Pre-historic Rock-art (10,000 B.C) Sites of Hazaribagh

ISCO

The village of Isco is a gift of time to India. In the north-eastern most corner of the valley it sits in the armpit formed by the Hazaribagh plateau and the Sati Range below the villages of Saheda and Chapri high up above on the plateau. Densely forested and temporarily inaccessible this picturesque village and its Munda tribal inhabitants face eviction by the Rautpara mine. The vast, gentle rice fields rolling for dozens of miles between forest lake and soaring saal trees will be gouged to a depth of three hundred feet to create an image from Dante's Inferno. Isco contains Lower Paleolithic deposits and deep underground caves inhabited by man during the ice ages, leaving for us one of the richest collection of Middle Paleolithic stone tool industry in South Asia. It should have been a World Heritage site, and this has been said again and again by India's leading archaeologists apart from myself. The Acheulian hand axes were picked up from the bed of the river of Isco which flows through the Marwateri cave. Borers, scrapers, strippers and hammer stones have been collected in large numbers in the cave and its surrounds. The deposit was officially certified by the prehistory department of the Archaeological Survey of India (S.B.Ota,l995).

About one kilometer to the southwest of the Marwateri cave is the famous Isco rock paintings brought to international attention by me in l99l. Over one hundred feet in length this mammoth rock art ( 15 'x 18.7'; 15' x 14.10' ; 15' x 16.10' ; 15' x 8.10'), in four separate interconnected sections resembling the hook of a cobra is called kohbara by the local Munda tribals and Oraon tribals whose mud houses come right up to within a few hundred yards of it. Located deep in a cleft of a sandstone sheet several hundred yards wide and over a kilometer in length the khovar divides the jungle from the village. The rock art has been dated by the leading expert on India's prehistoric rock art, Dr. Erwin Neumayer of Vienna, to the meso-chalcolithic period or in his dating as I understand it, the period between the appearance of microliths technology on the one hand and the appearance of copper on the other, so it is anywhere between 7,000 and 4000 BC.

THETHANGI

A continuous chain of Mesolithic rockart adorns the walls of the North Karanpura rift valley, interspersed in the beautiful garment of the perfumed brilliant white Bridal Bouquet creeper which flowers throughout the winter months. As noted, these sites were brought to light over successive years, beginning with the Isco rock art in l99l. Today they are a well established gallery of prehistoric rock art of India, with the additional dimension of a Paleolithic base on one side, evidence of continuous civilization and a continuing mural painting tradition by the Adivasi villagers on the other side. The Sat-pahar consists of a series of seven triadic ranges in a complex forming its own basins and stream valleys, upon the tops of whose ranges, in the flanks of whose valleys, are found the fantastic rockart of a glacial period painted in red hematite and yellow lignite, for both of which the range is famed. Both the Thethangi (15x15, 15 x 10, 15 x 15 ), and Sariya ( 5' x 8')rockart face south. The rock art covers a large grey sandstone expanse over fifty feet long and thirty feet high which is painted with zoomorphs, anthropomorphs, geometrical designs in boxes, very realistically painted spotted deer (Axis axis), mandalas, cattle, and ritually arranged frogs. Both the Thethangi and Sariya rock art caves are very threatened by the coal expansion project to the base of the hill. The site has yielded a wide array of stone tools, flakes, microliths, borers, strippers and hand-axes.

SARIYA

Discovered by Erwin Neumayer in l994, this is the most picturesque of our rock art sites (5' x 8'). Perched 3,000 feet high on an eerie overlooking the bifurcation of the new railway line being built from McCluskiegunj to Mangardaha washery, the site is precipitous in the extreme, with a clear view to the west as far as the Sone river a hundred kilometers distant. This is by far the oldest rockart in the entire region, believed to be around l5,000 BC It has the first horned deity, shamanistic figures with sacred tasseled barbs, geometric upright fish, much later to appear in Indus and Susa --- and ritual frogs, deer, grasshopper, votive pyramid, and fishes and small running animals resembling rodents.

KHANDAR

Khandar ( 8 x 15, 6 x 15) is a beautiful, small, precious rock art site about three kilometers along the side of the range towards the western end of the range. It is on a high level of a side stream gorge emerging from the Satpahars. It was visited by Erwin Neumayer and he drew my attention to a beautiful butterfly, according to him the only butterfly in Indian rock art . Also depicted is a uniquely Australian Aboriginal type of honey-bags hive, a bush-bag Mandala, honey hive, gourd flask, deer, and hunter with bow, throwing-sticks, etc. The railway line that has reached Sariya will go right past Khandar. From this beautiful elevation an unparalleled view of the Latehar range is visible sixty kilometers to the southwest.

RAHAM & SIDPA

On the opposite side of the Satpahar range, on its north facing side, are three major rock art sites facing the triple threats of a dam on the Tandwa river, the effects of the super thermal power project coming in the are shortly, and the opening of the Magadh and Amrapalli mines which we have collectively been able to hold up so far. Raham will stand along the edge of the submergence zone, being the easternmost of the three sites. The rockart of Raham is on a high perpendicular/vertical rectangular wall of sandstone with wonderful boxed mandalas painted in red haematite. The cave was believed to have been a refuge for the Tana Bhagats during the end of the nineteenth century from which period some graffiti remains on the lower edges. About six kilometers to the west is the Sidpa rock shelter with its enigmatic drawings of deer and bull. Here is found a perfect tattoo design from the meso-chalcolithic still in use in the women's body decoration in almost all the tribes. This is a typical feature in dozens of rockart motifs being directly related to art-forms such as mural painting, tattoo, metal casting, modeling, weaving and basketry, pottery, carpentry, and other crafts still today being practiced in the valley.

GONDA

This is a new rock art site recently brought to light by Neeraj Vagholikar. It contains deer and elephant drawings. Illustrated is the head of a stag from the rock art.

SATPAHAR

Satpahar-I

In a row, on the east-west ridge of the Satpahar massif are these three unparalleled rock art sites set amidst lush forests of pristine saal, set on huge, vertical walls of sandstone, so perfect in their setting that they seem for all the world as if they were erected for this express purpose ! The first is Satpahar-I, (6 x 12 ), which is in the southern end and on a high clear sandstone wall towering over its own huge sandstone foundation in a vast stone expanse measuring six by twelve feet presents us with the only examples of deer with bandaged feet which according to Erwin Neumayer is a sign the art was painted during an ice age     ( l0,000 BC) and also having a bison with X-ray, and deer painted in the almost identical style as in the Likhanya rock art of the Kaimur range of Mirzapur.

Satpahar-II

Slightly removed and on the west facing slope of the hill, we find Satpahar-II (3.6' x 14') in its wide berth of sandstone, sitting sheltered for aeons from wind and rain, and the sweeping dust-storms of the summer through the valley, sheltered by the thick saal foliage. Here we find a hunter's paradise: a string of animals from right to left a pair of huge humped bison or gaur, a pair of nilgai or bluebull, a type of Indian antelope; a pair of tigers, the male behind accompanied by three wild boar; then a langur monkey facing a pair of hunters with bows and arrows, one hunter shown in its stomach (!); a wild buffalo, and a horned rhinoceros, with some more figures of x-ray animals.

Satpahar-III (7' x 10')is famed for possessing perhaps the oldest crucifix form (Great One) set over a double line of racing spotted deer.

NAUTANGUA

The Nautangwa Pahar rockart was discovered by Neelima and Jason on 20th November 200l. The site is located on the Mahadeva or Mohudi Range of the upper Damodar valley in Hazaribagh. In my opinion this cave shelter offers the finest animal forms (I believe from the Paleolithic period) as yet found in the prehistoric rockart of the Hazaribagh region as yet discovered. It is painted in red haematite colour on grey sandstone rock across a long gallery high on a mountainside with scenic view of the surrounding hilly countryside. The animal figures are very large and some measure several feet across. It is believed that these animal forms belong to a Paleolithic level of art, while the second level infilled with white depicting stick-figures and mandalas are believed to be of a more recent date. Nautangwa-II has three hand stampings which are painted and filled in with lines. There is a line of deer’s too painted in while line drawings.