Rock Art of India

India is one of the three countries having the richest treasures of rock art in the world; other two are Australia and South Africa. A lot of developments have been made in Rock Art Discipline globally during the last twenty-five years, and India played crucial role in this development, especially in the study of the Pleistocene art through the EIP Project. Hence, there was a strong need of book which can give a comprehensive picture of Indian rock art in the light of the latest developments in rock art research in India.

The present book is an attempt to present Prehistoric Indian rock art with its irresistible beauty and glamour in the light of the latest developments in a scientific way. It presents an outline of how rock art research began and developed in this country. The facts presented and hypotheses proposed on the basis of available evidence can be checked and tested by future researches.

There is another important dimension to this issue, the protection and preservation of rock art, which has become such a major concern around the world. The efforts become more effective if the rock art scholars are able to take the support of the general mass. Hence, the book has been presented in such a way that it will not only be useful for rock art specialists but can also meet the general queries and aspirations of the enthusiasts and amateurs who want to know and visit the superbly rich and beautiful Indian rock art. It helps both of them: the specialist to appreciate the importance of public communication and to learn how to achieve it; and the layperson by making overly complex hypotheses and ideas readily accessible. It also highlights the mesmerising beauty of the rock art sites which are great attractions for the persons, especially the youth having adventurous spirit and creative mind.

Professor Giriraj Kumar (b. 1953) is a leading Rock Art scientist, having a long experience of research in various fields of the rock art, prehistory and Indian culture since 1997. For him rock art is a medium to understand the truth of life.

Prof. Kumar was honoured as the President of IFRAO from 2004 to 2006 and invited to share his research experiences by IFRAO, UNESCO and other international organisations. He has organised many national and international conferences on rock art and chaired several symposia in many countries. He is one of the members of the editorial board of the international refereed journal and founding editor of Purakala, the journal of Rock Art Society of India since 1990.

He has been the Indian Director of the high profile EIP Project (since 2000), a joint venture by Indo-Australian scientists to establish the antiquity of early Indian petroglyphs to Lower Palaeolithic. He along with Ram Krishna has carried out the extensive replication work, a form of scientific study, currently gaining prominence in several other countries as well. His work is the most advanced in the world, the only instance of international Indian leadership in the field of Rock Art Science. He has discovered many rock art sites, Stone Age, Chalcolithic and ostrich eggshell sites in Central India. He has 80 research papers published in different national and international journals to his credit.

Prof. Kumar, founding Secretary General of Rock Art Society of India (RASI), is presently (since 1985) serving as a Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Dayalbagh Educational Institute in Agra.

Rock art research is a very young discipline of the sciences, still in an embryonic stage, but it has made great strides in the last two or three decades. This period has led to a significant number of publications, theses and hypotheses, which are of great interest to the specialist but which are becoming increasingly inaccessible to the layperson. It is not just that they are full of jargon; the main difficulty in accessing them effectively is that they assume a certain level of previous knowledge by the reader. As in all the sciences, knowledge expands incrementally, and to keep track of changes can be quite demanding. This process of slowly increasing sophistication leads to progressive alienation and over specialization of all disciplines of science.

In rock art research this has occurred in a surprisingly short time: the kind of rock art studies conducted just 30 or 40 years ago look hopelessly simplistic today. While the well informed researcher welcomes the progress made, it has at the same time widened the gap between the discipline's cutting edge and the interested layperson's ability to follow these developments. This is most regrettable, and it establishes a need for publications that bridge that gap. No scientific discipline should be allowed to become estranged from society, and this applies particularly to a field that is so intimately concerned with the human quest to define reality. If as a species we don't understand where our experience of reality comes from, we are in a very poor state to consider its relationship with the real world as opposed to the construct of reality humans have created in their desire of understanding.

Not only does this state apply to human beings in general, specialists too remain in the dark about the most fundamental aspects of human existence. To this day no scientist has been able to explain how the human brain forms its perception of the world from the sensory information gathered by it. Yet this is such a simple issue and at the same time utterly fundamental to our understanding of the world. The study of the earliest forms of symbolism - of rock art - in conjunction with the neurosciences has the potential to help us explain how this may have occurred, but that road has been travelled by very few so far. And it tends to lead to literally mind-boggling complexity.

In this book, Professor Giriraj Kumar endeavours to fill a great gap developing in this important field of research. Focusing on India, he presents an outline of how rock art research began and developed in this country. His account is readily accessible to anyone with an enquiring mind, and in this he provides a valuable bridge between the specialist and the layperson. It helps both of them: the specialist to appreciate the importance of public communication and to learn how to achieve it; and the layperson by making overly complex hypotheses and ideas readily accessible. Who could be better suited in India to build such a bridge than Professor Kumar, the founder of the Rock Art Society of India and founding editor of its journal Purakala, the researcher who has brought to the world the knowledge of the incredible time depth of the earliest known rock art of India, currently the oldest in the world. Professor Kumar has ushered in the scientific phase of the study of rock art in India, and here he explains his ideas in a readily accessible format.

Rock art is a global phenomenon and India is one of the three countries having the richest treasures of rock art in the world; other two are Australia and South Africa. The rich treasures of rock art of Brazil, Saudi Arabia and China are also coming in to light. A lot of developments have been made in Rock Art Discipline globally during the last twenty-five years, and India played a crucial role in this development, especially in the study of the Pleistocene art through the EIP Project. Besides, scholars working in different parts of India have also brought out several regional studies on rock art. Hence, there was a strong need of a book which can give a comprehensive picture of Indian rock art in the light of the latest developments in Rock Art Discipline in India.

The present book on Rock Art of India is an attempt to meet this challenge. It is a gist of my long experience of rock art research since 1977 and inputs from my friends working in the field and teaching in the universities in India and overseas countries. The new vision and development in scientific rock art research in India became possible only after the researchers got rid of the vague Euro centric diffusionist model and followed the scientific evolutionary model in rock art research.

The protection of rock art is a great challenge. The efforts become more effective if the rock art scholars are able to take the support of the general. mass. Hence, I have presented the book in such a way that it will not only be useful for rock art specialists but can also meet the general queries and aspirations of the enthusiasts and amateurs who want to know and visit the superbly rich and beautiful Indian rock art. It also highlights the mesmerising beauty of the rock art sites which are great attractions for the persons, especially the youth having adventurous spirit and creative mind.

The book consists of six chapters. First chapter gives a brief introduction to rock art as a global phenomenon, then rock art in India, its general setting and major regions, forms of rock art and techniques of their creation, people who created rock art, the major tribes of India, rock art and human quest for understanding the reality, adventures and creativity in the exploration of the rock art sites and their study and roots of the Indian vision of life.

Second chapter deals with the brief history and latest development in rock art research such as establishment of Rock Art Society of India and its international journal Purakala in 1990, the EIP Project for scientific investigations and dating of early petroglyphs by International Commission, then scientific investigations carried out at Bhimbetka in the Vindhyas and Daraki-Chattan in Chambal basin, etc.

The crucial issues of the chronology and antiquity of Indian rock art in the perspective of a developmental model have been discussed in third chapter. Absolute dating of Indian rock art and their limitations have also been discussed here.

Fourth chapter deals with the non-iconic and iconic art in the Pleistocene and Holocene periods. The antiquity of non-iconic petroglyphs at Bhimbetka and Daraki-Chattan goes back to the Lower Palaeolithic. It presents different developmental traits, stages and a distinct transition from hunting food gathering to cattle domestication life, especially in the Chambal basin.

Rock art is a global phenomenon. It forms the archaic visual manifestations of the hominins on bare surface of rocks, which have survived the vagaries of time. Other archaic forms of human cultural activities such as dance, music, songs, thoughts, ideas, language, etc. could not survive. It means rock art is one of the many aspects of human creativity and cultural activities which has survived and available to us, hence is a very important source for understanding the cognitive and cultural development of the early hominins.

The rock art and rock art sites are the wonderful legacy the nature, the pioneers and authors of rock art had left for humanity (Kumar 2011a, 2011b, 2014). The theme of the figures in rock art generally not used to be a depiction of day to-day life activities or socio-cultural and natural environment as seen by their authors. Rather, it reflects the reality as perceived by their authors in particular and the related community in general, and also the human behaviour developed in the light of so earned wisdom at different stages in human history. Birth and death are two important realities of life understood by the hominins and are associated with different kind of ritual practices and ceremonies in different communities in different parts of the world. In between these two ends of human life, birth and death, hominins have been making their best efforts to sustain, maintain and celebrate life in a particular environment. In this process of struggle and celebration of life he manifested his creative ideas and thoughts in the form of rock art (Kumar 2009a).

Thus, rock art forms a wonderful and valuable tool for understanding the cognitive and cultural development of the hominins in the perspective of their adventurous zeal and creative spirit right from the beginning of human history through early agro-pastoral life, upto almost a few centuries back, in some cases even till present.

Setting of Rock Art Sites in Different Geo-climatic Zones

India is one of the three countries having the richest treasures of rock art in the world. Other two are Australia and South Africa, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and China are also emerging as countries having rich treasures of rock art.

Rock art sites have been reported from throughout India in different geological, geographical and climatic zones particularly in the areas of sedimentary, metamorphosed and igneous rocks; from Ladakh in the Himalayas in the north to Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the south, from Arunachal Pradesh in the east to Badmer in the Thar Desert in Rajasthan in the west (Pl. 1). So far rock art sites have not been reported from Trapian regions, but I am sure an intensive exploration in these regions in future will definitely bear fruits, especially discoveries in the form of petroglyphs. It is evident from the accidental observation by the author while publishing the article of Satish Lalit in Purakala (Lalit 2013: fig. 10). In that paper, Lalit published a deccan trap boulder bearing petroglyphs while presenting the discovery of rock art on laterite in Sindhudurg, the southernmost district of Maharashtra adjoining Goa. Now the boulder does not exist, as it has been destroyed during the construction of the road (Lalit 2013). Prior to it, I was shown some cupules on Deccan trap bed rock in the campus of Deccan College, Pune in 1995.

**Contents and Sample Pages**