Origin of Sculptural Art (a): Pre And Proto-Historic Period

Going by the definition that art is a special kind of skill, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the earliest extant artistic creations are those of the Palaeolithic period, in the form of stone tools and rock-art.

Sankalia rightly observes that,

“Because of the innate development of the sense of symmetry, and a sense of proportion, we see the earlier crude, irregular handaxes gradually replaced, or appearing side by side, with beautiful, symmetrical shapes”^[1].

Even though stone tools cannot be called an art object in the strict sense as they are utilitarian in nature, and the main intention of the maker is to use them for specific purpose, which may help in their day to day activities; yet the making of a stone tool can also be termed as a skill and it involves cognitive imagination and planning.

In this connection, Agrawala remarks that,

“From the art point of view they just demonstrate the craft ability of the primitive man who had begun to use his hand and thus laid the foundation of crafts for succeeding age”^[2].

Rock-art^[3] on the other hand is the physical manifestation of man’s creative aspects and it reflects the floral, faunal and natural environmental settings in which the people lived and also portray their day to day activities like hunting, fishing, honey collecting, dancing, festivities etc., apart from geometrical or abstract forms and landscapes. The art of the prehistoric period can be regarded as a precursor to the more glorious stage comprising of paintings, sculptures and architectural creations of the historical period. Rock-art was noticed in India from Lower Palaeolithic period onwards in the form of petroglyphs from sites such as Bhimbetka^[4] (Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh) and Daraki-Chattan^[5] (Mandsaur district, Madhya Pradesh). The tradition of rock-art continues well into the historical times, though they differ in style, form and technique. Among these, rock-bruising can be called as sculpture in embryonic form as it involves chipping the surface of the rock. However, the resulting form in a rock-bruising is always two-dimensional^[6].Thus the art of the pre-historic period as observed by Vasudeva S. Agrawala^[7] “is marked by certain primitive features giving it a separate entity to be recognized as the first link in the story of human art”.

Many interpretations were made by various scholars^[8] regarding the purpose of rock-art like–purely artistic and secular, for the sake of art depicting their day to day life; to meet ritual needs giving them strength to hunt the animals thus depicted; to teach the younger generation of the customs of the society, technique of hunting, etc. Thus, to the connoisseurs of rock-art they give a colorful picture of the many sided cultural life of those times. In Tamil Nadu the credit for discovering the first rock art site at Mallapadi (Dharmapuri district), goes to Dr. K. V. Raman in the year 1978, and from then on many such sites were located in the districts of Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Dindigul, Krishnagiri, Madurai, Nilgiri, Sivagangai, Vellore and Villupuram^[9].

The earliest example of artistic expression from India, involving alteration of a raw material can be found from the Upper Palaeolithic level at Patne (Jalgaon district, Maharashtra), dated approximately to 25,000 B.P. It is in the form of three Ostrich eggshell pieces engraved with simple crisscross designs, one finished and two unfinished Ostrich eggshell beads and one bead of shell^[10]. Few similar pieces were also reported from Bhimbetka^[11]. Also of interest is a bovid tooth with groove marks on it from the Upper Palaeolithic levels of Billasurgam caves (Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh)^[12]. Engraved stone artifacts are also reported from the Mesolithic levels of Chandravati (Sirohi district, Rajasthan)^[13] and from the Neolithic sites of Sanaganakallu-Kupgal complex (Bellary district, Karantaka)^[14]. Another object which reflects on the progressing religious beliefs and cognitive ability among the Upper Palaeolithic people was discovered from the excavation site at Bagor (II)^[15] (Bhilwara district, Rajasthan) in the form of a rectangular stone rubble platform with a triangular stone having naturally formed concentric circles on it, installed in the center. It is interesting to note that similar stones were still worshipped by the tribal communities of the area as mother goddess. This gives the earliest evidence of a shrine in India and shows the prehistoric antiquity of certain belief systems.

From the Neolithic period onwards, artistic creations began to be seen in the form of painted pottery, human and animal terracotta figurines. Indeed one of the earliest depictions of terracotta art can be seen from the Aceramic Neolithic levels (period I) of Mehrgarh (Kachi district, Baluchisthan) in the form of unbaked clay figurines assigned by the excavators to 6^th –5^th millennia B.C^[16]. From the Chalcolithic period onwards more ornate terracotta figurines, pottery painted with various designs like, geometric, linear or zigzag lines, human, flora and fauna can be seen. Prior to the discovery of the Indus valley civilization, many scholars felt that the earliest reference to art in India in the historical period can be seen in the Vedic literature, even though material evidence for such is unavailable and also in the form of extant Buddhist architectural and sculptural remains. Thus E. B. Havell^[17], the art historian traces the origin of art in India from the Vedic period, in the graphical description of nature, gods and goddesses in their hymns.

According to him:

“The Vedic period is of supreme consequence for the understanding of Indian Art. For throughout all the many and varied aspects of Indian Art–Buddhist, Jaina, Hindu, Sikh and even Saracenic, there runs a golden thread of Vedic thought binding them together in spite of all their ritualistic and dogmatic differences”.

However, as revealed through the subsequent archaeological explorations and excavations, it is found that artistic creations of a fine quality and standards existed in India even in the Chalcolithic period and more so from the sites of the Harappan civilization, the mature phase of which flourished between circa 2600 B. C. to 1900 B.C. The artistic remains of the Harappan civilization can be seen in the form of painted pottery, numerous seals, beads, amulets, bangles and terracotta figurines. Rarely sculptures made of alabaster, limestone, sandstone and metal were also found. Of the stone sculptures, eleven are found from Mohenjodaro (Larkhana district, Pakistan)^[18] and two from Harappa (Sahiwal district, Pakistan)^[19], the two prime cities of the Harappan civilization. Famous among the eleven sculptures is the bust of a male figure with bearded head wearing a stole with a trefoil decoration and a head-band holding his cropped wavy hair, popularly called as ‘Priest king’ from Mohenjodaro^[20]. Of the two statuettes from Harappa, one is a nude male torso in red sandstone and the other is a dancing figure of grey limestone. Agrawala^[21] opines that these two “figures are of divine import”. Of the metal images important one is the bronze dancing girl from Mohenjodaro, which Sir Mortimer Wheeler^[22] regarded as the most remarkable of the Indus figurines. According to Agrawala^[23] the figure in bronze “gives proof of the technique of casting metal by cire perdue or lost-wax process, a technique having a continuity of about 5000 years on the Indian soil”.

Apart from the Harappan civilization, artistic activity can also be seen in the numerous sites of Chalcolithic culture spread over Deccan, Central India, Rajasthan and a few in the Ganga doab and Gujarat, which flourished between 3^rd and 1^st millennia B.C. Specimens of artistic merit can be found in the form of painted pottery, beads, bangles, terracotta figurines and metal objects. A hoard of four bronze sculptures viz., a chariot with a rider, an elephant, a buffalo and a rhinoceros from Daimabad (Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra), are a rare example of artistic activity, which according to Dhavalikar^[24] belong to the later Harappan period. But as they are discovered from an unstratified digging, their exact identification as belonging to the Chalcolithic period is debatable^[25]. The copper-hoards found from several sites of the Ganga doab, Chotanagpur region, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, north Rajasthan, central Himalaya^[26] and a few from the southern parts of India are also of equal artistic interest as far as metal objects are concerned. Recently Dr. K. P. Rao^[27] discovered four copper-hoard swords from Veerulagudi temple in the village Karampudi (Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh), thus making it as the southernmost copper-hoard yielding site. Generally copper-hoards comprises of variety of weapons like axes, celts, spear-heads, hatchets, swords, harpoons and anthropomorphic figures. Scholars like K. N. Dikshit^[28], D. P. Agarwal^[29], W. Jurgen^[30], Paul Yule^[31], etc., are of the opinion that even though they are shaped as weapons, its heavy weight and lack of use-wear marks indicates that they are not made for utilitarian purpose and seems to be of ceremonial or ritualistic significance. For this ethnographic support is also found from the Gond tribes of central India, who still worship such metal tools and weapons^[32].

Next to Chalcolitic culture, we have several Iron Age cultures spread over different parts of the Indian subcontinent such as the Gandhara Grave culture, Painted Grey Ware culture, Northern Black Polished Ware culture and Megalithic culture^[33]. In South India the Iron age culture is represented by the Megalithic burials with characteristic Black and Red ware. The people of this culture having the knowledge of making tools and implements out of Iron furnaces, introduced the tradition of erecting sepulchral tombs, which involved the erection of large orthostatic boulders; semi to well dressed slabs; plain or anthropomorphic menhirs as funerary monuments^[34]. It is interesting to note that reference to the practice of using huge boulders to bury the dead and marking the place of burial is also found in the Vedic and Sangam literatures. The Satapatha Brahmana refer to two types of burial monuments viz., the four-cornered and round^[35]. It further mentions about two contradicting practices of burying the dead i.e. either by placing the corpse directly on the earth or in a trough and also refers to enclosing the burial by means of stones^[36]. Sangam literatures like Narrinai^[37], Ahananuru^[38], Patirruppattu^[39], Purananuru^[40] and Tolkappiyam^[41] refers to the practice of burying the dead in an urn (tali) and planting stones above the grave (nadukal). Post–Sangam age literature like Manimekalai^[42] gives different types of burial customs, which prevailed in those times, like cremation (suduvor), exposing the dead (Iduvor), inhumation into pits (todu-kuli-paduppor), cists (tal-vayin-adaippor) and urns (taliyir-kavippor). All these terms are indicative of the burial types found in the megalithic sites from Tamil Nadu. The process of quarrying the required raw material, transporting it from the quarry site and erecting a burial structure requires the technical skills of engineering and sculpture and also demands lot of labour, fore-planning and coordinated efforts. There was also another type of burial, closer to the rock-cut cave technique, prominently seen in the western coasts of India, especially in the Cochin and Malabar regions of Kerala, which involved scooping out of lateritic rocks to form subterranean tombs^[43]. Thus, these megalithic burials stand as a mute testimony to the earliest extant architectural activity in Tamil Nadu and it also reflects the organized social setup and religious beliefs of the age.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Ibid., pp. 3–4.

[2]:

Vasudeva S. Agrawala, op.cit., p. 10.

[3]:

Any types of artistic activities found on rock is rock art, vide, Y. Mathapal, “Rock Paintings of India, An Orthographical Interpretation”, in Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, Poona, Vol.35-73 Nos. 3-4, pp. 83 -93.

[4]:

R. G. Bednarik, 1996. “The cupules on Chief’s Rock, Auditorium Cave, Bhimbetka”, in The Artefact Vol. 19, 1996, pp. 63 -72.

[5]:

G. Kumar, “Daraki-Chattan: a Palaeolithic cupule site in India”, in Rock Art Research Volume 13, 1996, pp. 38 -46.

[6]:

Bridget Allchin and Allchin, Raymond, The Birth of Indian Civilization: India and Pakistan before 500 B.C. Baltimore, 1968, p. 298.

[7]:

Vasudeva S Agrawala, op.cit., p. 8.

[8]:

Scholars like Y. Mathpal, Prehistoric Rock Paintings of Bhimbetka, Central India, New Delhi, 1984; J. D. Lewis Williams, “A Dream of Eland: An Unexplored Component of San Shamanism and Rock Art”, in World Archaeology Vol. 19, no. 2, 1987, pp. 165 -177; Camuri, et.al, Deer in Rock Art of India and Europe, New Delhi, 1993; E. Neumayer, Lines on Stone: The Prehistoric Rock Art of India, New Delhi, 1993; N. Chandramouli, Rock Art of South India with special reference to Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, 2002, to name a few.

[9]:

T. S. Sridhar (ed.), Rock Art of Tamil Nadu, Chennai, 2005, pp. 2–5 and 13–14.

[10]:

S. A. Sali, “The Upper Palaeolithic Culture at Patne, District Jalgaon, Maharashtra”, in Recent Advances in Indo-Pacific Prehistory, Poona, 1978, p. 144. Also, R. G. Bednarik, “About Palaeolithic Ostrich Eggshell in India, in IPPA Bulletin, no. 13, pp. 34–43.

[11]:

R. G. Bednarik, “The Role of Pleistocene Beads in Documenting Hominid Cognition”, in Rock Art Research Vol. 14, 1997, pp. 27–43.

[12]:

R. G. Bednarik, “Palaeolithic Art in India”, in Man and Environment, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 33–40. Also, K. Thimma Reddy, “Billasurgam: An Upper Palaeolithic Cave Site in South India”, in Asian Perspectives, Vol. 22, No. 2, p. 222, (no. 71, Fig. 11).

[13]:

V. H. Sonawane, “Significance of Chandravati Engraved Core in the Light of Prehistoric Art of India”, in Rock Art in the Old World, New Delhi, 1992, pp. 273-283.

[14]:

About these Neolithic artifacts the authors describe that “These artefacts were all apparent by-products of stone knapping, and consisted of dolerite flake and non-flake debitage, a biface and a fractured cobble that were unremarkable in all regards except that each of them bore a series of engraved lines or grooves on their remnant cortical surfaces. The engraved lines appeared in parallel vertical and horizontal series that on some specimens produced a sort of grid-like or cross-hatching effect. vide Brumm, Adam, et. al. “Signs of Life: Engraved Stone Artefacts from Neolithic South India”, in Cambridge Archaeological Journal Vol. 16, no. 2, 2006, pp. 165 -190.

[15]:

J. M. Kenoyer et. al. “An Upper Palaeolithic Shrine in India”, in Antiquity 57, pp. 88– 94.

[16]:

J. F. Jarrige et.al., “Excavations at Mehrgarh, Baluchistan: Their Significance in Prehistorical Context of the Indo-Pakistan Borderland”, in South Asian Archaeology, Vol. I, pp. 473–536.

[17]:

E. B. Havell, The Ideals of Indian Art, London, 1920, pp. 3–12.

[18]:

John Marshall, Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilization, London, 1931, vol. 2, pp. 44 -45 and vol. 3, pl. XCVIII -C.

[19]:

M.S. Vats. Excavations at Harappa, Delhi, 1940, pp. 74–76.

[20]:

E. Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohenjodaro, Delhi, 1938, pp.356–364.

[21]:

Vasudeva S Agrawala, op.cit., pp. 20–23.

[22]:

Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Civilization of the Indus Valley and Beyond, London, 1966, p. 44.

[23]:

Vasudeva S Agrawala, op.cit., pp. 20–23.

[24]:

M. K. Dhavalikar, “Daimabad Bronzes”, in Harappan Civilization, New Delhi, 1993, pp. 421–426.

[25]:

D. P. Agrawala and J. S. Kharakwal, Bronze and Iron Ages in South Asia, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 164–165.

[26]:

Paul Yule, The Copper Hoards of the Indian Subcontinent: Preliminaries for an Interpretation, Jahrbuch des Ro>misch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz, Vol. 36, No. 01, pp. 193–275.

[27]:

K. P. Rao, “Copper Hoard Swords from Karmpudi: A New Discovery from Andhra Pradesh”, in Puratattva, no. 45, pp. 248–249.

[28]:

K. N. Dikshit, “The Copper Hoard in the light of recent discovery”, in Bulletin of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology Vol. II, p. 43.

[29]:

D. P. Agarwal, “The Copper Hoard Problem: A Technological Angle”, in Asian Perspective no. 12, pp. 113–119.

[30]:

W. Jurgen Frembgen, “On Copper age Anthromorphic figures from North India: An ethnographical interpretation”, in East and West no. 46, no.1 -2, pp. 177–182.

[31]:

Paul Yule, “The Copper hoards of northern India”, Expedition-P hiladelphia, Vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 22 -32.

[32]:

M. Nagar, “Ethnoarchaeology of the Bhimbhetka region” in Man and Environment vol. 7, pp. 61–69.

[33]:

D. P. Agrawala and J. S. Kharakwal, op.cit., p. 215 ff.

[34]:

K. R. Srinivasan and Banerjee, N. R., “Survey of South Indian Megaliths”, in Ancient India, no. 9, pp. 103–115.

[35]:

Kanda 13, Adhyaya 8, Brahmana 1.

[36]:

Kanda 13, Adhyaya 8, Brahmana 2.

[37]:

Mayirum-tali-kavippa-t Tavinru-kalika-ver-kolla-k-kurre (Narrinai, no. 271, ll. 11-12.)

[38]:

Aham, nos. 109 and 157.

[39]:

Mannar maraitta tali Vanni-manrattu-vilan?giya-kade (Patirruppattu, no. 44, ll. 22-23.)

[40]:

Puram, nos. 3, 221, 223, 228, 232, 238, 256 and 356.

[41]:

Tolkappiyam, Porulathikaram, verse 60.

[42]:

Suduvor-iduvor-todu kulippaduppor Talvayinadaippor-taliyirkavippor (Manimekalai, chapter VI, ll. 66-67).

[43]:

Y. D. Sharma, “Rock cut Caves in Cochin”, in Ancient India, no. 12, pp. 93–115.