Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c6: Chapter II: 2. Pre-Historic Period
Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c6
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Chapter II: 2. Pre-Historic Period
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The art of prehistoric man is found at many places in the world and also in India. Its precise dating is a matter of difficulty but it is marked by certain primitive features giving it a separate entity to be recognised as the first link in the story of human art. The prehistoric culture belonged to men living in Stone Age. In India, as elsewhere, it has two broad divisions, viz. Old Stone Age and New Stone Age, with a probable Middle Stone Age between the two. The first is known as Palaeolithic, the second as Neolithic and the intermediate one as Mesolithic.
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PALAEOLITHIC ART—In the Palaeolithic Age man lived by digging out roots and hunting animals for food. For this he made use of tools and implements of stone of a crude and rough variety, found in association with fossils of animals now extinct. The struggle that palaeolithic man put to master his surroundings was very hard and long-drawn. Still he had the capacity to think and develop which made him build a culture.
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There are several palaeolithic sites located in Madras, Orissa, Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. From the site of Attirampakkam in Chingleput district of Madras thousands of hand-axes have been picked. Similarly Khyad on the Malaphrabhā in Dharwar, Mungi near Paithan in Hyderabad, are other sites where palaeolithic man once flourished. He lived in caves and rock-shelters near rivers, anxious for national protection and constant water supply. He mostly used quartzite (Hindi, *Bujhā*) for making tools in the form of cores and flakes obtained by fracturing the rough stone.
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In north-west India in the Sohan Valley, a small tributary of the Indus (*Sushomā* of the *Ṛigveda*) and also in Kashmir *Karewas* traces of the earliest lithic industry of man in India have been found both as pebble tools and flakes.
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MESOLITHIC—The Middle Stone Age was intermediary between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Ages. It is represented by Microlithic tools of very small size. The tiny tools were fixed singly or collectively to a handle to make them more effective. Such tools may be identified with *śilimukha* of Sanskrit literature. The material consists of jasper, agate, carnelian, chalcidony, quartz and flint. The types of tools include blades, sometimes serreted (Hindi, *dāntedār*), crescents, triangles, points, scrapers etc. Microlithic sites spread in the Sabarmati valley in Gujrat, Narmada valley and along the lower Godavari. In the last region microliths were found in association with coarse hand-made pottery. From the chronological point of view microlithic industry went hand in hand with the neolithic and at times projected into the historic period. At Brahmagiri microlithic and neolithic cultures were found related to early historical times.
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Fig. 1
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Fig. 3
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Fig. 2
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Fig. 4
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Fig. 7
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Fig. 6
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Fig. 9
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Fig. 8
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Fig. 5
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HARAPPA CULTURE
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SCALE OF 100 0 100 200 KILOMETRES SCALE OF 50 0 50 100 150 MILES
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W. PAKISTAN R. INDUS JHUKAR MOHENJO-DARO KOT-DIJI AMRI CHANHU-DARO THANO-BULAKHAN KARACHI ARABIAN SEA DESALPAR TODIO LAKHABAWAL PHALA AMRA GOP KINNARKHEDA SOMNATH KANJETAR R. JHELUM R. CHENAB R. RAVI R. SUTLEJ BAHAWALPUR SITES LAHORE HARAPPA R. BEAS BARA RUPAR R. CHAGGAR R. CHAUTANG TKWD KALIBANGAN ALAMGIRPUR DELHI R. YAMUNA R. GANGA SOJANIPUR R. SABARMATI R. MAHI AHMADABAD KANASUTARIA PANASNA CHACHANA KOTH DEVALIA LOTHAL BABARKOT GONI BHIMPATAL RANGPUR ROJDI ADKOT VENIVADAR MEHGAM TELOD BHAGATRAV R. NARMADA R. TAPTI
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AREA OF MAP HARAPPA DELHI RANGPUR BOMBAY ARABIAN SEA BAY OF BENGAL
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EARLY HARAPPA SITE ... ● LATE HARAPPA SITE ... ○ MODERN TOWN ... □
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NEOLITHIC—The Old Stone Age culture had a very long duration dating back to about half a million years and continuing up to about ten to seven thousand years B. C. As against this the Neolithic age had a much shorter duration of a few thousand years and therefore linked with the earliest historic cultures of India. The Neolithic man was primarily producing food by an agricultural industry. He was using hand-made pottery, specially utensils for cooking. The Neolithic implements were ground and polished. The tools included celts, axes, adzes and hammer-stones. The polished handled stone axe is the distinguishing tool of the Neolithic man. In the Ṛigveda there are two significant words, viz. aśman-mayī vāśī and ayasī vāśī. The real significance of these words does not seem to have been understood. Vāśī was a kind of adze from which the Hindi word basūlā or basūlī is derived. The stone adzes seem to have been stone celts of the Neolithic man used for cutting (वाशीभस्तक्षतारमन्मयीभिः RV. X. 101. 10). The copper celt (ayasī vāśī) was a weapon of Tvaṣṭā (वाशीमेको बिभर्ति हस्त आयसीमन्तर्देवेषु, RV. VIII. 29. 3). The Neolithic man did not know the use of metals and he was using only stone tools. In South India he was followed by people using iron. In North India, copper-using culture succeeded the Neolithic man of which Mohenjodaro is the best example. Here is a transitional stage in which the use of stone celts is found together with that of copper celts. The Aryans in the Ṛigveda also were using both of these but mostly the copper tools, as in the Ṛigveda Tvaṣṭā, the divine architect (antar deveshu), is credited with having in hand a copper celt. The same god is associated with a copper axe (ayasa paraśu, RV. X. 53. 9.) Those who were armed with such handled copper celts were known as vāśī-mantaḥ.
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The polished stone celts and axes were tools typical in the Neolithic age. These have been obtained at several sites like Hamirpur, Chhatarpur, Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Santhal Pargana, Singhbhum, Darjeeling, Nadia, Naga Hills in Assam, Raichur in Hyderabad, Chittaldrug in Mysore, and Anantpur, Bellary, Guntur and Tanjore in Madras. In the North-West also some specimens were found on the banks of the Indus. In south India Bellary District, Mysore and Hyderabad were the focal centres of Neolithic culture. The excavations at Brahmagiri brought to light a polished stone axes between the beginning of the first millenium B. C. and 300 B. C. The authors of this culture were using both Neolithic celts and microlithic tools at the same time.
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The Neolithic man was generally not acquainted with the use of metals. After him came iron in South India and copper and bronze in the North. His pottery was hand-made and mostly coarse in gray fabric. The Neolithic peoples in India were food-producers with a settled life, whereas the Palaeolithic were food-gatherers wandering from place to place as hunters in pursuit of animals.
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The tool implements of these peoples form a considerable material. From the art point of view they just demonstrate the craft ability of the primitive man who had begun to use his hand and thus laid the foundation of crafts for succeeding ages.
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ROCK-PAINTINGS — The man using the stone axe tools used to live and wander in river valleys and open forests. In the next stage man learnt to live in rocky cave-shelters where he diverted himself by making drawings on the walls of the caves which are known as Rock Paintings. These paintings were done with a kind of soft red stone or haematite, and from this they are known to the local people as Rakat-Ki-putariyān (रकत की पुतरियाँ, Skt. Raktaputtalikā)
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There are four principal centres where such paintings have been discovered, as follows:—
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1. Mahadeo Hills round Pachmarhi, in Madhya Pradesh. Paintings in four series, superimposed over one another.
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2. Raigarh paintings of Singhanpur and Kabra Pahar (ten miles south-east of Raigarh city) in Madhya Pradesh.
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3. Mirzapur area in the Sone valley of the Kaimur Range (Skt. Kirmīra name of an asura). Here are rock shelters at Likhunia, Kohbar, Mehraria, Bhaldaria and Bijaigarh.
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4. Manikpur in Banda District.
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The largest number of prehistoric rock paintings have been found in the Mahadeo Hills with Pachmarhi as its centre. No less than fifty rock-shelters contain paintings, some of them known as Dorothi Deep, Mont Rosa, Mahadeo, Jambudwip and Dhaniakhal are within five miles of Pachmarhi. Others at about 20 to 40 miles distance are Tamia, Jhalia etc. Adamgarh is two and a half miles from Hoshangabad.
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The paintings are numerous and in the opinion of some writers are rich like the Stūpas of Bharhut and Sanchi furnishing a record of the many-sided cultural life of the people who made the drawings in red and white ochre colours. The superimposed drawings show sequences in four series.
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Ist Series : Schematic figures only, divided into early and late. The paintings of the early first series are conventionalised human and animal figures in red and cream colours. They show square-shaped bodies with triangular heads, the bust being filled by zig-zag or wavy lines, probably representing some kind of bark garment. [Fig. 1]. These paintings are superimposed by other figures and are scarce.
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The later stage of the first series shows stick-like figures with a triangular head. The cream colour is interlined with red to depict hair or head. With the stick-like figures also appear some in pink with triangular head and square body but with a single wavy line within the bust. [Fig. 2] These also belong to the same stage.
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2nd Series: Paintings in grey or cream, crude but naturalisitic, also divided into early and late, the early second series being very crude have only the rudiments of naturalism. The figures have elongated necks, wavy hair, generally featureless heads, thin sinuous legs and fringed skirts. In the late second series some kind of grouping begins to appear and bows and arrows which were scarce in the first series now become common. [Fig. 3]. Metallic arrow-heads which began to be used by figurines of the first series still continued in the second and to that metallic spear-heads were now added as of common use. The people were hunters, hunting wild beasts, sometimes a tiger, a huge porcupine, sambhar both male and female and even elephant and oxen. Sometimes the hunting folk enjoyed a thrilling dance holding bows and arrows and using animal masks. Honey-taking with a bamboo ladder from high trees or overhanging cliffs was a favourite pursuit of the hunters of the second series which continued throughout the following third series also. [Fig. 4]. The rock paintings in Mirzapur area coincide with the hunting and dancing figures of the second series of the Mahadeo Hills.
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3RD AND 4TH SERIES—The cultural scene changes from primitive hunters to well-armed warriors and mounted horsemen in battle scenes where archers and swordmen are engaged in fierce action. Armed cattle raiders are also seen. Besides the homelife of the people is also depicted, e. g. a man playing on a harp; a woman pounding roots and grinding grain; huts with women inside; men and women dancing in groups and pairs; men playing drums and a double pipe, entertained by a performing monkey and a dancing bear. Cattle and birds of various kinds including goose and peacock and also pigs and dogs are represented—virtually a cross-section of the life of the people. In the Adamgarh Quarry near Hoshangabad one of the rock-shelters shows a very large elephant which is the oldest and may belong to the late 2nd series. In the late 3rd and early 4th series of the Mahadeo Hills we find bun hair-dressing, loin-cloth ending in a tail between the legs, bow and quiver of arrows, straight swords, leaf-shaped dagger and round shield. The Mahadeo Hills paintings are mostly in difficult rocky jungles far from the main lines of communication and so also the Singhanpur paintings. The people there were using microliths, pottery and metal-headed spears. There are a few mythological figures—a heroic personage in a *vimāna* or sky-chariot and a gaint who leads a tiger with a rope like a pet dog (found in a shelter in the Mahadeo Hills group). [Fig. 5]. Another subject shows a male person resisting a lion or tiger on one side and a wild bull on the other while the cattle thus protected are moving below. No religious purpose seems to underlie the paintings which depict scenes of encounters with wild beasts, dances, domestic life and battle.
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II. Singhanpur and Kabra Pahar Paintings near Raigarh, in rock-shelters; the first about 3 miles from Meharpalik station on the Bengal-Nagpur Rly. and Kabra Pahar about 10 miles south-east of Raigarh city. The paintings are in dark red and varying shades of red. Square-shaped men are seen including animals like wild oxen. One thing may be noted, viz. that the square body of the figurines in the Mahadeo Hills are filled with vertical wavy lines whereas at Singhanpur the figures have only a single or a double wavy line.
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III. Paintings in the Mirzapur area. Whereas Singhanpur-Raigarh rock paintings fall within the Mahanadi valley, those of Pachmarhi (Mahadeo Hills) in the Narmada valley, the paintings of Mirzapur district belong to the area of the Sone valley. These three rivers form a well defined boundary of hilly forest area well suited for the protected habitation of primitive men, who appear to be the ancestors of the Śabaras and Niṣādas.
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The paintings in the Sone valley show hunting and dancing figures and a stage of culture as that of the painters of the 2nd series in the Mahadeo Hills. The local name for a rock-shelter is *Darī*, as in Likhunia Darī which is on the bank of the hilly stream Garai. The subject of the paintings is the capture of wild elephants by horsemen with the help of a tame elephant. The horse-riders carry a long pointed spear. Human figures with a square body or stick-like figures are found here showing that they were alike the figures of the 1st & 2nd series at Pachmarhi. In a remarkable painting we see a wounded wild boar with its mouth open in pain.
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IV. Manikpur in Banda District. Cave paintings show horsemen archers and a person seated in a wheelless bullock cart. In point of time they should be referred to the 3rd series of paintings in Mahadeo Hills.
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One of the Adamgarh shelters shows an animal like a giraffe with a very long neck which has remained a puzzle.
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MORI ROCK PAINTINGS— Recently a large group of thirty rock-shelters in village Mori, Districr Mandsor, M. P. has been surveyed, showing the ceiling and walls of the shelters decorated with paintings in red ochre, depicting animals, dancing humau figures and pastoral scenes, generally assignable to Series 3rd and 4th of D. H. Garden for the Panchmarhi Hills. Amongst geometrioal designs some are quite important, namely, a four armed cross inside a circle, an eight-spoked wheel, a solar orb with multiple rays, houses with gabled roof, a crude country cart a running *Sarvato’hadra* pattern intricately made out of Swastika design, and above all an eight-petalled lotus filled by a central design consisting of four *pipal* leaves joined at their tip end in the middle of the motif, which partly occurs in the Indus Valley also (Indian Archaeology, 1957-58, p. 27, Fig. 14. 1-4.).
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ROCK ENGRAVINGS—Whereas paintings are found in rock-shelters, engravings appear on smooth rock surfaces open to rain and weather. They are more widely distributed than the paintings. A number of rock engravings have come to light on the middle Indus, some 6 miles south of Attock in localities named Mandori, Gandab and Ghariala, showing human and animal figurines, depicting riding horses, camels and elephants engaged in warfare and men armed with weapon. At Sambalpur in Orissa, Raichur in Hyderabad, and at Bellary, groups of rock engravings have been found. Most of these engravings are nothing better than bruisings.
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COPPER CULTURE—The neolithic man using ground and polished stone axes was gradually replaced by food-producing agriculturists. A cultural succession from the primitive hunting communities has been observed at a number of sites from the Narmada to the Godavari, e.g. Maheshwar (ancient Māhishamati) on the north bank of the Narmada, Navda Toli, Jorwe (Ahmadnagar district), etc. showing post-neolithic features as indicated by painted pottery, use of microliths, copper articles and to an extent the older stone axes continuing to be used at several centres. A flake blade industry, the painted ware and fine copper articles seem to be moving to the chalcolithic phase which we see at its best in the Indus Valley. The evidence is far from being complete, as the quantity of articles of copper found in the early culture of Western and Central India is sparse, but in Northern India in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa large copper hoards have come to light from as many as thirty sites. Axes and chisels which include all types of celts and bar-celts account for 154 examples as against 50 of other types—swords, daggers, spear-heads, harpoons [Fig. 6] and anthropomorphic or men-like figures [Fig. 7], besides the great hoard of 424 assorted copper celts found at Gungeria in Madhya Pradesh. There were two industrial areas producing articles of copper, one the Ganga-Jamuna Doab and the other the country round the Ranchi Plateau in Bihar.
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The axes have a buttend somewhat narrower than the edge. The bar harpoons have a large spear-blade with two or three pairs of hooked barbs, sometimes with a hole, and a lug above the stem. They are quite large ranging from 12 to 17 in. and cast in a mould with a stout mid-rib. Spear heads both simple and barbed and also copper swords and daggers have been found. In the Rigveda we find reference to a weapon named Riṣṭi held on shoulders by the Marut-host with which it is tempting to identify these copper spearheads, just as the celts with Ayasī vāśi handled by Tvaṣṭā [Fig. 8], the barbed harpoons with the Vajra of Indra, and the axes with Svadhiti and Paraśu [Fig. 9].
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Chronologically the latest phase of the stone age culture was drifting towards the historic period with a two-fold intervening cultural sequence, viz. the chalcolithic phase of the Indus Valley and the Aryan phase, mainly of the Gangetic Valley. The Indus Valley culture by itself presents an extensive phenomenon both in space and time, in which a higher type of material civilisation was fully developed with all the main types of arts and crafts evolved in a high degree. The evidence about the Aryan cultural remains is yet uncertain, but the copper implements specially from the Gangetic Valley from Bithur in Kanpur, Sartholi in Shahjahanpur, Rajpur Parsu near Hastinapur etc., point to some cultural sequence. A new type of pottery also forces itself on our attention. The Northern Black Polished Ware known as N. B. P. with widely scattered find-places punctuating the limits of the Mauryan empire has been rightly assigned to a period from 600 B. C. to 200 B. C. This was preceded by another kind of pottery known as the Painted Grey Ware. This type has been found both at Ahichchhatra and Hastinapur from the earliest levels. The pottery is wheel-made and decorated with groups of vertical lines, bands of sigmas, concentric circles, pot-hook spirals and arrangements of dots and dashes. Mostly the designs are painted on the outside of the bowls and dishes. In the case of the open flat bottomed dishes the inner surface also is painted with elaborate patterns. In the post-Harappan occupation levels at Rupar this pottery was found. The area between the Sutlej and the Jumna is full of sites producing the Painted Grey Ware. Like the N. B. P. ware the Painted Grey Ware and the Ochre Washed Ware also have a glossy finish. Most probably they belong to the blank period between the Indus Valley and the historical beginnings and thus may be assigned to the Vedic and post-Vedic ages.