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Today’s Topic- Pre-Historic Rock Painting and Arts of Indus

Valley Civilization
Pre Historic Rock Paintings
The prehistoric period in the early development of human beings is
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commonly known as the Old Stone Age or the Palaeolithic
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Age. Prehistoric paintings have been found in many parts of the

world.
The subjects of their drawings were human figures, human

activities, geometric designs and symbols. In India the earliest
paintings have been reported from the Upper Palaeolithic
times. Remnants of rock paintings have been found on the walls of
the caves situated in several districts of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar
Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar. Some paintings
have been reported from the Kumaon hills in Uttarakhand also.
The rock shelters on banks of the River Suyal at Lakhudiyar,

Uttarakhand bear these prehistoric paintings. Lakhudiyar literally
means one lakh caves.
Features of Lakhudiyar paintings:
The paintings here can be divided into three categories: man,

animal and geometric patterns in white, black and red ochre.
Humansare represented in stick-like forms. A long-snouted

animal,a fox and a multiple legged lizard are the main animal
motifs.
Wavy lines, rectangle-filled geometric designs, and groups of

dots can also be seen here.
One of the interesting scenes depicted here is of hand-linked

dancing human figures.
There is some superimposition of paintings. The earliest are in
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black; over these are red ochre paintings and the last group
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comprises white paintings.
Also, the granite rocks of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh provided

suitable canvases to the Neolithic man for his paintings. Important
sites are Kupgallu, Piklihal and Tekkalkota.
Features of paintings from the sites of Karnataka and Andhra

Pradesh
Three types of paintings have been reported from

here—paintings in white, paintings in red ochre over a white
background and paintings in red ochre.
The subjects depicted are bulls, elephants, sambhars,

gazelles, sheep, goats, horses, stylised humans, tridents,
but rarely, vegetal motifs.
But the richest paintings are reported from the Vindhya ranges of
Madhya Pradesh and their Kaimurean extensions into Uttar
Pradesh. These hill ranges are full of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic
remains
Forests, wild plants, fruits, streams and creeks in these regions

provided a perfect place for Stone Age people to live.
Among these the largest and most spectacular rock-shelter is

located in the Vindhya hills at Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh.
Bhimbetka has about eight hundred rock shelters, five hundred of
which bear paintings.
Features of Bhimbetka paintings
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The themes of paintings found here are of great variety, ranging
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from mundane events of daily life in those times to sacred and

royal images.
Images include hunting, dancing, music, horse and elephant

riders, animal fighting, honey collection, decoration of bodies,
and other household scenes.
The rock art of Bhimbetka has been classified into various groups
on the bases of style, technique and superimposition. The drawings
and paintings can be categorized into seven historical periods.
Period I, Upper Palaeolithic;
Period II, Mesolithic; and
Period III,
After Period III there are four successive periods
Upper Palaeolithic Period
The paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic phase are linear

representations, in green and dark red, of huge animal figures,
such as bisons, elephants, tigers, rhinos and boars besides
stick-like human figures.
A few are wash paintings but mostly they are filled with
geometric patterns.
The green paintings are of dancers and the red ones of hunters.
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Mesolithic Period
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The largest number of paintings belong this period.
During this period the themes multiply but the paintings are
smaller in size.
Hunting scenes predominate. The hunting scenes depict people

hunting in groups, armed with barbed spears, pointed sticks,
arrows and bows.
In some paintings these primitive men are shown with traps and
snares probably to catch animals. The hunters are shown
wearing simple clothes and ornaments. Sometimes, men have
been adorned with elaborate head-dresses, and sometimes
painted with masks also.
Elephant, bison, tiger, boar, deer, antelope, leopard,

panther, rhinoceros, fish, frog, lizard, squirrel and at times
birds are also depicted. The Mesolithic artists loved to paint
animals.
In some pictures, animals are chasing men. In others they are

being chased and hunted by men. Some of the animal
paintings, especially in the hunting scenes, show a fear of
animals, but many others show a feeling of tenderness and love
for them.
Women are painted both in the nude and clothed.
The young and the old equally find place in these paintings.
Children are painted running, jumping and playing.
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Community dances provide a common theme. There are
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paintings of people gathering fruit or honey from trees, and of

women grinding and preparing food.
Some of the pictures of men, women and children seem to

depict a sort of family life.
In many of the rock-shelters we find hand prints, fist prints, and

dots made by the fingertips.
Chalcolithic Period
The paintings of this period reveal the association, contact, and

mutual exchange of requirements of the cave dwellers of this
area with settled agricultural communities of the Malwa plains.
Many a time Chalcolithic ceramics and rock paintings bear
common motifs, e.g., cross-hatched squares, lattices.
Pottery and metal tools are also shown. But the vividness and
vitality of the earlier periods disappear from these paintings.
Colours
The artists of Bhimbetka used many colours, including various

shades of white, yellow, orange, red ochre, purple, brown,
green and black. But white and red were their favourite colours.
The paints were made by grinding various rocks and minerals.

They got red from haematite (known as geru in India). The
green came from a green variety of a stone called chalcedony.
White might have been made out of limestone.
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Other important features
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The artists here made their paintings on the walls and ceilings of
the rock shelters. Some of the paintings are reported from the
shelters where people lived. But some others were made in
places which do not seem to have been living spaces at all.
Perhaps these places had some religious importance.
The men shown in the paintings appear adventurous and

rejoicing in their lives.
The animals are shown more youthful and majestic than

perhaps they actually were.
The primitive artists seem to possess an intrinsic passion for

storytelling. These pictures depict, in a dramatic way, both men
and animals engaged in the struggle for survival. In one of the
scenes, a group of people have been shown hunting a bison. In
the process,some injured men are depicted lying scattered on
the ground. In another scene, an animal is shown in the agony
of death and the men are depicted dancing.
It is interesting to note that at many rock-art sites often a new

painting is painted on top of an older painting.
At Bhimbetka, in some places, there are as many as 20 layers of

paintings, one on top of another. Why did the artists paint in the
same place again and again? Maybe, this was because the artist
did not like his creation and painted another painting on the
previous one, or some of the paintings and places were considered
sacred or special or this was because the area may have been
used by different generations of people at different times.
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Arts of the Indus Valley Civilization
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The arts of the Indus Valley Civilisation emerged during the second
half of the third millennium BCE.
The forms of art found from various sites of the civilisation include
sculptures, seals, pottery, gold jewellery, terracotta figures,
etc.
The two major sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation, along the Indus
river—the cities of Harappa in the north and Mohenjodaro in the
south—showcase one of earliest examples of civic planning.
Other markers were houses, markets, storage facilities, offices,

public baths, etc., arranged in a grid-like pattern.
There was also a highly developed drainage system. While

Harappa and Mohenjodaro are situated in Pakistan, the important
sites excavated in India are Lothal and Dholavira in Gujarat,
Rakhigarhi in Haryana, Ropar in the Punjab, Kalibangan and
Balathal in Rajasthan, etc.
Stone Statues
The stone statuaries found at Harappa and Mohenjodaro are

excellent examples of handling three dimensional
In stone are two male figures—one is a torso in red sandstone

and the other is a bust of a bearded man in steatite.
The figure of the bearded man interpreted as apriest, is draped

in a shawl coming under the rightarm and covering the left
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shoulder. This shawl isdecorated with trefoil patterns. The eyes
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are a littleelongated, and half-closed as in meditative The nose

is well formed and of mediumsize; the mouth is of average size
with close-cut moustacheand a short beard and whiskers; the
ears resemble doubleshells with a hole in the middle. The hair is
parted in themiddle, and a plain woven fillet is passed round the
head.An armlet is worn on the right hand and holes around
theneck suggest a necklace.
MALE TORSO
In this red sandstone figure, there are socket holes in the neck
and shoulders for the attachment of head and arms.
The frontal posture of the torso has been consciously adopted.

The shoulders are well baked and the abdomen slightly
prominent.
Bronze Casting
The art of bronze-casting was practised on a wide scale by the

Harappans.
Their bronze statues were made using the‘lost wax’ technique.
In bronze we find human as well as animal figures, the best

example of the former being the statue of a girl popularly titled
‘Dancing Girl’.
DANCING GIRL
Found in Mohenjodaro, this exquisite casting depicts a girl
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whose long hair is tied in a bun.
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Bangles cover her left arm, a bracelet and an amulet or bangle

adorn her right arm, and a cowry shell necklace is seen around
her neck.
Her right hand is on her hip and her left hand is clasped in a
traditional Indian dance gesture.
She has large eyes and flat nose.
Amongst animal figures in bronze the buffalo with its uplifted

head, back and sweeping horns and the goat are of artistic
merit.
The copper dog and bird of Lothal and the bronze figure of a
bull from Kalibangan are other examples.
BULL
The massiveness of the bull and the fury of the charge are
eloquently
The animal is shown standing with his head turned to the right
and with a cord around the
The late Harappan and Chalcolithic sites like Daimabad in

Maharashtra yielded excellent examples of metal-cast They
mainly consist of human and animal figures.
Terracotta
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The Indus Valley people made terracotta images also but
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compared to the stone and bronze statues the terracotta

representations of human form are crude in the Indus. They are
more realistic in Gujarat sites and Kalibangan.
The most important among the Indus figures are those

representing the mother goddess.
MOTHER GODDESS
The mother goddess figures are usually crude standing female

figures adorned with necklaces hanging over prominent breasts
and wearing a loin cloth and a girdle.
The fan-shaped head-dress with a cup-like projection on each

side is a distinct decorative feature of the mother goddess
figures of the Indus Valley.
The pellet eyes and beaked nose of the figures are very crude,
and the mouth is indicated by a slit.
In terracotta,we also find a few figurines of bearded males with

coiled hair, their posture rigidly upright, legs slightly apart, and
the arms parallel to the sides of the body. The repetition of this
figure in exactly the same position would suggest that he was a
deity.
A terracotta mask of a horned deity has also been found.
Toy carts with wheels, whistles, rattles,birds and animals,

games men and discs were also rendered in terracotta.
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Seals
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Archaeologists have discovered thousands of seals, usually

made of steatite, and occasionally of agate, chert,
copper,faience and terracotta, with beautiful figures of
animals,such as unicorn bull, rhinoceros, tiger, elephant,
bison, goat, buffalo, etc.
The purpose of producing seals was mainly commercial. It

appears that the seals were also used as amulets, carried on
the persons of their owners, perhaps as modern-day identity
cards.
The standard Harappan seal was a square plaque 2×2 square

inches, usually made from the soft river stone, steatite. Every
seal is engraved in a pictographic script which is yet to be
deciphered.
Some seals have also been found ingold and ivory.
They all bear a great variety of motifs, most often of animals

including those of the bull, with or without the hump, the
elephant, tiger, goat and also monsters.
Sometimes trees or human figures were also depicted.
The most remarkable seal is the one depicted with a figure in

the centre and animals around. This seal is generally identified
as the Pashupati Seal by some scholars whereas some identify
it as the female This seal depicts a human figure seated cross-
legged. An elephant and a tiger are depicted to the right side of
the seated figure, while on the left a rhinoceros and a buffalo
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are seen. In addition to these animals two antelopes are shown
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below the seat.
Seals such as these were found in considerable numbers in

sites such as the ancient city of Mohenjodaro in the Indus
Valley. Figures and animals are carved in intaglio on their
Square or rectangular copper tablets, with an animal or a

human figure on one side and an inscription on the other, or an
inscription on both sides have also been found. These copper
tablets appear to have been amulets.Unlike inscriptions on
seals which vary in each case, inscriptions on the copper tablets
seem to be associated with the animals portrayed on them.
Pottery
TheIndus Valley pottery consists chiefly of very fine wheel

made wares, very few being hand-made.
Plain pottery is more common than painted ware. Plain pottery

is generally of red clay, with or without a fine red or grey slip. It
includes knobbed ware, ornamented with rows of knobs.
The black painted ware has a fine coating of red slip on which
geometric and animal designs are executed in glossy black
Poly chrome pottery is rare and mainly comprises small vases

decorated with geometric patterns in red, black, and green,
rarely white and yellow.
Incised ware is also rare and the incised decoration was

confined to the bases of the pans, always inside and to the
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dishes of offering stands.
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Perforated pottery includes a large hole at the bottom and small

holes all over the wall, and was probably used for straining
liquor.
Pottery for household purposes is found in many shapes and

sizes.
Beads and Ornaments
The Harappan men and women decorated themselves with a

large variety of ornaments produced from every conceivable
material ranging from precious metals and gemstones to
bone and baked clay.
While necklaces, fillets,armlets and finger-rings were commonly

worn by both sexes, women wore girdles, earrings and anklets.
Hoards of jewellery found at Mohenjodaro and Lothal include

necklaces of gold and semi-precious stones, copper bracelets
and beads, gold earrings and head ornaments,faience pendants
and buttons, and beads of steatite and
It may be noted that a cemetery has been found at Farmana in

Haryana where dead bodies were buried with ornaments.
The bead industry seems to have been well developed as

evident from the factories discovered at Chanhudaro and Lothal.
Beads were made of cornelian, amethyst,jasper, crystal, quartz,

steatite, turquoise, lapis lazuli, etc.
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Metals like copper, bronze and gold, and shell, faience and
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terracotta or burnt clay were also used for manufacturing
The beads are in varying shapes—disc-shaped,cylindrical,

spherical, barrel-shaped, and segmented.
Some beads were made of two or more stones cemented

together,some of stone with gold covers. Some were decorated
by incising or painting and some had designs etched onto
The Harappan people also made brilliantly naturalistic models of

animals, especially monkeys and squirrels, used as pin-heads
and beads.
Fashion and other aspects
It is evident from the discovery of a large number of spindles

and spindle whorls in the houses of the Indus Valley that
spinning of cotton and wool was very common.
The fact that both the rich and the poor practised spinningis
indicated by finds of whorls made of the expensive faience as
also of the cheap pottery and shell.
Men and women wore two separate pieces of attire similar to

the dhoti and The shawl covered the left shoulder passing below
the right shoulder.
From archaeological finds it appears that the people ofthe Indus

Valley were conscious of fashion. Different hairstyles were in
vogue and wearing of a beard was popular among all.
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Cinnabar was used as a cosmetic and face paint,lipstick and
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collyrium (eyeliner) were also known to
Many stone structural remains are also found at Dholavira which

show how the Indus Valley people used stone in construction.
The artists and craftsmen of the Indus Valley were extremely

skilled in a variety of crafts—metal casting, stone carving,
making and painting pottery and making terracotta
images using simplified motifs of animals, plants and birds.
Tomorrow’s Topic- Mauryan Arts
Best Wishes
IASbaba
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Revise Indian

Revise Indian Culture with IASbaba-

The animosity of Indian Culture (UPSC) doesn’t need any

IASbaba is coming up with highly relevant and to the point

Note- These notes are prepared keeping in mind- MAINS also.

Today’s Topic- Pre-Historic Rock Painting and Arts of Indus

Pre Historic Rock Paintings

The prehistoric period in the early development of human beings is

Age. Prehistoric paintings have been found in many parts of the

The subjects of their drawings were human figures, human

The rock shelters on banks of the River Suyal at Lakhudiyar,

Features of Lakhudiyar paintings:

The paintings here can be divided into three categories: man,

Humansare represented in stick-like forms. A long-snouted

Wavy lines, rectangle-filled geometric designs, and groups of

One of the interesting scenes depicted here is of hand-linked

There is some superimposition of paintings. The earliest are in

comprises white paintings.

Also, the granite rocks of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh provided

Features of paintings from the sites of Karnataka and Andhra

Three types of paintings have been reported from

The subjects depicted are bulls, elephants, sambhars,

Forests, wild plants, fruits, streams and creeks in these regions

Among these the largest and most spectacular rock-shelter is

Features of Bhimbetka paintings

from mundane events of daily life in those times to sacred and

Images include hunting, dancing, music, horse and elephant

Period I, Upper Palaeolithic;

Period II, Mesolithic; and

After Period III there are four successive periods

Upper Palaeolithic Period

The paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic phase are linear

The largest number of paintings belong this period.

Hunting scenes predominate. The hunting scenes depict people

Elephant, bison, tiger, boar, deer, antelope, leopard,

In some pictures, animals are chasing men. In others they are

Women are painted both in the nude and clothed.

paintings of people gathering fruit or honey from trees, and of

Some of the pictures of men, women and children seem to

In many of the rock-shelters we find hand prints, fist prints, and

The paintings of this period reveal the association, contact, and

The artists of Bhimbetka used many colours, including various

The paints were made by grinding various rocks and minerals.

The men shown in the paintings appear adventurous and

The animals are shown more youthful and majestic than

The primitive artists seem to possess an intrinsic passion for

It is interesting to note that at many rock-art sites often a new

At Bhimbetka, in some places, there are as many as 20 layers of

Other markers were houses, markets, storage facilities, offices,

There was also a highly developed drainage system. While

The stone statuaries found at Harappa and Mohenjodaro are

In stone are two male figures—one is a torso in red sandstone

The figure of the bearded man interpreted as apriest, is draped

are a littleelongated, and half-closed as in meditative The nose

The frontal posture of the torso has been consciously adopted.

The art of bronze-casting was practised on a wide scale by the

Their bronze statues were made using the‘lost wax’ technique.

In bronze we find human as well as animal figures, the best

Found in Mohenjodaro, this exquisite casting depicts a girl

Bangles cover her left arm, a bracelet and an amulet or bangle

She has large eyes and flat nose.

Amongst animal figures in bronze the buffalo with its uplifted