The fight of the dragons

দাদাভাই এর পুত্রের উপনয়ন - গ্রন্থীদান 

Bhimbetka - The Altamira of India

To a layman like myself, history of India started from the era of Indus Valley civilization, i.e., bronze age civilization. That was as far as my high school history book could go in terms of Indian history. However, when it came to European history, I remember reading about the cave paintings of Altamira (Spain) and I was really fascinated by it. I read about some ancient cave paintings in Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's Aranyak. He mentioned about the ancient tribal paintings in the Chotnagpur range and regretted the lack of initiative to save those ancient paintings. The time period of those paintings were not known to the author. 

Recently I went to Bheembetika in Madhya Pradesh. I was amazed to see the cave paintings there. Some of them are over 10000 years old! These are some of the pictures taken by me.

T

Vishnu Wakankar discovered the Bhimbetka rock shelters in 1957. Those rock shelters dated back to Mesolithic and even to the late Palaeolithic (old stone age) period.  The rock arts belong to the Mesolithic (middle stone age - circa 10,000 before present [BP]) period. I am not a historian and not an expert in rock art. So instead of daring to write too much, I am going to add the relevant links.
















Wikipedia has a nice concise summary of the art and its history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhimbetka

The transition

I have not been living in India for the last ten odd years. After I am back - I seem to be in a weird state of transition. 

It has been eons since I wrote my last blog. Yesterday I saw something in our garden that I think worths sharing. It was a colourful spider - the cobweb was even more fascinating. It had white zigzag marks at the diagonals. A picture says more than a thousand words (unless it is a poem of course) - so here is the picture.

I do not understand why some people hate squirrels. We have plenty of tiny squirrels in our garden. They are very timid and feed on fruits and termites. They clean themselves very often. They are playful and often hang around in pairs. Although I am no Gussie Fink Nottle (Wodehouse readers know what I am talking about), but I think they are fun to watch. Here is a little member from our garden.

Historic Saptagram-Tribeni

Saptagram (sapta: seven, just like septa in Latin; gram: villages) or Satgaon was an ancient port on the Ganges (river Bhagirathi to be precise, which is one of its distributaries). Around 10th century A.D. Saptagram became a major centre for trade in Eastern India. By 12th century ship from all over the known world came to Saptagram port to buy Indian spices, silk, fabric, perfumes, ornaments, and jewelry and to sell their own merchandise. Rome, Portugal, Netherlands, as well as the far eastern countries, like Java, Sumatra, and later (16th century onwards) France and Britain were connected to Saptagram through the trade-route. Believe it or not, there is still a village nearby of the Portuguese settlers from that era and their present population is about 6000. Interestingly, none of them know a word of Portuguese any more. The first church in Eastern India was built by the Portuguese in Bandel, few kilometers away from Saptagram (started : 1599, finished : 1660). Here is a stained glass work of one of the windows of the basilica.

A scholarly, yet brief review on Saptagram can be found in :

http://banglapedia.info/HT/S_0128.HTM

Here is a map to give you an idea about the location, although, the map of India looked very different then..

Saptagram became a centre for education and culture. Both Hindu and Buddhist scholars gathered around Saptagram. Until the Muslim invasion in 1298 it flourished as a center for pilgrimage to the Hindus. There was a huge Hindu temple on the eastern bank of the river Ganges. Zafar Khan Gazi, the general of the Muslim invaders destroyed the Hindu temple and converted it to a mosque. Chiseled statues of Hindu deities can still be seen on the back walls of the temple. I took this picture just of the west side of the temple not too long ago.

"History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,

Guides us by vanities.." (Gerontion by T.S.Eliot)

Near the temple, there is an old banyan tree. No one knows how old it is. I sometimes wonder, how much of history has this tree witnessed! I wish it could talk.

Opposite to it flows the river Ganges. Here you see a tiny hand-made wooden boat used by a local fisherman. Some of the things did not change in the last thousand years.

and some obviously did...

Not too far from here, there are two beautiful temples. One is Hanseswari... Its unique architecture is unlike any other temple of Bengal. It does have some resemblance with St Peters Chapel of Moscow. Recently the temple underwent minor renovation. White paints were used in several parts of the temple. I like the original uncoloured red bricks rather the coloured structure. Renovation and restoration are two different words to me, and I prefer the later when it comes to old structures.


The other one is the Basudeb temple. It is a single canopied Bengal-style architecture.




The burnt-clay terracotta on the walls of the Basudeb-temple are slightly worn out with its age. A few of them have been removed (not sure by whom). Still, you can see quite a few of them. They depict stories from the Hindu mythologies. I wish I had better pictures of the terracotta than these:

As a young boy, I used to bike on the road along the riverbank. On some hot summer afternoons I would sit underneath the shade of an old tree and refresh myself with the river breeze, and hear the boatmen singing folklores from their tiny fishing boats. I wondered a thousand years ago, I would probably watch the Roman or the Portuguese or the Sumatran sailors singing some unknown melodies, perhaps the folklores from their own land. I would not understand the lyrics, but I know that they would be songs of love, or of amorous grieves and pangs. After all we are all the same...our melodies might vary, but not our feelings.

One afternoon we decided to visit a relative about 40-45 km away from where we live. We drove through rice fields, saw cattle grazing in the field and had a good glimpse of the country-side. Here are some pictures.

Here is a rice field. You could see goats and cows grazing there. The field close to you has already been harvested. The ones farther are ready to be reaped.




You can see some cows from close.



India is a country of peaceful coexistence and tolerance. One interesting thing about Indian roads is that both drivers and animals share them thinking that they have priority over the other. Here is an example:


As you see, a hen is right in the middle of the road. If you use a magnifying-glass you can see a few more further away. The dog, being an intelligent animal, stayed off the road and is possibly thinking when he would get a chance to sleep on the clean road. The goats (below) are busy in their altruistic duty to prune any grass growing right next to the road.


Would you agree any less that Indians live in a very symbiotic society, where animals and men (and women, to be politically correct) share their social responsibilities, and make this earth a better place for each other?

With this I conclude this part of the blog. Any comment, question or suggestion will be greatly appreciated.