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Rock Art and Archaeology in India
Bhimbetka
The Bhimbetka sites that we saw next, about 45 kilometres south-east of Bhopal, have become famous: they are the ones that are always mentioned whenever Indian rock art is alluded to. They were discovered and revealed to the world by V.S. Wakankar from 1957 onwards.
Bhimbetka, set in the Vindhyan range of central India, is about ten kilometres by two. On seven hills more than 500 painted sandstone shelters are known in an environment of forests, nowadays threatened by population increase and pressure. Some of the painted sites are very minor, with a few images only whereas there will be hundreds in others.
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One of the shelters in the main
complex open to the public
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They were put on the World Heritage List of UNESCO in 2003. Fifteen or so of the most spectacular ones, in an environment of convoluted cliffs on the top of a hill with a large vista, are open to the public. They have been skilfully fitted up with unobtrusive but efficient passageways and protections, so that visitors can view the paintings at leisure but are kept sufficiently away not to cause any damage. Guards provide information whenever necessary and see to it that the regulations are not broken.
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Painted shelter on top of a hill
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Visitors in one of the painted shelters
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Excavations carried out at Bhimbetka have revealed occupational deposits ranging from the Acheulian to Historical times. As to the art, the three main periods recognized by most Indian researchers (Mesolithic, Chalcolithic and Historical) are present on the shelter walls. The first impressions one has of the art have been graphically described:
“If one visits a painted shelter, one is confronted with two types of drawings –one very clear, bright and fresh looking, while the others, underlying them are faded, fragmented and hardly visible. The fresh ones feature mainly bands of marching and fighting soldiers, cavaliers being chased and aimed at by masked hunters equipped with bows and arrows and barbed spears. In between these two types of figures sometimes we find a third category. These are of long-horned cattle, other domesticated animals and men engaged in activities which can be associated with a primary stage of civilization –the beginning of sedentary life” (Mathpal 1998: 10).
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Sketchy white warriors
riding on horses
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Dual of red warriors with swords
shields and daggers
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Scene of red archers superimposed
on white figures
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Stag and humped cattle
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On the walls hundreds of images, very often superimposed upon one another, constitute a fantastic canvas that has been continually reused to paint white and red figures. Yashodar Mathpal, who has recently studied most on those sites, has established the following succession for the art (Mathpal 1998), in nine Phases:
Prehistoric, depicting the life and environment of hunter-gatherers
He saw in it five phases:
Phase 1. Large size animals (buffaloes, elephants, wild bovids and big cats), outlined and partially infilled with geometric and maze patterns; no humans;
Phase 2. Diminutive figures of animals and humans, full of life and naturalistic. Hunters mostly in groups. Deer are dominant. Colours are red, white and emerald green (the latter with humans in S-shaped bodies, dancing);
Phase 3. Large size animals with vertical strips and humans;
Phase 4. Schematic and simplified figures;
Phase 5. Decorative. “Large-horned animals” drawn “in fine thin lines with body decoration in honey-comb, zigzag and concentric square pattern” (Mathpal 1998: 11).
Transitional. Beginning of agricultural life
Phase 6. Quite different from the previous ones. Conventional and schematic. Body of animals in a rectangle with stiff legs. Humps on bovines, sometimes horns adorned at the tip. Chariots and carts with yoked oxen.
Historic
Phase 7. Riders on horses and elephants. Group dancers. Thick white and red. “Decline in artistic merit” (Mathpal 1998: 11).
Phase 8. “Bands of marching and facing soldiers, their chiefs riding elephants and horses (…), equipped with long spears, swords, bows and arrows” (id.). Rectangular shields, a little curved. Horses elaborately decorated and caparisoned. “White infilling and red outlining” (id.).
Phase 9. “Geometric human figures, designs, known religious symbols and inscriptions” (id.).
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Two men under a tent
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White elephant and human
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Out of the 817 human figures he recorded, Mathpal identified 779 as men (95.5%), the others being children (16) and women (only 21). The animals (428) are dominated by horses (185, i.e. 43.2%), followed by deer (39; 9%) and bovids (37; x%). The other animals are much rarer (dogs, tigers, buffaloes, panthers, monkeys, etc.) (Mathpal 1998: 13).
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Fantastic animal seeming to chase a
dimiutive man running in front of it
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White dancers in a row
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Red warriors riding horses
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Red archer with bow
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Sketchy man kneeling
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White warring scene with
elephants and horses
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Man and humped bulls
in different colours
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Red figures at Auditorium Rock
with a hand and humped bulls
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White and red big cat
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