D Kavita Singh obtaining in "Murshidabad painting', the many bazaar and popular traditions including woodcut prints from Calcutta, and the European-style imagery in newspapers and other sources of official art The patas of this period are interesting material for the study of the operation of eclecticism 3 This is probably encouraged by the opportunities that patuas of different areas now have to meet and compare work, and more so by a significant occupational shift that has come about due to the intervention of handicrafts development workers Earlier, patuas made their scrolls for their own 103 use, what they offered to their audience was their performance Today it is the patas that are on sale and the patua sees himself as a painter rather than a storyteller A certain self-consciousness enters his work through his attempts to work for his market For instance, the naive figuration and ascetic palette of the jadupatuas is popular among urban buyers and a range of patuas are now producing 'jadupatas' 4 This, more often than not, seems to be motivated by diplomacy, even an impecunious research student is a patron of a sort, and to denigrate another patua, or to admit one's own inadequacies, would be in very bad form 5 S K Ray, 'The Artisan Castes of West Bengal and Their Craft," in A Mitra (ed ), Tribes and Castes of West Bengal, Census 1951 West Bengal, Alipore, 1953, pp 309-10 6 Benoy Bhattacharya, Cultural Oscillation A Study on Patua Culture, Naya Prokash, Calcutta, 1980 7 Misled by the district-name, Richard Burton in his "Continuity and Change in the Tradition of Bengali Pata-Painhng" (in A L Dallapiccola et al (eds) Shastnc Traditions in Indian Arts, Stuttgart, 1989, pp 299-345) treats a scroll from Kandi, south Murshidabad, which clearly belongs to the Birbhum circle, as a development on an earlier scroll, also from Murshidabad, and a good example of the Murshidabad-Behrampur style, and then hypothesizes the reasons for this change 8 In Medinipun pata hell scenes do occur, but only at the ends of the Chaitanya lila or Jagannatha scrolls 9 This often extends over two or three registers It is evident that the artists delight in this subject here bizarre puppet-like yamadutas devise unmistakably erotic tortures for the damned, who are always naked, almost always female 10 It is possible that these patas were the work of the sutradhars, the community of sculptor-painters who are believed to have painted the many fine wooden book-covers found in Bengal There are strong stylistic affinities between the wooden book covers and the Murshidabad scrolls (See D P Ghosh, "Eastern School of Medieval Indian Painting", in Chhavi, Bharat Kala Bhavan, Banaras, 1971), further Apt Ghosh, in his "Old Bengal Paintings" (Rupam, No 26, Calcutta, 1926) illustrates a Murshidabad-style scroll which he says was the work of an artist called Ishwar Sutradhar 11 Meyer Schapiro, Words and Pictures On the Literal and the Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text, Mouton, 1973, p 13 12 In this particular tradition the changing emphasis in the depictions would give rise to altered texts for every register on the pata, the patua would have at least one couplet in the accompanying song Thus the shape of the text of patua songs in Murshidabad, Birbhum or Medinipur would change in consonance with their different, or changing, visual styles ILLUSTRATIONS 1 Ramayana pata, Murshidabad, collection of Gurusaday Museum, Ace No GM 1626 Detail showing the wedding of Rama to Sita and Lakshmana to Urmila, the procession returns to Ayodhya with much pomp, on the extreme right of the third register, Rama battles with Parasurama 2 Ramayana pata, Murshidabad collection of Gurusaday Museum, Ace No GM 1626 Detail Above The sacrifice of the sages, at left, Rama and Lakshmana battle with demons, at right Below ceremony from the wedding of Rama to Sita, Lakshmana to Urmila 3 Ramayana pata, Murshidabad, collection of Gurusaday Museum, Ace No GM 1626 Detail The upper register, divided into three rooms of the palace, is filled with grieving women who have heard of Rama's banishment At the edge of the right-hand section, Rama and Lakshmana are Numbers 27-28