Covering a vast terrain-from Ladakh and other Himalayan locations, to central India including the Vindhyas, the Satpuras, and the Chhota Nagpur Plateau, to southern Deccan and Sri Lanka-the book presents for the first time a well-rounded overview of rock art in India down the ages.
Prehistoric Rock Paintings Of Bhimbetka By Dr. Yashodhar Mathpal Is The First Exhaustive Study Of A Single Rock Art Site In India. It Covers The Entire Art Activity In The Form Of Paintings Found In 133 Caves At Bhimbetka, Central India, The Largest Concentration Of Rock Paintings In The Country. For The First Time Copies Of Prehistoric Cave Paintings Have Been Made On The Spot, In Original Colour, To Scale And With Original Background. All The Superimpositions Of Figures Have Been Copied. For The First Time Indian Rock Paintings Are Dated 10,000 Years Back On The Firm Ground Of The Archaeological Findings From The Excavations Of Painted Caves. For The First Time Indian Rock Paintings Have Been Studied In Their Historical Perspective. For Example, The First Discovery Of Rock Paintings Was Made In India 12 Years Before Their Discovery Of Altamira In Spain. India Is Also The First Country To Recognize The Antiquity Of Rock Paintings. For The First Time Too The Maximum Literary, Ethnologic And Archaeological Evidences Have Been Researched For Evidence Of Drawing Material, Motivation And The Antiquity Of Rock Paintings. In His Foreword To This Monumental Work Professor H.D. Sankalia Says: This Work Is Unique Because For The First Time Prehistoric Indian Paintings Are Evaluated By A Scholar Who Is Artist By Nature And Training And A Trained Prehistorian, And Thus Eminently Qualified To Write On The Subject.
This book is the pioneering attempt on several Indian rock art sites of diverse regions exhaustively studied by the writer for decades and finally a database is equipped with attributes on early rock art imagery.
Dating back to at least 50,000 years ago, rock art is one of the oldest forms of human symbolic expression. Geographically, it spans all the continents on Earth. Scenes are common in some rock art, and recent work suggests that there are some hints of expression that looks like some of the conventions of western scenic art. In this unique volume examining the nature of scenes in rock art, researchers examine what defines a scene, what are the necessary elements of a scene, and what can the evolutionary history tell us about storytelling, sequential memory, and cognitive evolution among ancient and living cultures?