Anga & Seemanchal · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
Dance
The story of Bihula, who floats her dead husband's body down the river to win his life back from the snake goddess, is sung over several nights while Manjusha paintings of the episodes are displayed and, at the end, immersed.
Performed by: Household women and hereditary singer-painters. Occasion: The Bisahari puja in Bhadra
Circling dances to dhol and jhaal, shared across the Bihar-Jharkhand-Bengal meeting point.
Performed by: Village groups, including Santhal neighbours. Occasion: Monsoon and harvest
A night-long women's performance after the baraat leaves, with role reversal and bawdy song.
Performed by: Women of the household. Occasion: Weddings
Line dances with flute, tamak and tumdak drums, performed in the Santhal villages that begin where the plain meets the Rajmahal hills.
Performed by: Santhal communities. Occasion: Sohrai, Baha and seasonal festivals
Music
The sung narrative of Bihula and Bala Lakhindar, performed over successive nights of the snake-goddess festival — the same story that Bengal sings as the Manasamangal.
Sohar, vivah geet, jhumar and barahmasa in Angika, sung by women's groups; the language's principal surviving literary form is oral.
The song traditions of the border belt, in a language that sits between Bengali, Maithili and Assamese and is spoken by several million people who are usually counted under Hindi.
The Chhath repertoire on the Bihar side, and Vaishnav kirtan in the Bengali-influenced districts — often in the same town.
Devotional songs sung by pilgrims on the 105-km walk from Sultanganj to Deoghar, with a repertoire that turns over almost completely every few years as recorded music replaces the older forms.
Theatre
Painted panels of the Bihula story displayed in sequence while the episode is sung — a scroll-and-song form related to Bengal's patachitra performance and to the Rajasthani phad.
Ramlila on the Bihar side, and jatra — the Bengali travelling theatre, played at volume on an open stage — in the eastern districts, sometimes in the same week.
Crafts
Tens of thousands of looms across the city and its villages, producing the textured wild silk sold across India as Bhagalpuri. The trade has been badly squeezed by power looms and by cheaper imported yarn.
Material: Tussar and mulberry silk, ghicha and matka yarn. Technique: Cocoons boiled and reeled or spun, warped, and woven on pit and frame looms; dyed in the piece or the yarn.
One of the few Indian folk painting traditions that is explicitly narrative and sequential — the panels tell the Bihula story in order, and were traditionally made for the festival and then immersed.
Material: Paper, cloth and bamboo-and-jute boxes; three colours — pink, green and yellow. Technique: Figures drawn in a distinctive x-shaped human form with borders of snakes, waves and lotuses, filled in a strictly limited palette, and composed as a sequence of episodes to be read in order.
Household craft across the wetland districts, including the conical fish traps used in the flooded fields every monsoon.
Material: Sikki grass, bamboo, cane. Technique: Coiled grass basketry, and split-bamboo weaving for winnowing trays, fish traps and screens.
Seemanchal has become the largest producing belt in the country alongside Mithila, with processing units now appearing beside the traditional village work.
Material: Euryale ferox seed. Technique: Diving, drying, grading, roasting and hand-striking.
A metalworking town since the eighteenth century, when it supplied the East India Company's arsenal — a skill base that also produced a long-running illicit small-arms problem the town is very tired of being known for.
Material: Iron and steel. Technique: Forging, filing and small-scale machining.
Bihar's only tea belt, an extension of the Dooars and Nepal terai plantations, grown largely by small farmers since the 1990s.
Material: Camellia sinensis. Technique: Plucking and CTC processing at small factories, on smallholdings rather than large estates.
The dance, music, theatre and crafts of Anga & Seemanchal, from classical forms to village traditions. (17)