Moonj (munj) is the coarse, strong monsoon grass that gives Mithila’s coiled basketry its body. Where the celebrated golden sikki grass is the fine, glossy strand that women wrap and stitch into bright decorative patterns, moonj is the thicker grass coiled into the rope-like core beneath it — the spine around which a basket, lidded pauti or grain-bin is built. Bundles of moonj are coiled in an ascending spiral and bound stitch by stitch, producing vessels far sturdier than sikki alone could make.
In practice moonj is also worked on its own into the plainer, heavy-duty articles of the Maithil household — storage baskets (dauri), grain containers, platters and the cases that hold ritual goods — while sikki is reserved for the showpieces of dowry and gift. The two grasses are gathered from the same ponds and wetland margins of Madhubani and Darbhanga and worked by the same women, mother teaching daughter, so the moonj tradition is best understood as the structural, everyday half of Mithila’s coiled-grass craft.
The skill survives wherever sikki does, and benefits from the same recent revival and Geographical-Indication interest — though moonj’s humbler products are increasingly displaced by plastic in daily storage.
