystic figures⁽⁷⁾. This platform or low table about 1 1/2 feet high, is placed upon clay, and beneath it are sprinkled the five grains, rice, wheat, barley, mas (Phaseolus Roxburghii, Wight) and sesamum. In about three or four days small seedlings of a whitish yellow color spring up beneath the table.