Indian Paintings - A Short History

Disclaimer: This is a loose translation of the work Bharater Chitrakala by Sri Ashoke Mitra. No originality or credit is intended nor claimed for this piece.

Introduction

In our country, it is not easy to view paintings as we desire. Most of the major paintings are in foreign hands; what little is available here are mostly in the collections of the rich and with the families of earstwhile kings. The only complete intact paintings are those located in caves which cannot be relocated. No library in our country has complete references on indigenous and foreign paintings. The kind of books required to understand the history, trade, economy and politics that influenced the paintings are also not available. Thus a student of art is often disoriented in her pursuit to understand such works.

To learn about and understand paintings, one needs to view them. A particular work of an artist is not self-contained nor complete in itself. That work is one among the many others created by the artist. Trying to understand an artist without viewing or studying her other works is therefore futile. That artist has worked in particular country, over a particular time period in a particular historical, social and political enviornment. But it would be wrong to interpret an artist based on that particular country, time period and environment. Every country, era and environment has a past. To understand the past, one therefore needs to know and understand many countries and many ages. Moreover, it is not enough to study one art form. It is necessary to know and understand all associated art forms of that country, its science and history. When the evolution of art over various periods in the whole world is discussed, we can reach a simple conclusion. Many eras or great geographical distances notwithstanding the paintings of various cultures reveal an unity that is astonishingly coincidental.

The reason for this is not some all conquering autogenous talent. Even that grows with the help of several things. Especially, the art world has no boundaries of time and place. The art of one country drawns incessantly from the art of another country and era. It learns and acquires and creates something fundamental thereby repaying its debt. In addition, its most important attribute is to remain established in a particular country, era and time.

Moreover, just as a language inspite of being the common property of a race, is not pleasing to hear nor is its character apparent until it is spoken by some particular individual in her own unique style and cadence, similarly the language of art though universal does not convey its majesty till it includes within itself the different characteristics of a race, a nation, a society.

The Earliest Painting

Drawing is a natural tendency whatever be its form. This habit is sometimes apparent at an early age and must have similarly been evident in the early ages of human history. There are plenty of studies to ascertain the reason behind this habit yet it is a fact that many ages ago, even before Asansol, Ranigunj, Birbhum, Bankura were buried below mountains of snow, even before that, when pre-historic humans ate raw meat because they did not know how to light a fire, they could and did draw in caves. What compelled them to draw is not known. The astonishing thing is that those drawings had such attributes as cannot be ignored by artists even today. The simple and bold lines of the drawings and their emotional appeal are still sought after by artists.

It may be surprising to know that there are atleast twenty-seven big and small places all over India that have paintings on the walls of a cave or cluster of caves which archaeologists believe date back to the Stone age. Much later, after thousands of years came our historical era which is not more than three to four thousand years old. Humans lived in caves even in this era as some do even today.

Very few cave paintings in our country are from the period some thousand years before history commenced. Whatever exists is no less valuable. These paintings have astonishing similarity with those found in the Spanish locations of Cogul, Altamira, Arignesan. There is a mountain range - Kaimur range in the middle of India. Caves in these hills have paintings depicting hunting which are barely visible today. These may not be good examples of cave paintings but they date back beyond the Stone Age.

In the Vindhya range close to Mirzapur are some rock shelters that have paintings dating back to the end of the Stone Age. These caves have been discovered only recently. Red coloured 'rundle' stones have been found close to these caves. Red or grey powder obtained from grinding these stones was used to make paint with primitive tools also found close to these caves. There was a native kingdom by the name of Raigarh in Madhya Pradesh which is now a district town to the Sambalpur in Orissa. In this district flows a river by the name of Mand and on the banks of this river is a village called Singhanpur. Adjacent to this village is a small chain of hills. Some caves in these hills have drawings with red paint on the walls of their entrance which are certain to be very old. These paintings depict humans and animals along with some random scripts much like the Egyptian Heiroglyphics. The animals are almost like those depicted in cave paintings. For example big deers, giant elephant or mamoth, rabbit along with humans in various states of activity. A particularly beautiful picturisation packs motion and rhythm in an energetic whirl - the depiction is of a hunting scene with a wild bison in the middle surrounded by human hunters - some in the state of spearing the animal and others airborne or grovelling in the dust in various stages of injury. At the other end of the same wall is another illustration of a wild buffalo, speared and in the throes of death surrounded by a ring of prancing hunters. Found close to this painting were primitive hunting objects and tools. This seems to imply that these depictions have been carved out of stone and coloured with stone dust applied with stone implements. Amazing what primitive mankind could do.

Caves discovered in the Mirzapur district of Uttar Pradesh contain some strange drawings made with red iron ore powder. Most of these paintings have a hunting theme. They depict animals being chased , their motion delineated with amazing lucidity. The animals depicted are mostly rhinos, deers and sambhar.

Many experts believe that these cave paintings may not be pre-historic. They may not be that old because there are still some tribes in our country that use stone tools and weapons. Their population must have been much more some two to three thousand years ago and the characterstics of the prehistoric era may have been present their drawings. Considering these facts it may be that these cave drawings are not that old afterall. An English expert by the name Barkit believes it to be so but all this is not certain.

Just like the cave paintings in Spain, the paintings found in our country carry the same qualities of depth, relative distance and perspective along with the use of black and red colours. Moreover, the cave paintings found in Raigarh and Kaimur have the same geometrical lines and shapes. These things are currently quite important.

When human beings started leaving caves to build houses, the practice of drawing pictures on the walls stayed with them. Buildings built to last for long were more likely to have paintings on their walls. Take for example the Egyptian tombs/temples, the walls of buildings in the land of two rivers - Caldia, Asyria. Round this time or even earlier, humans started drawing figures on earthen pots and utensils. This practive continues even today indicating that human beings probably cannot live without colours, drawings and paintings.

Due to the efforts of the Archaeological Society of India, many more places with cave paintings have been discovered. While no attempt will be made to give a comprehensive list of these discoveries yet certain places are worth mentioning. One of the important new discoveries are the cave paintings at Bhimbhetka in Madhya Pradesh. The book Stone Age Painting in India by Vishnu Wakankar has some plates of these Bhimbhetka paintings. The reputed journal Marg had a whole issue on the Bhimbhetka paintings. The prints seem to suggest the the paintings are prehistoric because the colours used appear to be made from earth or stone powder. Moreover the choice of colour and its method of application, boldness of its lines, depiction of creatures and events, suggestions of motion and velocity, takes the viewer back to a prehistoric age. The quarterly Bengali Abong Aei Somoy in its Winter 1993, issue published a captivating essay on this topic by Amitabha Gupta. To the east of Ramgarh Narsinghgarh is a hill named Katre Vihar. In a cave shelter on this hill Wakankar discovered more than sixty wall paintings. Like other wall paintings, these paintings too depict hunting, dance and horse mounted creatures weilding shield or sword. It is difficult to tell how old they are, perhaps as old as the early ages of history. Recently, towards the beginning of 1989, some twenty-five wall paintings have been found in a cave shelter in the Rajarao plateau of Bastar district. These painting too depict hunting scenes but their age is yet to be determined.

More wall paintings have been discovered in another cave shelter at Manikmunda in the Sundergarh district of Odisha. Colour made from vermillion, iron ore or other locally available quarry powder mixed with animal fat or oil has used to draw the wall paintings. Most depict hunting scenes. The images depicted are neither discrete nor similar to the typical style of prehistory. Thus it is difficult to date these paintings. At another hill named Ushakoti in the Lefripara thana of Sundergarh district, a cave shelter has been found to contain some paintings along with drawings assumed to be a script. The script is yet to be deciphered. Similar drawings have also been found at Ulapgarh in Sambalpur district and Gudahandi in Kalahandi district. It is difficult to determine the age of these drawings leading to serious doubts about whether they are prehistoric. The primary reason for this doubt lies in the fact that only a few hundred years ago, these districts were inhabited and continue to be inhabited by several forest tribes whose ways of living and social organisation are decidedly primitive. Hunting remains the primary source of nutrition for these tribes and this is done mainly with the bow and arrow or spears thrown using muscle power. The art and craft of a society reflects the tools and implements it has adopted and yet their aesthetic expression can surprise future generations. It is hard to say whether the expression of talent has any cronological progression although technological progress does reveal new directions that we often misinterpret as new ways of expressions and feelings.

More recently, in the year 1988, the archaeological department has discovered some cave paintings in the Aaravali mountain range at Viratnagar in Rajasthan. According to the archeologists, these paintings may be from the paleolithic era. The pictures primarily depict animals: deer, buffalo or bison, bear, tiger, elephant and even fish. There are others with a white background depicting buffalo, bison and tiger in the colour of vermilion dust.