As markets shift, ancient stone craft of Maharashtra's Patharvat artisans faces extinction

For generations, the seasonal Anjani River has been more than a waterway for the Patharvat community of Waghlud Khurd. It has been their classroom, their workplace, their temple, and their source of life. But today, the riverbed that once rang with the sound of hammers and chisels has fallen quiet. A centuries-old stone craft is dying—not because the river has changed, but because the world around it has, says a guest blog published in the website of the advocacy group SANDRP (South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People).

The Anjani River originates near Achalgaon village in Bhadgaon taluka and flows through more than thirty-eight villages before joining the Girna and, shortly after, the Tapi River near the Rameshwar temple, forming a tri-confluence. Though not perennial, it now carries water for nearly eight months of the year thanks to a string of small check dams built seven to eight years ago. Along its banks, the river sustains multiple livelihoods: farmers irrigate their crops, Bhil fishers cast their nets, potters in Sonwad harvest clay, and the Patharvat—also known as Shilpkar—have long extracted and shaped the stones buried in its bed.

"The riverbed is not simply a source of raw material," writes development practitioner Shreesai Kharat, who has documented the community's struggle. "They say it is a resource for their life as they don't have their own farm, land or any other capital", he writes in the SANDRP blog.

The Patharvat are landless. Their homes sit slightly outside the village, closer to the river. Their craft is not learned in classrooms but at the quarry itself. "Khadaan hich aamchi shaala hoti," says Devidas Patharvat, who has spent nearly three decades working the riverbed. "The quarry was our school." Devidas never learned to read fluently; there was never spare money for schooling. Instead, his father took him to the river as a child to watch, learn, and help.

The artisans trace their origins to a shared myth that binds them to other craft communities in the region. Ananda Patharvat, a stone contractor from Chawalkheda, recounts the story: in the court of Vishwakarma, the Hindu artisan-god, five craftsmen were asked to choose from five buckets. The one who chose stone became the ancestor of the Patharvat. The one who chose gold became a goldsmith. And the one who chose clay became a Kumbhar—the potters of Sonwad who still depend on the same river for their raw material.

This deep connection has produced an extraordinary intimacy with the landscape. Kharat observes that years of working the riverbed have given the artisans an almost intuitive knowledge of stone. By simply tapping a rock with a small hammer, they can tell whether it will hold as a grinding stone or crack beneath the chisel. They read the river's current to judge the strength of the stone beneath the water. Their entire seasonal rhythm is governed by the river: before the monsoon, they blast and stockpile as much stone as possible, because once the rains arrive, the riverbed disappears beneath the floodwaters for months.

The extraction itself is done entirely by hand—drilling holes, packing them with gunpowder, and blasting. Then begins the painstaking work of shaping raw stone into objects of daily and sacred use: the pata-varvanta, a flat grinding stone once found in every kitchen; the ukhal-musal, a mortar and pestle; small stone diyas selling for fifty to two hundred rupees; idols of Ganpati, Vitthal, Nandi, and Mahadev; flat stone slabs for washing clothes; and the Munjya, a memorial stone for families who have lost an unmarried son, which can fetch two to three thousand rupees.

A large, well-finished grinding stone now sells for five to six hundred rupees. "In digits, this looks like a big rise," Kharat notes, "but against how much everything costs now, most artisans say it barely covers the efforts they put in making craft products."

Much of their trade happens not in the village but at seasonal fairs. Artisans carry their wares to the Sarangkheda Chetak festival near Shahada each December, timed with Datta Jayanti. Others sell stone lamps to shopkeepers in Amalner and Shirpur. For many, these few weeks represent their only real earning season.

But the riverbed is more than a workplace. "The riverbed and khadaan (quarry) are places of worship, memories and belongingness for the community," Kharat writes. "No-one sees the riverbed just as a place of extraction."

The Silence of the Riverbed

The decline, the community insists, has nothing to do with the river itself. "What has disappeared in the last few years is the market demand for products they make," Kharat reports.

Concrete has replaced stone in house construction—from door frames to foundation stones. The mixer grinder has rendered the pata-varvanta and ukhal-musal obsolete in most kitchens. For road and railway projects, contractor systems have replaced the local supply of gravel that once provided crucial income. When government contracts for stone work do come, contractors increasingly bring their own labour, including Bhil workers from nearby villages, rather than hiring local Patharvat artisans. Even temple construction and monument work—once the domain of master craftsmen—are now handed to outside contractors who arrive with machinery and imported stone.

The numbers tell the story. In Waghlud, fifty families once worked together along this stretch of riverbed. Today, only eight to ten households continue. "The whole patharvat community used to work around the river throughout the day, sharing meals, sharing work and sharing the riverbed together," recalls Ananda Patharvat. Now, the youth have migrated to Pune, Mumbai, and Surat in search of jobs, while those who remain scrape together whatever daily wage work they can find.

Women, too, have been pushed out of this shared space. While memories differ on exactly how much stone work women performed—some recall them carrying tiffins and washing clothes at the ghat, others remember them hauling blasted stone and breaking gravel by hand for road and railway projects—everyone agrees that the riverbed was once a shared family space. Crushing machines have eliminated even that marginal work.

Perhaps the most painful sign of the craft's terminal condition is the artisans' own attitude toward its future. "Today no artisan wants their children to continue the stone art," Kharat writes. "Many of them have not taught the craft to their children, because they feel if the art products are not going to sell then how they will earn some money."

Yet some refuse to surrender entirely. One artisan has begun making gym dumbbells from riverbed stone—a striking adaptation to modern demand that, as Kharat observes, "shows that they still want the craft to survive."

What Is Really at Risk

The loss extends far beyond a livelihood. "The Patharvat artisans in the Anjani River Basin have the traditional knowledge of stones and riverbeds that exist nowhere else," Kharat warns. The quarry is a true commons—no fences, no private owners, governed only by custom and mutual understanding. "When a resource like this loses the people who depend on it, something more than a livelihood is lost with it."

There is an ecological dimension as well. "If Anjani have community stewards noticing a dying stretch of river, an encroachment in its flood plain, or a blocked channel, and say or do something about it, they will most likely be the people whose daily life still depends on the river noticing it first," Kharat writes. "That, in addition to the stone or the craft, may be the loss happening at Anjani's riverbed today."

The final word belongs to the reporter who walked the riverbed with them: "The patharvat community in Anjani River Basin is slowly losing their craft and with it they are also losing their connections with the river; not by choice, but because changes in the market are pushing them out in search for alternative livelihood options. If the changes happening around them are not addressed, then the traditional stone art, intergenerational knowledge, and deep river-community bond may disappear soon."