Lascaux of India

Lascaux is a Stone-Age cave site located in France. It was the first Stone-Age cave discovered in the world. In India also we have many rock/cave shelters like Lascaux. Some of these are the more popularly known Bhimbetka, and also lesser known ones like Tekkalokata, Kupgallu and Pikhlihal. All these ancient caves have paintings of various animals, birds, scenes, and performances in them. Here I have given a few popular paintings from 3 different rock shelters in India. I have also interpreted what I feel about a painting and what it means. 

Cave in Bhimbetka

Paintings of Bhimbetka: In Bhimbetka, the main theme of the paintings is hunting, dancing and animals. The most popular painting out of all of these is a huge painting of a boar attacking a man. Another popular place where paintings have been made is on a rock called the ‘Zoo Rock’. It is named so because it has paintings of 252 animals of 16 different species! Some of the animals shown are bison, tigers, lizards, elephants, deer, wild boars, crocodiles, antelopes, snakes, swamp deer, peacocks etc. But it is not just animals that are shown in the paintings, many species of birds too have been painted. 10 paintings of common peafowl and 7 paintings of jungle fowl have also been discovered in Bhimbetka. There are also many other paintings of men and women dancing, men carrying dead animals from a hunt, musical instruments and in one case a picture of a man carrying a fresh catch of fish on his back, men riding horses and elephants and the most common ones of hunting scenes.

Boar attacking man as mentioned above

Paintings of Kupgallu: Kupgallu is a lesser known rock shelter. It is located in the state of Telangana. The main theme in this rock shelter are hunting scenes. They include scenes of hunters on horses who are bearing spears and bows and arrows. Some paintings include pictures of animal traps and snares.

War scene 

Paintings of Lakhajoar: Lakhajoar like Kupgallu is a lesser known rock shelter. The main theme of the paintings are scenes of animals, hunting and dancing. Paintings show animals like bison, deer, swamp deer, elephants, etc. Some paintings also show social gatherings, objects of transport, geometric figures, human figures and plants and flowers. 

Animal figures

Many archaeologists and historians have interpreted what different paintings mean. Here I have interpreted what I feel the about the above painting. In the above painting there are 3 men sitting on 3 bull-like animals. The men may be sitting on bulls and not horses because it is possible that the men are going to travel a long distance and are going to take something heavy with them so they are riding bulls. It is also possible that the inhabitants of Bhimbetka may have had a caste system and only the higher class were allowed to own horses and that these men were from a lower class.