Who amongst the following discovered the rock art of Bhimbetka ?
- (a)Archibald Carlleyle
- (b)Alexander Cunningham
- (c)V.S. Wakankar
- (d)Mortimer Wheeler
Answer
Why
Correct — C, (c) V.S. Wakankar.
Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar was the archaeologist who identified the rock art of Bhimbetka. Travelling by train through the Vindhyan country south of Bhopal, he noticed rock formations that reminded him of the painted shelters he had seen in Spain and France, returned to the area with a team, and reported a group of prehistoric rock shelters in 1957. He went on to classify the paintings into seven periods and to argue that the earliest belonged to the Upper Palaeolithic. The site is at Bhimbetka in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, about 45 kilometres south-east of Bhopal; more than 750 shelters have since been identified in the complex, of which around 400 carry paintings, and it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003.
Two qualifications belong in a careful answer.
First, Bhimbetka was not unknown before Wakankar. W. Kincaid, a British official, mentioned it in a scholarly paper in 1888 on the strength of information he had gathered locally, but he described it as a Buddhist site and had no notion of its prehistoric painting. Wakankar was the first archaeologist to visit the shelters and to recognise what they were, which is what the question means by discovery.
Second, the scale of the site emerged later still. It was only in the 1970s that the extent and significance of the complex were established and reported. What 1957 marks is the identification of the rock art, and that identification is Wakankar's.
The item is set with a trap in the first option, and the reason it works is that a different and genuine discovery is being confused with this one - a distinction the wrong-option note below sets out.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)Archibald Carlleyle — This is the option that catches the well-prepared candidate, because the fact behind it is true and is taught in the same chapter as Bhimbetka. Archibald Carlleyle made the first discovery of rock paintings in India, in 1867-68, twelve years before the discovery of Altamira in Spain - the standard textbook formula. But the shelters he found were in the Kaimur hills of the Mirzapur region, not at Bhimbetka, and the discovery he is credited with is of Indian rock painting as a subject, not of this site. A candidate who has learned the sentence about 1867-68 and Altamira, and who meets a question about rock art, will produce this name unless the two discoveries have been kept distinct. Note also that the booklet prints the name as Carlleyle, a spelling that varies between accounts.
- (b)Alexander Cunningham — Alexander Cunningham was the founder of Indian archaeology as an official discipline: he was appointed Archaeological Surveyor in 1861 and became the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India when the department was reorganised in 1871, and his surveys of Buddhist sites, following the itineraries of the Chinese pilgrims, laid the foundation of the subject. His work belongs to standing monuments, inscriptions, stupas and coins rather than to prehistoric painting, and he predates the identification of Bhimbetka's shelters by nearly a century. The option is offered because he is the name most readily attached to any question about an archaeological discovery in India.
- (d)Mortimer Wheeler — Sir Mortimer Wheeler was Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1944 to 1948, and his name belongs to the excavation of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, to Arikamedu on the Coromandel coast, and to Brahmagiri in Karnataka, as well as to the introduction of stratigraphic method and the training of a generation of Indian archaeologists. None of that touches Bhimbetka, and his tenure ended nine years before the shelters were reported. Like the previous option, this one supplies a famous name from Indian archaeology in the expectation that a candidate who does not know the specific answer will choose the most eminent.
Concept
Indian rock art and the men associated with it are worth separating carefully, because examiners set them against one another.
Archibald Carlleyle, an assistant of Cunningham's, made the first discovery of rock paintings in India in 1867-68, in the Kaimur hills of the Mirzapur region, twelve years before the painted cave of Altamira was found in Spain. His priority is the point usually made about him, and it is a claim about Indian rock art in general.
V.S. Wakankar identified the Bhimbetka shelters in 1957 and reported them, later classifying the paintings into seven periods. Bhimbetka is the largest and best-known concentration of rock art in the subcontinent.
The site itself: Bhimbetka lies in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh at the southern edge of the Vindhyas, about 45 kilometres south-east of Bhopal, within a sal and teak forest. Over 750 shelters are known and around 400 are painted. The paintings span from the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic through the Chalcolithic and early historic to the medieval period, so a single shelter can carry work separated by many thousands of years. Pigments were mineral - haematite for red, manganese and charcoal for black, limestone for white - which is why they have survived on sheltered surfaces. Subjects include hunting scenes, animals, dancers, and in the later layers horsemen with swords and spears. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2003.
The distinction to hold is between the first discovery of rock art in India, which is Carlleyle's and belongs to the 1860s, and the discovery of Bhimbetka, which is Wakankar's and belongs to 1957.
Prehistoric art is a small but reliable part of the art and culture block on these papers, and Bhimbetka is the site it is most often set on, both as a single-answer question of this kind and as an entry in a chronology of Indian painting - as it is two questions later on this same page.
The option list here is a good illustration of how single-answer culture questions are built. One option is the answer; one is a true fact about a neighbouring subject, placed to catch candidates who have prepared the chapter but not distinguished within it; and two are eminent names from the same field, placed to catch candidates who have not prepared it at all and will choose by reputation. The middle kind is the dangerous one, and the only defence against it is to hold discoveries with their sites and dates rather than as a list of names.
A note on the printing: the first option is set as Carlleyle, and accounts of the archaeologist vary between that spelling and Carlyle. The stem and options are reproduced here exactly as the booklet prints them.
Key facts
- V.S. Wakankar was the first archaeologist to visit the Bhimbetka shelters and recognise their prehistoric significance, reporting several of them in 1957 after noticing rock formations resembling painted sites he had seen in Spain and France.
- Archibald Carlleyle made the first discovery of rock paintings in India in 1867-68, in the Kaimur hills of the Mirzapur region, twelve years before Altamira was found in Spain - a different discovery from Bhimbetka's.
- W. Kincaid mentioned Bhimbetka in a paper of 1888 but described it as a Buddhist site; the scale and significance of the complex were established only in the 1970s.
- Bhimbetka lies in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh about 45 kilometres south-east of Bhopal; over 750 shelters are known, around 400 of them painted, and the site was inscribed by UNESCO in 2003.
- Alexander Cunningham was the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India and Mortimer Wheeler its Director-General from 1944 to 1948 - both eminent in Indian archaeology, neither connected with Bhimbetka.
Study next
Common traps
- Attributing Bhimbetka to Carlleyle because he made the first discovery of rock paintings in India; the two discoveries are ninety years and several hundred kilometres apart.
- Choosing the most famous name in the option list when the specific fact is not known, which is exactly what the Cunningham and Wheeler options are for.
- Confusing the 1888 mention of Bhimbetka as a Buddhist site with its identification as a prehistoric painted complex in 1957.
- Dating the recognition of the site's scale to 1957; that came in the 1970s, and 1957 marks the identification of the rock art.
- Being unsettled by the spelling of the archaeologist's name, which varies between Carlleyle and Carlyle in different accounts.
Single-answer culture questions on these papers are built from four names or four places, of which one is correct, one is attached to a genuinely neighbouring fact, and two are eminent but irrelevant. That structure means the item punishes a candidate who has read the chapter loosely more than one who has not read it at all, because the neighbouring fact is what a loose reading retains. Preparation should therefore attach each discovery, excavation or attribution to its site and its date, and should be alert to the pairs these papers set against each other - the first rock paintings against Bhimbetka, Cunningham against Wheeler, Ellora against Elephanta.
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Practice
- practice — not a real PYQ
The first discovery of rock paintings in India, made twelve years before the discovery of Altamira in Spain, is credited to :
- (a)V.S. Wakankar
- (b)Archibald Carlleyle
- (c)John Marshall
- (d)H.D. Sankalia
Answer(b) Archibald Carlleyle - his discovery of 1867-68 in the Kaimur hills of the Mirzapur region preceded Altamira by twelve years. Wakankar identified Bhimbetka in 1957, Marshall announced the Indus civilisation in 1924, and Sankalia was a leading prehistorian of a later generation.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Bhimbetka rock shelters are located in which State, and in what year were they inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List ?
- (a)Madhya Pradesh; 2003
- (b)Chhattisgarh; 2003
- (c)Madhya Pradesh; 1989
- (d)Maharashtra; 2004
Answer(a) Madhya Pradesh; 2003 - the shelters lie in the Raisen district about 45 kilometres south-east of Bhopal and were inscribed in 2003.