Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya organised a Museum Popular Lecture here on Tuesday. Prof Sadasiba Pradhan, Former Professor of Ancient Indian History, Culture & Archaeology, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar (Odisha) delivered a lecture on ‘Interpreting Rock Art: An Ethno-archaeological Perspective’.
Prof Sadasiba Pradhan said that one of the characteristic features of rock art world over is the large assemblage of non-thematic and non-figurative abstract symbols and motifs juxtaposed with animal and human forms. These symbols are both geometric and non-geometric and are so bewildering that no definite name or meaning could be given to these forms.
They include a host of parallel vertical or horizontal lines or wavy lines within or without a geometric format; criss-cross, zigzags, grids, curvy linears, bisected triangles or triangles with a shallow depression (cupule) at the center resembling vulvas; honeycombs, rhomboids, harpoons, denticulate, diamond chains, spirals, concentric circles, series of dots, cupules, palm, foot, paws and so forth. It appears as if there is an overwhelming richness in the invention of symbols and men’s desire for creating such symbols in prehistoric time was inexhaustible.
Ninety percent of rock pictures documented in one hundred six rock shelters in eleven districts of Odisha are non-thematic symbols and motifs. Vulva (yoni) remains the hallmark of all representations in Odishan rock art. Identical symbols do appear all over in a given time whether in Australia or America or Africa or India.
Animal and human forms may appear identical in their execution and depiction because of their standardized physiognomy, which is divine, or the law of the creation, but why and how such uniformity also exists in the composition of certain symbols, which is exclusive to human creativity. Is it because the thought process of the mankind in a given time was alike everywhere wherever they roamed? Or since they shared a common level of subsistence economy of hunting-gathering, environment and insecurity of life, their cognitive development was identical irrespective of their area of operation.