कला और शिल्प परंपरा

Jhijhiyaलोक

Women dance balancing an earthen pot perforated with dozens of holes and lit from inside, moving in a circle to a fast rhythm. It is explicitly a protective ritual against black magic, addressed to the goddess, and the pot is made afresh each year.

कौन करता है: Women, unmarried and married. मौका: Dussehra and Durga Puja

Jat-Jatinलोक

A sung dance-drama about a husband who has gone away to work and the wife who waits, quarrels and reconciles with him. It is the region's own account of labour migration, performed as comedy and understood as autobiography.

कौन करता है: Women in pairs, one playing each role. मौका: The monsoon and the sowing season

Domkachलोक

A night-long women's performance with role reversal, mock marriages and bawdy songs, held in the courtyard when the men have gone.

कौन करता है: Women of the household. मौका: Weddings, after the baraat leaves

Salhesh nachअनुष्ठान

Dance and narration of the Raja Salhesh epic at the god's earthen shrines — a Dalit devotional tradition that also produced the Godna style of Mithila painting.

कौन करता है: Dusadh performers. मौका: The Salhesh festival and shrine gatherings

Vidyapati padavali

The fourteenth- and fifteenth-century songs of Vidyapati, sung as living repertoire rather than recited as literature — Radha and Krishna songs, and the Nachari and Mahesvani addressed to Shiva.

Nachari and Mahesvani

Two Maithil devotional genres addressed to Shiva, sung in a plaintive descending line, and among the very few folk forms still routinely performed at village gatherings.

Samdaun and vivah geet

The farewell song sung as a bride leaves her parents' house, and the long wedding-song repertoire around it — sung by women, unaccompanied or with a dholak.

Chhath geet

The songs of the Chhath fast, sung on the way to the water and through the night — a repertoire that has moved almost entirely into recorded form in the last thirty years without losing its ritual place.

Sohar and Sama-Chakeva songs

Birth songs, and the sister-brother songs sung over the clay bird figures of Sama-Chakeva through the Kartik nights.

Kirtaniya nataka

A medieval Maithili sung drama, performed by a troupe with a narrator and set to classical ragas — one of the oldest surviving vernacular theatre traditions in eastern India, now performed rarely.

Salhesh gatha performance

Night-long narration of the Salhesh epic with song and enactment at village shrines, in the Dusadh tradition.

Mithila (Madhubani) painting जीआई पंजीकृत Madhubani, Darbhanga

A women's wall-painting tradition of the wedding chamber, moved onto paper during the 1966–67 famine when a handicrafts officer suggested it as relief work. Within a decade it was in Delhi galleries and abroad, and it is now the best-known folk art of India — and one of very few in which the artists are named.

सामग्री: Handmade paper, cloth and mud walls; natural and now acrylic pigment. तकनीक: Line drawn with a bamboo nib or a cloth-wrapped twig and filled in flat colour, with every space occupied — the double-line kachni style, the filled bharni style, the tattoo-derived godna style, and the tantric style, each historically attached to particular communities.

Sikki grass craft जीआई पंजीकृत Madhubani, Sitamarhi, Darbhanga

Boxes, containers and figures made by women, historically for storing a bride's belongings. The mauni — a lidded ritual basket — is given at weddings and used to carry offerings.

सामग्री: Sikki golden grass and moonj. तकनीक: Grass split, dried to a natural gold, and coiled and bound into closed forms with a metal awl; dyed grass is worked in for pattern.

Sujini embroidery जीआई पंजीकृत Muzaffarpur, Madhubani

A quilting tradition turned into a narrative medium by rural women's collectives, whose panels record dowry, migration, health and violence as often as they record deities.

सामग्री: Layered old cotton, coloured thread. तकनीक: Running stitch quilting over layered cloth with chain-stitch outlines.

Tikuli art जीआई योग्य Darbhanga, Patna

A decorative-arts tradition that began as forehead ornament manufacture and survives as painted panels in a Mithila-derived idiom.

सामग्री: Glass, and now hardboard with enamel and gold leaf. तकनीक: Fine painting in enamel on a lacquered ground, once applied to glass discs worn on the forehead.

Papier-mache and clay figures for Sama-Chakeva Madhubani, Darbhanga

The bird figures made by sisters for the Sama-Chakeva festival — a seasonal craft that exists for eight days a year and is then destroyed.

सामग्री: Clay, straw, paper. तकनीक: Modelled by hand and painted, made new each year and immersed at the end of the festival.

Makhana processing जीआई पंजीकृत Darbhanga, Madhubani, Purnia, Katihar

Mithila Makhana holds a geographical indication registered in 2022. The region produces the overwhelming majority of the world's supply, and the work — diving and popping — is done by specific communities, chiefly the Mallah.

सामग्री: Euryale ferox seed. तकनीक: Diving, drying, grading, roasting and hand-striking to pop the kernel.