BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 117 of 142

Correct — D, Madhubani. The painting the question means is Madhubani art, also called Mithila painting, and the name settles the district: the style is named after Madhubani district of Bihar, where it originated and which remains the most active centre of its production. It began as wall art. Women of the Mithila region painted the freshly plastered mud walls of their houses — most famously the kohbar, the nuptial chamber — with deities and scenes from the epics, and the shift to paper and canvas came later, mainly in the villages around Madhubani, which is why the term 'Madhubani art' came into use alongside 'Mithila painting'. The technique is as distinctive as the imagery: no space is left empty, gaps being filled with flowers, birds, animals and geometric patterns; the figures are two-dimensional; and the traditional pigments were made from what the household had — vermilion powder ground with mustard seed for red, palash flower for orange, bilva leaf for green, red clay for earth tones, with gum arabic as the binder for paper and goat's milk for walls. Brushes were bamboo slivers, rags and sticks. Because the skills passed down within a compact geographical area and the content and style held steady, Madhubani painting carries a Geographical Indication. Five styles are recognised — Bharni, Kachni, Tantrik, Godna and Kohbar — and the district's artists are among the most decorated folk painters in India: Jagdamba Devi of Bhajparaul in Madhubani received the Padma Shri in 1975, Mahasundari Devi in 2011 and Dulari Devi more recently.

• (a)Darbhanga — The strongest wrong answer, because Darbhanga is the historic seat of the Mithila region and the style is practised there — the Kalakriti centre at Darbhanga is one of the institutions keeping it alive. But the art is named for Madhubani and centred on it; Darbhanga's own claims are the Raj Darbhanga, the university and the makhana trade.
• (b)Samastipur — A district of north Bihar in the same Mithila cultural zone, and painters work there as they do across the region, but it has no special association with the style and lends it no name. Samastipur is better known for its railway division and its sugar and agricultural belt.
• (c)Madhepura — Also in north Bihar, in the Kosi division, and again part of the wider Mithila world — which is exactly why it is offered. Madhepura's association is with the Kosi floodplain and the electric locomotive factory, not with a school of painting.

Madhubani painting is a domestic ritual art that became a global commodity within living memory, and both halves of that sentence matter. As ritual art it belonged to particular occasions — a wedding, a festival, a vow — and to particular surfaces, the mud wall and the courtyard floor, so it was renewed and lost with the seasons rather than collected. Its subjects come from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, from Rama and Sita and Radha and Krishna, from the sun and the moon and the tulsi, and from social scenes such as weddings and court life. As a commodity it moved onto handmade paper, cloth and canvas, entered the national award system, and now travels as a signature of Bihar — painted on the walls of Patna Junction and on the trees of Madhubani in a campaign to deter felling. The Geographical Indication it carries is the legal expression of the same idea the question tests: this art belongs to a named place, and the name is not decorative.

Bihar art-and-craft questions are almost always testing a craft-to-district or craft-to-region pairing, so learn them as pairs and expect the distractors to be neighbouring districts of the same cultural region rather than random names. Here all four options are north Bihar districts of the Mithila zone, and only the naming settles it. Build the table: Madhubani painting from Madhubani, Sujini embroidery associated with Muzaffarpur, Sikki grass craft and Manjusha art from the Bhagalpur–Anga region, Tikuli art from Patna, and the lac and stone work of the Gaya belt. Where a craft carries a Geographical Indication, the GI application itself names the districts, which is the most reliable source for exactly this kind of question. And note the wording of this stem — 'world famous painting' without naming it — which is a reminder that BPSC often expects you to identify the subject from the district list rather than the other way round.

• Madhubani or Mithila painting is named after Madhubani district of Bihar, where it originated and which remains the most active centre of production; it holds a Geographical Indication
• It began as wall art on freshly plastered mud walls, notably the kohbar or nuptial chamber, and moved to paper, cloth and canvas mainly in the villages around Madhubani
• Five styles are recognised: Bharni, Kachni, Tantrik, Godna and Kohbar
• Traditional pigments came from local materials — vermilion ground with mustard seed for red, palash flower for orange, bilva leaf for green and red clay for earth tones, bound with gum arabic on paper and goat's milk on walls; brushes were bamboo slivers, rags and sticks
• Jagdamba Devi of Bhajparaul in Madhubani received the Padma Shri in 1975; Mahasundari Devi received it in 2011 and Dulari Devi more recently; Sita Devi of Jitwarpur near Madhubani won the National Award
• A characteristic rule of composition is that no space is left blank — remaining gaps are filled with flowers, birds, animals and geometric motifs

• Choosing Darbhanga because it is the best-known Mithila town; the art carries the name of Madhubani, and that is what the question turns on
• Assuming 'Mithila painting' and 'Madhubani painting' are different traditions — they are the same art under two names, one regional and one district-based
• Treating the GI tag as decorative; it legally ties the craft to named districts and is often the source of the examiner's fact

BPSC asks the craft-to-district pairing directly and fills the option list with neighbouring districts of the same region, so vague regional knowledge is not enough — the district name has to be exact. UPSC prefers to bundle the same fact into a matched-pairs question spanning several states, where Madhubani appears alongside a martial art or a festival and only one or two pairs are correct.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is NOT one of the recognised styles of Mithila (Madhubani) painting ?

  • (a)Bharni
  • (b)Kachni
  • (c)Godna
  • (d)Pattachitra

  Answer(d) Pattachitra — a scroll-painting tradition of Odisha and West Bengal. The Mithila styles are Bharni, Kachni, Tantrik, Godna and Kohbar.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Traditional Madhubani painting obtained its red pigment mainly from

  • (a)vermilion powder ground with mustard seed
  • (b)crushed pomegranate rind
  • (c)imported synthetic dye
  • (d)powdered brick

  Answer(a) vermilion powder ground with mustard seed — one of a set of household pigments that also used palash flower for orange, bilva leaf for green and red clay for earth tones.