from earth to earth – terracotta offerings in Tamil Nadu | image gallery

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<span style="font-weight:normal;">Manikam, 87 years old when this photo was taken (2010), in his workshop.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">One of the numerous steps in preparing the earth to become workable clay.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">In 2007, Subash, at four years old, was already an accomplished sculptor. Today, Subash barely touches clay any longer.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">With a light caress, Jaganathan applies a thin coat of wet clay on a newly-completed cow.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Palaniappan is the chief potter for the festival in Thekkur and is responsible for the creation of the <i>ure-kutherai</i>. The village horse, made in two parts, will be close to four-metres high when assembled. Because of intermittent summer showers, Palaniappan has put fans in his workshop and keeps them whirring all day for one week, to insure that the clay is sufficiently dry before the pieces are fired.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Jaganathan has started arranging the dried pieces and the combustible material (wood and coconut shells and husk) in the oven. The clay pots and shards are used as air ducts for the easy circulation of heat.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">This make-shift oven was lit just five minutes before and billows of smoke escape from the top, where an orifice, like a chimney, was left open. The fire cannot be stoked, obviously, but must stay evenly distributed along the outer edges of the heated mound to ensure even baking of the clay pieces inside. Subbaiya stays at hand during the entire baking process (which takes only about an hour), making sure that the fire stays constant.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">The legs and bodies of a line of freshly baked offerings are given their final caress with mud made from earth, cow dung, rice hulls and some millet flour. Small handfuls of banana fibre are patted into the mud and finally the reinforced pieces are left to dry before they are painted.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">A gigantic horse, the principle offering at Kuthadivayal, is the largest currently made in Tamil Nadu, measuring around 6 metres in height. Kashirajan, the chief potter, puts the finishing touches on the extraordinary beast just hours before the festival commences.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">The morning of the Kuthadivayal festival in Aranthangi. The 6-metre-high <i>ure-kuthirai</i> (village horse) was created, fired and painted inside the oven. This afternoon, it will be decorated, lifted out of the oven and carried from the village directly to the shrine, five kilometres away.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">The first day of a three-day festival, about an hour before the devotees arrive to take their statues from the potters' quarters. Next to the offerings, the potters have begun to put the straw and bamboo poles that will be tied into place and used to carry the offerings from the village to their final destination, Ayyanar's shrine.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">A line of cows, poles securely tied to their haunches, just a short while before they will be lifted and taken into the shrine. Each is similarly decorated with a white <i>vesti</i>, lemons pierced onto its horns and a multi-coloured flower garland draped over its neck.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">The gigantic horse-offering for the Kuthadivayal festival being taken out of the oven in the potters' quarters in Aranthangi by more than one hundred devotees.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Devotees leaving the potters' village carrying offerings on their shoulders.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Carrying offerings through the dried paddy-fields towards the shrine.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">The day before this photo was taken, these three <i>ure-kutherai</i> (village horses) and numerous smaller offerings left the potters' village and were placed just outside the shrine's gates. They will be carried into the shrine the following evening.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">After leaving the potters' quarters, and before being carried into the shrine, the pieces are placed on the "intermediary grounds," in this case, near flooded paddy fields.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Four men are needed to carry this cow from the "intermediary grounds" through dried-up pasture land and into the shrine hidden inside a luxuriant sacred grove.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">A view of a festival in a small village square: the women and men sit separately, and wait and watch the two <i>sami-adi</i> being dressed and prepared for the rituals that will see them “receive” and thus be transformed into Ayyanar and Karuppu. The terracotta horses, too, wait patiently for the rituals to begin.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Weighed down by dozens of garlands given as offerings, the <i>sami-adi</i>’s transformation is complete: where a man stood just minutes ago, the god Ayyanar has taken his place among his followers.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">During this ritual in the potters' quarters, three <i>Sami</i> have taken their place among their devotees to drive away evil coming from outside the village. From left to right, they are Ayyanar, Saniyasi and Karuppu-sami.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">On the second day at this festival, a <i>sami-attam</i> (dance of the gods) called <i>Elle Sami</i> (Seven Gods) is carried out, where Singaravel incarnates, one by one, seven gods specific to the shrine. This photo was taken right before the dance of the god Sarimuni, who dances on nail-studded sandals with a <i>pujari</i>.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">At this festival, all of the numerous rituals are completed in one afternoon in the potters' village. After the "eye opening" ceremony, Ayyanar rides on his horse from the potters' village to the shrine. Once there, Ayyanar will dismount and continue to bless his subjects, and the offerings will find their permanent home next to the previous years' pieces.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">This photo was taken the morning after the completion of a (two-day) festival. In front of a row of old cows, newly-offered <i>bommai</i> are illuminated by the morning sun, their bright faces enhanced by dazzling pink scarves. Many have small squares of paper tied around their necks with the name of the donor written upon it.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">A line of horses and cows inside a small walled temple complex. The flamboyant tree has shed many of its appropriately named flowers, creating a vivid red carpet.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">In many shrines, after the monsoon rains have fallen, the animals - usually on dry land - find themselves knee-deep in water. The smaller <i>bommai</i> get even wetter!

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Since no written records exist, nobody knows for sure the age of these outstanding horses. The chief potter for the shrine insists they are more than one hundred-and-fifty years old. Most of the heads have fallen and disintegrated, but the ones that are still attached to the sculptural bodies reveal outstanding craftsmanship and attention to detail that have, alas, disappeared from the pieces created nowadays.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">These cows, about two feet high, had been offered two months before this photo was taken. The paint is still fresh and intact, and attests of a particularly keen sense of fantasy, form and finesse.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">In this shrine, the realism of form is enhanced by the choice of paint: all the animals - cows and horses alike - have been given white coats, pink ears and tongues, and black horns. The simplicity of colour and the patina of a few years of weathering have given this cow an appearence so lifelike that he's hypnotizing!

<span style="font-weight:normal;">In this remote shrine, a grazing cow finds edibles growing on the parched land where offerings were placed three years before...

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Tons of earth and sand had been brought to this shrine in order to raise the ground level (that was starting to sink as the surrounding marsh land gained territory during the heavy rains). One year, and one monsoon later, this new earth had flattened and dried out, burying legs and bellies and freezing the offerings as if they had been found in Pompei.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">A view of a shrine in the late afternoon as a storms brews just over the horizon.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">These old offerings, their paint totally worn away and their bodies coated with lichen, remain standing with the fragile equilibrium of a line of dominos.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">A lone horse and rider (<i>kutherai-karan</i>) guard the boundary between flood-lands and (very arid) pasture.

<span style="font-weight:normal;">Mayakrishna, the priest at Kuthadivayal, walking toward the shrine's small temple. Leading up to the shrine are the largest terracotta offerings currently made in Tamil Nadu: each year, a six-metre-high horse is created by the potters in Aranthangi and given to Ayyanar.

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