The kaavad of Rajasthan is a portable shrine with multiple doors that fold into themselves. The Kaavadiya Bhat or the storyteller journeys with this brightly painted wooden box to the homes of his patrons, to recite their genealogies and regale them with the stories of the pantheon of deities painted on the shrine. While the object serves as an aide – memoire for the storyteller, the keeper of its secrets his tales are meant to reaffirm the lineage of his ...
