Welcome to Aadishilp Museum. Aadishilp Museum is a digital presentation of selected artefacts from Niranjan Mahawar’s personal collection, carefully restored and documented for archival viewing. Each image has been enhanced to preserve material texture, form, and detailing while maintaining the integrity of the original artefact.
Click on any image to view it in high resolution and explore its finer craftsmanship with detailed description. All images are copyrighted and exclusively owned by niranjanmahawar.in.
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Sacred Metal
Project type
Cultural Artefact Archival
Location
Chhattisgarh
Role
Ethnographer and Collector
This section documents and restores a rare collection of Bastar tribal bronzes and ritual sculptures representing powerful regional goddesses and sacred motifs. The series includes Maoli Mata, Danteshwari Mata, Telgin Mata, Burhi Mata, Karnakotin Mata, Khanda Kankalin Mata, Banjarin Mata, Pardesin Mata, and associated divinities, along with animal totems such as Ghoda Deo and elephant motifs connected to Danteshwari.
The sculptures reflect the distinctive Bastar casting tradition, created through the cire perdue (lost-wax) process. Prominent elements include khappar motifs, spiral prabha halos, wheat-pattern necklaces, tridents, swords, staffs, and ritual objects symbolizing sacrifice, protection, fertility, and divine authority. Several works depict goddesses mounted on horses or elephants, while others show ritual lamps adorned with crow, sun, moon, tiger, deer, and elephant motifs, deeply rooted in Central Indian tribal cosmology.
Acquired across regions of Central and South Bastar between the 1960s and 1990s, these artefacts embody a living ritual tradition where metal sculpture is decorative as well as devotional, symbolic, and community-bound. The restoration work focuses on preserving surface detail, spiral ornamentation, prabha structures, and ritual attributes without altering the original form.
This category presentation brings together iconography, craftsmanship, and cultural memory from one of India’s most distinctive indigenous metal traditions.
