traditionGodna
गोदना · Hindi
godna — to prick
| Where it goes | arms, hands, face, chin, legs, chest |
|---|---|
| Notes | Women tattooing women, often for a small fee, village to village. |
| Ink | Soot and water |
about 1,700 – 2,026 · Carried by tattooing castes and by women of many tribal communities; thinning
23.5000, 82.5000 · OpenStreetMap
What it is
Northern and central India: women's marks, pricked by women, carried out of India to the Caribbean by indentured labour.
The long version
Godna is the verb to prick, which puts it in the same family as sak, kaki-, and deq: the word for the tattoo is the word for what the needle does. The designs go on arms, hands, legs and face, and the practice runs through Baiga, Oraon, Birhor, Munda, Santal and many other communities, each with its own repertoire.
It travelled. The tattoo went with indentured workers to Guyana and Trinidad, which makes it one of very few traditions on this site with a diaspora that kept the marks.
Connected to
- What the word means first Another word for tattoo that means to prick.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | cited | Godna — Wikipedia (en) | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Godna — Wikipedia (en)
- Munda people — Wikipedia (en)
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there