Stories & Insights

Pattachitra: The Sacred Scroll Paintings of Raghurajpur

In the heritage craft village of Raghurajpur, near Puri in Odisha, every house is a studio. Children grow up watching their parents mix pigments from conch shells and lamp soot, listening to the stories of Lord Jagannath painted onto cloth canvases that have served as portable temples for centuries. This is where Chitranjan Swain learned to paint — not from a textbook, but from the living tradition of his family. What is Pattachitra? The word Pattachitra comes from Sanskrit: patta meaning clo