V S Wakankar's quest for India's prehistoric art

Stick-like human figures on the walls of the Bhimbetka shelter.

In the year 1972, when I was a fresher at the postgraduate department of archaeology at Deccan College in Pune, I came across a tall figure with a radiant face walking briskly along the corridors of the department. This person engaged both the young and the old in conversation and his discussions with the faculty on his findings were clear and conducted with a great deal of enthusiasm and authority.

This was Shridhar Wakankar, a name that was synonymous with the prominent world heritage site Bhimbetka by then. Despite his successful exhibitions of artworks in India and across Europe and North America, he was a man of amiable disposition, simple living and was dedicated to his chosen field of prehistoric rock art studies.

Bhimbetka and related sites earned Wakankar worldwide recognition and the Padma Shri award in 1975. In 2003, UNESCO declared the Bhimbetka rock caves as a World Heritage Site.

However, his other significant contributions to unravelling India’s prehistoric past have remained overshadowed.

Not much has been written on his discovery and excavation of Chalcolithic site of Kayatha in the Chambal Valley and rediscovery of Dongla village near Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, where the shadow vanishes for a minute at noon on June 21 each year, during the summer solstice. Each year, a large number of enthusiasts gather here to witness the celestial spectacle.

Many archaeologists who tread terra incognita in search of the past, take pride in their heritage and would like to discover hard evidence to assert their cultural identities.

Post-Renaissance debates in the intellectual circles looked towards India as the centre of human origins and thought of the Ganga Valley as the birthplace of first civilisation.

Colonial scholarly explorers were keen on finding evidence in India to prove this theory and began their search for the indelible imprints of man in the archaeological record. Some of them, like Robert Bruce Foote and Archibald Carllyle found evidence for oldest human settlements in the form of stone tools (May 30, 1863) and cognitive behaviour in the form of prehistoric rock art (1867) respectively.

These discoveries were as inspiring as they were stimulating and led many archaeologists in the immediate post Independence period to join this organised pursuit of India’s past. The career of Wakankar is no exception to this. He was an artist by training but an explorer and excavator by choice.

Devout Indologist

He fulfilled the qualifications of a devout Indologist: he diligently investigated prehistoric sites, deciphered inscriptions, collected coins and relics of art, and read the Sanskrit lore pertaining to historical events and places with a missionary zeal. Above all, he was an extraordinary explorer, loved adventure and lived a purposeful life.

Although the presence of prehistoric paintings were first recognised by Archibald Carlylle of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the Vindhya hills (1867), a year before the discovery of the world famous Altamira cave art site in Spain, it did not receive recognition owing to lack of patronage by the authorities of the ASI.

By the time Bhimbetka was discovered in 1957, Wakankar had inherited a great legacy of European rock art research. He was already known for finding rock art sites as isolated instances but this dense cluster of polychrome parietal pictographic art at Bhimbetka shot him to fame.

Nationalistic historians and archaeologists believed that the deeper our past, the greater is our civilisation. V S Wakankar was one such person, who endeavoured to establish India as the birth place of prehistoric art, whether symbolic or figurative.

During a career that spanned nearly 35 years, he established Bharati Kala Bhavan at Ujjain and documented more than 1,500 rock art sites; he was the first explorer of the dry bed of the river Saraswati in the post Independence period; he founded the Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology at Vikram University, Ujjain; he founded the Wakankar Bharati Sanskriti Anveshan Nyas and its museum in Ujjain (now Wakankar Puratattva Sangrahalaya) and established the Sanskar Bharati, of which he was lifetime general secretary.

Wakankar was also associated with landmark excavations at Maheshwar (1954), Navada Toli (1955), Kayatha (1966) and Bhimbetka (1975-79), to name a few, in collaboration with Deccan College archaeologists. These excavations consistently revealed a distinctive Chalcolithic phase designated as Malwa Culture (1900-1400 BC), an early agricultural community with knowledge of copper metal, hence Chalcolithic.

The excavations at Kayatha pushed back the beginning of the Chalcolithic way of life, outside the Harappan province by at least 400 years (2400 -1900 BC), recognised as Kayatha Culture. Wakankar’s excavation of Kayatha (ancient Kapithhaka), the birth place of ancient Indian astronomer Varaha Mihira (6th century AD), had brought him closer to astronomy and astrology.

Wakankar has been a role model to many archaeologists of my generation, especially those who came in personal contact with him during their formative days as archaeologists.

(The writer is senior academic fellow, Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi)