Ganguly, Mrs. Waltraud
Waltraud Ganguly was born in Germany and holds a degree in medicine. She feels attracted to India since she was a student in Heidelberg. In 1971, she was married to an Indian, with whom she lives in Germany. From the very beginning of her contact to the country, Dr. Ganguly was fascinated by the customs and traditions of the Indian village people. Her special interest is the significance of the old customary rural ornaments, especially ear and head ornaments. In order to gather authentic information and photographs of traditional earrings and of the people wearing them, she conducted intensive field work throughout India, accompanied by her husband. Since 1995, the couple covered more than 40,000 km on fifteen trips. The author has held lectures and exhibitions on Indian earrings in Chennai, Berlin, Heidelberg and London.
Articles by this Author
Snake Earings of India - Their Social, religious and symbol context
- By Ganguly, Mrs. Waltraud
- Published 3 March 2008
- Jewellery - Ethnic
- Unrated
20 july 2007, Asianart.com
Traditional earrings in the villages and tribal areas of India are manifestations of symbolism, religious meaning and social significance. A woman wears a particular type of earring as a sign of identity, of membership in the defined social group into which she was born. Wearing the specific earrings of her community, she continues the tradition of her ancestors.
In a field work of ten years, I could locate and describe in detail 170 specific types of earrings, of which a majority are worn until the present day. Many more are extinct or neglected, others will follow this fate in the future under the present fast economic growth and impact from the west, which erodes values of tradition and heritage.
One of the most interesting and conspicuous traditional Indian earring types is the snake earring which can be found in three far-apart areas of the continent: Orissa in the East, Tamil Nadu in the South and Gujarat/Rajasthan in the West.
© Waltraud Ganguly
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