Zoo Rock, Bhimbetka

The most famous cave or monument in Bhimbetka is Zoo Rock which is around 10000 years old. The paintings here are primarily in white color and few are in red color. These paintings depict most of the animals like bison, deer, elephant, horses. (Click on all the images for bigger & clear picture)

There are scenes depicting community living, with groups of people dancing, drinking, playing musical instruments.

There are also figures depicting war scenes with people on horses. They may be king and his soldiers. The king can be differentiated from the soldiers by the decoration on the horse and sometimes an umbrella above his head. You can see the swords and other weapons used in warfare then.

Most of the paintings are on the ceilings of the cave. The paintings on the outer edges are lighter than the ones away from the edges as the water could not reach the paintings that are in the inner circle.

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Bhimbetka Prehistoric Art

Apart from the cave paintings of Bhimbetka which are old as 10000 B.C, that were seen in earlier post there are plenty more paintings that are very colorful and artistic.

Auditorium Cave is a spacious horizontal tunnel about 25m in length, ending in a cathedral-like hall that opens in three directions. At the center of this junction visible from all four entrances is a large rock, 2.5m high and 3.4m wide, called Chief's Rock. (Click on all the images for bigger picture)


On the left side wall of the East passage into Auditorium cave there are paintings on the walls. They are red in color. The prominent figures are that of cattle, goat, deer, hand prints, and double bar.


One can see another beautiful cave painting in the nearby cave. This is located in a elevated region. There are two sets of paintings in this caves. At the lower bottom they are in white color and the top are in the red color. In the above one can see figures of people riding the horse as if they are going for a war.

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Bhimbetka Cave Paintings

The caves of Bhimbetaka have paintings that date back to various periods during which these caves could have been inhabited. The main colors used in these paintings are red and white. Red color paintings are bright, while the white paintings look faded. The quality of the paintings is so great that the painting appear so fresh as if it has been done few days back. At lot of places, paintings have been done on top of the other, giving a feeling that the artists have used the same space to paint and re-paint. The style of paintings resembles the Worli paintings and at times the Madhubani. Most of the figures are written using geometrical shapes. Animals form the primary subject of paintings, followed by humans and occasional trees and flowers.

The rock art in these caves has been classified into various groups on the basis of the style and subject. (Click on all the images for bigger picture)

Upper Palaeolithic

The paintings in this period were mostly drawn using green and dark red colors as liner representations. The figures drawn were animals like bisons, boar.

Mesolithic

The paintings in this period are comparatively smaller in size. The linear representation of drawings are more stylish. Apart from animals, there are human figures. The hunting scenes clearly show the weapons like barbed spears, pointed sticks, bows and arrows used during those times.

Hunting scene

The depiction of communal dances, birds, mother and child, pregnant women, men carrying dead animal, drinking etc, are seen in this rock shelter range.

people dancing holding hands at the top and they are going for hunting at the bottom

Chalcolithic

The paintings in this period show that the cave dwellers of this area were in contact with the agricultural communities. They exchanged goods with them.

Early Historic

The paintings in this period are painted mostlty in red and white. The drawings have a schematic and decorative style. They mainly depict riders, religious symbols, tunic-like dresses, and the scripts of different periods.

Medival

The paintings in this period are geometric, linear and more schematic. The artistic style was crude when compared to earlier periods.

The picture below is taken at the first cave that you see as soon as one enters the cave complex. There are paintings of animals drawn in white color on the roof of the cave.

This place can be reached directly from Bhopal or from Bhojpur as I had done.

Bhimbetka Rock Shelters

From Bhojpur we moved to Bhimbetka to explore the rock shelters which is which is located in Vindhyan mountain range in the central India.

It is a rocky terrain of dense forest and craggy cliffs. In 1957, V S Wakanker of the Vikram University, Ujjain discovered over 1000 rock shelters belonging to the Neolithic age spread over a area of 10 x 4 Kms. In more than 500 of these caves there are paintings that depict the life of the prehistoric cave dwellers. Here there is also evidence of Stone Age habitation from the lower Palaetholic period to the late Mesolithic. It is a natural art gallery and an archaeological treasure. (Click on all the images for bigger picture)

In 2003, UNESCO made them part of the World Heritage List. Out of the over 1000 caves, the 15 of them are extraordinary ones. It is amazing how these caves are located in convoluted cliffs on the top of a hill.

These caves depict paintings belonging to the Paleolithic (10,000 BC), Mesolithic (5,000 BC) and the Chalcolithic (2,000 BC) periods. The paintings are mainly in red and white. There is also hint of other colors being used like green and yellow. Most of the paintings depict the scenes hunting, dancing, music, horse and elephant riders, animals fighting, honey collection, decoration of bodies, disguises, masking and household scenes. Animals such as bison’s, tigers, lions, wild boar, elephants, deers, dogs, lizards, crocodiles etc, have been abundantly depicted in some caves.

There are unobtrusive and clear passageways that have been provided, so that visitors can view the paintings at leisure but are kept sufficiently away not to cause any damage. We will explore this place in several sections in subsequent posts as:

• Bhimbetka Cave Paintings (Classification of paintings)
• Bhimbetaka Prehistoric Art (Auditorium Cave and more)
• Zoo Rock
• Turtle Rock

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