Rangoli

A pattern drawn on the floor at the threshold in coloured powder, rice flour or petals. At Diwali it welcomes Lakshmi into the house; in Tamil Nadu the white rice-flour kolam is drawn every morning of the year.

Diwali symbols. Also called alpana, kolam, rangoli meaning.

Meaning

A rangoli is a design drawn on the floor, often at the threshold of a house, in coloured powders, flowers, rice flour or chalk. The word began in what is now Maharashtra and is used across much of India for daily or festive floor drawings. Britannica derives the word from the Sanskrit rangavali, “line of color”, the same pattern of word as dipavali, the “row of lights” that gives Diwali its name. For Diwali, floors inside and out are covered with rangolis, and the Hindu American Foundation says that on Dhanteras, the first day, many families make rangoli or kolam, “which are also said to invite auspiciousness.” The commonest Diwali subject, the BBC says, is the lotus, because Lakshmi holds one or sits on one. It is mostly women’s work: Britannica calls rangoli predominantly a women’s folk art, and the women who draw them are predominantly Hindu, though Jains draw them for their own Lakshmi worship at Diwali and Roman Catholics of the Paravar community draw kolam on special occasions. The designs are meant to be short-lived: footsteps and wind wear them away, and ants, birds and insects eat the rice flour.

Origin and history

How old floor drawing is depends on which evidence is counted. Britannica takes the earliest clear reference to be the Kamasutra of the 3rd century CE, whose list of 64 arts includes tandula-kusuma-vali-vikara, “making lines of rice powder and flowers.” It finds floor paintings for weddings in the Narada Shilpa Shastra, an architectural text of about the 6th century, and the word rangavali used for doorstep designs in Sanskrit texts by the 10th century.

For the Tamil kolam the record is later. Sahapedia’s Anni Kumari reports that the oldest use of the word kolam for a floor design is a 13th-century inscription in Tirunelveli, among the duties of temple women, and that a 17th-century Sanskrit text on the duties of wives, the Strīdharmapaddhati, says the threshold of a house should not be left blank. Gift Siromoney of Madras Christian College, writing in 1978, found no kolam in Tamil word-lists, literature, old paintings or travellers’ accounts, and judged that the common threshold patterns “are not very ancient”, perhaps six hundred years old. He agreed that some of the geometric figures they use are much older, and Stella Kramrisch pointed to Vedic texts that mention drawing sun petals on the ground.

Kolam, alpana, mandana: names by region

Rangoli is the word in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka. In Tamil Nadu the drawing is kolam, in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana muggu, in West Bengal alpana, in Rajasthan mandana, and in Punjab and much of the north chowkpurana. The forms differ as much as the names. Southern kolam and muggu are mostly white, of rice flour or chalk, and the kolam’s lines and curves are drawn over a grid of dots, pullis; elsewhere the designs are more often figurative and brightly coloured. Vijaya Nagarajan, who has written on the kolam, draws the line by frequency: the kolam is drawn daily, while the other regional drawings mark festivals such as Diwali, holy days and vows. Writing for the MAP Academy, Alolika De says the Bengali alpana is thought to have roots among the Adivasi peoples of the region: the Santhals paint lotuses, suns, fish and elephants in a white paste of rice and water on thresholds and walls for the deity Marang Buru, while Bengali Hindu women draw alpanas as part of their vows, bratas.

What a rangoli is for

Women who draw rangolis, Britannica says, see them as welcoming good fortune, and specifically Lakshmi, whose footprints often appear in them (see Lakshmi’s footprints). The same women believe a rangoli on the threshold keeps away misfortune and the evil eye. Tamil women give Kumari many reasons for the daily kolam: to welcome Bhudevi, the earth, and Lakshmi, Surya and Ganesha; to ask the earth’s forgiveness for walking on her; to feed “a thousand souls” with the rice flour; and to keep out Mūdevī, Lakshmi’s sister, who brings poverty and ill luck. A missing kolam says something too: that the household is not Hindu, or that someone in it has died. After a death no kolam is drawn until the first anniversary.

Sources

Rangoli (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Charles Preston, Associate Editor for Religion, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Wayback Machine copy, 28 January 2026), Introduction; History and diversity; Many lines, many meanings
Diwali (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Britannica Editors; revised and updated by Shatarupa Chaudhuri, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Wayback Machine copy, 22 September 2026), Festivities
5 things to know about Diwali, Hindu American Foundation blog, 3 November 2020, Hindu American Foundation, 4) How Diwali is celebrated
Diwali (BBC Religions: Hinduism), BBC Religion and Ethics, archived page, last updated 20 October 2010, BBC, Lakshmi, wealth and prosperity
Significance of Kolam in Tamil Culture, Anni Kumari, Sahapedia, Sahapedia, Overview; Origins and historical references; Significance of kōlam
Blurred lines: Threshold floor drawings and their mediation between private and public, Alolika De, The MAP Academy; Garland magazine, 1 March 2024, Garland, opening; alpana
Dīvālī (Nalini Balbir, Jainpedia), Nalini Balbir, Jainpedia, Festivals, Jainpedia, Institute of Jainology, Worship of wealth

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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research

Added October 9, 2026.

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