ASSOCIATED ROCK ART

The occurrence of human and animal figures and different kinds of scenes painted or bruised on rock-surface in the Indian subcontinent has been known for a long time. In fact, more than a hundred years ago A.C.L. Carlleyle drew attention to some paintings in the eastern Vindhyas as being mesolithic. The main basis of his dating was the occurrence of microlithic material and pieces of red ochre in the painted rock-shelters of that area.

Lying along with the small implements in the undisturbed soil of the cave floors, pieces of a heavy red mineral colouring matter called geru were frequently found, rubbed down on one or more facets, as if for making paint—this geru being evidently of a partially decomposed haematite (iron peroxide). On the uneven sides or walls and roofs of many of the caves or rock shelters there were rock paintings apparently of various ages, though all evidently of great age, done in red colour called geru. Some of these rude paintings appeared to illustrate in a very stiff and archaic manner scenes in the life of the ancient stone chippers; others represent animals or hunts of animals by men with bows and arrows, spears and hatchets. With regard to the probable age of these stone implements I may mention that I never found even a single ground or polished implement, not a single ground ring-stone or hammer-stone in the soil of the floors of any of the many caves or rock-shelters I examined.

Fig. 12(a) Examples of rock painting (Man and Environment 1989)

Fig. 12(b) Examples of rock painting (Man and Environment 1989)

The preceding statement by Carlleyle was quoted by Vincent Smith in his article on ‘pigmy flints’ or microliths in 1906. Carlleyle had no doubt about the association between the microlith-users and the paintings, because, as he points out, there was nothing in the archaeological assemblage of the painted rock-shelters except microliths. There was no ground stone implement or anything suggesting later occupations in the rock-shelters which he saw.¹²

Here we need not go into the subsequent history of research in Indian rock-art. It would suffice to know a few general points, about it. First, the rock-art tradition continues well into the historic period. Thus, it is important to separate the obviously later paintings from the genuinely early ones, which is often not easy. Second, even in the case of the early specimens, there may be a succession of styles in different areas, which has been partly worked out in the central Indian hilis on the basis of a close study of the succession of superimposed paintings on the rock surface. Third, the study of the material contents of life, as depicted in many of these paintings, is an important source of study of the mesolithic life in India. Fourth, the most dense distribution of such paintings seems to be central India, across the entire east–west length of its hilly section. It is also here that the mesolithic character of many of these paintings is self-evident. Fifth, it would not be correct to claim that the tradition of modern tribal and village, art in India is rooted in the Indian rock-art tradition except in a vague and general way. The ideological system behind these paintings has to be considered lost to us. In Australia, for example, the Aborigines identify their folk memory with many of the motifs or scenes of the rock paintings which survive in many areas of that continent. In India, however, the living groups of people do not identify themselves with these paintings.

Systematization of our knowledge about Indian rock-art has only begun, and no useful purpose will be served here by trying to take the whole range of related issues into consideration. Our concern in this chapter is only to highlight some of these paintings as an artistic manifestation of the mesolithic in India and as a source of reconstructing the mesolithic way of life. Our purpose will be better served if in the present context we focus only on the paintings documented from the region around Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, with some specific reference to the archaeological situation which suggests mesolithic antiquity for some of these paintings.

The most famous painted rock-shelter complex in this region is at Bhimbetka which is about 45 km south-west of Bhopal. In seven locations extending over 10 km (Vinayaka, Bhonrawali, Bhimbetka, Lakha Juar East, Lakha Juar West, Jondra and Muni Babaki Pahari), there are 642 rock-shelters, with about 55 per cent of them containing paintings. There are 243 rock-shelters in the Bhimbetka group alone (marked as Location III; each location is divided into clusters A, B, etc. and each rock-shelter of each cluster is serially marked 1, 2 etc.); there are paintings in 133 of them. The basic documentation of the Bhimbetka group of paintings has been done by Yasodhar Mathpal, but before we turn to this work we should have an idea of the location of painted rock-shelter groups in the area around Bhopal as a whole. Jerome Jacobson’s description is clear in this context.

With the exception of the southernmost group, named Bhimbetka, the shelter groups fall within a 40-mile long, 8-mile wide band stretching across a series of hills that branch northward from the east–west Vindhyan range. Bhimbetka is a foothill of the main Vindhyan chain in Goharganj tahsil of Raisen district. Five of the groups lie within or just outside Bhopal, in Huzur tahsil of Sehore district; the other four lie between 20 and 40 miles almost due east of Bhopal in the tahsil and district of Raisen. Except for the Putli Karar group, which lies in the Narbada drainage, all the shelter groups are drained by the Betwa river. … The shelters cluster in hills which range in elevation from under 1600 feet to 2051 feet above sea level. In linear extent they cover from about one to 2½ miles. Most of the shelters are located in elevated cliffs along the upper ridge of these sandstone hills. Others lie under cliffs at lower elevations of the hills, or even in outcrops of sandstone on the plateau floor. The shelters are naturally weathered hollows. … Shelters with paintings or artefacts generally range from 4 to 16 feet high at the mouth and 10 to 60 feet long, although some are as long as 130 feet. Depth from the entrance averages between 10 and 15 feet, with a range from 5 to 30 feet. … These shelters are typically large enough to accommodate at least one and often two or more nuclear families. Access between shelters is fairly easy, enabling a band of hunters composed of a number of nuclear families, for example, to occupy adjacent shelters. Open sites, marked by concentrations of chipped stone, were found on the summits of slopes of most of the hills in which groups of shelters were located. … Most of the rock shelters reveal paintings on their walls, and/or ceiling. These were executed mostly in tones of red, or in white, or both, with other colours—green, yellow, and black—rarely used.¹³

Jacobson conducted test-probings on a limited scale in 39 shelters which established 0.6–0.9 m depth of cultural material inside them, with most of this material belonging to a microlith-using phase. He also test-pitted two open-air sites and undertook a comparative study between the microliths found in the shelters and those found in the open-air sites. The most obvious difference lies in the relative proportions of blades and blade cores. In the open sites the blade-core ratio is 1 : 1 but it is 11 : 1 in the shelters. This may be explained by postulating the shelters as a home-base where many of the blades were used and discarded, whereas in the field (i.e. at the open-air sites) people would manufacture blades as the need arose and perhaps carry them back to the home-bases. This in turn suggests a kind of centre-based wandering pattern on the part of the microlith-users of this area. Further, the large number of shelters in each group might have permitted a central gathering of the wandering groups and collective ceremonial activities where paintings on rock would form a part.

In the Bhimbetka locality we notice that in the scheme of stratification attempted for the paintings of the area by Mathpal, there are only two broad periods—one showing scenes of a society of hunters and food-gatherers, and the other those of fighters riding on horses and elephants, using metal weapons, and of royal processions. There are some overlap-pings between these periods, but the first one is prehistoric or broadly mesolithic, while the second one is historic, covering the entire spectrum from the Maurya–Sunga (late centuries BC) to the post-Gupta periods (seventh century AD and later). In the prehistoric period, again, there are five successive phases—A, B, C, D and E.

Once we set aside academic issues of distribution, chronology, phasing, colour schemes and styles of these paintings, we are confronted with a density of images which sharply convey the sense of a lost hunting-gathering world. The locales by themselves are very beautiful; the innate beauty of such landscapes has been juxtaposed by a world in which people collect food in the forests, hunt and trap animals and occasionally drink and dance with abandon, the warmth of which one can perceive in these paintings after all these years.

Academic issues, of course, cannot be sidetracked. It would be much easier to grapple with these issues if the type of documentation put at our disposal in the case of Bhimbetka by Mathpal were available from other areas. We would also need detailed studies on the locations of each of the painted shelter groups in different areas. Interestingly, some of the painting sites in the eastern Vindhyas seem to be aligned according to the orientations of the local routes. For instance, if one takes the general line of the main route to the Deccan from Mirzapiir in the Ganga plain, one notices painted rock-shelters along the way once the rocky outcrops and plateaus begin to appear. Similarly, beyond Robertsganj, on the way to the Son valley and the Surguja area of Madhya Pradesh, one notices painted rock-shelters overlooking the way. The painted rock-shelter site of Bhuili lies on the straight route from the hills near Ahraura to Banaras, and some rock-shelters have been recently reported on the direct route from Ahraura to the Sasaram area in Bihar. It is possible that the lines of movement of mesolithic people in central India marked the alignment of what became historically recognized routes. The distribution alignment of such painting sites and historical routes is also clear from the way these sites have been found almost all along the Karakoram route in the Gilgit Agency of Pakistan.¹⁵

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This chapter, it is hoped, would have succeeded in demonstrating that our knowledge of the early mesolithic in India amounts to very little: only eight excavated sites with proper occupational evidence and early dates in admittedly limited areas of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and an assortment of rock paintings which still seem to be confined only to the central Indian highlands from Uttar Pradesh to Gujarat. Also, at least two sixth millennium bc sites among them—Bagor and Adamgarh—show domestication of cattle and sheep/goat and people might already have shed some of their hunting-foraging ‘mesolithic’ activities. On the other hand, we should never stop emphasizing the importance of ‘mesolithic’ hunting-foraging way of life in the context of Indian history and culture. For one thing, the microliths themselves continued to be used for longer periods here than possibly elsewhere; for another, some amount of hunting-foraging is still entrenched in the peripheries of modern Indian village life. In fact, anybody who knows the Indian countryside knows too that for about 2–3 months of lean non-agricultural season every year the landless labourers survive, at least partly, by foraging for edible roots, leaves, seeds and fruit which grow wild in the countryside. The modern population explosion is, of course, fast depleting this wild source of food in the Indian countryside. The mesolithic way of life in India is still far more important to us than we are willing to admit. Besides, some of our modern cult spots may well have a mesolithic background or ancestry. For instance, around the modern Shakti cult spot known as Kalkaji in a part of the Aravallis on the outskirts of Delhi, the only archaeological relics that one can pick up are microlithic flakes. Whether some of these modern cult spots have mesolithic ancestry or not is impossible to determine with satisfaction, but the possibility is always there. The mesolithic hunters and foragers who roamed the Indian landscape have left long enough shadows which still touch us in different ways. One hopes that future research will give it a far greater semblance of reality than has been possible in this chapter.