Rabari and Mer

Rabari pastoral communities and Mer communities have distinct histories. Accounts from Gujarat often discuss their tattooing together because motifs, itinerant tattooists and regional practices overlapped. Community-specific details must therefore be read carefully.

Women tattooed women. Experienced Mer practitioners and itinerant Vaghari or Nat women travelled between villages. A reed holding two or three needles was used to prick soot- or plant-based pigment into stretched skin.

Girls could begin receiving tattoos in childhood and add marks before marriage. The hansali, named after a silver neck ornament, extended from neck to breast. Peacocks, flowers, domestic objects, plants, deities and protective figures connected beauty to marriage, fertility, chastity, labour and belief.

Songs and sayings describe tattoo as the possession that remains when jewellery and clothing are gone, accompanying a woman to the funeral pyre.

The practice is now most visible on older women. Contemporary artists and researchers are documenting trajva through family histories, photography and new tattoo work, but revival also raises questions of consent, ownership and distance from hereditary women practitioners.