Primitive art: painted rock walls in odisha

Geo-morphologically western Odisha is an extension of the Chhotnagpur plateau and the Chhatisgarh basin. The western uplands comprising the districts of Keonjhar, Sundargarh, Sambalpur, Balangir and Kalahandi share in common the history and culture of Central India. This region along with the eastern districts of Madhya Pradesh once formed a single political unit under the name Mahakantara and DaksinaKosala during the early historic and early medieval periods. It is full of detached peaks and small range of mountains gradually becoming more sparse and scattered towards the eastern part and is thickly forested with boundary outcrops of a sand stone one which is of great significance for studying the rock art in Odisha. Paintings and engraving drawn by the man on the bare rocks surfaces in the naturally formed caves and rock shelters are the earliest written and visual documents and beliefs. In the absence of any authentic and written record they are of great help to us in determining the contemporary environment and the mode of man nature relationship. They provide us clues to their society religion, rituals, customs, implements and other material cultures. Realizing the significance of the antiquity of rock-art in the recent years the scholars have brought to lime light hundreds of such painted rock shelters all over the country. Central India alone because of its favorable geomorphology has about more than two- thirds of the country’s rock art sites. However, in Odisha such a study has not yet gained importance among the scholars. Though only about half a dozen of such sites have been reported, so far no systematic documentation has been done on any single site. Hence the author in this small paper makes an attempt to survey the painted rock- shelters of Odisha.