India · Leather / Puppetry / Visual Arts
पिंगुळी चर्मवस्त्र बाहुली (Pinguli Charmavastra Bahuli)
Pinguli is a village in Sindhudurg District, Maharashtra, home to the Thakar tribe, practitioners of a leather shadow puppet tradition closely related to the Chitrakathi painting tradition of the same community. The puppets are cut from goat or deer leather, perforated with geometric patterns to create a shadow-light effect when held before a lamp, and hand-painted in the Chitrakathi style — bold outlines, flat color, mythological subjects. The Pinguli puppet tradition combines two skills: the leather perforation technique (requiring a specific pattern of holes that creates legible forms through light) and the Chitrakathi painting tradition (the visual vocabulary applied to the surface). The puppets are used in performance — the Thakar perform Ramayan and Mahabharata shadow plays for village festivals. Both the puppetry performance tradition and the leather craft are critically endangered — the Thakar community is small, and the two-skill demand (leather + painting + performance) creates a particularly complex succession challenge.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not inscribed
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