Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak
PrEsENT-DAy use of rock art sites for ceremonies by local traditional populations has become very rare. We have been fortunate to learn about such ongoing practices in the Pachmaṛhī and other areas in central India.
Pachmaṛhī is a small town of 15,000 inhabitants, 211 km south of Bhopal. It is situated on a high plateau at an altitude of 1,220 m, which is the reason why it became a summer resort. It is surrounded by the Satpuṛā mountains (Dhūpgaṛh Peak culminates at 1,350 m) and by dense jungles. The area is protected by a National Park for its abundant wildlife and varied flora (Dubey-Pathak 1992, 2013).
The Park is run by the Forest Department of Madhya Pradesh and entry is strictly controlled. Inside the Park, there still are a few villages of the local tribes, Korkus and Goṇḍs, that have peopled that land since very ancient times (Forsyth 1889). Other villages from sensitive areas within the Park have been displaced for protection reasons of the fauna and flora.
One of the prominent painted sites is that of Belkandhar 1. It was thus named because it is located half-way up the impressive Belkandhar mountain (1,152 m) that impressively stands on the horizon from the Borī plain at 25 km full west of Pachmaṛhī.
To reach the shelter one must first drive north from Borī, cross the Borī River and stop half an hour later in the jungle. Then a short hike will take one to a jungle sanctuary, near a waterfall, devoted to Goddess Kālī and to God Mahceo (Śiva). The sanctuary is obviously in frequent use as we can tell from colourful flags, tridents, stones painted with vermillion and offerings of all kinds (Pl. 2.1). The steep climb to Belkandhar 1 starts right from behind the sanctuary. It takes about one hour to reach the shelter.
The Kālī/Śiva sanctuary at the foot of Belkandhar
Belkandhar 1 roughly faces south. It is huge, about 250 m long with a 4 m overhang.Its sandstone walls are covered with hundreds of paintings mostly grouped in panels more or less equally distributed all along the walls. On the floor, one can see many narrow deep pits, identical to those made on the rock outside the houses in villages and which are used to remove the husks from a kind of millet (kuṭkī) or to grind wheat.
Mesolithic paintings at Belkandhar 1
The paintings belong to the main three periods determined in the Pachmaṛhī area, i.e., Late Mesolithic, Neolithic Chalcolithic, Historic/Late Historic (op. cit.). Many superimpositions occur.
Neolithic/Chalcolithic paintings at Belkandhar 1
Mesolithic paintings (± 8000 (?) to 2500 BCE) include stick figures, humans with conical heads and square bodies filled with zigzag lines, animals (wild boar, deer, peacocks), and huge geometric patterns. Their colour is mainly dark red, sometimes with white lines.
Neolithic/Chalcolithic (± 2500 BCE to 300 CE) deer, bison and humped bulls appear. The bodies of animals are sometimes decorated with lines or may be in flat tint. Humans are more naturalistic. The colours used are white and, sometimes, yellow; red is rare.
Belkandhar 1: Archer killing a monkey, Historic
Historic/Late Historic The most recent period starts about 300 CE and lasts perhaps to the tenth century CE. It is dominated by vivid representations of horse and elephant riders, archers and warriors armed with swords, dancers and musicians. Scenes are very frequent: fighting, hunting (tiger, deer, monkey), dancing and honey collecting. Animals are represented by tigers, monkeys, deer, dogs, goats and peacocks. Some are rarer (turtles, pangolin, hedgehog and snakes). Colours are mainly white, red and yellow. The figures are sometimes bichrome (white and occasionally yellow inside with red outlines). Humans are often painted with their two eyes, a most unusual detail elsewhere.
Belkandhar 1 is an unusual site in many respects: its location in a pristine landscape, but most of all its vast proportions, its great number of works of art from different periods, their high artistic quality and excellent preservation, and the duration of rock-art practices in the same place.
When we were at the site we noticed the presence of coconut half shells and of partly burnt incense sticks. It was obvious that these were very recent ceremonial deposits, which raised the question of the contemporary use of the shelter. We later made the same observations at three other painted sites in the same area: Borī (or Belkandhar 3), Bhurbhri Lane and Godhūli (in the latter with camphor, an offering similar to incense).
Tribal Testimonies
When we visited the sites, we were always accompanied by local foresters. Most of them belong to some local tribe where they were recruited by the Forest Department. Thanks to them, we kept meeting Korkus and Goṇḍs in their villages and had excellent contacts with them.
Goṇḍs and Korkus coexist peacefully in the Pachmaṛhī and surrounding areas. They lead basically the same lives as cattle raisers and farmers. They used to be hunter-gatherers, but hunting and gathering (except for honey collecting) are now prohibited in the jungles. Their beliefs and traditions vary, even if commonalities exist and they have adopted some Hindu beliefs. We received testimonies from both the tribes.
Working in that area for more than two decades, a bond of mutual trust had been established and much-unrestricted information was imparted freely by several people, mostly women. They were told that we were doing research and we would publish a book about it. Probably the most important factor in their unreserved cooperation was that women talked with other women and that we showed a deep interest and respect for their traditions. The conversations/interviews were entirely filmed and recorded by us.
From the testimonies of old people, the Korkus used to call rock paintings Māmā–Māmī. This means uncle and aunt on the mother side and it shows a mark of their deep respect for the paintings. In Indian tradition, Māmā–Māmī play an important role in weddings. When questioned, we were told that the paintings had been there forever and nobody knew who made them (gods, ancestors, nature). The paintings, however and whatever their origin, are felt to be powerful and able to grant them their wishes.
Rock art in Jhīṅgrī
When they have an important desire (for example a couple who cannot have children and would like to beget one), they make a bargain called mānatā, i.e. they promise to make an offering if their wish is granted. The offerings can be gold, jewels, a goat to be sacrificed, or jagui (sugar from sugar cane). It is an exchange, a quid pro quo. Mānatā may take place either at Belkandhar 1 or at the Kālī–Śiva sanctuary at the foot of the mountain. But in that case, they still ask Māmā–Māmī for the completion of their wish rather than Kālī–Śiva, while impressoning vermillion dots on the stones of the sanctuary. Then they climb to the painted shelter and make deposits of coconut and incense.
The same process applies if/when the wish is granted. Then they make the promised offering either at the jungle sanctuary or at Belkandhar 1. The parihāra (priest/shaman) accompanies them. After the ceremony is completed, the offerings go to the parihāra who generally distributes them among the people. Here again, if this takes place at the Kālī–Śiva sanctuary, the participants climb to the shelter and make the same offerings as before.
We had another example of the Korkus’ reverence for the powers of rock art in a village (Jhīṅgrī) about 15 km south of Borī. We visited a small painted shelter (5 m long 3 m deep 2.5 m high), with big white figures that are believed to be gods. According to our local guide and informant, a Korku forester, the place was sacred and full of power. People prayed when they passed it and would occasionally make offerings of coconuts, incense and camphor. In fact, when we were there, we saw a packet of camphor in a big hole 1.5 m below the paintings.
Muṇḍa funerary boards by Korkus
Gāthā by Bhīls
Various legends are attached to the site. When herders happened to pass near the top of the shelter, they would hear music and sounds issuing from it. A beautiful sāmbara stag (a local species of huge deer) used to come to the place very often. One day, an ill-inspired hunter killed the stag with his bow and arrows. He went to the dead animal and cut its tail off. When going back to the village, he suddenly died midway. Then, from the powers of the painted gods in the shelter, the tail was returned to the sāmbara and it resuscitated. Another story is that of a bronze dish full of all kinds of offerings which suddenly appeared out of the rock of the shelter to bewildered beholders, as a supernatural homage to the paintings.
Goṇḍs also consider rock paintings as sacred and powerful. At each rock art site, we found at least one pit about 10 cm in diameter and 8-10 cm deep, dug into the sandstone floor in front of paintings. A local Goṇḍ forester took us to three new shelters in the Madhai area, at about 30 km from Borī, the walls of which were covered with paintings of the Historic and Late Historic periods. He told us that during the Diwālī festival in autumn they go to the Bazaru Nallā shelter nearby, while on New Year’s Eve they go to the Cūrṇa mountain, 20 km from Madhai: they first climb the mountain, where their goddess resides, then repair the great painted shelter below for their ceremonies. They call the paintings deo.
One night before Diwālī, our forester’s mother used to soak rice in water. The next day, early in the morning, they would go to the paintings (deo) with the priest/shaman (bhagata). They would offer seven kinds of sweets, coconut and incense at the foot of the paintings, then put the soaked rice into the small pit (cupule) and grind it with a branch of sarāi wood (a local tree).
Horses and others on piṭherā
Then a paste was made, put on a leaf and the bhagata would place it below the paintings as an offering. When the ceremony was over, they would bring home what was left of the ground rice and apply it on the heads of their cattle and decorate them. Only elderly people, women included, would participate in the Deo ceremony.
A 96-year old Goṇḍ called Chaitram from Pachmaṛhī told us that the rock paintings are called putra–putrī by Goṇḍs, meaning male and female dolls. His parents, and himself when he was younger, used to go to painted shelters and make rituals and offerings there, including sacrificing a goat or a cock and sprinkling blood onto the painted walls.
Honey-collection scenes in Rajat Prapat
We have thus had concordant testimonies both from Korku and Goṇḍ men and women about the spiritual value and power of painted sites in the Borī–Cūrṇa–Madhai area of Pachmaṛhī in the Satpuṛā range, nowadays for some groups and in a very recent past for others (Clottes and Dubey- Pathak 2012).
Dancing scene from Chaturbhujnath Nālā
Rock Art and Tribal Art: A Few Examples
Various forms of visual art among tribal art and certain motifs may evoke rock art, with distinct variations due to the specificity of the art considered. For instance, tattoos or art in the open may be quite different from the contents of the Bhīls’ piṭherās (main painted wall inside a house). The repetition of motifs will be all the more interesting as it is a consequence of shared beliefs and of a hierarchy of symbols.
We found many representations of humans in tribal arts. We were surprised by the great number of men riding horses, one of Historic rock art’s favourite themes. Riding a horse is still the traditional way of carving the deceased on Korkus’ muṇḍas (funerary wooden boards) , Goṇḍs’ gurūs (carved stones) and Bhīl/Bhīlalas’ gāthās (funerary slabs) . In addition, horse riders always constitute the core images of the piṭherās of the Bhīl/Bhīlalas. This is surprising as none of those tribes possesses horses or has had any in the past. When asked about this, the answer was either “our ancestors used to have horses” or/and about status, especially for the deceased. Horses are also symbols of prosperity, whether in this life (piṭherās) or in the next (gāthās and muṇḍas). Representing a dead man on a horse was thus to honour him (and his family as a consequence) and also to provide him with status and a valuable piece of property for his afterlife.
The contents of piṭherās are peaceful: horse riders may or may not have a discrete sword. Archers are never represented while they are so numerous in rock art. Still, archery is a respected and well-practised tradition, as we could see for ourselves, with a bow and an arrow being kept near a piṭherā and exhibited proudly by its owner and bows and arrows being brandished during a traditional dance in a village.
As could be expected from cultures where hunting has practically never stopped until very recent times, animals play a huge part in traditional arts as they do in the rock art. The ones common to both that appear to have the greater importance, in addition to the horse images mentioned, are tigers and peacocks. We found both in piṭherās. In house decoration, tigers are present but rare, while peacocks are a constant. We also found the birds on the funerary slabs/boards. Honey collecting is one of the traditional motifs of piṭherās as it is in the rock art (more than twenty at Pachmaṛhī and so are isolated trees on muṇḍas. Other themes common to the two forms of art are ploughing (Chaturbujnath Nālā), women carrying water and men carrying the killed game (Clottes and Dubey-Pathak 2013).
This persistence of age-old beliefs and ceremonies concerning rock art sites has become extremely rare in the world and unfortunately, it is fast coming to an end, even in India.
This article is based on the books The Images for God Rock Art and Tribal Art of Central India (in French) and Rock Art of Pachmarhi Biosphere.