Detail of 1.4c.
CHAPTER ONE
Antecedents of Indie Civilization
St o n e A g e Pa i n t i n g a n d S c u l pt u r e
Although human beings have lived on the
South Asian subcontinent for hundreds o f
thousands o f years, very little is known about
the material culture o f the early inhabitants.
The earliest preserved man-made objects in
South Asia, as in other regions o f the world,
are the multitudes o f stone tools by which
archaeologists define the Early, Middle, and
Late Stone Ages o f the subcontinent.1 These,
however, represent only one type o f product
created by early humans. Prior to the develop-
ment o f stoneworking technology, and along-
side it, the early inhabitants o f South Asia must
have created vast quantities o f material goods
made o f bones, branches, animal skins, grasses,
and other easily perishable materials. While the
full range o f such ephemeral objects will prob-
ably never be known, the abundant stone tools
themselves serve as a haunting prefiguration o f
several millennia o f artistic developments in the
Indie regions, for it was stone that served as the
3
artistic medium for so many o f the gigantic
temples, excavated caves, and sculptures o f later
centuries.
Some stone tools, mainly from the Middle
and Late Stone Ages, suggest that aesthetic
consideration was given to aspects o f their crea-
tion, such as selection o f stone and precision o f
carving facets. The survival o f a few early carv-
ings made o f shell and bone also suggests that
these early humans were concerned with more
than pure utility in their carving efforts. How-
ever, it is in the rock shelters associated with
peoples o f the Middle and Late Stone Ages that
the earliest significant corpora o f Indie art may
be found. More than a thousand rock shelters
containing paintings have been identified in India
proper, over half o f which are in the north-central
region, within about a 150-kilometer radius o f
Bhopal, N ot all o f the paintings in these shelters
belong to an early period, since the creation o f
rock art has been continuous in Indie culture
4 FOUNDATIONS OF INDIO CIVILIZATION
1,1 . Pregnant cow. (Enhanced photograph.) Rock paint-
ing at Raisen, M adhya Pradesh, India, Ca. S000-2500
b .c .
even to the present day.3 But the archaeological
contexts o f some o f the paintings suggests that
they, and others executed in similar styles, were
made as long as ten thousand years ago. Clues
to the sequence o f styles, and hence to their
chronology, are provided by the paintings
themselves, for in many o f the cave shelters
new compositions were continually super-
imposed over older ones throughout the cen-
turies, thus preserving the order o f their produc-
tion. In paintings from Neolithic times3 and
later, comparisons with contemporaneous pot-
tery designs are also useful for dating purposes.
At least twenty styles o f rock paintings have
been identified on the, basis o f technique, pig-
ment, and subject matter.4 Many o f these
pictures were made by “ crayoning” 5 rather than
a true painting technique, since lumps o f pig-
ment were probably used to draw directly on
the rock surface, although painting with water
and a brushlike tool may also have been done.
The principal minerals identified in extant
pictures include hematite and iron oxides to
produce yellow, orange, red, and brown;
calcium and kaolin, white; manganese, purple;
and copper, black and blue-green. Most o f the
compositions consist o f animals, or sometimes
humans, alone or grouped. The animals in the
repertoire o f these early artists include elephants,
antelopes, lions, monkeys, and especially bulls
and cows, to name just a few. One example,
from Raisen, near Bhopal, may be among the
1,2. Zebu. (Enhanced photograph.) Rock painting at
Kharvai, M adhya Pradesh, India. Ca. 2500-300 b .c .
oldest o f the surviving rock paintings, possibly
dating from the period ca. 8000-2500 b .c .6 (Fig.
1.1),7 The animal is a pregnant cow, shown in
an outline form that becomes a solid, silhouetted
shape in the depiction o f the head, legs, and
tail. A series o f lines indicates the bone structure
o f the creature. This so-called “ X -ray style” 8
thus provides a view into the animal, revealing
its skeleton and, in this case and others where
pregnancy is being depicted, an unborn animal
within. The calf is drawn in a similar combina-
tion o f solid and linear forms, although the
arrangement o f bones differs from that o f its
mother. The meaning o f the pregnant cow can
only be surmised in this context: some relation-
ship to concepts o f multiplication and fertility
must be implicit. However, whether such
notions had any significant bearing on the later
development of-Indie religious ideas about birth
and rebirth or related concepts is unknown.
A completely different style may be seen in a
representation o f a zebu (Bos indicus) bull at
Kharvai, also near Bhopal (Fig. 1.2), which has
been dated to the period ca. 2500-300 b . c .9 In
this case, the form has been created by the use o f
white kaolin to define the silhouetted shape o f
the animal against the darker color o f the rock
wall. The suggestion o f naturalism is greater
here than in pictures in the X -ray style, since the
silhouette technique lends solidity to the form.
In addition, the roundness o f the animars body
and the swelling hump indicate a type o f ob-
 ANTECEDENTS OF INDIC CIVILIZATION 5

servation that anticipates later naturalistic repre-

sentations o f animals in South Asia.
The popularity o f cows and bulls as subjects
in early rock paintings, such as the two examples
just discussed, suggests that the later emphasis on
bovine creatures in Indie culture had its begin-
ning in the Stone Ages. However, it is difficult
to determine if these paintings were meant
simply to record life or if they served religious
or magical purposes as well. Thus, while it may
be suggested that the relationship between the
early depictions and later emphasis on the
subject is more than merely coincidental, the
special significance o f cows and bulls at an
early date remains speculative.
Although paintings in caves and rock shelters
are found throughout the world as records o f 1.3. Animals. “ Rock-bruising” at Maski, Karnataka,
early human artistic activity, in South Asia such India. Various dates.

works might be said to have special significance.

One o f the major art forms of the Indie world—
rock-cut architecture and its decoration— may
be an outgrowth o f aspects o f this early practice.
While the actual history o f rock-cut architecture
in ancient India may have had a foreign impetus
during the Maurya period, perhaps the practice
suited the needs o f an already existing and very
strong predilection.
Sculpture was also produced by the Stone
Age dwellers o f ancient India, as evidenced by
surviving examples in bone, shell, stone, and
other materials. One characteristic type o f sculp-
ture is the so-called “ rock-bruising,” 10 which is
produced by chipping the surface o f a rock so
that a pattern is created due to the changing
color o f the surface. While the technique is
essentially sculptural, the results are mainly two-
dimensional and therefore related to painting.
As in rock-shelter paintings, both animals and
humans are shown in rock-bruisings, but the
most common subject is cattle. An example
from Maski in northern Karnataka depicts
homed cattle in both silhouette and outline
form, suggesting relationships to early rock-
slielter paintings (Fig. 1.3). As in the case o f
most rock-shelter paintings, the specific species
are clearly distinguished and therefore identi-
fiable, despite the somewhat schematic rendering
o f the forms. The separate subjects in this panel,
including both animal and human forms, were
not executed as a single unified composition.
Instead, the arrangement as it appears today is
the result o f many separate incidents o f carving
and the cumulative efforts o f a number o f indi-
viduals. As in the case o f rock-shelter paintings,
it is difficult to assess the date o f any specific ex-
ample;11 some o f the carvings in this group may
be extremely old, while others may have been
made only a few centuries ago. Like Stone Age
paintings, such examples reflect the persistence
o f Stone Age patterns o f life alongside the
mainstream o f Indie civilization throughout the
centuries while at the same time providing some
insight into possible sources for Indie culture
itself.

E a r l y N eo l it h ic A r t

in spite o f the wide-ranging evidence o f Stone the origins o f what archaeologists define as true
Age populations throughout the South Asian “ civilization” are somewhat elusive, as is the
subcontinent for tens o f thousands o f years, definition o f civilization itself.12 B y most ac-
 6 FOUNDATIONS OF INDIC CIVILIZATION
counts, the term implies the use o f agriculture,
(domestication o f animals, urbanized patterns o f
existence, the evolution o f a political structure
and, important for our purposes, the development
o f specialized crafts. Because o f the concentrated
archaeological research in this region, most o f
the known settlements that are a prelude to the
complex patterns o f life that characterize the
civilized state have been found in the far north-
west o f the subcontinent, such as at Mundigak
in southeast Afghanistan and in northern Balu-
chistan in Pakistan. The recent excavations at
Mehrgarh in northern Baluchistan in particular
have revealed Neolithic patterns o f life as early
as the sixth or even seventh millennium b .c .,
that is, contemporary with the Stone Age
patterns that were flourishing elsewhere in the
subcontinent. Later settlements have been identi-
fied further south, in southern Baluchistan and
Sind, again in Pakistan, and even later in the
Panjab region o f Pakistan and in Rajasthan,
India, The geographic distribution o f these
early settlements has led to the supposition
that stimulus toward a settled existence was
provided by contact with the western Asiatic
world and gradually spread southward and
eastward. However, this viewpoint is not ten-
able in light o f recent discoveries in the central
Ganges region o f northern India, where, at sites
such as Koldihwa near Allahabad, settled pat-
terns o f existence have been traced to the seventh
millennium b .c .13 This suggests that further
archaeological work will greatly alter our under-
standing o f early settlement patterns and o f the
“ origins” o f civilization in South Asia.
No single excavated site provides a complete
profile o f the emerging patterns of life or the
artifacts produced by these early peoples. Since
they created and used pottery, however, a fuller
range o f their material culture is known than
survives for their Stone Age counterparts.
The pottery unearthed at the northwestern
sites reveals a variety o f vessel shapes and color
schemes, along with a well-defined vocabulary
o f abstract and geometric designs. In general,
greater refinement in technique and design
developed over the course o f centuries so that
the earlier, hand-built pots were gradually
superseded by wheel-formed vessels. The wares
range from simple monochrome or bichrome
compositions to complex polychrome designs.
Some levels and sites have yielded pots with
geometric and abstract motifs, while others
show the popularity o f more naturalistic motifs,
such as vegetal and animal forms. In some cases,
geometric forms such as zigzags, triangles,
ovals, and bands create abstract patterns like that
seen on a shard from the Quetta Valley o f
northern Baluchistan, Pakistan (Fig. 1.4a). The
arrangement o f such motifs sometimes suggests
a scene. For example, step-pyramid forms and a
band o f chevrons combine to create the effect
o f a landscape with mountains and a river on a
pot from Mundigak in southern Afghanistan
(Fig. 1.4b). Animals, such as the ibex (Fig. 1,4c),
and vegetal motifs, such as the pipal (Ficus
religiosa) (Fig. i.4d), have been recovered from
later levels at Mundigak. These latter two motifs
are noteworthy, for both have been identified
in the same level at Mundigak and are therefore
presumed to be contemporaneous, yet the ibex
is associated with the western Asiatic pottery
cultures, while the pipal later became a major
symbol in South Asian Buddhist art. Thus, their
joint occurrence seems to document the coexi-
stence o f ties to western Asia and strongly in-
digenous developments. The meaning o f these
and other motifs employed on early pottery
can only be surmised. However, it is likely that
some symbolism, whether conscious or un-
conscious, was present.
A very fine example o f a painted pot comes
from Damb Sadaat (Pi. 1). Dating from
around 2700-2300 B.c., the vessel represents the
final stage o f the prehistoric period in the Quetta
Valley. The shape o f the pot, with its narrow
foot, rounded bowl, and gently flaring rim,
suggests both the technical skill o f the potter and
the highly developed aesthetic principles govern-
ing the creation o f pottery during this period.
The painted design, which consists of hands o f
black encircling the bowl and bulls with wide
arching horns, combines both abstract and natu-
ralistic elements. While the animals are clearly
identifiable and have counterparts in the natural
world, the painter has embellished their forms
by exaggerating the contours and adding geo-
metric patterns to the surfaces o f their bodies.
 ANTECEDENTS OF INDIC CIVILIZATION 7

1.4. Pottery motifs. A ) from Quetta Valley, Northern Baluchistan,

Pakistan; B) from Mnndigak III, Afghanistan; C , D ) from Mundi-
gak IV , Afghanistan. Pre-Harappa phase.

1.5. Figurines, From Mehi, Pakistan. Kulli Cuiture association. Ca.

2500-1900 B.c. Terra cotta. H : ca. 5 -7 cm. Archaeological Survey
o f India, N e w Delhi.

Terra-cotta figurines have also been un-
earthed alongside the painted pottery in early
Levels o f sites irrthe northwest. Three small male
figurines from Mehi display the abstracted and
amplified body forms often characteristic o f
such pieces (Fig. 1.5). Recognizable as humans
more because o f the upright postures and
jewelled ornaments than due to verisimilitude in
depicting body parts, the figures have a lively
n somewhat illogical appearance. Hand-formed
and often very crude, the figurines may some
day provide valuable clues to the development
o f cultural and religious concepts that eventually
manifested in later Indie civilization. Both
animal forms (most commonly the bull) and
humans (most often the female) are found
widespread throughout the region, although
they are notably absent from at least two com-
plexes.14 The female figurines suggest some
type o f female cult, often identified as mother-
8 FOUNDATIONS OF INDIC CIVILIZATION
1.6. Bull sculpture. From Periano Ghundai, Zhob
district, Northern Baluchistan, Pakistan. Ca. third
millennium b .c . Clay. American Museum o f Natural
History, N e w Y o rk .
C o n c l u sio n
The study o f the prehistoric period o f the
South Asian subcontinent is still in an early stage,
and yet these phases must not be overlooked in
reconstructing the region s artistic past. While
the creation o f rock art, terra-cotta figurines, and
painted pottery are in no w ay unique to the In-
die world but are common signs o f the earliest
beginnings o f civilization throughout the world,
they may be said to have a particular importance
in this region due to their persistence. Rock art
perhaps provides evidence o f an early predilec-
tion which culminated in the monumental and
elaborate rock-cut caves o f the Buddhists, Hin-
dus, and Jains. The subjects that appear in such
compositions as well as in terra-cotta sculpture
goddess worship. While the popularity o f the
female and the later importance o f female and
goddess imagery in Indie art might suggest
such a concept, the term '‘mother goddess” is
perhaps too strong, since we know neither
how these sculptures were used nor what they
represented; we cannot say whether the female
is a goddess, nor even a mother. Bull sculptures,
too, provide a link with later Indie culture,
since, as will be shown, the bull came to have
important economic, symbolic, and religious
meaning in the Indie world. Bull imagery also
indicates a possible link with the Stone Age
dwellers for whom bovine creatures apparently
had great importance. An example may be seen
in a representation from the Zhob Valley (Fig.
i,6).
and on painted pottery o f Neolithic peoples
are possible links with later Indie thought. Bulls,
females, certain plant forms, and other motifs
that appear in early Indie art not only persisted
but became prominent, recurring themes in
later periods. One might even say that the
abstract motifs so commonly represented on
early pottery find their counterparts later in
yantras and other abstract or geometric con-
trivances used in Indie art and religion. Such
ties are further suggested by the fact that im-
portant religious sites o f historic times may
often be identified as important prehistoric tool
sites, indicating strong continuity between the
traditions.