Jadu Patuas are member of a small community of painters still found in Midnapur, Bankura, Borbhum and Manbhum in west Bengal and Singbhumi and the Santhal Pargana in Bihar. Jadupatua practice magic and they paint for tribal Santhals. People see jadupatuas in awe because they are not known merely as patuas (painters), but jadupata (magic painters). The painters are inevitably men. The Santhal paintings are intended for their own audience.
Jadupatua orJam pata or Jadu pata and Chakkhudan pata, dealing with eschatology, are painted for a family that has recently suffered bereavement They make trips going from village to village inhabited by the Santhals, came with painted pictures on long scroll of paper. The readymade schematic portraits of which one or other is bound to fit the type of the recently dead amongst the tribal Santhal whose house he visits.
The dead are believed to wonder blindly in the other world until the jadupatua gives them eye sight by painting the eye in the ‘portrait’. After the death in a village home, the duari-paua would appear with paintings of the dead person or deceased complete in every respect except for the iris of the eyes. The implication was that the dead person was wondering blindly in the other world when his eyesight could easily be restored for a small consideration. The dead man’s relatives would provide the ‘patua’ with a little money or some articles of daily use for transmission of the decease where upon the patua would restore the sight by filling in the iris of the eyes on paintings. The pictures of a dead person also show enjoying earthly comforts in the world hereafter. The portrait painted for the Santhal are distinguished from the work of chitrakaras.
Other theme painted by jadupatua includes pishacha, the evil spirit, which causes death in the Santhal community. It is believed that pishacha enters the house through domestic animals and dirty drinking water and the person who drinks water meets death. Therefore the pishacha pata often shows pictures of animals, water buckets and people of the Santhal community drinking the water.
The scrolls stem from an old tradition of aperlaukik chitra ie. The main subject matter on scroll made by Jadupatua’s in Santhal Pargana is life in the kingdom of dead. The human and the divine look alike, and share the same features but, the crowns and some iconographic signs made them different. They show these and tell the story. Practice gradually ceased not to be so exclusively funeral, the subject list was expanded to include pleasant scenes from life, feasting, music and dancing, illustration of folklore, story of creation, music, festival of boha, gatras or dance meetings, personification of Santhal clans, tiger or tiger with human rider, adventures of Krishna with gopis (milkmaid) and Santhal version of Hindu religious legends. They use limited colours and material. They have a common style of painting which was determined by long established traditions