Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T20:05:41.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The rock and the hunter. The significance of rocks and boulders in rock art production in the western Himalayas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2017

Lars Reinholt Aas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper is an addition to the recent advances in the field of rock art research and aims to accentuate the significance of rocks and boulders in the production of rock art. I argue that the rock itself must be recognized as an important element in rock art production even in cases where there are no discernible connections between the rock art images and the irregularities found in the rock surface. The paper concerns rock carvings from the Taru Thang site in Ladakh in northern India and builds on ethnography drawn from the Dardic-speaking people of the western Himalayas. I argue that the rocks must be understood as devices of communication between hunters and their supernatural allies, and that the images represent messages conveyed through the rock interface. In these acts of communication, the geological irregularities of the rock surface serve no purpose and have been avoided rather than included in the compositions.

Keywords

Ladakhethnography and archaeologyrocks and communicationhunting and rock artDardic-speaking peoplerock interface
Type
Articles
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , December 2017 , pp. 155 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aas, L.R., 2009: The rock carvings of Taru Thang. The mountain goat. A religious and social symbol of the Dardic speaking people of the Trans-Himalayas, Saarbrücken.Google Scholar
Bruneau, L., 2007: Preliminary study of rock art of the western Himalayas, Puratattva . The Bulletin of the Indian Archaeological Society 36, 104–111.Google Scholar
Bruneau, L., 2010: Le Ladakh (état de Jammu et Cachemire, Inde) de l’Age du Bronze à l'introduction du Bouddhisme. Une étude de l'art rupestre, Ph.D. dissertation, Université Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne.Google Scholar
Bruneau, L., and Bellezza, J.V., 2013: The rock art of Upper Tibet and Ladakh. Inner Asian cultural adaptation, regional differentiation and the western Tibetan plateau style, Revue d’études tibétaines 28, 5–161.Google Scholar
Bruneau, L., Devers, Q. and Vernier, M., 2011: Rock art research in Murgi Tokpo, Nubra Valley in Ladakh, Purkala. The Journal of the Rock Art Society of India 20–21, 91–98.Google Scholar
Cacopardo, A., and Cacopardo, A., 2001: Gates of Peristan. History, religion and society in the Hindu Kush, Rome.Google Scholar
Clark, G.E., 1977: Who were the Dards?, Kailash 5, 323–56.Google Scholar
Clottes, J., and Lewis-Williams, J.D., 1998: The shamans of prehistory. Trance and magic in the painted caves, New York.Google Scholar
Coles, J.M., 2000: The dancer on the rock. Record and analysis at Järrestad, Sweden. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 65, 167–287.Google Scholar
Darling, E.G., 1979: Merit feasting among the Kalash Kafirs of north western Pakistan, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.Google Scholar
Di Carlo, P., 2007: The Prun festival of the Birir valley, northern Pakistan, in 2006. East and West 57, 44–52.Google Scholar
Dollfus, P., 1988: La représentation du bouquetin au Ladakh, in H. Uebach and J.P. Panglung (eds), Proceedings of the 4th seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Hohenhammer 1985, Münic (Kommision für Zentralasiatische Studien, Studia Tibetica), 125–38.Google Scholar
Durand, A.G., 1899: The making of a frontier. 5 years of experiences and adventures in Gilgit, Hunza, Nagar, Chitral and E. Hindu-Kush, London.Google Scholar
Francfort, H-P., Klodzinski, D. and Mascle, G., 1992: Archaic petroglyphs of Ladakh and Zanskar, in Lorblanchet, M. (ed.), Rock art in the Old World. Papers presented in symposium A of the AURA Congress, Darwin Australia, IGNCA, New Delhi, 147–92.Google Scholar
Francke, A.H., 1914: Antiquities of Indian Tibet, Calcutta.Google Scholar
Helskog, K., 1999: The shore connection. Cognitive landscapes and communication with rock carvings in northernmost Europe, Norwegian archaeological review 32 (2), 73–94.Google Scholar
Helskog, K., 2010: From the tyranny of the figures to the interrelationship between myths, rock art and their surfaces, in Blundell, G., Chippindale, C. and Smith, B. (eds), Seeing and knowing. Understanding rock art with and without ethnography, Johannesburg, 169–87.Google Scholar
Hussam-ul-Mulk, S., 1974a: Chitral folklore, in Jettmar, K. and Edelberg, L. (eds), Cultures of the Hindukush. Selected papers from the Hindu-Kush cultural conference held at Moesgård 1970, Wiesbaden, 95–115.Google Scholar
Hussam-ul-Mulk, S., 1974b: Kalash mythology, in Jettmar, K. and Edelberg, L. (eds), Cultures of the Hindukush. Selected papers from the Hindu-Kush cultural conference held at Moesgård 1970, Wiesbaden, 81–83.Google Scholar
Jettmar, K., 1961: Ethnological research in Dardistan 1958. Preliminary report, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 105 (1), 79–97.Google Scholar
Jettmar, K., 1975: Die Religionen des Hindukusch, Stuttgart (Die Religionen der Menschheit, Bd 4, 1).Google Scholar
Jettmar, K. (ed.), 1986: The religions of the Hindukush, Vol. 1, The religion of the Kafirs, Warminster.Google Scholar
Jettmar, K., and Edelberg, L. (eds) 1974: Cultures of the Hindukush. Selected papers from the Hindu-Kush cultural conference held at Moesgård 1970, Wiesbaden.Google Scholar
Jettmar, K., König, D. and Thewalt, V., 1989: Antiquities of northern Pakistan. Reports and studies, Vol. 1, Rock inscriptions in the Indus valley, Mainz.Google Scholar
Jones, S., 1986: The pre-Islamic religion of Waigal Valley, in Jettmar, K. (ed.), The religions of the Hindukush, Vol. 1, The religion of the Kafirs, Warminster, 112–20.Google Scholar
Klimburg, M., 1999: The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush. Art and society of Waigal and Ashkun Kafirs, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Knudsen, A., 2009: Violence and belonging. Land, love and lethal conflict in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Kuz′mina, E.E., 2007: The origin of the Indo-Iranians, Leiden (Leiden Etymological Dictionary Series).Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J.D., 1988: Reality and non-reality in San rock art, Johannesburg (Twenty-Fifth Raymond Dart Lecture).Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J.D., 2002: A cosmos in stone. Interpreting religion and society through rock art, Walnut Creek, CA.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J.D., and Dowson, T., 1990: Through the veil. San rock paintings and the rock face, South African archaeological bulletin 45, 5–16.Google Scholar
Lorimer, D.L.R. 1929: The supernatural in the popular belief of the Gilgit region, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 3, 507–36.Google Scholar
Loude, J.-Y., and Lièvre, V., 1988: Kalash solstice, Islamabad.Google Scholar
Morris, D., 2010: Snake and veil. The rock engravings of Driekopseiland, Northern Cape, South Africa, in Blundell, G., Chippindale, C. and Smith, B. (eds), Seeing and knowing. Understanding rock art with and without ethnography, Johannesburg, 37–53.Google Scholar
Müller-Stellrecht, I., 1973: Feste in Dardistan. Darstellung und kulturgeschichtliche analyse, Wiesbaden.Google Scholar
Parpola, A., 1999: The formation of the Aryan branch of Indo-European, in Blench, R. and Spriggs, M. (eds), Archaeology and language, III. Artefacts, languages and texts, London and New York, 180–207.Google Scholar
Robertson, G.S., 1896: The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, London.Google Scholar
Schmidt, R.L., and Kohistani, R., 2008: A grammar of the Shina language of Indus Kohistan, Wiesbaden.Google Scholar
Sidky, M.H., 1994: Shamans and mountain spirits in Hunza, Asian folklore studies 53 (1), 67–96.Google Scholar
Siiger, H., 1956: Ethnological field-research in Chitral, Sikkim and Assam. Preliminary report, Copenhagen (Historisk-filologiske Meddelelser udgivet af Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab 36(2)).Google Scholar
Staley, J.F., 1964: The Pul festival of the Kalash of Birir, Folklore 75 (3), 197–202.Google Scholar
Staley, J.F., 1982: Words for my Brother. Travels between the Hindu-Kush and the Himalayas, Karachi.Google Scholar
Teit, J.A., 1930: The Salishan tribes of the Western Plateau, Bureau of American Ethnology annual report 45, 23–396.Google Scholar
Tilley, C., 1991: Material culture and text. The art of ambiguity, London.Google Scholar
Tuite, K., 1997: Pelops, the hazel-witch and the pre-eaten ibex. On an ancient circumpontic symbolic cluster, Amsterdam (Antiquitates Proponticæ, Circumponticæ et Caucasicæ II).Google Scholar
Vernier, M., 2000: Study of rock art in Ladakh Himalayas. Unmesh (newsletter of NS Kashmir Research Institute), January–March 2000, 15.Google Scholar
Vinnicombe, P., 1976: People of the eland, Pietermaritzburg.Google Scholar
Vohra, R., 1989: The religion of the Dards in Ladakh. Investigation into their pre-Buddhist ‘brog-pa traditions, Ettelbruck.Google Scholar
Whitley, D.S., 1998: Finding rain in the desert. Landscape, gender, and far western North American rock art, in Chippindale, C. and Taçon, P.S.C. (eds), The archaeology of rock art, Cambridge, 11–29.Google Scholar
Whitley, D.S., 2011: Introduction to rock art research, Walnut Creek, CA.Google Scholar
Whitley, D.S., and Keyser, J.D., 2006: Sympathetic magic in western North American rock art, American antiquity 71 (1), 3–26.Google Scholar
Witzel, M., 2004: The Rgvedic religious system and its Central Asian and Hindukush antecedents, in Griffiths, A. and Houben, J.E.M (eds), The Vedas. Texts, language and ritual, Groningen, 581–636.Google Scholar