Under the 15th series of its online exhibition by Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS), on Thursday an exhibition of Rock Art- A Shared Heritage was introduced. IGRMS has been presented online with its basic information and photographs and videos.
About this exhibition, Praveen Kumar Mishra, Director, IGRMS said that, Universally, existing in several parts of the world Rock painting are also called Petroglyphs in technical terminology of archaeology.
In-spite of being an object of material culture in its first appearance and due to simplicity, beauty, variety and diversity or multiplicity of forms it attracts a vast range of audience including general observer to scholars, art admirers and researchers but also converse with their past at some extent.
These paintings were prepared thousand years back in ravines of tough and inaccessible mountains when the universe and society was not divided in to political boundaries unlike today.
Composed in various stages of prehistoric period from stone to metal, these paintings even being diverse in subject matter, pattern, material, colour and purpose convey the message of university in diversity and ‘Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam’.
In this regard Garima Anand Dubey, Museum Associate told that Beyond the boundaries of nation and State the rock art is not associated with a specific discipline or a particular group or class instead it is heritage of entire humankind.
It will be more appropriate and possible to see and understand it in its natural surroundings. It is that unique shared heritage that even being an independent discipline is very much helpful in making study of archeology, anthropology, art, sociology and science easier and comprehensible, on the other hand the methods of construction of pattern present in them colors, similarity and diversity of patterns, vastness or connotation of meanings may present a blend of intellectual challenge and joy but in India and in special reference to central India the continuity of cultural traditions in the region helps us to gradually access to that end of cultural past where there was neither the text nor words but only meditation and these beautiful rock paintings are the articulation of that thought process which could been recorded, documented and studied only after the passing away of their unnamed composers or over centuries of their creation which is still continue.