Visual Language and Cultural Symbolism in Ritual Art: A Comparative Study of Mandana and Alpana

Abstract

Ritual floor and wall paintings transform domestic surfaces into spaces of devotion across South Asia, yet the Mandana tradition of Rajasthan and the Alpana traditions of Bengal and Bangladesh are generally studied separately. This qualitative comparative documentary study examines how ecology, material practice, visual grammar, semiotic logic, ritual function, gendered transmission and contemporary commercialization shape their similarities and differences. A purposively selected corpus of eight documentary sources on the traditions was analyzed alongside visual sources and Peirce’s icon-index-symbol framework. Comparative thematic coding produced five findings. First, local materials are associated with distinct visual grammars: Mandana uses mineral pigments and geometric organization, whereas Alpana uses rice paste and a continuous freehand line. Second, Mandana privileges convention-dependent symbolic geometry, while Alpana relies more strongly on iconic and indexical signs such as fish, vegetation and Lakshmi’s footprints. Third, formal divergence coexists with functional convergence because both traditions operate as domestic devotional practices concerned with auspiciousness, protection and petition. Fourth, both depend on intergenerational transmission among women and are vulnerable to changes in domestic architecture and community life. Fifth, commercialization can support visibility and livelihood while detaching motifs from ritual context. The comparison offers a focused semiotic account and identifies preservation as a problem of sustaining practice, meaning and transmission, not merely conserving motifs.