Indian Cave Paintings

Indian Cave Paintings Brief History:

Indian Cave Paintings played a vital role in knowing the Prehistorically Indian history and the lifestyle of ancient people in India. These Indian cave paintings are old, and some date back thousands of years. During British rule, the British failed to record these cave paintings. Even the Indian government also not interested in documenting all the cave paintings. Significantly the Indian archaeological department partially succeeded in writing the Indian Cave Paintings. These cave paintings are also durability than most other art forms of India. So these cave paintings give us the lifestyle of prehistorical people. These cave paintings are painted on the granite inside of the caves. So they were not breakable and terrible. The preserved paintings give us an idea about the older adults’ way of life and social activities in those days. We can find perfectly shaped rock-cut sculptures, landscape paintings, religious paintings and pictures of daily life events here.

Cave Painting Styles:

Usually, Indian cave paintings and rock-cut relief sculptures belong to the ancient and prehistoric ages. These can be found in many parts, from the Himalayas to the Southern parts of India. Especially the Bhimbetka rock caves in Madhya Pradesh, very magnificent and spread in five hundred caves. Here are the paintings and pictures of various subjects. Humans painted these paintings around 15,000 years ago. Surprisingly 2, 90,000 years old petroglyphs also we can find here. The historical Ajanta caves are spread with magnificent images which give us information about the life events of Gautama Buddha. These paintings date back to 1 st century BC, and most of the photos originally belonged to 460 AD to 480 AD. Here the murals are painted with rich colours, and the themes revolve around the life tales of Lord Buddha. We can find here the Indian Goddess creatures like Nagas, Yakshas, Vrikshikas and some others. We can see other famous paintings at Bagh Caves in Madhya Pradesh from the 4th to 6th century AD. If we look into Karnataka and Badami cave temples, they portray images of Lord Brahma riding his Swan.

South Indian Cave Paintings:

In South India, the Sittanavasal Cave paintings in Tamilnadu are very famous. These paintings belong to the period of the 7th and 9th century AD. Here we can see the artwork spread on the ceiling and the pillars. These painting themes are based on the stories of Samava-Sarana. Here other important paintings are Gods Apsaras, elephants and bulls. Another essential cave is Armamalai, where we can see pictures based on the theme of the Jain religion; the Thirunadhiklara cave temple paintings portrayed the Mahabharata and Ramayana stories. Saspol Caves in Jammu and Kashmir have special significance to the Buddhist monks. We can see the paintings in dominated blue colour and in the style of Indo-Tibetan art.
These cave paintings were made with the technique of tempera and fresco. Before going to paint, the surface is plastered with a mixture of dung, hay, clay and lime. First kept the surface rough and later made it very smooth and dried it for some time after the artists showed their skills according to the adopted themes.