What colours mean

Where

Across India and Nepal; best known in the Braj region (Mathura, Vrindavan, Barsana)

When

The full moon of the month of Phalguna, usually in March

Made with

Gulal (dry coloured powder) and coloured water

Holi says goodbye to winter and welcomes spring. On the night before, people light bonfires for Holika Dahan, which recalls how the boy Prahlada was saved while his wicked aunt Holika burned: good beating evil. Next day, friends, families and strangers throw gulal and coloured water at each other. In Braj the festival is tied to the love of Krishna and Radha. The old colours came from plants: orange and red from the flowers of the palash or tesu tree, the "flame of the forest", and yellow from turmeric.

Where

Hindu communities across much of India and Nepal

Made with

Traditionally turmeric mixed with slaked lime or alum; later vermilion, ground from the red mineral cinnabar

Sindoor is a red powder that many married Hindu women wear in the parting of their hair. The groom first puts it there during the wedding, a ritual called sindoor daan, so it marks a woman as married, and widows traditionally stop wearing it. Red runs right through Indian weddings: it is the most popular colour for a bride's sari, because red is seen as auspicious, meaning it brings good fortune. Old recipes made sindoor from yellow turmeric and lime, because the lime turns turmeric red. Some cheap modern sindoor has been found to contain lead, which is poisonous.

Where

Weddings in many parts of India and Pakistan

When

Usually the day before the wedding

Made with

A paste of turmeric, often mixed with flour and oil

In the haldi ceremony, married women of the family rub a paste of turmeric (haldi) on the face, arms and legs of the bride, and separately of the groom, each in their own home. Women sing traditional songs, and sweets are handed out at the end. The yellow paste is a blessing on the couple just before their new life together begins. Afterwards the bride and groom bathe and get ready for the wedding.

Where

North and east India and Nepal; this mustard field is near Chandigarh, in Haryana

When

The fifth day of the bright half of the month of Magha, in late January or February

Basant Panchami gets ready for spring and honours Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. Schools and homes, especially in West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar, hold Saraswati Puja, and many small children write their first letters on this day. Yellow is the colour of the festival. In Punjab and Haryana people wear yellow, eat yellow rice and fly kites, matching the mustard fields that are in flower at this time of year.

Where

The photo shows pilgrims at Har ki Pauri, Haridwar, during the Kanwar Yatra

Saffron, a deep orange-yellow, is the colour of renunciation in Hinduism: giving up home, money and worldly ties. A sannyasi, someone who has taken vows to leave worldly life, is usually given an ochre or saffron robe, and many sadhus wear saffron. Pilgrims wear it too. Each monsoon, in the month of Shravan, crowds of saffron-clad kanwariyas carry Ganga water from places such as Haridwar back to Shiva temples, many of them on foot.

Where

Painted at Akbar's court; now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

When

About 1590 to 1595

Who

Attributed to Miskin

Made with

Ink and colours on paper, a page from a Harivamsa manuscript

In Indian paintings and temple images, Krishna is nearly always shown with blue, black or very dark skin. The reason is his name: in Sanskrit krishna means "black" or "dark". Vishnu, of whom Krishna is an avatar, is shown the same way. In this painting Krishna lifts Mount Govardhan on one hand to shelter the people and cows of Braj from a terrible storm.

Where

North India and Pakistan; this one hangs at a shop in Jaipur

Many families in South Asia believe that envy or too much praise, the evil eye or nazar, can bring bad luck. Black is the usual guard. A mother may put a small black dot of kajal on a baby's cheek or forehead, the kala tika, as a deliberate flaw that spoils perfection, and black threads are tied on wrists and ankles. A nazar battu is an object meant to catch the evil eye instead: houses, shops and trucks hang fierce black faces like this one, often with a lemon and green chillies (nimbu mirchi).

Where

Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, London; the painting is in the Royal Collection

When

10 February 1840

Who

Painted by George Hayter

Before 1840, European and American brides usually married in their best dress, in almost any colour: blue, yellow, brown or even black, and red was popular too. Then Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in a white silk satin dress trimmed with lace made in Honiton, Devon. She was not the first bride in white, but pictures and reports of her wedding spread everywhere, and by the end of the 1800s white was the choice of wealthy brides on both sides of the Atlantic. Middle-class brides in Britain and America mostly followed after the Second World War. The dress survives, though it has aged to cream.

Where

China and Chinese communities around the world

When

Seen most at Chinese New Year, the Spring Festival, in January or February

In Chinese culture red stands for good fortune, happiness and wealth. At New Year, streets and homes fill with red lanterns and paper decorations, and children and relatives are given money in red envelopes called hongbao. Traditional brides wear red, though white Western gowns are now popular too. Red is kept away from funerals, because the traditional colour of mourning in China, as in other parts of East Asia, is white. Yellow was once the emperor's own colour.

Where

Tyre in ancient Phoenicia, now in Lebanon, and around the Mediterranean; these shells are on show in a hotel in Tyre

When

Made by the Phoenicians from at least 1200 BCE; prized by the Romans and the Byzantine emperors

Made with

A slime from the glands of murex sea snails

Tyrian purple is a deep reddish-purple dye made from the slime of murex sea snails. It is named after Tyre, the Phoenician city whose dyers made it famous. In an experiment in the early 1900s, 12,000 snails gave only about 1.4 grams of dye, barely enough for the border of one garment, and in ancient times it was said to be worth its weight in silver. It did not fade easily. Senior Roman officials wore white togas edged with it, and by the 4th century CE only the emperor was allowed to wear it. That is why purple still means royalty in Europe.

Where

The Prophet's Mosque (Al-Masjid an-Nabawi), Medina, Saudi Arabia

When

First painted green in the 1800s

Green is the colour most closely linked with Islam. The Quran describes the people of paradise dressed in green silk and resting on green cushions, so green suggests paradise, life and blessing. The best-known green landmark is the Green Dome over the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina. Green also appears on the flags of many Muslim-majority countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Where

India was the main source for Europe for centuries

Made with

Leaves of the indigo plant, fermented in water and dried into cakes

Indigo was India's great blue export. It reached Greece and Rome more than 2,000 years ago, and the Greeks called it indikon, "from India", which became the English word indigo. It was sold as hard blue cakes like these. Under British rule, European planters forced farmers in Bengal to grow it, which led to the Indigo Revolt of 1859 and the Bengali play Nil Darpan by Dinabandhu Mitra. From 1897 the German company BASF made indigo from chemicals, and India's natural indigo trade shrank fast. Today indigo is the blue of jeans. How it is dyed is in Printed, dyed and tied.