The Indian Toy Story
“And so the child grows, his awareness
expanding to encompass ideas and images larger than himself…”[1]
Play is universal. Children of every culture engage themselves in play.
Though play differs from culture to culture, generation-to-generation, it is
clearly an instinctual and an essential part of growing up. The vast landscape
of play, by itself, is an emotional experience of joy.
Play is almost incomplete without toys. A toy gives form and reality to
a child’s play. The young use toys and play to discover their identity, help
their bodies grow strong, learn cause and effect, explore relationships, and
practice skills they will need as adults. Adults use toys and play to form and
strengthen social bonds, teach, remember and reinforce lessons from their
youth, discover their identity, exercise their minds and bodies, explore
relationships, practice skills, and decorate their living spaces.
Toys are more than simple amusement, and the ways that they are used
profoundly influence many aspects of life.
Indian
Toys: A Tradition
Folk toys
are, in a way, the autobiography of the Indian People. [2]
“Each toy,
every doll, has its own story to tell.”[3]
“Each region in India
“Play, with
emphasis on safety and learning, are the core foundations for the toy industry
in India
A toy made by an artisan in India
The function of these ageless types of figurines is not predetermined.
It is established by usage and association: placed under a banyan tree, the
figure of a dog or horse or a doll, is an object to which offerings are made,
but to a child at home, it is a toy- static in nature, made out of easy-to-grasp
clay or wood.
The link between ritual and play is intimate. A woman, for example,
makes an image of the household deity and explains the Vratato the children sitting around her, so that when they get the
same image to play with, the theme persists in their mind. The toy to them,
becomes a symbol of what they know, it becomes a living social concept.
Likewise, toy animals also perform a double role, retaining all the
qualities of a type the earliest specimens of which have been found at Harappa,
Mohenjo-Daro
The terracotta toys discovered at various archeological sites in Mathura
or Pataliputra, expanding from the pre-Mauryan to Gupta age, shared certain
basic affinities despite regional variances; ‘through frequent interaction of
ideas and experiences at seasonal melas
and places of pilgrimage and in the course of riverine trade, which brought
together the far-flung parts of this vast sub-continent.’[6]They
have found resonance, in the ages to come, though with marked, newer elements
entering the old patterns, enriching and enlarging them in striking ways.
Toys and dolls are the obvious expression of the human psyche, social
and cultural practices, demographical differences and as such is a very
important part of traditional knowledge and wisdom, passed on through
generations. There is harmony in their integral use of material; the colouring
vivid and brief; the brush strokes, spontaneous. They base themselves,
frequently, on the elementary principles of physics: simple movements around
gravity, expansion in convection currents, the vacuum that fills, sound,
magnetism or kinetic energy, are three-dimensional in nature.
That the Indian tradition of making toys survived because of the fact
that the social organization was based on the village community, in the
corporate life of which artists and craftsmen played their assigned roles.
Inspired by continuity of tradition through mythology and folk-tales, and
working within the parameters of a social and religious structure and assurance
of economic security, the craftsmen worked out age-old forms, while introducing
newer patterns, but perhaps unaware of it, though not a radical assertion of
his individuality in the modern sense of the word.
Palna and the
toy
The whirling jhalars and mobiles, made out of textiles, wood, lacquer and decorated with shells and
beads, or painted with vivid colors, and making interesting sounds, engross the
attention of the infant, resting in his palna.
Bought with great love and affection, the parents themselves indulge with
them in the play. The physics of kinetic energy gets translated by the skilled
hands of the craftsperson into these striking toys.
Rattle,
the first sound
The infant becomes a child now. S/ he is amused by the sounds and
movements of that rattle made either of wood, cane, bamboo or palm leaf, with
bright colors and filled with stones or trinkets . The dug duggi is another variant of the rattle. And paper rattles are
contemporary versions of the same.
Toy Cart,
the first vehicle
The child is now beginning to walk. His first playmate, the toy cart, or
mrichhkatikka, (which also finds
expression in historical literature, as a legendary design ), made from clay
and wood and colored brightly, it may be in the shape of an animal or just a
flat Drum cart drawn with a string, which a child would then drag through mud
and dust.
Doll, the imaginary
friend
That doll, the imaginary friend is
always there for the child, to listen, sympathise, reassure and comfort. The clay
dancing dolls from Panruti (Tamil Nadu); Kinnaur dolls from Shimla; figurines
of animals and people of India from Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh); leather miniature
horses from Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh); wooden toys from Kondapalli and Benaras;
lacquer-turned wood toys from Etikopakka, Chennapatna; and terracotta forms
from Krishnanagar; are the imaginary
friends, never asking one to wait a moment, never tired, never preoccupied.
Always ready for a chat about worries and concerns.
Moving in and
out
The nostalgic memories of Indian childhood is filled up with maximum
physical freedom; discoveries in physics; reinforcement of gender-occupational
roles, or to help bridge them. Scenes of "ghar
ghar" (house games) or the conducting of mock weddings, enacted with
clay dolls in many a village across the country; or flying kites at the turn of
winds at Makara Sankranti, or playing
with marbles, tops, gilli-danda and others.
Spells of
Motion
The pitara of toys only grows
in size from here. The toys that the child buys with his/her father from a haat or a mela or a pilgrimage-site… only to discover, explore, break and
refix them. The indigenous udan
khatola, spinning wheel, bow and arrow, acrobat toys, yo-yo, mystery toys, lid
cart, string puppets, ektara, gulatia, among others, are perfect examples of
Indian based on the imaginative application of simple principles of science and
technology. These toys, to be bought for a couple of paise in any bazaar or
fair, generate joy and wonder.
Toys of
Ritual
Toys made in India
And then the religious showman
unwinds his scrolls of paintings or painted cards, the phad from Udaipur and other parts of Gujarat; Scrolls from Cheriyal;
Patachitras from Bengal and Orissa; narrating
that story of a local legend, or one of the avatars
of Vishnu, or informing the audience
of the contemporary issues that hound the society today; amidst the night
lamps.
Players
and Collectors/ Beauty and the Brain
The older playthings, in India
Toys generally serve a two-fold purpose. They can be used as playthings
by the children and as decoration pieces by the adults.
Newer forms of economy and Industrial Revolution, with associated social
change, haveled to the decadence of older systems of social existence. This is
evident in case of toy-making as well, with the dissipation of content and
form. However the forms of tradition neutralized the shortcomings to a minimum,
making the contemporary product that is always tolerable.
[1] Aditi, Page 80, 1982, Faridabad
[2] Mookerjee, Ajit, Folk Toys of India , Page 20, 1956, Oxford
Press, Calcutta
[3]
http://www.craftsinindia.com/indian-art-culture/indian-toys-dolls.html
[4] http://www.craftsinindia.com/indian-art-culture/indian-toys-dolls.html
[5] http://www.toysindia.in/indiantoy_industry.html
[6] Mookerjee, Ajit, Folk Toys of India , Page 15, 1956, Oxford
Press, Calcutta
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