Pabuji: The Rajasthan Deity Whose Temple Is a Painted Scroll

The Pabuji katha turns on a promise, and it is the promise rather than the battle that devotees emphasise.

The mare. Pabuji obtained a black mare, Kesar Kalmi, from a Charan woman named Deval. The condition attached to the gift was that he would protect her cattle whenever they were threatened.

The camels. In one of the best known episodes, Pabuji travelled to bring camels for the wedding of his niece, and folk memory credits that journey with introducing camels to the region.

The wedding. Pabuji's own wedding was under way, and the rituals were still incomplete, when word came that Jindrav Khinchi had seized Deval's cattle.

The choice. Pabuji left the wedding as it stood and rode out to recover the herd. He kept his promise. He did not return.

The gatha continues past his death, with his nephew Rupnath taking up the fight, but the moment the tradition holds up is that departure. A man walked out of his own wedding to keep a promise made about someone else's cattle.

That is why the deity is invoked in the way he is. Pabuji is not asked for wealth or moksha. He is asked to keep animals safe, because that is exactly what he died doing.

The most remarkable feature of Pabuji's worship is that his principal shrine is a painted cloth.

A phad is a long horizontal scroll, often several metres in length, painted with natural colours by artists of the Joshi family tradition of Shahpura and elsewhere. It shows the entire katha at once, with Pabuji at the centre, his companions, the mare, the cattle, the wedding and the battle arranged around him in dense, brilliantly coloured detail.

How it works as a shrine:

• The phad is kept rolled and carried by the bhopa, the traditional priest singer of Pabuji, often travelling from village to village
• It is unrolled only after dark, and worship and performance take place through the night
• A lamp is used to light the section being sung, so the audience sees exactly the part of the story being narrated
• The bhopa sings the gatha to the ravanhattha, a bowed string instrument of the region, while a partner, traditionally the bhopi, holds the lamp and sings responses
• The phad is rolled up at dawn, and the shrine ceases to be a shrine until it is opened again

When a phad becomes too old, it is not discarded casually. Tradition calls for it to be respectfully immersed, since it has served as the deity's seat.

This makes Pabuji's worship one of the clearest examples in India of a fully portable temple, developed by a pastoral society that moved with its animals and needed a deity that could travel with them.

In this tradition the bhopa is everything a temple establishment would otherwise be.

• He is the priest, since the phad is consecrated in his keeping and worship happens through him
• He is the singer, holding a gatha that runs for many hours and is learnt by memory over years
• He is the musician, playing the ravanhattha, which he often makes and repairs himself
• He is the narrator and performer, moving along the phad with a lamp and acting out sections
• He is the carrier, since the shrine travels on his person from village to village

Bhopas traditionally come from specific communities associated with Pabuji's worship, and the role passes within families. A performance is commissioned by a village or a household, often in response to a vow, an illness among the animals, or a promise made during a difficult season.

The economics of this have changed. Pastoral demand has fallen as herds shrink, and many bhopas now perform for festivals, cultural programmes and visitors as much as for village patrons. Folklorists have documented the tradition extensively, and the Pabuji gatha is recognised as one of the major oral epics of India.

For a visitor, the honest advice is this: a staged twenty minute performance at a hotel is not the tradition. A full night phad performance in a village, commissioned by people who believe it will help their animals, is a completely different thing.

Although the phad is the travelling shrine, Pabuji also has fixed places of worship.

• Kolu, in the Phalodi area of western Rajasthan, is regarded as his home village and the principal shrine
• Small Pabuji thans stand in villages across Marwar, often near grazing land or at the edge of a settlement, marked by a platform, a stone and a flag
• Devotees offer coconut, gud, batasha, cloth and a lamp, and pastoral families offer at the start and end of grazing seasons
• Households that keep Pabuji as kul deity make offerings at weddings, births and before long journeys

His worship shares the pattern of Rajasthan's other lok devta shrines, where the deity is present at the edge of the working landscape rather than in a temple town. A herder passing a Pabuji than on the way out with animals will stop, offer briefly and continue.

Devotees also connect Pabuji with the wider group of Rajasthani folk deities. Gogaji protects against snakes, Tejaji is invoked in similar circumstances, Ramdev ji is approached at Ramdevra, and Harbhuji and Mehaji complete the traditional grouping in parts of Marwar. Families often keep more than one, and the division of responsibility between them is well understood locally.

Pabuji's worship is under the same pressure as the pastoral economy it came from, and the two are hard to separate.

As herds shrink, grazing routes close and families move to towns, the demand for a night long phad performance falls. Fewer young people in bhopa families learn the full gatha, since it takes years and no longer supports a household on its own. Phad painters continue, but much of their work now goes to collectors and decorative markets rather than to bhopas who will use the scroll in worship.

At the same time, some things are holding:

• Pastoral communities in Marwar still keep Pabuji as kul deity and continue their vows
• The Kolu shrine remains active and draws devotees through the year
• Documentation and archival recording of the gatha has increased
• Phad painting has become internationally recognised as an art form, which has kept the visual tradition and its artists in work

For devotees and visitors who want to engage honestly, the useful principles are simple. Commission a performance from a bhopa if you have the opportunity, buy a phad from the families who paint them traditionally, and understand that the object you are looking at was designed to be a temple rather than a picture. If it is kept in a home, tradition would treat it with the respect due to a shrine, not to a decoration.