Cutting etch: Tracing India’s most ancient rock art, and the efforts to save it
Hindustan TimesSome are so large and dramatic, looming right beside a highway or on the outskirts of a town, that they are often mistaken for recent doodles, some wayfarer’s version of “I was here”. “Especially with the zoomorphic designs, one can tell that the maker observed the creatures closely, capturing their expressions.” After years of funding their mission themselves, the two men’s NGO, Nisargyatri Sanstha, received funding from the central government’s department of science and technology last year, to work with IIT-Madras on a digital database of the rock art they have documented. The rock art is certainly of immense historical value, says Banani Bhattacharyya, archaeologist and deputy director of archaeology and museums with the Haryana government. Part of what makes this ancient rock art so intriguing is that, in a world of geotagged everything, many of these ancient relics remain undocumented. “People who once dismissed such works as ‘kharoch’ or scratches have begun to come to us and report them,” Risbud says.
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