Serpent (Naga) festival

An essential village ritual in Mithila, the veneration of nagas, or snake divinities, is represented in this intricately detailed scene. Ganga Devi is perhaps best known for her renderings of Hindu subjects and epic literature. Here she portrays the richness and profusion of events from everyday rural life. With exacting linework, she lays out the array of accoutrements involved in worship. The snakes are contained within framing structures, including what appear to be mats, a flat woven tray with a handle, and pipal-shaped leaves. Surrounding them are offerings and ritual vessels, including flowers and fruits, and containers probably filled with ritual food and drink. The sun and moon divinities appear at the top of the framed scene, while a garland-bearing woman and the figure of an elephant, suggesting fertility and abundance, punctuate the scene below. Typical of the linework style characterizing the artist's caste, the picture has a palette of black, red/pink, and white. Dense borders frame the scene. The effect is one of visual intensity, where dense abundance and seeming disorder are closely observed and precisely contained.