Chalcolithic Pottery Paintings (With Special Reference to Central India and Deccan)

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Much before the great river valley civilisations took root in the flood plains of the Ganga and Yamuna, the Chalcolithic cultures had grown in the river valleys of the Central India and Deccan. These cultures of the Copper Age flourished primarily along the river valleys of the Narmada, the Chambal and Son and their tributaries. These Chalcolithic people were illiterate. There is no evidence of any written script. The only decipherable records of this civilisation are the pottery paintings on the sherds of broken earthen ware discovered at many of these ancient sites. These simple and elegant paintings open up an ethno-universe of surprising diversity and vibrance. They present a fascinating glimpse into those ancient tribal cultures.
Dr. Datta, has carried out a fascinating study of these Chalcolithic pottery paintings. She has painstakingly compiled a compendium of the various motifs, designs of human and animal figures encountered in these paintings, and has analysed and classified them in detail. She discovered regional stylistic variations and unique creative expressions that characterised the paintings found in each river valley. The paintings of the Navdatoli sites are so elaborate and unique in stylistic content that they may well qualify as the first distinguishable school of painting in ancient India.
This book is a fascinating voyage of discovery through the aeons of time. Through her study of the Chalcolithic paintings, Dr. Datta has opened up an entire ethno-universe of great beauty and primaeval splendour.

Dr. Veena Datta, was born in Jabalpur - the banks of the sacred river Narmada which was once the seat of the Chalcolithic civilisation in India. She did her schooling from St Joseph's Convent in Jabalpur and went on to study Commercial Art in New Delhi. Later she did her Post Graduation in Fine Arts from the Rani Durgawati University, Jabalpur. Veena Datta taught Commercial art at Jabalpur for many years.
Dr. Datta is an accomplished painter and held many exhibitions of her works and won numerous prizes and accolades. She is also a skilled sculptor and expert on fabric paintings and textile designing. It was her rich background in the fine arts which impelled her guide Dr. R.K. Sharma to assign her the fascinating study of Chalcolithic Pottery. Paintings for her Doctoral Thesis. She brought to this study the stand point of empathy. Not only was she born in the Narmada river valley but as an artist, she was eminently qualified to empathise with the Chalcolithic pottery painters.
Her current passion is creating exquisitely beautiful ceramic pottery on which she paints the Chalcolithic motifs and designs of the Copper age in India.

Much before the great river valley civilizations took root in the flood plains of the Ganga, and the Yamuna, Chalcolithic cultures have grown, flourished in the smaller river valleys of Central India and the Deccan. These primitive Chalcolithic cultures have flourished in the river valleys of the Narmada, Son, Chambal, and other Central Indian rivers.
These primitive tribal cultures represent the first transition phase from the nomadic hunter gatherer stage of human evolution, to settlements in the Deccan river valleys that carved passages through the dense forest tracks. These Chalcolithic people were illiterate. No evidence of any written script of them in available so far. Their dwellings were simple and rudimentary huts. The only decipherable record of this Chalcolithic civilization that has survived the ravages of time are the pottery paintings on the shreds of broken earthenware discovered at these ancient sites and settlements. These simple pottery paintings have a fascinating tale to tell of those tribal cultures and settlements of the Chalcolithic period of Indian history. The creative imprint of those ancient potters has survived the ravages of the centuries. The painted motifs, figures and designs speak a simple but elemental language that transports us over the aeons and throws a powerful searchlight on those vanished cultures, on the lifestyles and collective experiences of those simple tribal people.
It is a matter of considerable surprise then, that so far, there has been no serious study undertaken of the Chalcolithic pottery paintings. There was, till recently no single compendium, dealing with an exclusive study of the paintings on the Chalcolithic pottery. Dr. 0. Manchanda dealt with the theme in passing in her commendable work on "A study of Harappan Pottery". Other works deal with this aspect as part of the wider studies of Chalcolithic excavation sites. However, there was to date no specialised work on the subject of these painted motifs and designs on the Chalcolithic ceramic ware.
I essayed forth on this fascinating voyage of discovery into our Chalcolithic past through a study of these pottery paintings. Mine was a truly multidisciplinary approach. I had a background in commercial and fine arts. I had done my post-graduation in Fine Arts, I had also dabbled in sculpture, painting, textile designing and ceramic painting. This, I feel qualified me eminently to undertake this study, as I had the stand point of Empathy. It was in the year 1989 that I had launched into this fascinating project. To gain a real feel I sat and worked on the potter’s wheel with present day craftsmen. I pored over the tomes in libraries, excavation reports, photographs, drawings, etchings, carvings. I visited museums and sites. For almost three years I lived, breathed and dreamt of those pottery paintings. And they grew upon me in slow degrees - the Kayatha bulls, the dancing peacocks, the doe eyed antelopes, the fleeting deers, the tigers and snakes and monkeys, the dancing tribal figures, the men playing the frenzied tribal drum. It was literally an unforgettable experience of deja vu. I felt transported to a distant past when the earth was young and the copper age had dawned, when hunter gatherers were slowly settling down in permanent settlements and rudimentary agriculture was transforming the contours of human civilization. It was the dawn of civilization. Its only existent record today is in these pottery paintings and etchings. It is a fascinating and remarkable record of a verile and spontaneous tribal culture. The first upsurges of creative expression have left behind a permanent impress on those pottery sherds and fragments that historians have pieced together painfully from various sites all over Central India and the Deccan plateau.
As I sat recording and categorising I began to gain fascinating insights. Each river valley had its own unique and distinctive style and particularised motifs. Some chose the solar logos itself - the flaming sun was their prime focus. Others chose the bull and antelope as a symbol of fertility. Some were almost impressionistic in their style - showing tremendous degrees of abstraction and imagination. What I was looking at were fascinating glimpses of the protohistoric schools of art and painting. The medium was the ceramic surface of the pottery ware. The most ancient industry of the Chalcolithic period today provides us a peep into that distant part of which there is absolutely no other authentic record. There is simply no script to be deciphered. There is no written language. There are only these pottery paintings and motifs.
This book, I believe, is the first serious and full fledged study of the pottery paintings of the Chalcolithic period. I have undertaken a meticulous and detailed attempt at classification and analysis so as to gain insights that would establish the existence of rudimentary schools of art specific to the distinct geographical locales of the Central Indian river valleys.
The book in your hands is the product of over three years of research work and labour leading to the award of Ph.D. degree of Rani Durgavati University, Jabalpur. If it helps to draw attention to the fascinating field of Chalcolithic pottery paintings I would feel more than vindicated. Present day artists and ceramic ware producers can draw tremendous inspiration from these ancient artists of the Chalcolithic age.
I am no historian. I have undertaken this arduous work in all humility. My chief qualification has been my background in the Fine arts. It is this which has given me empathy with those ancient Chalcolithic artists. And empathy is essential for understanding. The empathy of the artists standpoint, I am convinced can provide us a clear insight into the cultural context depicted in the pottery paintings. The Chalcolithic tribal’s used this folk art to enhance the aesthetic quality of the wares produced by their surprisingly sophisticated ceramic industry.
In as much as it is a folk art the motifs and designs are highly stylized and form cultural constants that do not permit of any individual creativity or genius. They represent the cultural creativity of entire people per se.
Within the ambit of Chalcolithic art, however, a closer examination indicates the presence of distinctive regional sub-styles in terms of painting techniques (filled in wash or cross hatching and use of dots etc.) and regional uniqueness of motifs and design patterns. Creativity and innovativeness in folk art appear on a regional or geographical basis. To pick out these minor stylistic variations, an attempt has been made in this work to establish the typology and basic features of the common motifs and designs. The basic structure of this work therefore is given in the succeeding paragraphs.

The Habitat Ecological Basis of the Chalcolithic Civilisation
It is imperative that before commencing any in depth study of the paintings on the ceramic ware of the Chalcolithic period, we take a detailed look at the environment of the Chalcolithic potters and painters. Professor Herman Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund have this to say about the environment.
"For human beings the environment is both an objective ecological condition and a field of subjective experience. Nature sets limits, man transcends them with his tools and his vision. Man progressively creates a specific environment and makes history. The conception of environment changes in the course of this evolution. Ecological conditions which may appear hostile to man at one stage of his evolution may prove to be attractive and inviting at another stage. The hunter and food gatherer armed only with stone tools preferred to live on the edge of forests near the plains or in open river valleys. These areas were attractive to the settled peasant who cut the trees and reclaimed the fertile soil. Initially even the peasant looked for lighter soils until a sturdy plough and draught animals enabled him to cope with heavy soils. At this stage the peasant could venture to open up fertile alluvial plains and reap rich harvests of grain. If rain fall or irrigation were sufficient, he could grow that most productive but most demanding of all grains: rice. Where ever irrigated rice was produced, plenty of people could live and great empires could arise."
Indian history provides excellent examples of this evolution. Pre-historic sites with stone tools were almost exclusively found in areas which were not centres of the great empires of the later stages of history. The area between Udaipur and Jaipur, the valley of the Narmada River, the Eastern slopes of the Western Ghats, the slopes of the mountain ranges of Central India, the country between the rivers Krishna and the Tungabhadra and the rim of the Chhotanagpur Plateau".
Quite coincidentally most of the Chalcolithic sites whose ceramic paintings are being studied in this work, were located in the above primitive areas. A large number of them are located along the Narmada river valley and its adjoining valleys of the Chambal and its tributaries. The other groups of sites are in the Mountain ranges of Central India and the Eastern slopes of the Western Ghats and the plateau regions. More were quite simply not the seats of any great empires or later day civilisations. They were the habitats of primitive people, possibly part hunters and food gatherers and rudimentary peasants living on the edges of the forests and in broad river valleys. Nevertheless their ceramic industry was quite well developed. The paintings on their pottery ware gives us a fascinating glimpse of their environment and its ecological contours. Before we study these paintings in detail in the quest of fresh insights into the nature of the Chalcolithic civilisation, let us commence with a detailed Geographical study of the individual sites from which these pottery paintings have been recovered.