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Kala · The threshold art

Kolam

Dots first, then one line that goes around every dot and ends where it began. Make one, trace one with a guide, or learn a flower or a star.

1 line
Dot grid
Symmetry
Lines
WovenLooped
Show

Tap where two lines cross to make them turn, or choose Guide me to trace it in short sections.

A few to start from

Each one is a single line. Tap one to open it on the floor.

A home kolam

Let the lotus grow

Begin with eight petals. Grow a crown, add a layer, or take your time with a whole bloom. There is a geometric star and a yantra to try too. Trace each stroke as it glows.

Step 1 of 12

About this kolam

A daily kolam drawn in many homes. The first four petals face east, west, north and south, the next four the corners between them, and the star appears where they cross.

Each line is really two, drawn in one movement: a pinch of kolam powder on the index finger and one on the middle finger, pushed out with the thumb. One line falls outside the index finger, the other inside. In Tamil this is irattai ezhai, two lines.

The crown, layered blossom and festival bloom are original Kala variations inspired by radial flower kolams. They repeat the petal gesture at different sizes, keeping the tips aligned and joining each pair of lines around a complete contour. The star mandala is a geometric study inspired by the completed angular sketch: build an upward triangle, cross it with a downward triangle, then repeat at a larger size. Their names describe these studies; they are not traditional pattern names. These flowers are drawn in separate strokes, unlike the dot-loop rules of sikku kolam.

The yantra follows the layers of many Hindu yantras: the bindu at the centre, the shatkona of two triangles (Shiva rising, Shakti descending), rings of eight and sixteen petals, and the square bhupura with a gate on each side. Maṇḍala means circle, and a yantra is often called a mantra given a shape. The Sri Yantra adds nine interlocking triangles whose lines must meet exactly, and drawing it well is still a geometry puzzle. Your eight-petal home lotus is the same lotus ring you will find inside it.

Read about the different kolam families and generating patterns through repeated gestures.

Sources 17 to 19

A game

Draw the heart lotus

Join the dots with one line, counting from the centre: 1, 3, 5, 2, 4, and round again.

0 of 40

Change the lotus
Order
Petals
About Hridaya Kamalam

The lotus of the heart is Lakshmi's kolam. It is drawn in the prayer room, beside the tulasi plant, and for Friday and Varalakshmi puja, not at the doorstep, and people take care not to step on it. Some families count 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, the same order drawn the other way.

In 1986 Gift Siromoney and Chandrasekaran showed why one line reaches every dot: 8 and 5 share no factor. Try 8 arms with 4 dots under Change the lotus and the line splits into rings.

Sources 12 to 16

What is known

The science of kolam

Kolam is often called scientific. Some of that is well studied, some is tradition, and some has simply never been tested. Here is which is which.

Kolam and energy

Many people feel that a kolam brings energy to a home. This comes from tradition and inner experience, the same place yantras come from. No instrument has measured it and no study has tested it, so science can neither confirm it nor rule it out.

What surely changes is the person drawing. You wake early, bend and squat, keep a steady hand, and hold your attention on one line for several minutes. You can notice these effects in yourself.

Measured and published

  • It is real mathematics

    A sikku kolam follows three rules: every dot is enclosed, lines cross cleanly, and there are no loose ends. Many are one closed line drawn without lifting the hand or going over any part twice. Mathematicians call that an Eulerian circuit.

    In 1974 Gift Siromoney and colleagues at Madras Christian College used kolams to study how pictures can be generated by rules ("array grammars"), which fed into computer science. Marcia Ascher wrote about the tradition in American Scientist in 2002, and a 2024 paper counted how many kolams exist for each kind of symmetry.

    You can meet one of these rules above. A one-line kolam can be mirrored across its middle lines, but never across a diagonal. A single loop mirrored across a line can cross that line straight on only twice, yet it would have to cross the diagonal twice at every dot sitting on it. That is why Mirrored here only mirrors left to right and top to bottom.

    Sources 1, 2, 3

  • The same idea grew on another continent

    Storytellers of the Chokwe people in Angola draw sona in sand around a grid of dots, with the same kind of line. The mathematician Paulus Gerdes proved a neat rule for the plain woven pattern: on a grid a dots wide and b dots tall, the number of separate lines is the greatest common divisor of a and b. Try it:

    Across6
    Down4
    Sources 4, 5

  • It feeds small lives

    Kolams were drawn in rice flour, and ants, birds and insects eat it. Vijaya Nagarajan's study of the practice is titled after the householder's duty it answers: to feed a thousand souls. You do not have to take this on faith. You can watch the ants arrive.

    Source 6

  • Making art calms the body a little

    In a 2016 study at Drexel University, 39 adults made art for 45 minutes, and cortisol (a stress hormone) went down in about 75% of them, with no link to skill. That study was not about kolam, so it is a fair hint, not proof.

    Source 7
Held by tradition

  • One of the 64 arts

    The Kamasutra (around the 3rd century CE) lists 64 arts to learn alongside it. The sixth is तण्डुलकुसुमबलिविकाराः (taṇḍula-kusuma-bali-vikārāḥ), designs of rice and flowers made as offerings.

    In the 13th century, Yaśodhara explained it in his commentary: अखण्डतण्डुलैर्नानावर्णैः (akhaṇḍa-taṇḍulair nānā-varṇaiḥ), "with whole rice grains of many colours", laid as patterns on inlaid floors in shrines of Sarasvatī or Kāmadeva. Flowers of many colours were arranged the same way for worship of the Śiva liṅga.

    That is the ancestor of rangoli and kolam. The doorstep kolam of dots and one line, drawn at dawn in rice flour, is not described there.

    Source 11

  • A line at the threshold

    The kolam marks the door between the street and the home. Folklore says the lines must be closed so nothing harmful can slip inside, and a fresh kolam at dawn welcomes guests and Lakshmi. In Margazhi (mid December to mid January), women cover whole streets with them.

    Sources 3, 8

  • Geometry shapes energy

    The yogic and Tantric view holds that certain shapes, like yantras, hold and direct subtle energy. This is known through practice and experience, not through instruments, which is why it sits here and not with the measured findings.

Not shown by evidence

  • "It radiates positive vibrations"

    No study has measured this. It describes how a kolam can feel, not something that has been found.

  • "It calms the amygdala and grows neurons"

    You will read this on wellness sites, but they point to no brain study of people drawing kolams. It is an educated guess from general research on attention and hand skill. Parts of it may be true. None of it has been tested yet.

    Source 9

  • "The cow dung wash is antiseptic"

    The floor was traditionally washed with cow dung and water before the kolam. A 2024 study of rural homes in Bangladesh found human pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes in cow dung and on dung-washed floors. The wash helps bind a mud floor, but "antiseptic" does not hold up.

    Source 10

The part you can check yourself

Tomorrow, before your phone

Choose Draw your own above, pick a 5 by 5 floor, and draw one line around every dot with your finger. Or copy the dots onto paper and use real rice flour. When you lose the line, notice where your mind went. That is something you can check for yourself, every morning.

Sources

  1. Siromoney, G., Siromoney, R., Krithivasan, K. "Array grammars and kolam." Computer Graphics and Image Processing, 1974. Summary in Sequential Encoding of Tamil Kolam Patterns.
  2. Ascher, M. "The Kolam Tradition." American Scientist 90(1), 2002.
  3. "Symmetry classification and enumeration of square-tile sikku kolams." Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, 2024 (arXiv).
  4. Gerdes, P. "Sona drawings, mirror curves and pattern designs."
  5. Jablan, S. et al. "Mirror-curves and knot mosaics." The method this page uses to draw.
  6. Nagarajan, V. Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual, and Ecology in India. Oxford University Press, 2018.
  7. Kaimal, G., Ray, K., Muniz, J. "Reduction of cortisol levels and participants' responses following art making." Art Therapy, 2016.
  8. Kolam, Wikipedia.
  9. Example of the untested claims: "Kolam and Cognition", Psychologs.
  10. "Pathogens and antimicrobial resistance genes in household environments: soil floors and cow dung in rural Bangladesh." 2024.
  11. Kāmasūtra of Vātsyāyana with Yaśodhara's Jayamaṅgalā. Nirnaya Sagar Press, Bombay, 1900, pp. 32 and 34.
  12. "Hridayakamalam and the dreamcatcher." Medha Journal. The 8 arms of 5 dots and the order 1, 3, 5, 2, 4.
  13. Chakraborty, S. K., Manna, A. "Extending Hridaya Kolam to even-ordered dot patterns." 2025. Builds on Siromoney and Chandrasekaran (1986); see also multiple loops.
  14. Srinivasan. "Scalable Hridaya kolam and Aishwarya kolam." Journal of Mathematics and the Arts 17, 2023.
  15. "Hridaya kamalam, lotus kolam for Friday." Rangoli Sans Dots, 2012. Step photos, the order 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, and the puja room.
  16. "Hrudaya Kamalam: lotus of the heart." Storied Quilts, 2018. The order 1, 3, 5, 2, 4 from the innermost dot, and not stepping on it.
  17. "How to draw double line kolam for Pongal." Rangoli Sans Dots, 2023. The two-finger technique and step photos.
  18. "Simple apartment kolam designs." Rangoli Sans Dots, 2012. Eight petals, four facing the directions, then four between them.
  19. Kulaichev, A. P. "Sriyantra and its mathematical properties." Indian Journal of History of Science 19(3), 1984.