In Tamil-nadu in the south, the tattooists came from the Yerukula tribe. They were talented tattoo artists, who could sketch from memory and prick highly complex labyrinth patterns at great speed onto a woman’s skin, furnishing them with the means to enter heaven. The plant determined the colour of the ink: Yerukula ink was green because the powder they used came from the tropical turmeric root. The Tamil there spoke of ‘green pricking’.Scorpions, fish, birds and flowers were also in high demand. Most challenging were initials in Tamil script. The Yerukula were largely illiterate, so clients would be asked to draw them in sand first.

The Kota, Toda en Badaga in the Nilgiris Hills of Tamil-nadu tattooed a crescent and a small dot on their foreheads to represent the moon and a star., but only women who had one or more children were tattooed in this way.