Some cloths are worn; some are hung; this one is a temple you can carry. A phad is up to thirty feet of painted cloth that holds an entire epic — and a god — and is unrolled and sung through the night by a travelling bard.
✨ Fun fact: A phad is not a picture of a shrine — it is the shrine. When it is finally worn out, it cannot simply be thrown away; it is ceremonially retired, “cooled” by immersion in the holy waters at Pushkar, the way one would respectfully lay a deity to rest.
A god on a scroll
Phad is the sacred scroll-painting of Rajasthan. On a long band of handspun khadi cotton — about fifteen feet for the epic of the hero-god Pabuji, and up to thirty for that of Devnarayan — the whole life of a folk deity is painted at once: battles and processions, horses and peacocks, washermen and queens, the divine hero always the largest figure, at the centre.
The composition is unlike anything in Western art. It is not read left to right; the scenes are laid out by the geography of the tale, so a single cloth is at once a map, a comic and a scripture. As William Dalrymple memorably put it, a phad is a whole panorama of medieval Rajasthan.
The travelling temple
And it was made to move. The phad belongs to the Bhopas — priest-singers of the folk gods — and their wives, the Bhopis, who carried these scrolls from village to village as portable temples. At night they would unroll the cloth between two poles, and perform: the Bhopa singing the epic and playing the ravanhattha, a spike fiddle, while the Bhopi held up a lamp and lit each scene in turn as its part of the story arrived. The audience did not merely watch a painting. They attended a temple that had walked into their village.
A cloth that tells a story, unrolled and sung to an audience — we have just met its cousin in the pater gaan scroll-singers of Bengal, in Pattachitra. Across India, the same beautiful idea keeps recurring: cloth as the medium of a performed, living story.
The Joshis, and the making
The phad is the hereditary craft of the Joshi families of Shahpura, in the Bhilwara region of Rajasthan. The khadi is first primed with a boiled paste of flour and gum and burnished smooth with a stone; then the natural mineral and vegetable colours go on in a strict order, colour by colour, with the black outlines drawn last of all. And the very last stroke is the most sacred — the painting of the chief deity’s eyes, which is said to bring the phad to life and consecrate it as a shrine.
“Creating a phad,” as the master Kalyan Joshi has said, “is an act of devotion even as it is an art form.” It is exactly the sentence we would write about a great Banarasi — work and worship, refusing to be separated.
The thread we love
A cloth that is a map, a scripture and a theatre; a temple light enough to carry on a bard’s shoulder; a making that ends by opening a painted god’s eyes — the phad shows cloth doing something almost no other material has been trusted to do: to be the sacred, and to carry a story through the dark. That conviction, that cloth is worthy of the highest things, is the one we weave into every Banarasi. Explore our handwoven Brocade Fabric collection, or the woven kind of storytelling in the Baluchari saree.
Frequently asked questions
What is a phad?
A large horizontal scroll painting on cloth from Rajasthan, depicting the epics of folk deities — chiefly Pabuji and Devnarayan. It functions as a portable temple carried and performed by Bhopa priest-singers.
How is a phad used?
Bhopas and their wives unroll the phad at night and perform the deity’s epic before it — the Bhopa singing and playing a fiddle, the Bhopi lighting each scene with a lamp as it is narrated. The cloth serves as a mobile shrine.
What is a phad painted on, and with what?
On handspun khadi cotton, primed with a flour-and-gum paste and burnished smooth, then painted in natural mineral and vegetable colours with the black outlines drawn last.
Who makes phad paintings?
Traditionally the Joshi families of Shahpura in the Bhilwara district of Rajasthan, for whom the making is an act of devotion. The art is recognised as an endangered heritage tradition.
Sources & further reading
On phad painting, the Pabuji epic and the Bhopa tradition, see the National Museum (New Delhi), the Ministry of Textiles documentation of the craft, and William Dalrymple, Nine Lives.
More from Khinkhwab Diaries: Pattachitra · pichwai · the Baluchari · kalamkari.
