Prehistoric Rock Cave Paintings of Ongna by Ankita Haldar

Prehistoric Rock Cave Paintings of Ongna  by Ankita Haldar

Part 1: Introduction 

Fig 1. The man with the headgear? He can't be the Pashupatinath man from Mohenjodaro Seals? 2900BC? No. Can it be people imagining alike?  And so much superimposition.

Do you feel restless after staying in one place for a long time? I frequently do. I would feel so anesthetized if i cannot travel somewhere new or old, near or far. Don't you feel being wooden, like a  table which doesn't move until moved? I consistently do. So, i try to find time to travel as frequently as my workload and deadlines permit me. My motto in life has been "Work Hard but Travel Harder". I don't want to spend the rest of my life like a water hyacinth attached to the bottom of an algae covered pond. I want to keep moving from one place to another, like driftwood perhaps.

But it was that  innate restlessness which had prompted me to hire a Bolero jeep and go asking around my way from Raigarh (one of the districts of the central Indian state of Chattisgarh) to Ongna, 77 km from Raigarh...not very far if you have a asphalt/bitumen road but on a bumpy ride where you are bouncing off on dirt tracks in jungles, coursing over shallow streams and farmland ridges, trampling high and long elephant grasses etc and speeding over rocks and boulders then certainly it is one spine and rib displacing joyride. But, the prospects of the site embalm any weariness one could have. That's what the site did to my bruised ribcage. It's 6 kilometers further inside the jungles from Dharamjaygarh.  Not my ribcage..but the prehistoric painted rock shelters and caves of Ongna. They allegedly belong to the Upper Paleolithic Age (Late Stone Age, 50,000-10,000 yrs ago)

Fig. 2. I had just climbed the mountain and arrived in front of the caves  

 I came across the fact that this district has the highest number of prehistoric rock sites with paintings executed by Stone Age man in the state. While the British were trying to lay railway lines across the length and breadth of his state, the engineers did a survey of the area and someone named C.W Anderson, apparently recorded the presence of all these painted rock shelters. It happened in 1910 and evidently since then the Archaeological Survey of India had reached there for sure because one can see a board declaring it to be a protected site but the ASI seems to have abandoned the site afterwards as now the site is open to nocturnal visitors, bears, bats and other wild animals and the stray villager stealing a nap on his way back from wood-cutting or gathering from the wilderness. Infact we found lot of bear poop, both petrified and fresh when me and the driver crawled inside one of the caves with  a tunnel! 

Fig. 3. Crawling inside the cave only to find lot of bear poop and darkness being spewed out by a tunnel inside. This was for inhabitation and it's said some stone tools were found inside which had been submitted to the state museum. This cave didnt have any painting inside or not that i had read of and nevertheless it was so dark inside one couldn't see the tip of one's nose inside. Bears allegedly come for siestas there in the noon sun as it's cooler inside. But the cave expands inside.

Fig. 4. 

Fig. 5. A row of  stick figure dancers

Fig. 6. Shades of Red- a dominant colour visible on the palette with outline drawings of a humped bull, human figures in animated or gesticulating postures, either outline drawing or striated or bodies filled in monochrome hues. A close observation of the paintings and illustrations would reveal a lot of superimposition red over white and red over red.  

Fig. 7. More figures but they are becoming graceful here and getting embellished with head gears; a motif that is visible in a lot of contemporary tribal folk art in the state as well.  

Fig. 8. Is it an outline of a Spider? The circular lines?  Reminds me of the Nazca Geoglyphs...the Nazca lines of Peru, especially the spider in outlines. But Nazca culture came between 400-650 AD. No, can't be. Just people thinking and imagining alike. 

Fig. 9. The man with headgear seems to be painted in a space which has lot of fading white and red sketches. 

Fig. 10. Mixed Canvas- What do we have here? A contemporary grafitti of a woman with modern anatomical proportions, looming large and superimposed upon more finely sketched prehistoric figures with headgears. On top we can see right hand palm prints, humped bulls, and can you see white outlines which seem to be like petroglyphs...when you scrape off the top surface layer and the underlying layer being lighter creates patterns when contrasted with darker top and lighter underlying layer. 

Fig. 11. A row of stick figures dancing or doing hunting-ritual dance, following a leader with a woven basket or are they 2 separate unrelated pieces of work? The saffron stick figure on top seems to be crouching, reminds me of the posture of a praying mantis. Is he a Shaman in a ritualistic posture?

Fig. 12. Tucked between the yawn of the cave..this part didnt have any paintings.

Fig. 13. Inside the mountainous forest of Bani Hills

In my maiden trip i could find and visit only 2 painted cave sites ( Ongna-Dharamjaygarh and Karmagarh), so in this article i would talk only about Ongna but though i reached the other sites of Botalda and Singhanpur but i couldn't find the painted caves, even after much search; also owing to the fact that it became dark and they, that is my Bolero Jeep driver who was a local village lad and one more villager whom we had picked up on our way from the nearby villages to be our GPS in the wilderness and mountains; they said it wasn't safe to tarry behind in the forests after dark as we had nothing to defend ourselves against from wild animals, especially bears, hyenas, foxes and truant panthers. We were just armed with 3 sticks for walking and 1 sickle that our driver carried to cut down the long grass and tree branches to make way as we progressed in the jungle and a long knife which the other village man  carried. I had my shades, sunscreen, scarf, water, bars of bitter chocolates, my camera, spare batteries, a notepad, pen, a district map and battery-operated torch, hand sanitizers and loads of energy and enthusiasm. This rock shelter was on the Bani Hills. 

Fig. 14. The yawn of the rock shelters where the paintings are open to the mercy of the sunlight, wind and moisture which is slowly fading the paintings away, not to mention uncouth forest rangers and visitors who spit betel-nut juice on the walls! 

 Subsequent parts of this article on the Ongna series will attempt to look into the composition details of these paintings, their colour coding, motifs and patterns used and to what effect. Who were the artists? Men or women? Prehistoric Civilians or Shamans? What is the origin and utility of art in the prehistoric minds? Is it sacred art or aesthetic art? Can we actually apply all these parameters to the prehistory? What is the significance of so much of  prehistoric superimposition itself? I am not just speaking about the contemporary graffiti on the walls which marrs the essence of prehistory in situ but also those paintings/illustrations which look similar in form and motif and were superimposed one upon another often in layer after layer? Why? Were certain sites on these rock canvases more prone and susceptible to yielding magic? Were these sites for Sympathetic Magic? 

During my visit to the site, i had taken extensive photographs of most of the painted surface. And after coming back from this trip, i studied the pictures and tried to hand-sketch and record the motifs on transparent plastic A3 sheets.

Fig. 15. Ankita sketching the motifs on plastic sheets mounted on chart paper for clarity for personal record keeping

It's a very crude method and not perhaps scientifically accurate for the proportions but my limited exposure to the techniques of studying Parietal Art, bar me so far from executing any other way of recording the wall motifs, other than hand-sketching. Perhaps, as i learn more about the ways and forms of this art, i would correct myself further. When am not studying for my doctoral theses, in that spare time i like to interpret the symbolism implicit in these rock canvases. 

Fig. 16. One of the sheets

Fig. 17. 

I would like to investigate and understand the symbolism and function of this art with respect to various readings i have collected on Parietal Art ( study of prehistoric art done on cave or rock walls) in both India and abroad.  I did come across a whole range of books and articles on this topic and on topics allied. My Working Bibliography  is attached herewith and i would be very glad to share and exchange information with anyone willing to shed some more light on this discipline to me. I must confess that though when it comes to Rock Art in India, the limelight is always and inevitably hogged by Madhya Pradesh's Bhimbhetka rock shelters. Justified because they are much greater and large in number and showcase a range of generations of art, however, what i noticed was the sheer neglect or indifference and even apathy at times for the neighbouing rock art sites in Orissa and Chattisgarh. Not only is there a dearth of research material on these other Central Indian sites but also mostly they are not researched or scrutinized "because" they are termed as minor sites! I feel the context, motive and politics of execution behind any kind of art is beyond categorization as major and minor site. It exists and attains significance and prominence as it has a relevance in that particular moment when it was conceived and given a form. Thus, any and every work of art, in my view is open to comparisons for it's stylistic deviance or convergences or even imitations, however, it should not be subjected to any kind of clustering vis-a-vis it's position and hierarchy with other sites of artwork. It should be treated as if it's frozen in time and space. I feel that would remove a lot of bias which propels a lot of art historians, archaeologists, art conservationists and restorers from giving differential treatment of various artworks and styles. An artwork or art-site should be beyond such regimentalization. 

This blog space is thus an attempt to not only  discover this discipline which fascinates me to no end but being an amateur, i would also discover it at my own pace. However, am extremely eager to be corrected and guided if anyone feels they can add anything to my learning curve.  Watch out for this blog's nomadic space till then for more on Ongna's Prehistoric Palette!

- Ankita Haldar

My Working Bibliography

Apart from numerous articles which i came across on rock art, i also had the good fortune of being guided by a rock art specialist Prof. Robert Bednarik, whom i had approached for initial guidance on this discipline of which he is a veteran and i a novice. He was generous enough to take my amateur interests seriously and had not only patiently answered to all my queries on rock art but also provided me with his own works as reading material and also gave me ample suggestions for the Indian rock art scene. I look forward to using all these reading materials both articles and books ( some of which are listed below) which i could acquire so far and would embark on my learning expedition on Parietal Art in Central India. 

On Indian Rock Art 

Stone Age Painting in India (W.S Wakankar)

Prehistoric Indian Art ( Sharma and Tripathi)

Indian Rock Art ( SK Pandey)

Prehistoric Indian Rock Paintings (Erwin Neumayer)

Mural Paintings in India (JC Napall)

 New Light on the Pre-historic Cultures of  Central India (Ansari and Dhavalikar)

Pre-Historic Art in India (H.D Sankalia)

On Prehistoric/Primitive Art in General 

Art in Primitive Societies (Richard Anderson)

Primitive Art (Leonard Adam)

A Manual of Historical Development of Art: Pre-Historic, Ancient, Classic, Early-Christian 

The Outlines in the Early Beginnings of Art ( Gideon)

Mind in the Cave (David Lewis-Williams)