Prehistoric & Mural Paintings

This leaf covers the two oldest layers of Indian painting. Prehistoric paintings are images made by humans before the invention of writing ("prehistoric" = before recorded history), found mainly on cave and rock-shelter walls. Murals are paintings executed directly on a wall, ceiling or other permanent surface (from Latin murus, "wall"). Fix the vocabulary on first use: a rock shelter is a shallow cave-like overhang used for habitation; a pictograph is a painted image while a petroglyph is a carved/engraved one; the Stone Age is the long pre-metal era; and a mural differs from a miniature (a small, portable painting on paper/cloth). The story runs from the red-ochre hunters of Bhimbetka to the Buddhist masterpieces of Ajanta — the foundation of all later Indian painting.

A1. Prehistoric Painting — Stone-Age Chronology

• Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age, up to ~10000 BCE): earliest; very few/no surviving paintings in India (mostly cupules/engravings).
• Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age, ~10000–4000 BCE): the peak of Indian rock painting (most Bhimbetka art) — small, lively hunting and dancing scenes.
• Neolithic (New Stone Age): continuation, with more scenes of settled life and cattle.
• Chalcolithic (Copper-Stone Age): overlap with early farming cultures — motifs resembling painted pottery, showing contact between rock-shelter folk and villages.

A2. Types of Prehistoric Art

• Pictographs (paintings) vs petroglyphs (engravings/carvings/cupules and bruisings).
• Cupules — cup-shaped hollows, among the world's earliest art — at Daraki-Chattan (MP) and Bhimbetka's Auditorium Cave (claimed Lower Palaeolithic/Acheulian).
• Edakkal (Kerala) — famous prehistoric petroglyphs (engravings).

A3. Bhimbetka (the central site)

• Location: Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh, in the Vindhya hills near the Betwa; the name means "the seat of Bhima."
• Discovered by V. S. Wakankar (1957); a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2003).
• About 750+ rock shelters (~500 with paintings), with continuous occupation from the Palaeolithic into the historic period (seven cultural layers).
• Famous shelters: the "Zoo Rock" (dozens of animals), the "Auditorium Cave," and the great boar/"Boar Rock."
• Noted for the superimposition of paintings of different ages (layers used to date the art).

A4. Themes / Subject Matter

• Hunting scenes are the commonest — hunters with bows, arrows, spears, traps.
• Animals — bison, tigers, elephants, deer, wild boar, rhinoceros, antelope.
• Dancing, music and group/community scenes; domestic and social life (cooking, childbirth, burial) in later periods.
• Battle scenes and riders on horses/elephants appear in the historic-period layers (with metal weapons).
• Note: pure landscape is rare — the focus is living beings and human activity.

A5. Colours, Technique & Style by Period

• Pigments: natural minerals — red ochre (haematite/geru), white (limestone/kaolin), green (chalcedony), yellow; binders = animal fat, plant gum, water; brushes = plant fibre, animal hair, twigs. They survived because of the dry sheltered rock and the stable mineral pigments.
• Colour-by-period (high-yield): green & dark red = older (Upper Palaeolithic); red = Mesolithic; white = later.
• Style: Upper Palaeolithic — large, linear animal figures and wavy lines; Mesolithic — smaller, lively, numerous hunting/dancing scenes; Chalcolithic — contact with settled farming communities.
• Global contrast (brief): the European cave art of Lascaux (France) and Altamira (Spain) — cited only to place Bhimbetka in world context.

A6. Other Prehistoric Sites

• Bhimbetka (MP) — the most important; Adamgarh (Hoshangabad, MP) and Pachmarhi (MP); Daraki-Chattan (MP) — very early cupules.
• Lakhudiyar (Uttarakhand) — on the Suyal river; man, animals, wavy lines and "hand-linked" dancing figures.
• Jogimara caves (Chhattisgarh) — among the oldest (Ramgarh hills); Mirzapur/Sonbhadra (UP) in the Kaimur range.
• Kupgallu, Piklihal, Tekkalkota (Karnataka) and Edakkal (Kerala, petroglyphs). Sites spread across the Vindhya, Kaimur and Satpura ranges.

B1. Murals — Mural vs Miniature & Technique

• A mural is large, fixed and public (on wall/ceiling); a miniature is small and portable (a later development).
• Technique: buon fresco (wet plaster, no binder) vs fresco-secco (dry plaster + binder) vs tempera (binder = egg/gum). Indian murals (Ajanta) are primarily tempera / fresco-secco, NOT true buon fresco — the classic confusion.
• The wall was prepared in layers (clay+dung+fibre+lime ground → fine lime coat), then painted with mineral pigments (lamp-black, red ochre, lapis-lazuli blue, terre-verte) bound with glue/gum; volume was shown by tonal colour-shading, not cast shadow.

B2. Ajanta (the most important mural site)

• Location: Aurangabad district, Maharashtra, in a horseshoe gorge on the Waghora river; 29 rock-cut Buddhist caves (chaityas & viharas).
• Period: c. 2nd century BCE–6th century CE, in two phases — early Hinayana (Satavahana) (Caves 9, 10) and later Mahayana (Vakataka, Gupta age) (the great painted Caves 1, 2, 16, 17).
• "Rediscovered" by a British officer, John Smith, in 1819; copied later by Robert Gill and Lady Herringham; a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1983).
• Famous paintings: the Bodhisattvas Padmapani (with a lotus) and Vajrapani and the Mahajanaka Jataka (Cave 1); the "Dying Princess" (Cave 16, Nanda's renunciation); the Simhala Avadana and the Shaddanta (six-tusked elephant) Jataka (Cave 17); and the reclining Mahaparinirvana and Mara's assault (Cave 26).
• Style: naturalism, graceful figures, expressive faces, volume through colour-shading, fluid lines. Ajanta is the one place where architecture, sculpture AND painting survive together.

B3. Other Mural Sites

• Ellora (Maharashtra, UNESCO 1983) — 34 caves (Buddhist + Hindu + Jain); murals mainly in the Kailasa temple (Cave 16) (Rashtrakuta, with later repainting) and the Jain Indra Sabha (Cave 32); better known for sculpture/architecture than painting.
• Bagh caves (Madhya Pradesh) — Buddhist; tempera murals close to Ajanta but more worldly/secular (the "Rang Mahal," Cave 4; a famous procession of dancers).
• Sittanavasal (Tamil Nadu, Pudukkottai) — the Jain Arivar Koil cave (Pandya, 9th c.); the Samavasarana theme and a lotus-pond ceiling with dancers, bulls and elephants; Ajanta-like style.
• Badami (Karnataka) — the earliest surviving Hindu/Brahmanical murals (Cave 3, dated 578 CE, Vaishnava themes and a courtly scene), Chalukya patronage.
• South Indian / later murals: Pallava (Panamalai, Kanchipuram Kailasanatha); Pandya (Sittanavasal, Tirumalaipuram); Chola (the Brihadeshwara Temple, Thanjavur, under Rajaraja I — rediscovered beneath later Nayaka layers, showing Rajaraja, Sundaramurti and a Nataraja/Tripurantaka); Vijayanagara (Lepakshi, the Veerabhadra temple, AP — one of the largest mural panels; Hampi Virupaksha); Nayaka (Madurai, Chidambaram); and the distinctive vivid Kerala murals (Mattancherry Palace, Ettumanoor, the five-colour "panchavarna").
• Mughal wall paintings (Fatehpur Sikri) come later, as murals decline and miniature painting rises.

B4. Significance & Evolution

• Murals form a continuous tradition: Ajanta (Buddhist) → Hindu/Jain → regional schools (Chola, Vijayanagara, Kerala).
• They are a source for costume, jewellery, music, court life, religion and daily life, and the foundation before the miniature tradition.

Quick Reference Tables

Bhimbetka and Ajanta are recurring Prelims favourites — tested through site facts, discoverer/period, colours, and site–religion–dynasty matching.

For Mains, use prehistoric art as a historical source and Ajanta as a social mirror + the high point of Gupta classicism.