Circle of Life

Research archive

Tattoo cultures of India

12 starting points for understanding who carried these practices, who made the tattoos, what the designs held, and what changed. Some are living, some endangered, some remembered only by their last bearers.

Central India

Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh

Gond and Surguja

Living
Close view of a traditional godna mark on a Gond woman’s arm
A traditional godna mark on the arm of a Gond woman.Varaprasad Sidam, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Across Gond communities and Surguja district, godna is both a body practice and a field of women’s cultural labour, increasingly translated into cloth and paper.

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Chhattisgarh

Ramnami Samaj

Endangered
A smiling member of the Ramnami Samaj with the name of Ram tattooed across his face
A member of the Ramnami Samaj. The divine name is written across the face and head.Arpan Basu Chowdhury, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Members of the Ramnami Samaj tattoo the name of Hindu God Ram across their bodies, a devotional practice that began as a refusal of caste exclusion.

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Eastern India

Mithila, Bihar

Mithila Godna and Madhubani

Endangered
Woman in Naiyyasi, Bihar showing traditional tattoos
A resident of Naiyyasi, Bihar, showing traditional godna.Amrit Sufi, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Godna places the visual history of Mithila on skin, while Madhubani carries related forms through painting. Its sun, moon and labyrinth imagery is closely related to godna, becoming a new tattoo lineage in itself.

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Kandhamal and Rayagada, Odisha

Kandha (Kondh)

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A smiling Kutia Kondh woman with facial tattoos, nose rings and large earrings
A Kutia Kondh woman with facial tattoos, Odisha.Yves Picq, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Among Kandha women of Odisha, geometric facial tattoos are remembered by many elders as protection, a way of making themselves less visible to powerful outsiders.

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Northeast India

Mon district, Nagaland

Konyak Naga

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An elderly Konyak man with a tattooed face wearing beaded necklaces with brass heads
A former headhunter in Longwa village, Mon district. Facial tattoos marked warriorhood.Avantika Chaturvedi, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Konyak facial and chest tattoos recorded a man’s passage into warriorhood. They are now carried only by a small number of elders.

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Ziro Valley, Arunachal Pradesh

Apatani

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An elderly Apatani woman with facial tattoos and a nose plug
An Apatani woman with tiipe tattoos and yaping hullo nose plugs, Ziro Valley.Soup0w0, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Apatani women once wore a line from forehead to nose and bars on the chin, a mark of identity now seen only on the oldest generation.

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South India

Nilgiri Hills, Tamil Nadu

Toda

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Historical photograph of Toda men and a woman in white cloaks
Toda men and women, photographed around 1871.Madras School of Art, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Toda women of the Nilgiris were tattooed with dots and rings across the body. The practice is now known mainly through colonial ethnography and community memory.

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Tamil Nadu, Kerala and old Mysore

Pacchai Kuthu

Endangered
A Korathi woman seated outdoors beside a metal pot
A Korathi woman in Tamil Nadu. Women of itinerant communities long worked as hand tattooists.Parithimathi, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Pacchai kuthu, or green pricking, names the hand tattooing of South India, long carried by itinerant Kurava women known as Korathis.

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Western India

Rajasthan and central-western India

Bhil

Endangered
Historical photograph of a Bhil woman circa 1914
A Bhil woman, circa 1914. The colonial archive often recorded subjects without preserving their names or voices.Unknown photographer, Battling and Building Amongst the Bhils · Public domain

Bhil tattooing joined adornment and marriage to social and spiritual identity, but the surviving public record is fragmentary and regionally uneven.

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Kutch and Saurashtra, Gujarat

Rabari and Mer

Endangered
Older Rabari woman with traditional facial tattoos
An older Rabari woman. Trajva survives as a living archive on women’s bodies.Meena Kadri, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0

Trajva formed a permanent visual language of adornment, protection, marriage and memory among several communities of Kutch and Saurashtra.

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Maharashtra

Warli

Living
Warli painting showing figures and animals
Warli painting uses spare geometry to hold dense scenes of collective life.Sahakol41, Wikimedia Commons · CC0

Warli is best documented as a painting tradition with its visual language now being carried into tattoo.

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