CDS (II) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 56 of 120

Correct — B, 2 only. Statement 1 names the wrong man. The first discovery of rock paintings in India was made in 1867-68 by the archaeologist Archibold Carlleyle, twelve years before the discovery of Altamira in Spain, and it was Cockburn, Anderson, Mitra and Ghosh who followed him in finding a large number of sites; 'Alexander Burns' appears nowhere in that story, and the name looks like a garbling of Alexander Burnes, the Scottish traveller in Sind and Afghanistan, who had nothing to do with rock art. Statement 2 is the received account of Bhimbetka and it holds: V. S. Wakankar came upon the rock formations from a train on the Bhopal-Itarsi line, got off to look at them, and the shelters were identified in 1957-58, after which he spent years surveying the hills and jungles around them. Statement 3 is false: at Vikramkhol in Sambalpur district, one of the best-known Odishan sites, paintings and engravings occur together in a single shelter, so the flat claim that they never share a shelter in the rock art of Orissa does not hold. That leaves statement 2 alone.

• (a)1 only — Keeps only the statement with the wrong discoverer. The 1867-68 discovery belongs to Archibold Carlleyle, not to anyone named Burns.
• (c)2 and 3 — Adds the Orissa claim to the true Bhimbetka statement. Odishan shelters such as Vikramkhol carry both paintings and engravings on the same rock face.
• (d)1 and 2 — Pairs the true Bhimbetka statement with the false attribution of the first discovery.

Indian rock art is found from the Kumaon hills to the granite country of Karnataka and Andhra, but the richest concentration is in the Vindhyan ranges of Madhya Pradesh and their Kaimurean extension into Uttar Pradesh. Bhimbetka, forty-five kilometres south of Bhopal, has about eight hundred rock shelters in ten square kilometres, of which some five hundred bear paintings, classified into seven periods beginning with the Upper Palaeolithic and running through the Mesolithic and Chalcolithic into historical times.

The item is a name-and-date test wearing the clothes of an art-history question. Attack it by attribution: the discoverer of Indian rock art in 1867-68 is Carlleyle, a fixed point in every account, so any option that keeps statement 1 is out, and that removes options (a) and (d) at a stroke. The remaining choice turns on the Orissa claim, and negative statements of that kind — 'do not exist in the same shelter' — are almost always the weak point of a question, because a single counter-example destroys them. Vikramkhol is that counter-example. Note also that Bhimbetka became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, which is the fact examiners most often pair with the Wakankar story.

• The first discovery of rock paintings in India was made in 1867-68 by the archaeologist Archibold Carlleyle, twelve years before the discovery of Altamira in Spain.
• Cockburn, Anderson, Mitra and Ghosh were the early archaeologists who went on to find a large number of rock art sites in the subcontinent.
• The Bhimbetka shelters, forty-five kilometres south of Bhopal, were identified in 1957-58 by V. S. Wakankar; about five hundred of some eight hundred shelters bear paintings.
• Bhimbetka's paintings are grouped into seven periods, beginning with the Upper Palaeolithic, then the Mesolithic and the Chalcolithic.
• Odishan rock art sites include Vikramkhol and Ulapgarh in Sambalpur district, Ushakothi and Manikmada in Sundargarh, and Gudahandi and Yogimatha in Kalahandi; at Vikramkhol paintings and engravings appear in the same shelter.

• Accepting a plausible-sounding European name as the discoverer; the 1867-68 discovery is Carlleyle's.
• Trusting a sweeping negative statement about a region's rock art; one shelter with both techniques defeats it.
• Confusing the date of the Bhimbetka discovery, 1957-58, with the date of its World Heritage inscription, 2003.

As a statements item mixing a false attribution, a true discovery anecdote and a sweeping regional generalisation.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first discovery of rock paintings in India, in 1867-68, is credited to

  • (a)Archibold Carlleyle
  • (b)Alexander Cunningham
  • (c)V. S. Wakankar
  • (d)John Marshall

  Answer(a) Archibold Carlleyle — twelve years before the discovery of Altamira in Spain.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bhimbetka rock shelters, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003, lie in which state?

  • (a)Uttar Pradesh
  • (b)Madhya Pradesh
  • (c)Odisha
  • (d)Maharashtra

  Answer(b) Madhya Pradesh — in the Vindhyan hills about forty-five kilometres south of Bhopal.