An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c18.s10: 13.10 Dating
An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c18.s10
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13.10 Dating
v1.c18.s10.1
The dating of prehistoric rock art is everywhere a complex problem, and it is even more difficult in the Indian situation. The paintings are on the surface, and no technique is at present available for dating them directly. So far no fragment of rock painting has been found buried in an archaeological layer at any site. We have therefore to depend on indirect and circumstantial evidence to date the paintings.
v1.c18.s10.2
There is no ethnographic record of any tribal group in India producing cave paintings. The tribal people do not accept any direct or indirect relationship with these paintings. When questioned about the authorship of these paintings they invariably answer that the paintings are created by female ghosts on dark nights. Some of them are even afraid of going alone in the painted shelters. We do not find any modern object, such as bicycle, bus, aeroplane and rifle, depicted in the cave paintings though such objects can be seen in the paintings made by tribal people on their houses. It can therefore safely be said that rock paintings are not the creation of present-day tribal people or their immediate ancestors. The inscriptions overlying the figures of the historical period are in Aśokan and Gupta Brāhmī and in *śaṅkha* scripts. Thus the youngest paintings are at least 1500 years old. Many of the historical drawings depict royal processions and battle scenes. Historical data from sites like Vidiśā (BESNAGAR) show that urban life and kingdoms in this area cannot be much earlier than 600 B.C. Thus the earliest limit of the historical paintings can be put around 600 B.C
v1.c18.s10.3
The older paintings which lie below the historical paintings in superimpositions clearly depict a hunting-gathering way of life and therefore belong to the prehistoric period. Excavation of the Mesolithic deposits in many shelters at BHIMBETKA, ADAMGARH and Mirzapur have always produced haematite nodules with tell-tale grinding impressions. So far such nodules have not been found in the pre-Mesolithic layers in the shelters. There can be no doubt that pigment from these nodules was used for painting. A part of the paintings is therefore clearly associated with the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. For BHIMBETKA there are nearly a dozen ¹⁴C dates from Mesolithic deposits ranging rom 8000 B P to 2000 B.P The eldest of the paintings can therefore be as old as 8000 B P However since even the earliest painting are mature creations they imply a still older tradition of art among prehistoric societies.